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Here are a few other suspect things that I noticed in the article. Their theory on "Hyperstability" assumes that people were not fishing the spawing grounds before. In the case of Sandbass, I would highly disagree with that assumption. I don't believe for a minute that the biomass has decreased by 90% without a decrease in the catch rate, regardless of where they are being targeted. Also, using data from the intakes of powerplants seems a bit skewed too. The long term effect of a 24/7 intake has to be the reduction of the fish population in the nearby waters. Especially for fish of slow growth rate that don't travel very far in their lifetime like Kelp Bass. It is funny how they dismis "changes in environmental conditions" in less than it's own sentence as a contributing factor.
I agree with Rob, there are a multitude of factors that effect the fish counts. And just like forcasting the weather, nobody is very effective at putting all the pieces together. Is there really far less tuna in the sea the last 2 years than there was 3 years ago, or are environmental factors influencing the counts? I also agree that the most important steps are controlling pollution and creating structure along the SoCal coast. Most of the artificial reefs created along our coast are little more than bumps of sand today.
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