California Coast & Ocean

helped the Morro Bay Commercial Fishermen’s Organization take on the lease and, with funding from the Coastal Conservancy, improved the wharf. In 1984, to prevent tourist businesses from pricing fishermen out of the working waterfront, citizens passed Measure D, a voter initiative that rezoned the northern waterfront for waterfront-dependent uses. (Existing restaurants and other businesses were allowed to stay.) There has recently been talk about modifying Measure D zoning because considerable space on the northern waterfront stands empty.

Part of California fishermen’s problem is that they operate in market frameworks that have become obsolete. Scarcity of fish is a fact under the current regulatory environment, but the market structure doesn’t allow fishermen to benefit from the higher values that scarcity could bring. For the most part, fishermen sell their whole catch at once, as farmers might a load of grain or other commodity. The lack of competition among buyers and markets leaves them little choice but to take the price they are offered.

“Our fishermen harvest pearls and are forced to sell their seafood products for the price of a shell,” said Algert. “What is needed is innovative new thinking on markets to get this incredible fresh seafood to our California consumers and add price value to the fishermen. A transition must be made from high-volume low-end to low-volume high-end.”

Commercial fishing in California declined for many years, largely because of overfishing and habitat damage. In the 1950s and ’60s, up to 50 trawlers, 60–70 feet long, went for groundfish out of Morro Bay, wreaking havoc on bottom habitat. The federal government encouraged industrial-scale commercial fishing by offering low-interest loans. Regulation began only in the 1980s, too late to prevent depletion of some groundfish stocks.

But many corrective measures have been taken in recent years and “things are looking up, generally,” according to marine ecologist Rod Fujita of Environmental Defense. Some groundfish stocks are now rebounding and fishermen report that some populations are abundant. However, Fujita notes that only 23 of the 82 species of groundfish that are commercially exploited off the West Coast have been assessed, and that about a quarter of those were found to be overfished.