New anchovy catch limit, and the future of local seafood, called into question.

A week ago, on Oct. 26, the National Marine Fisheries Service announced the 2017 catch limit for the central subpopulation of northern anchovy, setting it at 25,000 metric tons. 

And that catch limit, according to a recently updated scientific study, is above an estimated biomass over the last four years of 18,200 metric tons.

In other words, the catch limit has been set at a higher level than what some scientists believe to be the total number of anchovy in the subpopulation. 

In an Oct. 26 statement from Oceana, a marine sustainability nonprofit, Oceana's California Campaign Director Geoff Shester said, "These fishery catch levels show a blatant disregard for science and conservation."

"This decision by federal fishery managers will jeopardize the potential recovery of the fishery in the future and leave already food starved dependent predators without enough to eat."

The response from NMFS staff to those concerns, which the agency was informed of prior to making the ruling, are vague.

Broadly speaking, the agency says there is high variability in anchovy populations, and that predators that eat anchovy rely on a "suite of species whose total and regional abundances may also shift each year."

Furthermore, the statement highlights that NMFS own indices of northern anchovy populations "show a decline of over 95 percent since the 1980s."

This all comes at a time where the warm water "blob" off the West Coast continues to disrupt all sorts of marine life patterns, and as climate change continues to create more uncertainty in the health of our local marine ecosystems. 

A detailed report of this trend, written by the San Francisco Chronicle's Tara Duggan, highlights the unusual recent migrations of certain species like squid and sardines, and in Northern California, "the plight of urchins, abalones and the kelp forest."

Climate change-driven ocean acidification, she continues, is also showing impacts to shellfish like oysters and crab, and drought—perhaps also climate change-driven—is causing baby salmon to die "by the millions in drought-warmed rivers while en route to the ocean." 

The title of the story is "Seafood's new normal," which is taken straight from one of Duggan's own sentences, which alludes to the various climate-related disruptions she details in her report: "More disturbing are signs that the recent changes to the Pacific Ocean could represent the new normal."