‘A ghost town’: How Bodega Bay is adapting to the ailing seafood industry

From the living room window of their waterfront home, Carol and Tony Anello have watched the rise and fall of Bodega Bay. Traffic on Westshore Road flows past in waves, fishing boats pull into the docks and throngs of visitors line up at Spud Point Crab Co., their restaurant next door. Launched more than 20 years ago and known for its chowder and Dungeness crab rolls, the restaurant has helped make the Anellos beacons of the community. 

It has also served as a life raft as they left the commercial fishing business.   

“I had a premonition that the fishing industry was going down,” said Tony Anello, who fished commercially for salmon, crab and herring for 54 years before selling his boat Anabelle last year. “There are guys dropping out of this industry like flies, and I’m one of them.”

At Bodega Bay and other picturesque seaside villages along the California coast, the fishing economy is gradually sinking.

The latest blows came earlier this month: Commercial harvest of Chinook salmon was banned in California for the third consecutive year because of low populations, and the state’s Dungeness crab fishery has been severely restricted in an effort to protect humpback whales from entanglements. Sportfishing for salmon — a valuable industry and a beloved pastime — also was prohibited for two straight years, and will be severely cut back this year to what may amount to a single weekend in June in Northern California.  

Now coastal towns that once relied on freshly caught seafood are finding ways to adapt. In Bodega Bay, fishing has increasingly taken a backseat to tourism and the draw of souvenir shops and art galleries, saltwater taffy, waterfront dining, vacation rentals and a backdrop from Hitchcock’s “The Birds.” 

Tourism is “the lifeblood of this town now. It’s not fishing,” Tony Anello said. He nodded to the line of boats moored at the harbor — elaborate rigs that can cost the price of a Bay Area home. “All the boats are in. What are they fishing for? Niente. Nothing.” 

When the salmon closure hit two years ago, sportfishing charter boat operator Ty Taube’s revenue stream was cut almost in half. To compensate, he has shifted much of his business from Bodega Bay to San Francisco Bay, where he now rents a second berth in Richmond and takes his clients fishing in the spring and summer for halibut and striped bass. 

“Bodega Bay now has very little to offer,” he said.

Tourism is “the lifeblood of this town now. It’s not fishing. All the boats are in. What are they fishing for? Niente. Nothing.” 

TONY ANELLO, RESTAURANT OWNER AND FORMER COMMERCIAL FISHERMAN

Mike Long, who ran a Bodega Bay fishing charter company on his boat Miss Vic for eight years, said Chinook salmon fishing used to drive a frenzy of local activity. 

“Bodega Bay, back in the day when the salmon were running … was an absolute party. People were camping, having fun,” he said. “From a fishing standpoint, Bodega Bay has become a ghost town.” 

Lucrative salmon harvests — sometimes exceeding a million fish in a season — and a robust population persisted through the mid-2000s, before the fish seemed to cross a tipping point, collapsing almost to extinction in 2009. Experts say the harvests were sustainable but that Delta water diversions, loss of river habitat and poor ocean conditions are driving the collapse of the past 20 years.

The Anellos fondly recall those banner days of their youth, and the fishery’s prime, rehashing stories of big days on the water and unloading the catch in port. 

“I remember saying, ‘My God, is there a bottom to this boat? The fish just kept coming up and coming up,” Carol Anello said.  

At nearby boat ramps, the traffic jams of the salmon season are a thing of the past, at least for now, though a trickle of skiffs still comes and goes, mostly targeting either crab or rockfish. Some anglers come to fish from shore.

“Bodega Bay, back in the day when the salmon were running … was an absolute party. People were camping, having fun. From a fishing standpoint, Bodega Bay has become a ghost town.” 

MIKE LONG, CAPTAIN OF THE CHARTER BOAT MISS VIC

Abalone, and the kelp forests they live in, also have almost vanished, the victims of overfishing and climate change. Banned in 2018, diving for abalone was a recreational attraction for decades that brought visitors and cash flow to remote North Coast communities.

