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Just as all recipes for rabbit stew begin with the line, “First, you catch the rabbit, ” all recipes for tuna begin with, “First, you go to the store and take some cans off the shelf” If we think at all about how the tuna got into the cans, our thoughts probably contain some generally vague notions about boats and something we’ve read or heard about porpoises getting trapped along with the tuna. It is we millions and our taste for the contents of those 6 1/2-ounce cans that necessitate this country’s tuna industry. For thousands of people in and around San Diego the business involves much more than small cans.
-*-0r many years, San Diego has been home port not °nly to the warships of the U. S. Navy but also to t^le modern seiners that comprise the bulk (about jOO of 140) of the U. S. high seas tuna fishing fleet. hese seiners are not the small fishing boats used in sometimes marginal U. S. coastal fisheries but arSe> well-equipped oceangoing ships which cost upwards of $6 million each. These vessels can stay at Sea for months as they roam rich fishing grounds ^eking the tuna that comprise most of the canned ls” consumed in the United States today.
Not only is San Diego home for many “superseiners,” but industry in the southern California city designs, builds, and maintains them as well. Boats coming back from trips lasting several months to the waters off South America, West Africa, the Central Pacific, or New Zealand sell their catch to San Diego canneries which process and can the fish. The tuna business is one area of U. S. maritime industry that Americans can look at with genuine pride as a first- class example of successful free enterprise operated without government subsidies.
The U. S. tuna industry dates back to the early years of this century. In 1903, a San Pedro, California, packer began canning albacore tuna when locally caught supplies of sardines could not meet demand. Ironically, for many years the various species of tuna had been regarded as “scrap” fish of no particular commercial value. Albacore (which generally cannot be seine caught) gained ready acceptance on the market because of its excellent flavor, but by 1917 demand had outstripped supply. Fishermen began sailing farther from West Coast ports and started taking yellowfin, skipjack, and bluefin tuna. Some albacore can be fished at relatively short distances from the U. S. coast, but the other species required boats capable of operating at extended ranges.
The difference in range required of the various boats engendered a separate high seas fishing fleet
Until the mid-1950s, most of the U.S. tuna catch, regardless of species, was acquired using the labor-intensive, inefficient method of pole and line. When one considers that some tuna weigh in excess of 200 pounds and that the fish were continuously landed by each man, almost unaided for hours at a time, one can appreciate the need for better methods.
Purse seining was not a new technique when the U. S. tuna industry adopted it in the late 1950s. Though seiners had sailed from West Coast ports for many years, the vessels had never brought back more than 14% of the catch. The problem with early seiners lay with the equipment available at the time. Early seines were made of heavy, hard-to-handle cotton. The nets deteriorated rapidly in a saltwater environment and were very susceptible to damage from sharks. In early 1956, the 120-foot Anthony Ah
which grew steadily until World War II. Tuna imports from Japan, begun in the 1920s, were halted, and many of the oceangoing U. S. tuna “clippers” undertook wartime duties. Tuna virtually disappeared from the U. S. civilian market. After World War II, the tuna fleet went back to sea with varying degrees of economic success. Its problems could be related to the technology required to fish tuna in profitable quantities.
sailed to South American fishing grounds with equipment innovations that would revolutionize tuf^ fishing. The vessel used the first all-nylon purse seine and was also equipped with a “power block” tha1 vastly increased the speed and efficiency with which the crew could haul the seine. This first trip was af unqualified success, and owners of pole-and-line clippers began the expensive conversion to purstj seine equipment the next year.
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The drawing above by Kenneth Raymond shows a tuna seiner and her net. This “back down” maneuver permits porpoises to escape the purse seine at left while keeping most of the tuna within. As the seiner hacks down, the net draws shut. At left, fishermen on board the seiner Venturous bring the immense net back on hoard at sunset. When there are fish to be caught or a net to be tended to, fishermen continue working— sometimes 14 or more hours at a stretch—often without even a pause for food.
In the photo on the opposite page, a seine and its supporting floats lie on San Diego’s Embarcadero. Costing as much as a quarter of a million dollars apiece, these complex nets have been modified in recent years to reduce porpoise mortality. A relatively fine tnesh, seen at lower left, prevents porpoises from becoming entangled in the nets and drowning.
Stretched to its full length, a purse seiner’s nylon net is almost a mile long. It extends beneath the surface of the water to a depth of 300 feet. When tuna are found, the basic idea is to encircle them with the net and then—as the name implies—draw the bottom of the seine together like a woman’s purse, thus trapping up to 200 tons of tuna within the closed net.
