Friday, August 9, 2013

Mornings On The Wharf

A few days each week I will start my morning with a trip to wharf #2 in Monterey.  This time of year the water is usually calm.  Fog wraps around the bay like a misty vignette, surrounding rafts of otters and rocking sailboats.  Pelicans perch on wooden posts waiting for the fisherman to arrive.  Each day brings something different: a small day boat with a hatch full of live black cod, a squid boat unloading its catch with a giant vacuum and conveyor belt into two waiting semis, an old fisherman with a half dozen rockfish.  Seeing the commercial wharf, with its rusty lifts and patches of crushed ice is like a window into the past, when small towns still had commercial fishing operations.  Even here commercial fishing is a fraction of what it once was, and most of the catch is destined for a table hundreds or thousands of miles away.  I spend a lot of time wondering how the local community could better support our fisheries and keep the local industry vibrant and the catch closer to home…




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