A small fleet of party boat services, including Taube’s vessel Dragonfly, Pole Dancin’ and New Sea Angler, still keeps a presence in the harbor, but some don’t fish as much as they once did. Some are turning to cruises, whale-watching and ash-scattering voyages to replace lost fishing opportunities. 

Visitors to the town still expect seafood, and they still get it — but many menus feature products farmed or delivered from faraway waters, including clams, oysters and shrimp.

Local Dungeness crab has become more expensive — a boon to fishers — but it remains plentiful, even when the season ends, thanks to freezing and thawing on demand. Salmon has dropped off most local menus.  

At Fishetarian Fish Market, co-owner Shane Lucas supports local boats but must lean on imported catch. This market-cafe at the south edge of town on a recent day was selling farmed New Zealand Chinook salmon under their display case, and it may shift later to wild salmon from the Pacific Northwest. Rockfish, though locally available, mostly comes from Oregon, simply because local hook-and-line commercial fishers don’t catch enough to meet his needs.

Oysters are a plentiful local product, with their crushed shells mashed into the asphalt and picnic grounds throughout town. But they are mostly farmed — not fished — in nearby Tomales Bay. Lingcod and halibut remain seasonal catches, along with albacore tuna and some bluefin, too.

Nothing, however, matches the value and cachet of Chinook salmon, also known as king salmon.

Last fall, restaurants countywide collaborated with Bodega Bay fishers and the county tourism board in a promotional push dubbed “Black Cod Week.” The idea was to promote the buttery, soft flesh of locally caught black cod, also known as sablefish, as a stand-in for salmon.  

“They were looking for an alternative fish that is highly sustainable, with lots of them out there,” said Patty Ginochio, owner of Ginochio’s Kitchen on the northeast shore of Bodega Bay, explaining that black cod is oily but delicious.

“We offered black cod tacos in lieu of the salmon tacos that we would normally have been offering,” she said. Ginochio, who has not served salmon since California’s season was shut down two years ago, also served smoked black cod. 

“No matter what you do, it’s not king salmon,” she said. 

Untangling whales and crabs

At least for now, Dungeness crab remains a valuable fishery, though seasonal catches range wildly. 2022 saw one of the poorest statewide harvests in 40 years. 2023 was a huge year, 2024 less so and this year another bummer. 

“It’s been horrible,” said Bodega Bay commercial fisherman Dick Ogg on a recent morning as he prepared to offload and sell one of his last Dungeness crab hauls of the season at Spud Point Marina, across the road from the Anellos’ restaurant. 

Ogg, who has fished out of Bodega Bay for 25 years, said profitability of crab fishing has declined, contributing to attrition in the statewide fleet. 

“The gear has gone from $50 a pot to $350 a pot, plus the rope is more expensive. The regulations are more stringent, and the time we get to fish has been condensed down to three months,” he said. “If you sit back and look at what’s happening, it’s getting to the point where you just can’t make a living.”

The West Coast’s Dungeness crab population is generally booming, and landings have soared since the early 2000s. 2024’s catch of 14 million pounds was worth $50 million, and 2023 saw the eighth largest catch — 21 million pounds — in the past 45 years. 

But new regulations have constrained the fishery, including trap limits and frequent season closures. This year, the Dungeness fishery opened late — in January — and state officials announced last week that they are shutting it down early, on May 1, in much of the state.  

The complicating factor is whales — particularly humpbacks, which are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act and routinely become entangled in ropes that connect floating buoys to crab traps on the seafloor. These synthetic lines can slice deep into their skin and blubber and, when attached to heavy traps, exhaust and drown the giants. 

Entanglements have increased in the last decade following a change in feeding activity that has concentrated the animals closer to the California coast, especially from spring through summer.

“The regulations are more stringent…It’s getting to the point where you just can’t make a living” off Dungeness crab.

