Fishermen Long to See Limits Relaxed

You’d think the people of this coastal town best known for the big rock dominating the landscape would be cheering and hoisting celebratory beers over at the Harbor Hut.

Despite fears that drastic government limits on rock fishing would cause economic devastation, the crisis never materialized. Bed and sales taxes were down just enough to make Chamber of Commerce types grumpy. The city had to consider delaying work on some of its more jaw-rattling streets. But that was pretty much it.

“There was an effect,” said Rodger Anderson, a former mayor who owns the Galley restaurant on the waterfront. “Was it huge? Not really.”

Now the tourists are back, kayaks ply the bay amid frolicking seals, fishing boats bring back their limits and the restaurants are packed with refugees from the San Joaquin Valley’s long run of 100-plus-degree days.

So why are local politicians and businesspeople walking up and down the Embarcadero with long faces? The reason is that, although the fishing restriction did not empty their pocketbooks, it did something far more damaging. It tore a hole in the town’s identity.

Morro Bay’s commercial and recreational fishermen have long dealt with limitations on what fish they can catch and when. But the gravity of the most recent curbs, aimed at preserving overfished stocks of rock cod, convinced a lot of people that there is no future in what has long been the town’s trademark enterprise.

“Fishing is the industry of this town,” said Ed Biagginni, who operates the Embarcadero Inn downtown. “Take away those boats and what have you got?”

Lex Budge, owner of the upscale Windows on the Water restaurant, can answer that question. “Newport Beach,” he sniffed. “That is something Morro Bay definitely does not want to become.”

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with boutique tourist meccas. But people here say that’s just not Morro Bay, where crashing waves are a meal ticket, not just a soundtrack for elegant shopping and dining.

The community is so proud of its long association with fishing, both commercial and recreational, that it reserves leases right in the heart of downtown for fishing-related businesses.

Unlike towns that consider hulking trawlers and big spools of red netting to be eyesores, Morro Bay reserves its docks for fishing boats. Shapely sailboats anchor out in the bay.

Fishermen Sue State

When local fishermen decided to sue the state over the fishing restrictions imposed last year, the city leadership and scores of others paid $100 a plate to raise money for the suit. And when they ran out of tri-tip, a restaurateur rushed over to his place of business and cooked up a dozen New York steaks for free.

Of course, what would you expect in a city where the mayor is a commercial fisherman?

“We have resolutions going back many years that commercial fishing is our No. 1 priority,” said William Yates, 55, who fishes for albacore, salmon and Dungeness crab. “We stand behind those guys.”

Times being what they are, there are fewer and fewer of those guys to stand behind. Joe Giannini Jr. of Giannini’s Marine Supply, estimated that the local fleet was down at least half from its glory days of more than 100 boats.

“We used to make really good money,” said Tom Hafer, who has fished for 32 years. “Two years ago, we had a year-round fishery.” This year, with restrictions on spot prawns and rockfish, he got 29 days in.

During the good times, a fisherman like Hafer made up to $100,000 a year. Hafer’s wife, Sherri, said their income will be cut 50% to 75% this year. The couple have three children, the oldest a boy, 13.

“I wouldn’t encourage my son to fish,” Hafer said.

Not only are fishermen leaving the business, but the infrastructure supporting the marine industry is fracturing.

There once were four sportfishing landings in Morro Bay. Now there’s one.

There were eight fish processors. Now, the biggest one remaining brings in fish from Mexico. A local ice plant is ceasing operations.

After rules were passed closing most of the rocky reefs on the continental shelf off the Central and Southern California coasts to rock fishing, Virg’s Landing laid off most of its workers and sold one of its boats.

“The whole system is collapsing,” said Barbara Stickel, who is going back to school to learn a new trade because fishing is no longer dependable.

While Stickel seeks work, her husband continues to earn his living on the water. But restrictions on the near-shore fish population forced him to head for the deep sea, as much as 50 miles offshore.

“He goes alone, which is really dangerous,” his wife said.

In most ways, the city today is in a good position to adjust to a prettified existence as another coastal town offering beachwear, whale-watching trips and big ice cream cones.