While superseiners carry a respectable array of electronic equipment (two radars, gyro and autopilot, position finder, depth recorder, automatic monitoring system, satellite navigation system, several radios and a scrambler), in the final analysis finding fish at sea depends on experience and “eyeball.” No gadget yet devised can surpass an experienced
A tuna seiner is shown at the beginning of a net “set" with the seine just beginning to go off the stem as the boat moves at high speed to surround a school of tuna before it can escape. Below is the broad-heamed skiff of another seiner. The skiff helps set the net in a rough circle.
lookout placed either high above the main deck in the traditional crow’s nest or in a helicopter launched from the seiner. Tuna are spotted either by broaching porpoises swimming above them or by the surface disturbance they make. Why porpoises habitually swim with schools of yellowfin tuna has never been scientifically explained, but the fact that they do is the key to successful tuna fishing, and ironically, to the legal problems the U. S. seiner fleet has had in recent years.
Once tuna have been spotted, a process not unlike a Navy ship going to general quarters occurs. A large seiner carries about 18 in her crew. Everyone on board becomes a fisherman. Some scurry to man small, very fast motorboats, while others man an oversized skiff. The skiff, an enormous workboat equipped with a powerful diesel engine, is quickly launched off the stern by knocking loose a single retaining shackle. The skiff takes out the bitter end of the net and begins tracing half of a rough circle, while the seiner forms the circle’s other half. The motorboats, meantime, are herding the porpoises, with the tuna just below them, toward the closing net.
With the tuna moved within the confines of the net, the skiff and the seiner come together, thus closing the circle on the surface. Cable along the submerged bottom of the net is taken in, and the “purse” is closed. By means of a “brail” net used along with the seiner’s boom and winches, the tuna are taken up from within the closed seine and struck below to refrigerated storage wells. A large vessel such as the Elizabeth C.J. has 20 wells and capacity for 1,700 tons of fish.
While seining vastly improved the efficiency of the U. S. tuna industry, it also generated an enormous increase in porpoise mortality. Until quite recently, many of the porpoises trapped within the purse seine died from a variety of causes, including drowning and trauma. The creatures are extremely intelligent air-breathing mammals, very susceptible to injury and shock. In times past, a net “set” might have cost the lives of several hundred.
In 1972, the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) forbade fishing or importation into the United States of certain marine mammals, including porpoises. The MMPA provided for procedures to protect such mammals, but enforcement was delayed so that commerical fishermen could adapt purse seining
techniques to reduce porpoise mortality. A two-year time limit was set to create the necessary change in technology, after which the taking of any porpoises would require a permit issued by the Secretary of Commerce. Environmental groups challenged in court the validity of the permits for the 1976 fishing season, and for the next 18 months the San Dieg° tuna industry was in a state of turmoil.
A federal court declared that very small numbers of porpoises could be killed incident to fishing, but that no eastern spinner, a depleted species, could be taken. Most tuna seiner skippers then believed they could not profitably fish under such a restriction an<f that the U. S. tuna industry might disappear. Before the advent of the MMPA, attitudes toward porpoise5 varied among tuna skippers. Some seiners killed pot' poises indiscriminately during net sets, while other boats went to extraordinary lengths to free porpoise5 and move them outside the closed net. Some fisher' men regard the porpoise as “just another fish,” buc
most are quick to point out that it is in their own best interest to preserve it.
Within the last three years, the fleet has modified lts nets to a design which has drastically reduced the number of porpoises being killed. Large portions of the seine were changed to a smaller mesh so that porpoises could not become entangled in it and drown. A special “apron” built into one part of the seine permits porpoises to slip over the top and into the open sea. If necessary, crewmen enter the water themselves and physically aid the escape. Figures compiled by the National Marine Fisheries Service mdicate that porpoise mortality for 1978 would be considerably below the court mandated figure of 51,946. Using a variety of lifesaving techniques, fishermen by mid-year had reduced the rate of mortality to 0.026% of those temporarily trapped.
Yet, by law, porpoise mortality must eventually aPproach zero.” The tuna industry firmly believes that even with improved equipment and the most careful fishing techniques, some porpoises will inevitably 6ie the nets. The American Tunaboat Asso- Clation (ATA), which speaks for the industry from its headquarters in San Diego, says federal insistence on 2ero porpoise mortality could, ironically, increase the billing of porpoise, not reduce it. The ATA says that if American tuna seiners must follow this rule, they will not be able to operate at a profit and might reluctantly be forced to change national registration. The U. S. tuna industry is the only one which has such restric- t,0ns placed upon it by its own government. The government and the industry may come to a reasonable compromise because the terminology of the law—“a mortality and injury rate approaching 2ero ’—does permit some flexibility. Without such compromise the U. S. tuna industry, and indeed the Porpoise itself, may be in deep trouble.
Besides the current difficulty relating to the kill- of porpoises, the most vexing problem for the • S. tuna industry over the years has been the con- tr°versy over territorial waters. Several Latin AmeriCan countries have claimed since the 1940s that their s°vereignty extends 200 miles to seaward and that any vessels fishing these areas must first buy permits.
ntil 1977, the U. S. Government consistently obServed a maximum limit of 12 miles relevant to fish- Ir*g rights. Following their government’s lead, U. S. t^ria fishermen declined to buy licenses for fishing in ^ ese areas, and in many cases they were seized and ^ned. In 1975, for example, Ecuador seized seven ‘ boats and imposed fines and penalties in excess
$1-5 million. U. S. fishermen were particularly ltter about these seizures, since the Ecuadorian
Navy vessels which stopped and boarded the American seiners were former U. S. warships transferred to Ecuador under foreign aid programs. The adoption by the United States of a 200-mile Fishery and Conservation Management Zone which went into effect 1 March 1977 has not changed the situation. Tuna and other highly migratory fish are specifically excluded from the Fishery Conservation and Management Act. Though the question of permits has not been resolved, it is obvious that U. S. tuna men are reluctant to purchase the expensive ($40,000 plus) documents simply for the opportunity to fish.
