Quick Take

In her weekly roundup of Santa Cruz County business headlines, Jessica M. Pasko notes a milestone for the Westside's beloved Ms. Blue, another delayed start for commercial Dungeness crab season, a boom in downtown Santa Cruz and plenty more names, numbers and dates to know.

Each week, we’re taking a closer look at the movers and shakers, the growth of industries and what’s really driving the Santa Cruz County economy. I’ll be spotlighting some of the biggest areas for opportunity, updates on local development and all things underpinning the regional business scene each Wednesday.

Got ideas? Send them my way to news@lookoutlocal.com with “Business News” in the subject line.

Seymour Center to celebrate beloved whale skeleton’s restoration, aided by local tech company’s 3D printing technology

After three years away, Ms. Blue is returning to her longtime spot outside The Seymour Marine Discovery Center on the UC Santa Cruz Coastal Campus.

The 87-foot-long blue whale skeleton has been restored, with the help of technologies developed by a UC Santa Cruz professor and a local startup focused on creating more environmentally friendly surfboards. The Seymour Center will officially welcome the rejuvenated skeleton back Sunday with a day of festivities.

The blue whale skeleton exhibit at the Seymour Marine Discovery Center, affectionately known as "Ms. Blue"
Seymour Center executive director Jonathan Hicken with Ms. Blue in fall 2023. Credit: Alix Soliman / Lookout Santa Cruz

After nearly 40 years outside, the skeleton’s bones and the steel structures holding them together had degraded from exposure to salty sea air. It was dismantled in 2023 for restoration. 

The team behind SwellCycle used its 3D-printing technology to create replicas of the bones that were beyond repair. Patricio Guerrero, Pol Riera and Nathan Jackrazi founded the Westside-headquartered company in 2023 with a goal of creating a more sustainable surfboard using recycled materials. SwellCycle’s boards were originally 3D-printed using melted-down plastic hospital waste. The company has since switched to using a plant-based material composed partially of sugarcane. (You can also now buy your own 3D-printed replica of Ms. Blue’s vertebra from SwellCycle’s website.)

To repair the bones that were cracked, Seymour Center officials turned to Marco Rolandi, a UCSC professor of electrical and computer engineering. As Lookout detailed in 2025, Rolandi and his students created a special bone-repair putty from chitosan, a material found in shrimp and lobster shells, and calcium carbonate. Rolandi was also the co-founder of the now-defunct Cruz Foam, which created a sustainable packaging option using a similar model.

To celebrate Ms. Blue’s glow-up, the Seymour Center will host a marine festival Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tickets and more details here.

Commercial Dungeness crab season postponed until at least January amid flurry of whale activity

Crab traps sit unused in the Santa Cruz Harbor.
The Dungeness crab season will remain closed throughout California until at least Dec. 31 due to a high number of whale entanglements in crab fishing gear. Credit: Mallory Pickett / Lookout Santa Cruz

Commercial Dungeness crab season has been delayed for a seventh year in a row, according to the latest announcement from state officials. The season will remain closed until at least Jan. 1, 2027, due to the number of confirmed entanglements this year and ongoing concerns around the high number of humpback whales in the fishing area, as Lily Belli reported.

The recreational crab season will open Saturday, under what’s known as trap restrictions, meaning crabbers must avoid setting any gear in areas where whales are present. Those restrictions don’t affect the use of hoop nets and crab snares. Recreational crabbing will be prohibited for the area of southern Humboldt County/northern Mendocino County, where state health agencies have found unhealthy levels of domoic acid in the crab collected from there. 

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife will conduct its next risk assessment in mid-December to determine when the commercial fishing season might be able to open. 

The tradition of having Dungeness crab at holiday feasts is becoming a thing of the past. Prior to 2019, state officials typically opened the season in late November, but delays have now become the norm. That’s been a major blow for Monterey Bay fishing operations, which have also grappled with cancelled salmon seasons in recent years. These days, local fishers are looking more to other species, such as halibut and sea bass – to supplement the salmon and crab catch.

ICYMI: 29 new businesses have opened in downtown Santa Cruz since 2025. Here’s why.

Amid a flurry of new construction – with more to come – downtown Santa Cruz is having a growth moment. After the pandemic ushered in the closure of numerous businesses, storefronts are filling up once again. 

Since January 2025, almost 30 new businesses have opened in the downtown area, including national clothing and houseware retailer Anthropologie and independent businesses ranging from secondhand clothing seller to cocktail bar to specialty foods purveyor. 

