Sun Sets on Fleet : San Diego Tuna Fishermen Squeezed by Economics, Environment

The old fisherman died in the spring, and his son and grandson agree on one thing:

San Diego harbor without a Zolezzi-family tuna-fishing boat would have broken the old man’s heart. Once a thriving tuna-fishing community, the harbor has only a handful of tuna vessels left.

John Zolezzi, who was 81 when he died in April, was a believer in the family tradition. He never would have believed this.

“He’d probably be glad not to be around to see it,” said John Zolezzi III.

“No question, I don’t think he would have wanted to see it,” added John Zolezzi Jr. “He wouldn’t have believed it.”

After four generations in the business going back to the turn of the century, the Zolezzis sold their tuna seiners, as many Italian- and Portuguese- American families in San Diego did before them. Those are the boats with the huge purse seine nets, which can catch and kill dolphin along with the tuna. Under environmental pressure, major tuna canners have stopped accepting tuna caught by seiners.

When the purchase papers were signed Sept. 28, another bit of San Diego tradition died.

The government of Yap, an island nation in the western Pacific, bought the Mary Antoinette from John Jr. and John III and the Marietta from Julius Zolezzi, John Jr.’s brother.

From a high of more than 250 tuna boats years ago, the number of San Diego-based vessels has dwindled as the U.S. tuna-fishing and canning industry dies, taken over by foreign investors.

About 45 tuna seiners still are owned by San Diego entities, but only a few actually use San Diego as a base, and those vessels are expected to be sold soon.

From a business that supported generations of Portuguese and Italian families, tuna fishing in San Diego has been reduced to this: a few boats, plain, simple, weathered workhorses of the ocean, tied up at the Embarcadero.

“It’s no longer economical for these guys and their families,” said August Felando, president since 1960 of the San Diego-based American Tunaboat Assn. “All the jobs are going overseas. . . . It bothers me that the tuna-fishing history here is ending.”

As with other tuna-fishing families, the economic hammer has fallen hard on the Zolezzis and they had little choice but to leave the business, Felando said.

“I have known them for years, of course,” Felando said. “And it’s a shame, but it’s happening all over. The chances are not too good” that tuna fishing will survive in San Diego.

Like countless men before them, four generations of Zolezzis have spent their lives at sea. Old-timers stood in the racks along the sides of the boats on the open ocean, rolling waist-deep in the sea, using bamboo poles like pistons--dip and pull, dip and pull--to snatch the fish from the chum-baited eastern Pacific.

The younger generations, using the giant purse seines developed in the mid-1960s, worked as hard as their great-grandfathers but in different ways. They still weathered storms, sharks and tedium for months at a time, when the only thing on the horizon was more horizon and when the sun baked their skin and etched deep wrinkles in their necks.

The Zolezzi-family story is a blue-collar tale rich with hard work, laughter, pain and pride, like those of other San Diego tuna families.

John Zolezzi Jr.’s great-grandfather, a fisherman who had emigrated from Italy, moved from San Francisco to San Diego after the 1906 earthquake. There he took up fishing for rock cod and, eventually, tuna.

Rearing a family in Point Loma, he went to sea, as did his son, John, and John’s son, John Jr., and his son, John III. John IV, age 9, never got the chance.

“He loves fishing and he might have gone into tuna fishing, but who knows?” his father said. “I’d support him in whatever he does.”

From humble beginnings after the turn of the century, many local Portuguese- and Italian-Americans have earned a good living from tuna fishing, enough to reside in affluent Point Loma, whose hills overlook the harbor from which they departed.

In his Point Loma house last week, John Jr. sat with a view of the bay spread out like a 3-D painting, the brown mountains beyond the city, sailboats down in the harbor.

Zolezzi, 58, retired in 1981. A private man, big and strong, he is typical of many tuna fishermen. They are a close-knit bunch, made even closer by the dolphin controversy. They are angry at being driven out of business--unfairly, they say--still a little shell-shocked at losing their way of life, wary of outsiders.

Zolezzi talked about the old days of bait or pole fishing when he worked around the clock, catching bait, preparing feather flies that resembled squid, using bamboo poles and a lot of muscle to catch, move and store the tuna.

