In Reply to: Clearly somebody isn't doing their "job" posted by Elaine on January 02, 2008 at 16:08:46:

... look to me like white sea bass nets. Fairly small mesh, monofilament, anchor-sink. They're not supposed to be set inshore, as someone pointed out already, and in those photos and in your stories you can understand why. Awful.

If anyone ever comes across a gillnet they should avoid getting near it if they're in the water, but if you do happen to get near the lines on the top, sides or bottom, try to see if there are any plastic tags that have a number on them. I think most sink gillnet fisheries in the U.S. require fishermen to apply tags that do indeed identify the net's owner, for precisely these situations. If anyone sees another net like this, look for a tag and report the number to the DGF or NMFS enforcement. They'll go after the fisherman. But it's certainly possible that there are no tags on that net.

(Someone over at wetpixel.com linked to this discussion, so I thought I'd stop by and give my two cents. I was once an observer in the CA pelagic gillnet fishery and I heard a bit about sea bass gillnetting.)

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