28 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY DECEMBER 18-24, 2025 www.montereycountynow.com face a number of big ticket expenses: licensing, permitting, gear and maintenance among the most significant. Permits, which must be renewed annually, vary widely in price depending on the fishery. If fishing in federal waters (between 3 to 200 nautical miles offshore) fishers must obtain a permit from the National Marine Fisheries Service; if fishing in state waters, California Department of Fish and Wildlife is the go-to agency. In many ways, permits reflect the health and vulnerability of a fishery— their structure and rarity illustrate the rules around how much protection the fishery requires. And, as long as a fisher renews each year, permits can be held indefinitely. Take the spot prawn fishery, for example. It’s one of the most limited commercial fisheries on the West Coast, and 28 permits for commercial harvest are available statewide, managed by CDFW, with about two local fishers with a spot prawn permit fishing in local waters. That’s by design: Spot prawns are slow growing, making them easier to overfish. It’s also an incredibly lucrative fishery, averaging $40-$60 per pound, and driving up the cost of the permits to reach $1 million. And then there are quotas, limits placed on the fishery which is shared by all permit holders. Tim Eelman, the chef at Solstice restaurant in Big Sur, says he averages paying $52 a pound for spot prawns. “With that said, they’re one of my favorite ingredients of all time,” he says. “I mean, I absolutely love them. If I can get them, I get them.” Commercial crabbing permits, more accessible but still capped, vary depending on boat size, number of traps, and other factors. For Hart, the cost to renew his permit, licenses and gear tags each year is around $4,000, money that’s tough to make back when the season is delayed. For the last three years he’s been trying to sell his permit so he can retire, hoping to get around $80,000 to $100,000. Six years ago, permits for his category were selling for around $200,000. “I’ve made $200,000 in two months doing it before,” Hart says. “Now, they’re only worth half of what they used to be, because we can only make half as much.” Rockfish, black cod and halibut are fisheries that remain somewhat reliable for local fishers. But competition is steep, and market demand is not the same as for crab or salmon. Deyerle explains that they are often competing against imports and large retailers that sell fish for as little as $4 a pound for fillets, a price that isn’t profitable for local fleets. At his wholesale market, these prices range from about $9 to $10 per pound for rockfish species and black cod. He differentiates his fish by centering on quality handling, freshness and direct sales. For his family fleet, they are vertically integrated, allowing them to sell to restaurants his family owns (Sea Harvest restaurant in Carmel’s Crossroads shopping center, as well as Sea Harvest Restaurant & Fish Market in Monterey) which helps ensure demand and more control over pricing, as well as supply larger orders in the Bay Area. “If you go into Costco, and take a look at the impact rockfish under those ultra bright lights, you can disguise [the quality],” he says. “But cook them side by side. When you take that one out of the package, you’ll immediately know the difference: One will be softer, smellier, fishier. Fresh fish should be firm and not taste so fishy.” In October 2017, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a federal lawsuit against the CDFW for failing to protect Dungeness crab traps from entangling endangered whales, a lawsuit which ultimately reshaped the modern Dungeness crab fishery by formalizing a set of risk protections, including trap limits, and most significantly, shrinking the Dungeness crab season. Ropeless crab traps have entered the arena as a possible solution via experimental fishing permits, which allow fishers with a permit to catch crab using methods that don’t leave a rope behind in the water column to entangle passing whales. But using such alternatives during the peak Dungeness crabbing season is still likely many years away, according to Craig Shuman of CDFW. Proof of concept— and more importantly, buy-in from the entire crabbing fleet to allow a new gear type into such a competitive market—is needed to take next steps. Ropeless crab traps have shown Top: Workers with Sea Harvest weigh out the morning’s catch of groundfish—a group of fish that includes rockfish species and sablefish that spend most of their lives close to the sea floor. Bottom left: Sea Harvest workers prep the fish to get ready to sell at their wholesale market. They’ll sell the fish whole as well as in fillets. Bottom right: An employee of Real Good Fish—a distributor that focuses on connecting consumers with locally caught, sustainable fish—package tuna for their seafood subscription boxes.
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