Net Losses

Monday brought the first real break in a series of Pacific storms that have pounded Ventura County for weeks. It was a day of sunshine and calm seas that was especially good news for Frank Reed and other commercial fishermen who have been unable to work in the unceasing rains.

Reed and the rest of the crew of the 72-foot squid boat Junior got a head start on the predicted good weather, heading out of Channel Islands Harbor on Sunday at 1 p.m.

The Junior can hold 70 tons of squid, and at prices of up to $300 a ton, the crew had plenty of incentive to get in as much fishing as possible.

In recent weeks, the winter storms whipped up rough seas and winds that idled many commercial fishermen in Ventura and Channel Islands harbors. Steady rainfall has pushed some areas of the county to more than triple normal amounts.

But the skies cleared Monday, and no rain is expected until at least the end of the week, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Dennis Tussey.

The winds are especially troubling for squid fishermen, who use purse seine nets to haul in their catch. When the winds blow too hard, the fine nets can become tangled in the machine used to set them up and haul them back in.

So, despite a light wind and a bit of drizzle, the crew of the Junior saw a chance to make some money Sunday afternoon, and they took it.

“We don’t make any money if we don’t catch fish,” Reed said.

Channel Islands Harbor is home to about 100 commercial fishing vessels, and the number increases to 120 during the height of the season between October and March, when large purse seine boats from up and down the coast come to harvest their share of the squid population, said Channel Islands Harbor Patrol Capt. Jack Peveler. There are also about 67 commercial fishing boats in Ventura Harbor.

“You have to go fishing when there’s a chance to go. Even if it’s a little nasty out there, you have to go anyway,” said Reed, who is responsible for keeping the Junior’s engine running smoothly. Having a sense of what a weather pattern will bring often is enough to allow for a short period of fishing, and with operation costs of about $300 per day, almost any catch is better than no catch at all, he said.

“The weather reports said the winds were supposed to be 40 mph Saturday. But we went out and got 30 tons of squid Saturday night. It was pretty calm when we got out there,” said Reed.

“It’s nice to have a night off. But right now, with the squid fishing you have to go when you get the chance. This might be the last month to make enough money to hold you over,” said Reed.

*

On Monday, 39-year-old Jack Douglas from Bellingham, Wash., was getting the squid seiner Heavy Duty ready for a trip. After sitting in port for the past few days, Douglas was ready to get back out to sea.

“You guys have the best weather down here. But you can’t count on it,” he said.

The weather that had many local fishermen concerned seemed like mist to 20-year-old Tobias Bright and his brother, Jared, 22, deckhands on the squid boat Jeannie Kathleen, of Ketchikan, Alaska.

“To me this is nothing. I’m from Ketchikan, where it rains about 13 feet a year,” Tobias Bright said. He and his brother had been fishing for 10 straight days before the crew decided to take a day off.

Jeff Obert of Kirkland, Wash., who works on the 78-foot squid seiner Dreamland, said bad weather doesn’t keep them from their catch.

“They’re all pretty much fair-weather fishermen,” the 36-year-old fishermen said of the locals. He and his crew mates are used to conditions much worse than what locals have been dealing with in recent weeks.

“These guys down here get a little mad because we make them go out,” Obert said.

Local seafood processors, who clean the catch and get it ready for shipping to market, are also affected.

Gabriel Martinez, 42, and Manuel Castillo, 35, would have spent the weekend cleaning squid and rock cod at Pierpont Seafood in Ventura Harbor. But as the rain fell hard Saturday, all they could do was wait.

“We haven’t had anything in here today. Not even one fish,” Castillo said. “We’d have 10,000 to 15,000 pounds of rock cod, 200 tons of squid if it wasn’t raining. Normally this place is full of fish.”

Castillo was busy Monday as fishing boats docked with fresh catches. “All we needed was a little break in the weather, and we got it,” said Castillo, sitting behind the wheel of a forklift he uses to haul containers of fish from the boats to the cleaning area.

Looking up at he sky, he said, “But I don’t think it’s going to stay this way.” Rain can also bring grief to other harbor businesses.

*

For 44-year-old Steve Smith, owner of Offshore Islands Sailing Club in the Channel Islands Harbor, inclement weather during the week is not a problem. When it hits during the weekend, it’s anything but business as usual.

“I lose a few thousand dollars a day, especially on the weekends,” said Smith.

“Nineteen days out of the first 24 days of the year, it’s either rained or we haven’t seen the sun. It shuts everything down. We do sailing instruction and charters, and pretty much since the beginning of the year, we’ve shut everything down. This reminds me of Seattle,” Smith said.

Still, Smith said he doesn’t let the gloomy weather get him down. “You laugh a lot, you drink a lot of beer and you listen to a lot of Jimmmy Buffet CDs,” he said.

“This gets depressing. It makes it hard to do business,” said Mark Connally, a partner in Island Packer Cruises, which conducts tours to the Channel Islands. “We have to cancel about 30% of our trips when there’s cold, wet and windy weather.”