A ‘perfect storm’ of environmental and political issues is driving Santa Cruz fishers out of the water

Would Santa Cruz still be Santa Cruz without a fishing industry? After nine rocky years of delayed, shortened and outright canceled fishing seasons, the coastal community could soon have to face a cultural reckoning as the number of commercial fishing boats active in the Santa Cruz Harbor dwindles to fewer than 20. 

For generations, fishers along California’s Central Coast have relied on two primary catches to make their living: Dungeness crab in the winter and Chinook salmon in the summer.

But over the past nine years, this traditional rhythm has been disrupted by a cascade of environmental challenges. Migrating whales are lingering in crabbing areas longer, contributing to delayed seasons and reduced catch limits, while droughts and fluctuating river levels have decimated salmon populations.

The impact on Santa Cruz County’s commercial fishers has been profound. The state’s salmon fishery has been closed since 2023, with little sign of recovery, while the crab season has been shortened and restricted for the past six years.

Despite promises of disaster relief to offset these losses, fishers are still waiting for promised financial aid, leaving them struggling to maintain their livelihoods in an increasingly uncertain industry.

“This is the scariest year I’ll ever have. The opportunity in California is gone,” said 25-year fishing veteran Tim Obert. “There’s no way you can be a full-time fisherman with the opportunity that’s available in California at this point, unless you own everything outright, and everything you make is in your pocket, and that’s very few and far between.” 

“The writing is on the wall. We’re in for a rocky ride here in the fishing industry,” said second-generation fisher Valerie Phillips, 33, who splits her time between the Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay harbors. “This bay has been dependent on crab and salmon for a few generations now and with less access to both, it’s troubling to say the least.”

In the 1980s and ’90s, the Santa Cruz Harbor was the home port of around a hundred commercial fishers, but that number steadily declined over the decades to fewer than 20 full-time fishers.  

This year, a combination of bureaucratic and environmental factors is likely to force more out of the water and will demand a never-before-seen tenacity from the remaining few. Some fishers fear that barriers to continuing this way of life have become too great, and barring promised government support that has so far failed to materialize, the future of Santa Cruz’s commercial fleet is sinking fast. 

For some, a generational business

Each boat in Santa Cruz’s commercial fishing fleet operates as an individual small business, and many of the owners have deep ties to the local community.

Obert was drawn to fishing at an early age. He grew up in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and got his first job in the Santa Cruz Harbor when he was 10, washing charter boats and helping in the tackle stores. After graduating high school early, he and his twin brother purchased their first fishing boat when they were 16. At 38, he has more than 25 years of commercial fishing experience under his belt. 

Although he travels as far north to Oregon and Washington for albacore tuna, he mostly works out of Monterey Bay. “My heart is there. But it has kind of fallen by the wayside over the last 10 years. Less opportunity creates issues,” said Obert. 

Phillips learned to fish from her father, who started fishing out of Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay in the 1980s. She started her own career 12 years ago, and works with her husband, father and a crew member. 

Despite the challenges in the industry, changing careers isn’t an option for her. “I don’t want to do anything but fish,” she said. 

As a generational fisher, she’s used to a certain level of uncertainty within each season, but the growing unpredictability is weighing on her. 

“Fishing is never a sure bet,” she said. ”You never know what you’re going to catch, you don’t know the price.” 

For decades, hardworking fishers used to be able to make a living in Santa Cruz County. But over the past 10 years, it has gotten harder and harder to make ends meet, with few viable solutions. 

Phillips’ 45-foot steel fishing vessel, the Aqua Leo, supports six people: Phillips, her husband, their 8-year-old daughter, her parents, and a crew member. Phillips’ father fishes for rockfish and during the first few weeks of crab season, and her mother is the chief financial officer for their family business. 

They need to make at least $240,000 a year to meet their basic expenses and pay for the boat’s overhead, but that figure can be flexible depending on variables like the price of fuel, and how much time and fuel they spend looking for fish. “In bad years, those running costs can be more,” Phillips said. 

It’s difficult for her to say whether they’ll meet that figure this year. “Crab is devastating. We’ve caught about a third of what we’d like to see in a season,” Phillips said in early February, about a month after the 2024-25 crab season opened. “We’re looking at switching over to rockfish by March. We’re getting to the point where the bait, fuel and share to the crew isn’t enough for the boat to make profits.” 