The Embarcadero on the oceanfront has steadily gentrified since the city incorporated in 1965. Restaurants on the water now serve meals as fine as you can get between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Morro Bay already earns more money from tourism than from property taxes, City Manager Bob Hendrix said.

But you can’t have a conversation with a merchant or a city official for very long before they bring up the threat to their beloved fishermen. Outsiders seem to feel the same. When the sportfishermen held a fund-raiser in Bakersfield, 200 people showed up and paid $50 a plate.

“The regulatory situation is death by a thousand paper cuts with new environmental laws, area closures, and state and federal management programs with layer on layer of new hurdles to jump,” complained Rick Algert, Morro Bay’s harbor director.

All of this might be OK, fishermen and their supporters said, if they didn’t see evidence that, despite the dire talk of crashing fish populations, the ocean was teeming with fish.

“There’s plenty of fish out there,” said Jeremiah O’Brien, 56, waving a ropy arm at the breakwater beyond the stern of his 53-foot boat, the Aguero. “The problem is, there’s even more regulators.”

Science says different, particularly about rockfish, a range of species that live in deep water on rocky reefs. Of 16 types of rockfish that had been studied extensively, nine were found to be overfished off the Central and Southern California coasts.

The biggest problem was with bocaccio, also known as red snapper, a slow-maturing fish that can live to be 40. When the latest limits were imposed, the best guess from scientists was that its numbers had declined as much as 96% in the last three decades.

“Last year’s assessment was that they would have a huge problem recovering,” said Alec MacCall, a fisheries biologist whose research led to the rock fishing restrictions. Some estimates were that it would take 170 years for the fish population to recover.

Fueling the ire of fishermen already skeptical of the scientists, MacCall recently did a follow-up survey that showed that the fish were in better condition than he originally thought. The recent survey shows 7,133 metric tons of bocaccio off the Central and Southern California coasts. Although still only 7% of historic levels, it is more fish than at any time since 1990.

The fish reproduce infrequently, with the last significant hatch coming in 1999.

“It’s clear the ’99 year class are assisting rebuilding the population,” said Milton Love, a rockfish researcher at UC Santa Barbara. “But in no way is there cause for massive rejoicing.”

MacCall counts fishermen among his friends. But he said their idea of what constitutes a healthy ocean is flawed, because no one alive saw the primitive ocean “the way it originally was.”

The real damage was done nearly a century ago, when no one worried about fish populations and the invention of refrigerated railroad cars enabled fishermen to send vast quantities of their catch east to population centers like Chicago.

Tremendous Catches

“Occasionally, you can find pictures of the boats coming in,” MacCall said. “You can see the decks filled with fish. You can see how big they were.”

The only way to estimate what the original fish population looked like is with mathematical models.

“The target we’re trying to reach is 40% of that,” MacCall said. At 7%, he said, there is a long way to go. The question is: How much of the local fishing industry will vanish in pursuit of that target?

“It’s been horrible, almost devastating,” said Giannini, who traditionally served both branches of the fishing industry. “We’re trying to hold out, to diversify [by selling kayaks]. But we don’t see much light at the end of the tunnel.”

All the publicity about a lack of fish has also spread among recreational fishermen. “I heard two guys talking on the dock about how they used to fish a lot, but there’s no fish anymore,” said Darby Neil, president of Virg’s Landing.

“The fishing’s fabulous,” Neil said. But too many of his boats are going out with empty spaces.

Now, local fishermen are trying to take fate into their own hands. In an attempt to fight science with science, they are paying for observers from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to collect data on fish stocks.

Fishermen also are likely to get some good news on bocaccio when the federal Pacific Fisheries Management Council meets in September. Last year’s catch was limited to 20 metric tons. This year, MacCall said, based on his latest research, the figure could jump to 200 to 300 metric tons. That would make for the best season in four years.

Now UC Santa Barbara’s Love is worried. He fears that number is too forgiving to fishermen. “By opening it up,” he said, “they will not achieve the rebuilding target as soon as hoped.”