Commercial Fishing Industry Is a Waning Force in L.A. Harbor

A commercial fisherman on the Los Angeles waterfront, Joe Terzoli mends huge nets, maintains his 87-foot boat, San Pedro Pride, and plies choppy seas beyond the breakwater for sardines.

Once, there were hundreds of local deep-sea netters like Terzoli, many of them descendants of immigrants from Italy, Portugal and Croatia.

Today, there are only 22 such operations. The commercial fishing industry’s grip is weakening at the city’s southernmost point.

Repairing a net on the dock beside his vessel, Terzoli, 47, grumbled, “My boat has been my life for 27 years, but I’m so . . . disgusted I wish someone would buy it.”

Hammered by foreign competition, soaring fuel and labor costs, fluctuating market prices and government regulations, the local industry that once included 300 vessels has dwindled to fewer than two dozen mostly old sardine and squid boats, some swordfish netters, a handful of fish processors, one cannery, one steam plant and one tuna fisherman. The 69-year-old San Pedro Boat Works repair yard is up for sale.

When one piece of the industry shuts down, the rest teeter precariously.

Such was the case in April, when Heinz Pet Food Products closed its 51-year-old canning operation at nearby Terminal Island’s Fish Harbor, letting go 325 people who packed fish for cats.

Heinz described the closure as part of an effort to consolidate and increase efficiency in the face of California’s higher wages and rents, and uncertainty over utilities. It also pointed out that 200 people will continue to work in its Fish Harbor research laboratory and distribution center.

Still, the decision to move its canning operation to Bloomsburg, Pa., was a major blow to the birthplace of America’s fish canning industry.

“The commercial fishing industry in Los Angeles County has gone the way of its dairy farms and aircraft and automotive assembly plants,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp.

Historically, the industry has been so crucial to the local economy that the Los Angeles County seal is emblazoned with a tuna.

At its height, the harbor had 18 canneries and provided jobs for 17,000 people who processed the catches of 2,000 fishermen who cruised up and down the California coast and south to Mexico, South America and Central America from San Pedro, Los Angeles’ port community.

Most of the canneries shut down in the 1970s and ‘80s, leaving a legacy of empty buildings and vacant lots on Tuna, Barracuda and Cannery streets, and a harbor floor covered with a layer of tuna scales 2 feet thick. The companies moved their operations to American Samoa and Puerto Rico, lured by low labor costs and tax incentives.

In the meantime, the big shipping companies have been steadily gobbling up waterfront property on which to stack their thousands of product containers. Across the port, earth movers are clearing land to make room for more and more of the large metal boxes that now edge the once-secluded Fish Harbor.

“It’s hurt to watch my industry go from bustling and beautiful to nothing,” said Terry Hoinsky, president of the Fishermen’s Union of America, AFL-CIO, whose statewide membership has shrunk to a few hundred members. “I feel so sorry for those people. I wish there was more I could [do] for them.”

Marifrances Trivelli, curator at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum in San Pedro, put it this way: “It’s been a sad thing to watch. There is great pride in the fleet, in their catches and in the strong family and ethnic bonds that were the backbone of the industry.”

In San Pedro and on Terminal Island, commercial fishermen large and small were paid roughly $35 million in 1999, according to the state Department of Fish and Game. A decade ago, they were paid about $69 million. Much of the 49% decline in revenue was related to increasing foreign competition.

Statewide, commercial fishermen saw declines, too. In all, Californians were paid $146 million for their catches in 1999, down about 20% from a decade ago.

For some deep-sea netters, or purse seiners, a new federal limit on the number of Pacific mackerel that can be accidentally taken while catching sardines may be the last straw. The law aims to strengthen the state’s foundering mackerel stock and restricts incidental catches to one metric ton per trip.

Mackerel Limit Hurts Deep-Sea Netters

But the only way to know whether the limit has been reached is to haul the net up for a close look, effectively killing the entire catch. If there are too many mackerel in the net, the dead fish must be dumped back into the ocean.

“Every time I go out to sea, it costs me $1,300 in operating costs,” Terzoli said. “But I’ve made no deliveries to fish buyers in three days of fishing because I keep finding mackerel mixed in with the sardines.”

When the purse seiners hurt, Vince Torre hurts, too. As general manager of Fish Harbor’s sole remaining wet fish processing plant, operated by Tri-Marine Fish Co., he depends on them for product.

The company moved against the local economic tide four years ago when it opened for business in the shell of a former cannery.