In light of the political problems of fishing the Eastern Pacific, and the finite number of yellowfin tuna to be caught there, it seems likely that American seiners will look with greater interest to other fishing grounds. Superseiners have already begun fishing with some regularity off West Africa, the Central Pacific, and in the waters off New Zealand. While there are huge quantities of skipjack to be had in these new areas, some changes in equipment will be required. In the Latin American fishing grounds, tuna usually dive until just before reaching a cold water layer—the thermocline—to escape the seine. In the Central Pacific the thermocline may extend to 400 feet, and existing nets are sometimes too short to trap the tuna. The wily fish can also see and escape the net more readily in these clearer waters. What will be required is a net extending to greater depth, and equally important, one which sinks very rapidly to prevent tuna from escaping.
Such a change would be yet another example of the singular self-reliance the San Diego tuna fleet has displayed in adapting to changing operating requirements over the years. With equitable, understanding treatment from their own government, members of the San Diego fleet can continue to fish on the world’s oceans for their fair share of tuna.
tMr. Powers is editor of publications for the Port of San Diego. This is his 14th major illustrated article in the Proceedings. Previous pictorials have addressed a wide variety of subjects, including the Republic of China Navy, the F-14 Tomcat fighter, the U. S. Coast Guard Academy, and historical pieces from Japan and the Philippines. He is an honors graduate in journalism of San Diego State University and has done graduate work in photojournalism at Syracuse University. Mr. Powers retired from naval service in 1974 as a senior chief petty officer. He served as a working photojournalist in many duty stations including North Africa, Vietnam, the Philippines, the Naval War College, and in Washington, D.C. His other publication credits include most newspapers subscribing to either Associated Press or United Press International, Newsweek, Parade, and many specialized publications.
Except for the use of ex-Navy floating dry docks in repairing ‘una boats, there is little direct connection between the tuna 1ndustry and the Navy, but both share the home port of San Diego and have for many years. Neither the carrier Constellation nor the small seiner nearby is the newest of her type. They date from a time before carriers cost $2 billion and tuna boats $6 million each. San Diego’s Campbell Shipyard builds and/or repairs virtually the entire U.S. tuna fleet—as 11 has done for 70 years. The seiner hulls are built upside ‘/own, then inverted for completion and outfitting, including tbe installation of bridge equipment. Like Navy vessels, the tuna boats carry a plethora of electronic gear. Even so, their “Ppearance against the sky—with crow’s nests, masts, and r,Sging—is somehow reminiscent of an era when the Navy bud battleships, and the pole and line represented the height of sophistication in tuna fishing.
Photographer Mike Zolezzi of the American Tunaboat Association captured this series of shots of the super seiner Elizabeth C.J. during fishing operations. With her displacement of 3,200 tons, 232-foot length, and 21-foot beam, 0ne is more inclined to call her a ship than a boat. She can take on 1,700 tons of tuna in her 20 refrigerated wells, and her two diesel engines can propel her at speeds up to 18 knots. The tuna are located from the crow’s nest or helo because of the Porpoises that swim along with them. Once the fish are s'ghted, the crew figuratively goes to battle stations, sets the huge purse seine, and then herds the tuna into the ever-closing uet by means of speedboats. Men in an alongside skiff then Maneuver a brail net into position to bring on hoard the tuna tapped in the purse seine net.
In an era uhen electronics and mechanization are so important in bringing tuna hack from the briny deep, hundreds of human hands are necessary to get the catch ready for the American family’s table. A muscular worker guts fish and sends them to a cooker which can handle ten tons at a time in the 640,000-square-foot Van Camp cannery, which is probably the most modern in the world. The cooked fish then go on a conveyor which carries them to still other workers who separate the white meat eaten by humans from the red which will become pet food. Skin, bones, and viscera are converted to fish meal. Other solubles become livestock feed supplements. Virtually nothing is wasted.
The San Diego tuna fishing industry is more than just boats and nets, of course. Its vitality, strength, and continuity come from the people who spend years, often lifetimes, bringing in the catch. Their dress tends to the functional—comfortable and casual. Even so, the hardhat is necessary when working on board because of the danger of getting clunked on the head by a fish falling from the net as it is pulled through a power block. Those nets are long ones, nearly a mile’s worth on each seiner, and repairs are sometimes called for. Some of the fishermen are immigrants and still speak the language of their European forebears. All share the common heritage provided by the sea which is often their home.