Fish plant caught up in changes

In predawn darkness, fisherman Nick Jurlin raced his 60-year-old fishing boat Eileen to a dock in Los Angeles Harbor, trying to beat friend Tom Jerkovich aboard the Pacific Leader to see who would head home first.

The two had been out with their crews since 8 p.m. and their purse seiners -- so named because their nets pull closed around schools of fish like the drawstrings on a purse -- were each laden with 55 tons of sardines.

After being unloaded at Tri-Marine Fish Co., the sardines were quickly boxed and flash-frozen in preparation for being shipped to an Australian aqua farm, where they will be used to fatten tuna.

Tri-Marine has been processing the catch of independent fishermen like Jurlin and Jerkovich for 10 years. But under a plan by Los Angeles port Executive Director Geraldine Knatz, Tri-Marine’s $10-million fish processing plant would be moved to another location on the port’s historic Fish Harbor.

Knatz says she is trying to revitalize Terminal Island’s fishing industry while meeting long-standing obligations to reduce the port’s truck traffic, consolidate hazardous materials storage and facilitate the loading of cargo containers from ships directly onto rail cars. Fishermen and processors say the proposal amounts to a land grab of an area that once was home to the nation’s largest tuna-fishing fleet.

The dispute has brought renewed attention to the harbor’s fishing industry, which once employed 10,000 people to catch and process vast schools of tuna and other sea life. Nowadays, the tuna is mostly gone and only a handful of companies remain, with about 100 employees in all.

The fishermen, processors and wholesalers are managing -- some even say thriving -- after years of struggles. They say their apprehension over Knatz’s proposal is a fight to preserve an important part of Southland history -- and their livelihoods.

“I am concerned for the fishermen, for our employees and our customers and any possible disruption of our business,” said Vince Torre, general manager of the San Pedro office of Tri-Marine, which is based in Bellevue, Wash. “We prefer to remain where we are currently located.”

Knatz’s unveiled her “Terminal Island Concepts” plan to a standing-room-only meeting of the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners last week.

“No one has done anything for this industry in eons. Parts of Terminal Island haven’t been looked at in ages,” she said. “There hasn’t been much effort to look at the reuse of vacant facilities, but we have been doing a lot of brainstorming.”

Knatz, who is in charge of the nation’s busiest and fastest-growing container port, is under pressure to cut pollution and truck traffic. That would be easier if railroad tracks could be run along the northern edge of Fish Harbor -- Tri-Marine’s location.

Fish Harbor evokes a time when the port wasn’t dominated by cargo traffic.

As recently as the 1960s, the harbor had 18 canneries. They processed the catches of some 2,000 fishermen who plied their trade from the Northern California coast to South America, said Orlando Amoroso, 67, a retired seventh-generation fisherman.

The fishing industry was once so central to the Los Angeles economy that the county seal, designed in 1957, carries the image of a tuna. But tuna has largely disappeared, mainly because of overfishing. The canneries began to shut down 35 years ago, leaving a smattering of empty buildings along Tuna, Barracuda and Cannery streets.

“Now, we primarily fish for sardines and mackerel and squid. It’s hardly worth fishing sardines, and if you don’t have a good squid season now, you have a bad year. The last generation of local fishermen are retiring, and no one is replacing them,” said Amoroso, a San Pedro resident.

Companies have had to change to survive. J & D Seafood, for example, no longer owns its own boats. Now, 70% of its daily catch arrives by truck, having been caught in waters off Mexico, Ecuador, Costa Rica and as far away as Fiji and Australia.

“When we started this business 16 years ago, it was all local fish,” said co-owner Joe Ciaramitaro, whose business sits on the port’s main channel and will not be forced to relocate. It supplies restaurants and seafood stores in 10 states and has annual sales of about $13 million.

Ciaramitaro says it’s commendable that Knatz has taken an interest in the fishing industry, but most of the problems are beyond her control.

“There are too many restrictions on where you can fish and how much you can fish, too much pressure from environmentalists. It’s too hard to get a permit,” Ciaramitaro said. About 80% of Terminal Island is devoted to containers and its cargo operations account for 54% of the port’s revenue.

Knatz is trying to weave a delicate course, stressing that her plans are ideas and saying that the next step is to talk to those who would be affected. The whole process could take years.

Part of the plan is designed to help terminal operators who say they need more space to handle record levels of cargo. The new rail lines would ease pressure on facilities that are nearly at capacity. In addition, facilities that handle dangerous cargo such as chemicals and petroleum products would be relocated farther from populated areas.

Knatz’s proposal for the fishing companies would involve offering freezer space in revamped facilities, eliminating the need some have to truck catches to other parts of Los Angeles to be frozen. Knatz said part of the plan might include a boutique cannery that would sell directly to the public.

But Torre and Anthony Vuoso, executive vice president of Tri-Marine, said they already had freezers at their current location. And port officials didn’t ask their opinions before floating the proposal, they said.

Vuoso said his company hauled 42 million pounds of fish onto its dock in 2005. He declined to reveal sales figures.

“This is the right place for us,” Vuoso said.

“The tuna may be gone,” he said, “but we’re still here.”

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ron.white@latimes.com