The changing face of Moss Landing

MOSS LANDING – Weathered by age and the sea, rusted railings mark the path to Bay Fresh Seafoods, a one-room shop where fourth-generation Moss Landing fisherman Jerid Rold has just arrived with a writhing haul of hagfish – one of his few remaining profitable catches.

Across the street stands the sleek and sophisticated Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute – a world-renowned center for advanced research in ocean science.

Moss Landing, population 200, is rapidly switching identities. The historic town is seeing its commercial fishing roots disappear as Moss Landing secures its status as a prized destination for marine research and ecotourism.

Real estate players, research institutions, cannabis entrepreneurs and restaurateurs are becoming driving forces of the town — and its economy. And as Moss Landing’s future is reinvented, Rold sees a dwindling place for fishermen like him.

“Every one of those slips across the street was a commercial fishing boat,” Rold said, pointing across the harbor. “Now there’s maybe 10.”

Pleasure and scientific craft now dominate the 600-slip harbor that was once home to mostly commercial fishing vessels, said Linda McIntyre, Moss Landing’s harbormaster.

The local fishing business “used to be analogous to the family farm,” McIntyre said. “The children would grow up learning the trade, and then the children would take over, and it was passed on from generation to generation.”

But now, she said, “When the elder fishermen decide to retire, they just sell their boats.”

To keep its slip, Bay Fresh pays rent to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, founded by Silicon Valley pioneer David Packard. Much of the harbor is owned by MBARI, Moss Landing Marine Labs and Gregg Marine, a company that develops and deploys marine drilling technology.

In 1996, $10.5 million worth of fish (in 2009 dollars) were caught by Moss Landing crew, according to the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey. By 2016, that figure had decreased to $5.4 million – an inflation-adjusted drop of 49 percent.

The hard times have gutted the Bay Fresh fleet. Over the last five years, Rold said, the company lost half its black cod boats and went from owning 40 salmon boats to four.

To survive, Rold and other independent fishermen recognize they will have to change their way of life, or be left behind.

“Fishing is going to be where you’re going to go work for someone else,” Rold said. “You’re not going to own your boat. You’re not going to own your business. You’re going to work for a company, or a market, or a government entity.”

Or maybe someday Rold will simply leave the Moss Landing Harbor for good.

Industrial roots 

Located at the confluence of the Elkhorn Slough and the Pacific Ocean, Moss Landing has always been tied to its waterfront. In the late 1800s Charles Moss, a ship captain from Texas, put the town on the map when it became one of the West Coast’s most successful whaling ports. That led to an explosion of fish processing plants and canneries in Moss Landing in the early 20th century. To transport goods, the Southern Pacific Railroad laid down tracks, which still run adjacent to the slough today.

When the whaling and cannery industry crashed, the town swung a deal with Pacific Gas & Electric, and Moss Landing in 1952 became the site of the second largest power plant in the world at the time. Today those same steaming stacks still tower over the town – an iconic if out-of-place community landmark.

Now, Moss Landing is seeing a new era of energy ushered in. PG&E and the Texas-based power company Vistra, which merged with former owner Dynegy, are teaming up with electric-car manufacturer Tesla to build a massive lithium-ion battery plant. The California Public Utilities Commission approved the project last month.

Across the street from the power plant in the commercial business park, entrepreneurs are growing recreational and medicinal marijuana in 500,000 square feet of greenhouses.

Moss Landing’s cool climate makes the town ideal for indoor cultivation, said Gavin Kogan, co-founder of Groupo Flor, a cannabis collective instrumental in developing the industry in Moss Landing.

Many visitors see Moss Landing as quaint. But Kogan said  much of the town is “blighted” and envisions a setting for the “new economy – clean agriculture, clean manufacturing and resources used to promote the environment rather than take advantage” of it.

The DeepWater Desal plant on Moss Landing’s east side, whose owners hope to start construction in 2021, would transform ocean water into drinking water. The seawater may also be used to cool a data center and to grow fish, said David Armanasco, one of the project’s partners.

Ecotourism on the rise

Other big changes are also underway.

The “Little Baja” pottery store, a landmark familiar to legions of Californians passing through town on Highway 1, is being demolished to make way for a boutique 30-room inn on the waterfront. And next door, construction crews are building 9,500 square feet of retail space, likely to become a restaurant.