Inside, a silver river of anchovies gushed down a long production line where workers in rubber aprons funneled them into bins destined for freezers. From there, the 20-pound blocks of frozen fish would be shipped to Australia, where they would be used to fatten up blue fin tuna in captivity tanks for the Japanese sushi market.

Outside, the 48-foot purse seiner Paloma, owned by Frank D’Amato, was pumping 20 tons of anchovies caught a mile and a half offshore into Tri-Marine’s processing plant.

“I’ve been fishing since I was 17, but I don’t see anybody taking my place,” said D’Amato, 62. “There’s no money in it, and there’s too many regulations.”

Rebecca Lent, regional director of the National Marine Fisheries Service, conceded that the new mackerel limit is proving to be a bad policy for fish and fishermen.

“The waste of fish is a big concern and means that we will have to go back to the drawing boards,” she said.

But it is not just strict fishing limits that are threatening the industry.

Tuna boat operator James Bunn has a beef with law enforcement authorities who have repeatedly boarded his boat in recent years. Two weeks ago, he said, he was escorted into San Diego by federal narcotics agents who scoured his boat, confiscated his travel records, even measured his fuel tanks. Eight hours later, their counterparts in San Pedro inspected the boat again, and checked the immigration status of his crew.

“Somebody somewhere apparently alleged my boat had drugs,” said Bunn, 64. “They didn’t find anything; I don’t traffic drugs. But they scared . . . me and my crew.

“I just told my wife, ‘I don’t want to fish anymore,’ ” he added. “I’ve had it.”

No one is complaining about a lack of fish.

Commercial fishermen are quick to note that, as one of them put it, “There’s so many fish out there you can walk on them. No way, no how 22 boats are going to overfish that ocean.”

Although some commercial fishing businesses have managed to maintain a profit, the industry overall has been struggling against hard times from Fort Bragg to San Diego.

But some would argue that few places have as much to lose, culturally and historically, as San Pedro and Terminal Island, where Canners Steam Co. Vice President Rich Crews has been trying to organize a last stand under the banner “Fish Harbor Business Assn.” Informally, group members refer to themselves as “Brothers of the Brine.”

Since 1951, the plant on Cannery Street has provided steam for canneries through an underground delivery system connected to towering steel boilers.

Crews said the association formed in November when the Port of Los Angeles requested summaries of each company’s operations and future plans. The port manages and leases the Fish Harbor acreage historically designated for fishing-related businesses.

“Between the lines, they just want to know if we plan to stick around,” Crews said. “But it’s been hard getting people stirred up about it because they are afraid of repercussions from the port.”

Port spokesman Sid Robinson denied that the requests were part of an attempt to oust them, and said the local industry has more to fear from global market forces.

“Fishing has a long history at Fish Harbor, and the port will always be supportive, assuming fishing can survive market changes beyond our control,” Robinson said. “Right now, the trends are not favorable.”

Fish Harbor business owners would call that an understatement.

The closure of the Heinz canning operation left a Chicken of the Sea plant as the only cannery remaining on the harbor.

Crews’ plant, which half a century ago supplied 11 canneries with 400,000 pounds of steam per hour, now worries about losing its primary customer.

“If Chicken of the Sea stays, we’ve got a future,” Crews said. “If they close down, processed fish is toast in Los Angeles.”

“We haven’t decided whether to stay or go,” said Chaiphorn Wangnitayasuk, Chicken of the Sea’s senior vice president.

But he acknowledged that although “we are alone here, our competition is canneries in South America and Thailand, where the minimum wage is 66 cents an hour.”

“Now the Port of Los Angeles wants to raise our rent,” he said. “So we are trying to maintain a presence on Terminal Island, but we are getting nowhere.”

Protection Against Port Expansion Is Questioned

Under an agreement with the Port of Los Angeles, Fish Harbor’s historic commercial fishing businesses are protected against port expansion.

The big question now being asked along the waterfront, from boat docks to welding shops, is this: How long can that protection be justified?

The situation is underscored by an ongoing exhibit in downtown San Pedro’s Washington Mutual Bank. Beneath a large bronze plaque exclaiming “Gone . . . but not forgotten!” are dozens of framed photographs of commercial fishermen, their families and their boats.

The exhibit caught the attention of bank customer Robert Bocox, 74, who used to own two big sardine vessels, the Tommy Boy and the Frances Marie.

“Oh, man, you should have seen this town in 1947,” he said, squinting up at a photo of a fishing family he once worked beside.

“Those were the days. We worked hard, slept hard, fought and argued . . . and ate good!” He shook his head sadly. “All gone. Such a shame.”