BODEGA BAY FISHERMAN DICK OGG

Since about 2014, reported entanglements have averaged several dozen per year. Last year, 31 humpbacks were reported snagged in fishing gear off the West Coast. 

“We know that we’re only observing maybe 10%, maybe 20% of the entanglements,” said Catherine Kilduff, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. 

About 84% of entangled humpbacks may die or suffer serious injury as a result, according to an estimate by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

Shifting gears: Can an old industry learn new tricks?

Commercial crabbers are collaborating with environmental groups, including Oceana, to develop whale-safe crab gear that involves no unattended vertical ropes in the water. 

They have experimented with a system reliant on compressed buoys fixed to each trap and which inflate by remote control, lifting the cage to the surface with no rope. Another model relies on a buoy spool coiled with rope and fixed to the sunken trap, then released via remote control. When the spool surfaces, the fishers, standing by, retrieve it and their gear. 

The concept for each is brilliant, but the problem that manufacturers have struggled with is reliability. Ogg, who has tried some of these methods, said they fail too frequently to be trusted. While advocates have cited a 98% reliability figure, Ogg said it’s lower, likely less than 90%. 

Ogg plans to move ahead with a whale-safe system in which he drops a line of crab traps strung together on a single rope, then retrieves the array later by snagging it with a grappling hook dragged over the bottom. 

Ogg thinks this alternative gear system could represent the future of crabbing, allowing fishers to bypass seasonal bans on conventional gear implemented when whales are near.

Retrieving gear via grapple hook takes at least twice as long per trap, Ogg said. “It’s a pain in the butt, it’s hard to do,” he said. 

But maybe worse, he said, is snagging a whale. “Nobody wants to interact with an animal other than the targeted species.” 

Boom and bust of salmon

For Taube, the glory days of the North Coast salmon fishery are just a few years gone. Taube launched his fishing charter service in 2019, cashing in on several good years. Sometimes, he said, fishing was hot enough just outside the Bodega Bay harbor that he was able to run two trips daily, each with about a half-dozen customers. 

“We would do a morning trip, and we’d do an afternoon trip … it was easy fishing,” said Taube, owner of Reel Obsession Sportfishing, which features a 34-foot boat named Dragonfly. 

Those were the days when salmon season traffic jammed up the bay’s boat ramps, when wait times could be an hour and early morning tempers sometimes flared. All morning, commercial trollers, private skiffs and charter boats like Dragonfly funneled out the mouth of the harbor, where they dispersed across the water. 

Often, the fish were barely a mile outside the Bodega Bay harbor mouth, with clouds of anchovies darkening the electronic screen of the dashboard “fish finder,” feeding whales surging in all directions and the salmon quick to strike a bait. 

“If we catch the quota quickly, then it could be done in a day or two. It’s not going to make a difference in the 100 (salmon sportfishing) trips or so that we used to run.” 

TY TAUBE, CAPTAIN OF THE CHARTER BOAT DRAGONFLY

This year, the tradition will resume — but perhaps for just one weekend. Recreational anglers have been allocated a sliver of a season for the first time since 2022. Fishing will begin June 7, and while multiple weekends are designated for fishing, there is a catch: a 7,000-fish quota. 

“If we catch the quota quickly, then it could be done in a day or two,” Taube said. “It’s not going to make a difference in the 100 trips or so that we used to run.” 

Along part of the Central Coast, a second fishing window, with a 7,500-fish quota, will open in September.

In the historical context, such numbers are almost nothing — what a single commercial boat might catch in a season. “Total averages (in the 1970s) would be about 80 fish a day,” Tony Anello said. 

Long left the fishing business when the salmon closure took effect two years ago. Now — like many other boat operators — he runs the Miss Vic to cash in on alternative guiding opportunities. 

“We do whale-watching trips now,” he said.

Graphs depicting past abundance show a towering wall of California Chinook through the 1980s and 90s. In the record year of 1988, ocean harvest in California — commercial and recreational combined — amounted to nearly 1.4 million salmon, the best year on record. Even after that huge harvest, more than 200,000 fish returned to the Sacramento River to spawn that fall and in 2002, more Chinook swam into the Central Valley than ever recorded before — about 900,000 adults.  