Since the season opened on Jan. 5, fishers in California say they are seeing more small, juvenile crabs, which aren’t legal to catch. It’s unclear why there are so few full-sized crabs, but it’s not unusual, said Ryan Bartling, a senior environmental scientist for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Crabs experience periods of lower and higher abundance, and the low stock numbers don’t necessarily indicate “anything ominous,” he told Lookout in February. 

Nevertheless, it couldn’t be worse timing. 

“It’s a down year up and down the coast, even in Oregon. In Santa Cruz and Monterey Bay, there’s almost nothing,” said Obert. 

Obert says he needs to make around $600,000 a year to pay all of his bills and operate his vessels. This year, with the low number of viable crabs and likely cancellation of the salmon season in the spring, he expects to make only around $400,000 to $450,000, and that’s only if he fishes rigorously, every single day. 

Obert owns two boats: the 40-foot Lulu and the 58-foot Stacey Jo. Expanding his fleet in 2018 came with risks – he and a business partner are on a payment plan for Stacey Jo, which cost around $1 million – but it’s difficult to catch enough to get by with just one boat, he said. 

Larger boats bring greater fishing opportunities, but there can also be a great financial burden. Basic annual operation costs for the Stacey Jo include a $58,000 loan payment, $20,000 in insurance, $15,600 for harbor slips in Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay and around $25,000 for maintenance. 

Operating the smaller Lulu is much less costly because Obert owns it outright. He pays $700 a month to moor it in Santa Cruz, $6,000 a year in insurance and around $10,000 for maintenance. 

Obert also has his own personal expenses for himself and his family, including a mortgage, which total around $14,000 a month. 

With so few crabs coming ashore, Obert is able to sell his crabs for a much higher price. Normally, he receives around $3 per pound; in January, Obert sold it for $7. He believes that, despite the low numbers, he can capitalize on the high price to make ends meet. 

“The only way you’re going to be able to survive this year is to put in the extra effort and capitalize on the price of the product, and don’t take a day off,” said Obert. 

Crab population steady overall, but variable year to year

Fishing for Dungeness crab is difficult at the best of times. The crab population is considered stable, and might even be growing, despite intense harvesting, according to a 2020 report by the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration. But the number of crabs varies from year to year, and they can be hard to find. 

Dungeness crabs scuttle along the bottom of the ocean between Washington and Central California. To catch them, fishers drop large, heavy crab traps, called “pots,” filled with bait to the ocean floor, and secure them to a buoy on the surface by a long, thick fishing line. They leave them there for hours or days at a time, hoping that when they finally pull up their pots, they’re filled with large purple and red crustaceans. 

Dungeness crabs are seasonal, so in Santa Cruz County, crab fishers are also often salmon fishers. Crab season traditionally runs from November through April, and Chinook, aka king, salmon season usually runs May through October. Together, the two seasons make up the bulk of most local fishers’ annual income. 

But it’s been nine years since Santa Cruz had a normal fishing season. Starting in 2016, both the crab and salmon seasons started to get squeezed on both ends. 

During the winter of 2015-16, opening day for Dungeness crab was delayed for almost five months due to the fact that many of the California crabs had elevated levels of domoic acid, a naturally occurring neurotoxin that can be deadly to humans.The following year, storms in December and January made it difficult for smaller boats to go out. 

In 2017, the season was delayed on the Central Coast due to the presence of humpback whales. Normally, the whales complete their annual trip from the northern Pacific Ocean to the warm waters off the coast of Mexico, but about a decade ago they began staying in the area for longer periods of time. 

Becoming entangled in the fishing lines can be fatal for whales, so in 2017, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife postponed the season until December, when more whales had moved on. 

In 2019, the start of the crab season was delayed again due to whales, and crab on Thanksgiving, once a herald of the holiday season in California, began to feel like a thing of the past. Every year since then, the opening date has been pushed further and further back to accommodate the safety of whales and other wildlife. 