On Moss Landing Road, the traditional “downtown,” the juxtaposition of old and new is striking. Post Office Antiques leans to one side, almost as if decades of offshore winds tried to push it over. Many storefronts are hauntingly empty.

But down the road, new apartments and 14,000 square feet of retail space are being developed. In addition, an octagon-shaped building that has sat empty for years will be transformed into a three-story hotel catering to ecotourists.

Kim Solano, a 25-year Moss Landing resident who owns the popular Haute Enchilada gallery and restaurant, has seen the evolution coming for years. Part of what’s driving the shift, Solano said, “is cannabis for sure,” which became legal to sell in California in January.

The East of Eden marijuana dispensary is set to become the Haute Enchilada’s next-door neighbor this spring.

Another part of Moss Landing’s new economy is ecotourism — kayaking in Elkhorn Slough, whale watching out of the harbor, walking the sand at Moss Landing State Beach.

The Monterey Bay is one of the few places on the West Coast where whales can be spotted year-round. And Elkhorn Slough boasts the largest raft of sea otters in California.

Moss Landing “used to be kind of a hidden gem, and now it’s getting a lot more exposure – you’re getting people from all over the world that are coming to see it,” said Dave Grigsby, owner of Kayak Connection in Moss Landing.

Will fishermen survive?

Solano thinks that one way commercial fishermen could adapt is partnering with ecotourism companies, sustainable fishing organizations and research giants like MBARI.

“I think it’s a wonderful marriage,” she said.

One such partnership could be at Moss Landing Marine Labs’ aquaculture facility. Funded by the Packard Foundation, researchers there are looking into how to responsibly “farm” fish and other foods like seaweed.

Jim Harvey, director of the labs, sees the facility as a place where local fishermen could blend in to Moss Landing’s new economy. “In fact,” he said, “some of those people might choose to no longer go out on a boat and necessarily catch fish, as much as grow them.”

As they look to the future, Moss Landing leaders acknowledge that fishing isn’t critical to the town’s economy – but vow to try to bolster the struggling industry.

“We value our fishing heritage and we intend to do everything we can to sustain that commercial fishing heritage,” McIntyre said.

But to preserve its fishing industry, Moss Landing’s infrastructure must be improved, fishermen say. There’s little room in town for a modern fish market, however, as property values soar.

And because most of the harbor is held by institutions like MBARI, there is “pretty limited amount of space and infrastructure that can be dedicated to just fishing and fish offloading,” McIntyre said.

But without the infrastructure, a small business like Bay Fresh can’t compete with corporate fleets flooding the market.

“Before we used to have markets around here that you could bring 30,000 pounds in and they would cut it and then they would distribute it,” Rold said. Now, Bay Fresh sells fish whole, or sends them to be cut to places as far away as Japan

Years of high-volume fishing in the Monterey Bay also changed the regulatory landscape. So now there are short windows for when and where fishermen like Rold can catch certain species of fish, such as lingcod.

These strict quotas are “the ramifications of several decades of overfishing,” said Geoff Shester, who directs Oceana’s California Campaign in Monterey. “That had devastating consequences for the fishermen here. A lot of them weren’t able to survive, and I think it’s still very hard.”

Bay Fresh attempts to make ends meet by selling fish to higher-end restaurants and sustainable-fish markets. But Rold says those markets are limited.

“So you’ve got a fish that used to get $1.50 a pound for that now you’re getting $4,” Rold said. “But realistically the general public can’t afford that. What happens is the boutique market that can afford that gets flooded.”

Shester says the main obstacle in opening the sustainable seafood market is getting people’s attention through marketing tactics.

“We’re not actually valuing and telling the story of our local seafood,” he said. “People who want sustainable seafood are still buying stuff that’s coming from China, Norway, Scotland and Chile instead of our backyard.”

Cultivating Moss Landing’s reputation as the place on the Central Coast to buy sustainable catch like Petrale sole, salmon and black cod could take years, though.

And the 43-year-old Rold, who has a family of four, is running out of time.

“It’s all I know,” he said. “It’s where my family lives. It’s the beach I’ve walked since I was a little kid. But man, it’s hard to watch.”

He predicts that the day may come when visitors will no longer watch commercial fishing boats bob in the harbor.

To see the old Moss Landing, he said, they’ll “go click online and look at pictures.”

Mobile users, click on the link https://youtu.be/3VJuty0KrHA to see and hear Moss Landing fisherman Jarid Rold describe how commercial fishing is changing.