Salmon abundance plunged off a cliff in the late 2000s, and it has never recovered. Just 140,000 adults migrated up the Central Valley’s rivers last year, and that came after two years with essentially no harvest. 

Return of the salmon

A salmon rebound would change everything, and it’s something state officials are calling for. 

“We are hell-bent … pushing as hard as we can, because we hate the idea of a future California without salmon,” said Chuck Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. 

Some positive signals, maybe suggesting a comeback, are emerging from the watersheds where salmon spawn — due, Bonham says, to the state’s restoration efforts as well as the record wet year in 2023. Wet winters increase river flows, which help juvenile salmon reach the ocean, and can be a precursor to salmon rebounds. Bonham is optimistic that next year will see a bump. Already, numbers of spawning endangered coho salmon in coastal watersheds jumped last winter to several times the recent historical average.   

In the Sacramento River, premature returning Chinook — two-year-old males known to biologists as “jacks” — returned in very large numbers last fall. That could reflect a swelling population in the ocean. 

A major victory was recently scored in the Klamath basin, where four dams were removed from 2023 to 2024. Already, Chinook are reported to be entering spawning habitat that was inaccessible for decades, and experts and local tribes anticipate a revival.  

“We are hell-bent … pushing as hard as we can, because we hate the idea of a future California without salmon.”

CHUCK BONHAM, DIRECTOR OF CALIFORNIA DEPT. OF FISH AND WILDLIFE

Bonham said a state policy of “cutting the green tape” has allowed faster movement on projects to rebuild habitat features like wetlands and floodplains, mostly in the Central Valley. Another new state policy allowing project developers to pack multiple project permits into a single approval has helped the state make progress on salmon restoration work. 

“Just last year, we streamlined the approvals for 60 important projects related to salmon,” he said. “We don’t have a chance to dink around and take 20 more years.” We need “more good projects faster and cheaper,” he said. 

Fishery experts and advocates say the state is not doing enough to save salmon. Scott Artis, executive director of the Golden State Salmon Association, an industry group, said the state has failed to guarantee that Central Valley rivers contain adequate cold water for salmon. He said reservoirs are drained too early, which depletes the supply of cold water essential for successful spawning, and too much water is pumped to farms and cities to the south. 

“Dead salmon don’t use habitat,” Artis said. “So if we kill all the salmon because there is no water, are we really creating habitat and allowing them to use it?”

Relics of a thriving industry

At Bodega Bay, an old fishing pier, succumbing to saltwater and wind, is falling to pieces and is no longer accessible. 

The local ice machine, installed at the Spud Point Marina in the 1980s, is in disrepair, too.

“It’s long past its life expectancy,” said Noah Wagner, marina supervisor for the Sonoma County Regional Parks Department, which operates the facility. “We’re very concerned that we’re going to have a catastrophic failure that necessitates a complete replacement of that ice house during one of these really important seasons for the salmon or crab.”

Officials with the state and county visited last year, part of an ongoing quest for funding to modernize the ice house, which is the only one of its kind between San Francisco and Fort Bragg, Wagner said. “All the fishing boats and the processors … rely on this ice house, so it’s vitally important to the fleet,” he said.  

While the community thrives on the bustling tourism economy, many residents and business owners are worried about the town’s fishers.

Waves of Compassion is a local nonprofit that, among other things, helps struggling commercial fishers in and around Bodega Bay with food, clothes, laundry money, dog food and other items that Ginochio, a cofounder, says many increasingly cannot afford. 

Lucas, at Fishetarian, sees a gray future for the local fishing economy.  

“It’s sad because my grandfather was a commercial fisherman, but I don’t think there will be a commercial fisherman left here in 10 years,” he said. “They’re going to be all gone. To support a family in California as a commercial fisherman, you’ve got to be doing something else.”