In 2022, the season didn’t open until Dec. 31, and fishers missed both the Thanksgiving and Christmas markets. In 2023 and 2024, it opened in January, and fishers like Phillips and Obert lost the entire holiday crab market, and therefore lost the bulk of their sales. 

The CDFW also began placing limits on how many crab pots fishers could use in order to limit how many fishing lines were in the water. In 2022, 2023 and 2024, the CDFW implemented a 50% gear reduction at the start of the season in order to protect whales and other sea life still present in the areas where crabbers typically fish. By using only half of the number of pots that fishers’ boats are permitted for, environmentalists hoped to strike a balance with fishers that would allow them to earn money while also protecting marine animals. 

Salmon fishing opportunity dries up

The drought from 2014 to 2016 made it difficult for the salmon to spawn and migrate along the Sacramento River delta, and the 2016 and ’17 seasons were declared federal disasters.

But abundant rainfall during the winter of 2017 aided young salmon in their rush to the ocean, and the 2019 season was considered the best in a decade. The pandemic in 2020 posed challenges to distribution, but the catch was plentiful. 

In 2021, river levels dropped again, and the fishery was strained. For the first time, CDFW instated staggered fishing dates for the season to curb the number of fish that could be caught. The season opened for seven to 12 days, then closed for eight to 10, then opened again for another few days. This system proved especially challenging for smaller boats, like many of those in the Santa Cruz Harbor, that are more sensitive to weather. If the waves came up, sometimes they couldn’t go out, even if the season was open. 

In 2022, crab season closed two months early, and the dates for the salmon season were staggered again. In 2023, the salmon population reached a critical low, and the fishing season for the entire state was canceled outright. The impact to coastal communities and personal income impacts was valued at at least $45 million, the state told U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. 

The state promised disaster relief to the salmon fishery sector at approximately 67% of average estimated revenue for the lost salmon season in 2023, but so far local fishers haven’t seen a penny, and are feeling disheartened. 

“They promised the fleet that we’d have expedited relief and I think that that false promise has really left a bad taste in the industry’s mouth,” said Obert. “There’s nothing worse than thinking you’re going to get something and then not getting it, especially when it’s your livelihood and you have no other opportunity.”

In early 2024, $20.6 million in federal funds for disaster relief for California salmon fishers was allocated through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to the spending plan released by the CDFW. So far, nothing has been distributed. The date has been pushed back several times since last year. Earlier this month, a phone recording at the Pacific State Marine Fisheries Commission, the entity in charge of distributing the funds, said that it expected the funds to be awarded after Oct. 1. The agency didn’t respond to questions about why the funding has been delayed. 

California’s salmon season was canceled again in 2024, and, with preliminary numbers showing little recovery, the season is poised to be canceled in 2025 for a third year in a row. With salmon numbers at the lowest point in 75 years, environmentalists and state lawmakers are currently battling it out on ways to save the iconic fish, and the question arises of whether it will be able to be fished commercially in California again. 

Fishers managed to scrape by with a short but plentiful crab season in 2024, despite the canceled salmon season. But catching so few large, legal full-sized crabs this winter has created another unexpected hurdle. 

“Last year, it was viable, and the amount we could harvest was just about enough to get people through with no salmon season and no disaster relief for them,” said Obert. “But unfortunately, this year, I think we’re in a different place.”

Possible solutions

One way fishers could bring in more income is by extending the season by using pop-up crab fishing gear, a new experimental technology. The ropeless, electronic traps don’t use fishing lines and are considered safer for marine wildlife. Instead of being hauled up by a rope attached to a buoy floating on the surface of the water, fishers trigger the large, round crab traps to “pop up” from the bottom via an app on their phone or tablet. 

A small number of permits for these traps became available through the Experimental Fishing Permit Program, launched by the CDFW in April 2022. Since then, environmentalists have promoted the traps as a possible solution to entanglement issues. Without fishing lines in the water posing a risk to whales and other wildlife, the fishing season could remain open for pop-up trap users from mid-November through the spring. 

But according to Phillips and Obert, pop-up traps aren’t the saving grace they’re made out to be. A host of issues and unanswered questions prevent pop-up traps from being the wide-reaching solution the majority of fishers need. At best, they could possibly benefit a niche segment of the industry – in a few years. 

