Take Action

E-mail DFO Minister Gail Shea and request an interim moratorium for the longspine thornyhead fishery.

The idiotfish aka
longspine thornyhead

There is a fish out there that needs your help. Not many people know about this fish; you’re probably the first person on your block to even read its name. You almost certainly have never seen it in a restaurant or at the grocery store, because it’s only popular in Japan. It’s a medium-sized rockfish that lives in the low-energy, oxygen-minimum deep-sea waters of the North American Pacific Ocean.

These little-known animals are called “longspine thornyhead” (Sebastolobus altivelis), and they are the target of a deep-sea bottom trawl fishery that is indefensible from any economic or environmental standpoint. In fact, this fishery, when it is being pursued, is likely the most unsustainable fishery on Canada’s Pacific coast.
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YOUR MESSAGE:

Dear Minister Shea:

I am writing to you urge you to immediately implement a moratorium on landings of longspine thornyhead (Sebastolobus altivelis) until a comprehensive ecosystem-based management plan can be developed for this fishery.

Overfishing during the past 13 years has reduced the abundance of this slow-growing, deep-sea species to the point that Committee for the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) has determined that longspine thornyhead is a species of special concern, thus making it a candidate for protection under SARA. Currently, it is under consideration for protection under SARA. However, in the interim, bottom trawlers continue to pursue the already-diminished longspine thornyhead stocks, abetted by Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s allocation of over 400 tons of quota to trawlers.  This continued fishing pressure is likely further depleting stocks and making future stock rehabilitation all the more difficult.
 
The directed fishery for longspine thornyhead in B.C. began in 1996. Within 10 years, landings crashed to less than 10 percent of peak landings; DFO’s catch-per-unit-effort data for the fishery shows a 50 percent decline in CPUE over the course of eight of those years. This should not have been a surprise to anyone, as this is a very slow-growing, long-lived species that is very slow to reproduce. In fact, longspine thornyheads may eat only several times each year. This is virtually the definition of a fish that is susceptible to over-fishing.

There will be very little economic or social impact to barring landings of longspine thornyhead. The market for this fish is in Japan, not Canada. It is a marginal fishery even when fuel prices are low and the Japanese market is strong; high fuel prices and a weak Japanese market have made it even less appealing to Canadian fishermen in recent years. It is safe to say, in fact, that there is not one fisherman in Canada who is economically dependent upon this species.

Temporary economic disincentives, however, are no substitute for strong protection. I am concerned about the following aspects of the fishery for longspine thornyhead: the innate vulnerability of the species to overfishing; the damage caused by bottom trawl gear to deep-sea ecosystems, which are not adapted to be resilient to change, the incidental catch and discarding of other ecologically important species by bottom trawlers targeting longspine thornyhead.

Currently, there is no ecosystem-based management plan for this fishery, and thus it is free to continue on its demonstrably unsustainable path. We must ensure that any directed longspine thornyhead fishery is undertaken only with strong precautionary measures in place to manage the fishery within the obvious biological constraints that attend deep-sea fisheries for slow-growing species. Once again, I urge you to implement an immediate moratorium on landings of longspine thornyhead until an ecosystem-based management plan can be developed for this fishery.

Sincerely,