REEDSPORT — If Joe Mulkey could fish for market squid year-round, he would.

The emerging Oregon fishery ticks a lot of boxes for the commercial fisherman from Reedsport: the use of gear and electronics, and, of course, the recent profitability.

In the past five years, the market squid fishery has moved from almost nonexistent to booming. Now boats that would normally fish for squid in California’s Monterey Bay have headed north, and Oregon fishermen are seeing new opportunities in local waters, hunting the small, short-lived animals sold mainly for human consumption or as bait for recreational anglers, according to the state of California.

Last year, the fishery saw the highest participation yet in Oregon and fishermen landed more than 10 million pounds. Before fishing took off in 2016, fishermen had only landed 4.5 million pounds in Oregon since 1980.

But as market squid surges forward, state fishery managers are rushing to catch up.

In March, the state issued a suite of regulations specific to the squid fishery and plans to discuss further regulations and parameters later this year.

On Friday, an advisory panel made up of state fishery employees and industry stakeholders, including Mulkey, met to discuss a number of issues to help inform how the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission proceeds.

As the panel discussed possible gear restrictions, vessel monitoring and changes to how fishermen might enter the fishery, one central, unanswerable, issue remained: Will the squid stick around? The long-term sustainability of the fishery is a question mark.

No established quota

Oregon’s market squid fishery has no established quota and no set season. There are no reliable population estimates. No one knows what the squid population off the Oregon Coast really looks like or how it might respond to the shifting ocean conditions associated with climate change.

In general, demand for market squid has been high. Fishermen landed more than 32 million pounds in the United States in 2019 for a value of about $16.4 million, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries database.

Market squid are short-lived and, even without the pressures of fishing, the population replaces itself each year, according to NOAA Fisheries.

“As a result, market squid populations can handle a relatively high amount of fishing pressure,” the agency concluded.

Most of Oregon’s landings have come to Coos Bay, Newport and Winchester Bay. Among the few Oregon fishermen who have started to participate in the local fishery, there is a strong desire to maintain it as just that: local.

But many of the boats are from farther afield, vessels from California, Washington state and Alaska that faced downturns in the California market squid fishery and Alaska’s herring and salmon fisheries and were looking for new opportunities.

As many as 40 vessels participated in Oregon’s market squid fishery last year and 32 participated this year.

That’s more than the fishery can support, Mulkey and others believe. Troy Buell, the fishery management program leader with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, has heard that a better vessel range might be 20 to 30 boats.

“This is a dynamic resource, and it could grow in the future,” Buell told the panel on Friday. “It seems to be more robust now than it has in the past.”

“There could be a day where a bigger fleet could be supported,” he added, “but that’s pretty hypothetical at this point.”

Mulkey thinks the sweet spot might be closer to 15 or 20 boats.

He sees little room for the larger operations more typical in California, where a large boat might sit on the fishing grounds for days, attracting squid with fishing lights, while smaller boats associated with the vessel take deliveries to buyers.

In Oregon, the spawning grounds can be very small and appear to be focused more in certain areas. One large light boat could monopolize a fishing ground, Mulkey argues.

For Josh Whaley, a fisherman based in Brookings, there is a definite desire to find ways to “keep most of the fishery here.”

Local fishermen also wonder how profitable the fishery really is to participants coming from elsewhere.

Mulkey might only land squid two or three days in a month, but he is close to the fishing grounds and he burns far less fuel in a summer than he did when he was going after shrimp.

For Whaley, market squid has worked as a bridge fishery between the end of the Dungeness crab season and the beginning of the shrimp season. The boat Whaley operates, the Miss Emily, fishes for Da Yang Seafood, in Astoria, and the processor encouraged Whaley to enter the market squid fishery. There was good money to be made, the processor said.

It is beginning to pencil out now, Whaley said. Still, the fishery remains supplemental for him, not a staple, not yet.

Mulkey has made market squid a much larger part of his business plan. So far, he feels like the huge initial investment he had to make to outfit a boat for the fishery — around half a million dollars — has been worth it. Despite the many unknowns, he is optimistic about the future of Oregon’s market squid.

“I feel like there’s been squid here the entire time,” Mulkey said. “They just weren’t being harvested.”

Market squid are short-lived and, even without the pressures of fishing, the population replaces itself each year.

— NOAA Fisheries