Both have concerns about safety, and said it can be difficult to manage the fishing lines that connect the traps to each other. “It’s very dangerous. If you have guys that don’t know what they’re doing, it’s really easy to get snarled up in the line and have something bad happen,” said Obert.  

Additionally, the old-school crab fishing lines served another purpose: The buoys marked the location of one fisher’s gear, so another fisher could avoid them and fish in a different spot. With no way to mark the pop-up gear on the surface, Phillips wonders what would stop fishers from dropping their pots on top of each other.

Phillips and Obert also worry that the learning curve to use the electronic app-based traps might be too great for some fishers who are used to more analog technology. “There’s a lot of fishermen in my dad’s generation that are still figuring out their smartphones,” said Phillips. 

While Obert says he doesn’t think the traps are a realistic solution for the entire industry, he does think they could be beneficial to extending the season for smaller fishers in the spring. 

A limited number of experimental permits has also created an equity issue within the industry. Last year, between 30 and 40 permits were issued to test out the traps. In Santa Cruz, only one fisher has a permit to use pop-up traps. Obert and Phillips said the limited supply has created a tense division between the “haves” and the “have-nots.”

In December, the CDFW announced it would expand pop-up gear trials this spring, but even with a permit, the initial investment is substantial. Fishers have to purchase the gear and outfit their boat with new equipment and ropes to accommodate the new traps. 

The process is tedious, and expensive. It would cost Obert around $40,000 to outfit each boat, excluding labor, plus additional storage fees for the traditional gear while it’s not being used. 

Last year, Obert was offered a permit, but declined. He has several leadership positions within the industry, including on the Dungeness Crab Task Force, and he felt it would be inappropriate for him to profit off of pop-up gear while so many of the fishers he represents are struggling. If he had accepted and outfitted his boat with the traps, he estimates that he could have made $150,000 over the initial investment. 

Phillips decided the up-front costs were too great for her. 

“$30,000 to $50,000 going out the door for something that’s experimental is a lot,” she said. “It felt more like an investment from someone’s company rather than a saving grace for the fishing industry.”

Can fishers survive a “perfect storm”?

With so many factors working against it and little support, Obert thinks Santa Cruz’s fishing industry could go out with a whisper, rather than a bang. “You won’t see the selling of anything,” he said. “Most people will just tie the boat up, and they’ll go find another career for a while, and you’ll see the boat come up for sale in a couple of years.” 

In order to survive this “perfect storm,” he’s taking part in every fishery possible, including fishing for salmon in Oregon after crab season, fishing albacore in Oregon and Washington later this summer, and catching groundfish.

Fishers will also have to seek out fishing opportunities all along the West Coast, potentially leaving their home port for long periods. Obert and Phillips already spend three to four months a year fishing away from home. Obert said he expects his trips away from home will get longer as he travels to fishing opportunities in Oregon and Washington.

Instead of chasing crabs in Oregon and Washington, Phillips and her family have started fishing for groundfish, a huge group of more than 90 different species, including multiple types of rockfish, Pacific sanddab and petrale sole. She’s grateful they have another fishery to turn to, but it’s a lot more work since she has to take on the additional job of marketing the fish in order to get a competitive price. The longer hours means less time with her daughter, and to have a life outside of work. 

She said it’s a tradeoff; instead of being gone for weeks at a time, she sleeps in her own bed at night, but hardly sees her daughter because of the long hours. “I’m doing so much to make it work that there’s no work-life balance,” said Phillips. 

Despite the difficulties, Phillips is committed to staying in the industry, only partly by choice. “You can’t really leave in the bad years because the value of your assets isn’t there,” she said. 

Phillips’ reasons for wanting to see the local industry survive extend beyond her own personal interests. She believes in the value of fresh, locally caught seafood and wants that resource to remain accessible to the people who live on Monterey Bay. 

Failing to find long-term solutions that benefit both the environment and the fishing industry could send a message that resonates beyond the state’s borders. 

“America has some of the safest fisheries in the world. If it doesn’t work here, what will be the incentive for any other counties to succeed?” said Phillips. “If our experiment with sustainable fisheries doesn’t work, it doesn’t send a good message to other countries who are working toward this goal. It doesn’t give them an incentive to do better.” 

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