Ventura Area’s Squid Is Satisfying Appetite of Overseas Markets

With an anguished metallic cry, a winch slowly pulls a shimmering black net teeming with squid aboard the Heavy Duty.

Giant light bulbs visible for miles illuminate the evening’s catch: 25 tons of silvery squid that in a matter of hours will be chopped into calamari bound for overseas markets.

“The boat’s leaning now!” yells a crew member, as the metal winch strains to hoist the heavy load alongside the 58-foot vessel.

Inside the net, thousands of bug-eyed mollusks squirt ink in a panic and ram their parrot-like beaks against the nylon web. On deck, the crew nods approvingly at the $5,500 haul.

This winter has delivered a bumper crop of squid to the Ventura County coastline as millions of the delicate creatures spawn along the Santa Barbara Channel’s sandy floor.

Dozens of fishing boats from Alaska to Hawaii have congregated in Ventura and Channel Islands harbors to harvest what many have described as one of the best squid runs in recent years.

The influx of fishing crews has brought a Cannery Row spirit back to local docks, not to mention thousands of dollars in boat slip rentals to struggling harbors.

The number of squid boats working out of tiny Ventura Harbor has quadrupled since last year. The increase will pump an estimated $60,000 in slip fees into the local economy, not to mention the money that crews will spend on groceries and other living expenses.

“The guy at the fuel docks actually hugs us,” said Gary Cassidy, 47, a Washington state fisherman working aboard the Heavy Duty.

Fishing boats netted more than 60,000 tons of squid off the coast of California last year, the bulk of which came from Southern California waters, according to the state Department of Fish and Game.

“Last year was a record year statewide,” said Jerry Spratt, a Fish and Game marine biologist in Monterey.

This year promises to be even better, anglers say.

“It’s looking pretty good,” said Bo Sands, a 46-year-old fisherman from Bellingham, Wash., and the Heavy Duty’s skipper.

Biologists are at a loss to explain the phenomenal season. The squid population is widespread, stretching from Mexico to Canada, and fluctuates annually.

For nearly three months, the Heavy Duty’s crew has combed the channel for dense pockets of squid and pulled up an average of 30 to 50 tons a night. In mid-December, the crew netted a record 67 tons in one night’s catch.

Sands rolled the dice two years ago when he spent $50,000 to convert his salmon boat into a squid boat, stringing it with giant light bulbs and finely-meshed nets.

So far, his luck has held. The bountiful squid run has generated $35,200 more than last year and he is only halfway through the season. Because of limited capacity, Sands had to wait until a local squid distributor could accommodate his boat and its nightly haul. Now, the Heavy Duty is one of four boats catching squid for Sun Coast Calamari in Oxnard.

At nightfall, dozens of boats jostle for the best spot to cast their nets. They mark their turf by dropping anchor and defend it by barking verbal warnings over the radio to other boats that drift inside their fishing zones. Etiquette says a boat should not encroach within an eighth of a mile of another boat.

Fishing boats flood the dark water with more than 15,000 watts of light to lure photosensitive squid to the surface.

At the port, a vacuum sucks the squid from the boat’s hold into waiting trucks or iced crates in which they will be shipped to processing plants. From there, frozen squid are packaged, renamed calamari and exported.

Demand for the sweet-tasting seafood in overseas markets--particularly China--has been a driving force behind this year’s squid catch, according to companies that market the product.

And that has some environmentalists concerned.

“It’s kind of a minefield we wander through and we are doing it blindfolded because we don’t have much information about what sustains the squid,” said Gary Davis, a research marine biologist for the National Biological Service.

Because there does not appear to be an imminent risk to the coastline’s squid population, Spratt says his agency sees no reason to place restrictions on squid fishing.

But Davis of the National Biological Service compares the squid fishery today to the ravaged abalone fishery of decades ago.

“It continues our tradition of finding a relatively unexploited resource and running it into the ground,” he said. “We have discovered a new frontier . . . the concern is, what happens when you run out of frontiers?”

FOR PIX SLUGGED SQUID 6, ABOVE LEFT, AND SQUID 1, ABOVE RIGHT