He and his brother, Julius, 59, fished when they were boys and started going on their father’s tuna runs during their high school summers. They ended up as captains of their own boats. Brother Michael owns a helicopter service that spots tuna schools for the big modern boats.

“My family’s always owned boats, and I always thought I’d be a fisherman,” John said. “I liked fishing, but not the time away at sea. Still, it was the best way for me to support my family.”

He looks like he could tell a million tales, but he’s not much of a talker and he’s not a man who dwells on the past. He doesn’t know where to begin or how to explain in an hour what it took him a lifetime to learn.

“It’s a real loss to San Diego, this heritage, all the families that came from Europe and settled here,” Zolezzi said. “It was hard work, but we stuck with it; lot of ups and downs, a lot of sacrifice, but good pay. Now it’s all dying out.”

He skipped around a lot, touching on memories here and there, the advantages of purse seining, with the great nets scooping massive amounts of fish, versus the old one-at-a-time bait fishing. “God, more volume!” he said.

“I miss going to sea, but deep down, I don’t miss it, if you know what I mean,” he said.

And later: “Tuna fishing is kind of like farming; you’ve got to feel it, it’s got to be in your blood . . . but you’ve got to learn it too.”

In the end, a little frustrated, he showed an old video of tuna fishing. Made perhaps in the early ‘60s, it shows men in crew cuts, using their wiry arms and their backs to bait fish. They slap the sea with the tips of their long poles, jerking the feeding tuna up and over their shoulders onto the boat, filling the belly of the ship with tons of fish, one at a time.

Zolezzi smiled. “There,” he said, pointing at the screen, “look at those guys work. They work hard today, don’t get me wrong, but do you think you get guys to do that kind of work today? Do you see what I mean?”

Down at the docks, the Mary Antoinette sits empty. The great black nets are piled on the back. Most of the crew has gone, some to tuna-fishing jobs with foreign or U.S.-flagged vessels based in the western Pacific, some taking land-based jobs.

The boat’s gangplank is not up; despite two big dogs and warning signs, tourists try to come aboard as if the seiner is another aquatic museum gathering dust. The boats will leave for Yap in 60 days after being remodeled to handle heavier loads.

Zolezzi’s son, John III, 34, the boat’s captain since 1980, has cleared out his cabin. The 14-man crew’s cabins are empty--empty as the tuna storage tanks, the pilot house, the engine room.

The dock is empty, too, except for a few fellow tuna men who come to shoot the breeze awhile, everyone waiting for the sale of the boats to go through.

John III, whose brothers also are in the fishing industry, plans to stay in tuna fishing, working in the western Pacific with other West Coast tuna men. He has no specific job lined up, but something will turn up, he said.

“Yeah, I’ll probably go to the other side (of the Pacific),” he said. “Less pay, more time away from the family, but you have to make a living.”

He held a cigarette in his hands, which look like meat hooks, as tuna fishermen’s hands do--calloused, beaten up, the fingers a little crooked, the fingernails battered. He talked about the lure of the sea a little more expansively than his father. But not much.

“You’ve just got to like being out at sea. It’s a strain on the family, but I have a good wife. You’ve got to have a good wife,” he said.

Down the dock is the Mary Antoinette’s sister ship, the Marietta, owned until recently by Julius Zolezzi, John Jr.’s brother. The 165-foot vessels were built in 1969. Julius also owns three tuna boats in the western Pacific. Like his fishermen brethren, he complained about environmentalists and the public’s not knowing “the real story” about the number of dolphins killed in purse seines. The tuna men are the true protectors of both the tuna and dolphin stocks, he said.

But his heart did not seem in the argument in the days after the sale of his boat.

“Our family’s been in it for 90 years. When the (sale) papers were signed, I was really just kind of numb. . . . It brought back a lot of memories,” he said.

And then a few more memories jumped up in his face, and the middle-age fisherman choked up.

“I’m getting a little emotional,” he said. “ . . . I’m not really jumping for joy now that the boat’s sold, I’ll tell you that.”