Commercial halibut season opens May 1

For Don Marshall, who fishes on his boat The Northern Light, the start of halibut season isn’t much to celebrate.

“It’s a very niche fishery, there are guys that can do well, but halibut is a tough one to make money with,” Marshall said. “A lot of times you go out there, you catch 10 fish. After gas prices, a couple sandwiches for lunch, you are thinking what am I doing this for, one thing breaks and I am in the red.”

Also, many salmon fishers like Marshall troll for their catch. Dragging a net requires an additional permit many fishers don’t have. Fishers with a permit have a huge advantage.

“Rod and hook guys, like me, we are lucky to catch a few hundred pounds on a trip, but the guys dragging nets can easily catch over 1,000 pounds,” Marshall said. “It softens the market and it’s a hard fishery to make money off of.”

Crab season was delayed until midnight on New Year’s Eve and it was the first rogue wave the Half Moon Bay fishers had to endure. The late start was over concerns about humpback whales in the area it added to missing sales over the holidays.

While crab season offered great quality meat, wholesale prices were down to $2.25 per pound. It is a price Marshall said he hasn’t seen since the late ’90s. Many of the fishers out of Pillar Point Harbor have speculated the price drop may from be the big fisheries controlling the market, yet they all admit it’s just a dock rumor.

“Wholesale prices on crab never came up or moved, that was difficult,” Marshall said. “Crab season was lackluster and has been progressively shorter the last three years.”

The season generally runs from Nov. 15 to June 30, but this year it was cut short, and ended April 15. The shortened season was to reduce the risk of entangling humpback whales returning from winter breeding grounds.

The second rogue wave to rock the fishers’ boats was the recommendation to cancel the commercial salmon season. The Pacific Fishery Management Council announced March 10 it would cancel the season due to near-low record numbers of salmon returning to the Sacramento River and Klamath River. The ocean had the second lowest abundance forecast since 1997. The pause on commercial salmon fishing will hold out until April 2024.

Scott Edson, who fishes on the Fish Vessel Genesis, said he and many other fishers rely heavily on salmon.

“It is going to be extremely difficult to get by the rest of the year without salmon,” Edson said.

The canceled salmon season means Edson loses two-thirds of his yearly income, he added. He doesn’t think halibut will be the fish that saves the summer, instead, he said he is looking to pivot and fish for live rock fish, black cod and lingcod. His Hail Mary pass at the end of the season is to hope albacore and bluefin tuna make it this far west, he said.

For both Edson and Marshall, this year is about keeping afloat, paying the bills and hoping to make it to the next crab season without delays and debt.

The one thing either won’t be relying on is halibut.

“It is problematic to sell, salmon sells itself, the meat, the quality it’s all there, but halibut is a white meat fish and to an untrained eye it is harder to market and harder to sell,” Marshall said.

May and June is when the ocean warms up and the halibut move closer to shore, making catching them more efficient with gas prices. Still Marshall said it’s an uphill battle when the dedicated halibut fishers use small skiffs that are even better on gas.

“Hopefully, next year the salmon season comes back to what it was and we can get back to doing what these boats are designed to do, catch salmon,” Marshall said. “Halibut is generally supplemental. It is a very difficult fishery to make a living at, so basically it is not a very good side step.”

Note to readers: This story has been changed because it said commercial Pacific halibut season begins in May when it was actually recreational. It also had an incorrect crab season ending date. Fishers out of Pillar Point Harbor fish for California Halibut not Pacific.

nick@smdailyjournal.com

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