Read more from Lily Belli here.

Ch-ch-changes

  • Joby takes flight in Florida: As Santa Cruz-based Joby Aviation continues its progress toward launching commercial service of its electric air taxis, the company kicked off a week of flights in Florida. Starting last Friday, Joby began conducting piloted flights at Orlando International Airport and Kennedy Space Center. This marks the first flights in Florida as part of the federal eVTOL Integration Pilot Program, a White House initiative aimed at accelerating the deployment of electric air taxis. 
  • New documentary focuses on one of Santa Cruz’s most iconoclastic winemakers: Bonny Doon Vineyard founder Randall Grahm is the subject of a new documentary coming to streaming sites later this month. “The Terroirist” premiered last month at the Santa Cruz Film Festival and will be available on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, YouTube Movies & TV and Google Play starting Nov. 13. Grahm dropped out of UC Santa Cruz before later studying winemaking at UC Davis and planted his first varietals in the early 1980s on a Santa Cruz Mountains property his parents purchased. He sold Bonny Doon Vineyard in 2020 to WarRoom Ventures (but remains a partner in the company) to focus more on his passion project, Popelouchum, a vineyard in San Juan Bautista he started several years ago with a goal of breeding thousands of new grape varieties.
  • Watsonville-based berry company helps donate soccer equipment to local schools: California Giant Berry Farms and the Quakes Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the San Jose Earthquakes of Major League Soccer, teamed up recently to donate more than a dozen complete sets of soccer equipment to Pajaro Valley Unified School District schools. The donation came as part of the Quakes Foundation’s Soccer in a Cart program, which provides balls, goals, cones and mesh vests to community leaders in underserved areas. Two of the sets went to Watsonville Parks and Community Services; the other 13 went to PVUSD elementary schools.

Got hires, promotions or departures to report? Send them to news@lookoutlocal.com with the subject line “Career changes.”

Looking at the numbers

  • $1.77 billion: That was the third-quarter revenue for Watsonville-based Granite Construction, marking a 23% increase over the same period last year, according to the company’s latest earnings report. While core road and bridge projects continue to fuel the company’s growth, it’s also looking to pursue more federal, mission-critical and data center projects in the coming years, executives said. Founded in 1922, Granite is one of the largest construction and construction materials companies in the country.

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Save the date

  • Wednesday, Nov. 4: The Santa Cruz Area Chamber of Commerce will host Peter Kellison, managing partner of Clear Advocacy, for a session aimed at helping business leaders understand the legislative process. The event takes place from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Seacliff Inn in Aptos. Registration and additional details are here.
  • Thursday, Nov. 5: Santa Cruz Works will hold its next New Tech event at 6 p.m. at RiverRow, 444 Front St. in Santa Cruz. Representatives from five different companies – Farmblox, ElevationXR, g-SPACE, Printed Living and Scale AI – will speak. Tickets are available here.
  • Friday, Nov. 6: The Monterey Bay Economic Partnership will hold its annual State of the Region conference at the University Center at Cal State Monterey Bay from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Speakers will represent industries and municipalities throughout San Benito, Monterey and Santa Cruz counties. This year’s keynote speaker is Somjita Mitra, the chief economist for the California Department of Finance. For more details and to register to attend, go here. 
  • Friday, Nov. 13: The Aptos Chamber of Commerce will hold its annual awards dinner and auction from 5 to 9 p.m. at Seascape Beach Resort. For tickets and registration, go here.
  • Saturday, Nov. 14 – Sunday, Nov. 15: Trailside Books will officially open its doors in Aptos Village, with a grand opening celebration weekend that includes a ribbon-cutting ceremony with the Aptos Chamber of Commerce at 1 p.m. on Sunday. Festivities will take place from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. both days. Trailside Books, one of two new bookstores in the county, will be located at 136 Aptos Village Way, Suite 100.
  • Thursday, Nov. 19: The Santa Cruz Area Chamber of Commerce will hold its next business after-hours event at Hotel Paradox, 611 Ocean St. in Santa Cruz. The networking event takes place from 5 to 7 p.m. and is open to both chamber members and non-members. Tickets are available here.

Add your business or networking events to Lookout’s free public calendar, BOLO. Click here to add your event.

Business news worth reading

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Jessica M. Pasko has been writing professionally for more than two decades. She cut her teeth in journalism as a reporter for the Associated Press in her native Albany, New York, where she covered everything...