Gary Griggs, Our Ocean Backyard: Climate Oscillations and disappearing sardines

the purse seiners are still sucking the life out of montetey bay, along with hundreds of thousands of tons of baitfish the by catch of salmon, and schooling fish is never talked about, WHY do the enviro' let them get away with this?

Because it's not a problem?

Humans are not the cause of every - or even most - catastrophic changes on the earth.

The sardines did not disappear from the local waters because they were fished out.

Xanthippe wrote:

Because it's not a problem?
Humans are not the cause of every - or even most - catastrophic changes on the earth.
The sardines did not disappear from the local waters because they were fished out.

Do I detect a theme here? Seems you have issues with conservationists?

Xanthippe wrote:

Because it's not a problem?
Humans are not the cause of every - or even most - catastrophic changes on the earth.
The sardines did not disappear from the local waters because they were fished out.

was referring to all baitfish not just sardines, anchovies, herring, mackerel, jacksmelt, ext.

I would like to speak up for a higher level of commentary on articles that appear in the Sentinel. This is not just an opportunity to give a knee-jerk comment on your particular vision of what *may* or *may not* be going on in the environment. Some actual data i.e. real numbers are presented, deal with them.

My obsevation about the numbers Gary Griggs presents is that readers need to be careful to understand what the cycle length described here really is. The full length of a cycle is the time it takes to go from one point back to that same point again. If the sardine phase is 25-30 years and the anchovy phase is about the same, the cycle length is twice that i.e. 50-60 years. Professor Griggs, please correct me if I am wrong.

We all want a good environment, but I think long before we have that, everybody in Santa Cruz will understand the difference between cycles and phases. Somehow I don't think we are there yet.

So with more cores and more data we can get more analyses and more answers about trends and conditions of the Eastern Pacific. But there aren't enough boats available for all the scientists. Solution: hire the out-of-work salmon fisherman, buy 'em a tank of diesel, throw an a-frame and section of pipe on the back deck, get everybody in on the game of science, it's all that's left around here of the once diverse group of local professionals out on the water.

plant natives wrote:

<quoted text>
Do I detect a theme here? Seems you have issues with conservationists?

Not at all. My issue is with people who assume that humans are automatically the cause of population changes in other species.

For years, it was assumed that the sardines were overfished and that is why they disappeared. These days, people believe in the anthropomorphic global warming theory as fact.

chovie wrote:

<quoted text>
was referring to all baitfish not just sardines, anchovies, herring, mackerel, jacksmelt, ext.

Are these populations endangered?

The presence of this column in the Santa Cruz paper (on-line or print versions) is very different from the general change towards less local content (from any source, journalist or columnist) at the Salinas paper, or the Monterey paper.

Kudus to the SC Sentinel!