Crescent City Profile - California Sea Grant

Key Factors Affecting Crescent City FisheriesCrescent City’s fisheries and fishingcommunity have experienced considerablesocial and economic change over the past 30years. Regulatory, market and environmentalfactors have influenced individuals andcommunities, sometimes gradually and at othertimes more abruptly, as with the devastating1964 tsunami. These factors do not operate inisolation; rather, they often interact in complexways. As one study participant summarized:When I arrived [in 1964], therewas no boat basin. The biggest boatwas 52 feet. The biggest impact waswith the boats from the East Coast inthe 1970s. With the [Farm] Credit Act,fishing was viewed as farming. I saw itas an opportunity, but it wasn’t. Singleriggers (trawlers) … were replaced bydouble riggers with two nets. They gotmore sophisticated and more educated[and] depleted the resource. You didn’tneed more than a license to get in. Itwas great back then. Then they neededto move toward a permit.Community members highlighted severalfactors that have shaped local fisheries,infrastructure and the community as a whole(Table 18). Some of these factors originatedlocally, while others are regional, national oreven international in nature. Moreover, theseforces do not operate in isolation. Rather, theyinteract in complex and cumulative ways,posing both challenges and opportunities to theviability and resilience of the community. Thediscussion that follows focuses on those factorshighlighted by study participants as havingmost influenced local fisheries, infrastructure,and the community as a whole.A Watershed Event, Expansion andContractionThe 1964 tsunami fundamentally changedthe course of history for Crescent City andits fishing community. The devastationevoked national sympathy and catalyzed thecommunity, paving the way for it to obtainfederal funding to build a more extensiveharbor. In a relatively short time, CrescentCity’s fishery-support infrastructure wassignificantly improved, and provided oneamong many incentives at that time for localfishery expansion. According to one studyparticipant:Before the boat basin, fishing boats hadto anchor out (in the outer harbor),and fishermen rowed out to them everymorning to go fishing or work on theboat. With the new boat basin, their lifebecame a lot more convenient; the fishplants gave them a better place to selltheir catch; and the haul-out facilitymade it easier to repair (or build)their boats. All of this made it easierand more lucrative to be a fishermanin Crescent City, and contributed toan atmosphere where investing in afishing boat was ‘the thing to do’. Evensome local loggers and real estatebrokers were buying boats in the late1970s. I don’t know of any other porton the West Coast where so muchpublic investment in commercial fishingoccurred in such a short time.The 1970s into the late 1980s were ‘boomyears’ for Crescent City, as they were formany other fishing communities along theWest Coast. Expanding markets and incentiveprograms such as the Capital ConstructionFund and Fishing Vessel Obligation GuaranteeProgram fueled the expansion not only ofCrescent City Fishing Community Profile 41