Storm clouds over California’s fishing industry are lifting after conservationists struck a unique deal with trawlermen, offering to preserve their dwindling livelihoods on the condition that they swap their destructive dragnets for lines and hooks.
Roger Cullen is tired but happy. He has just unloaded 1,500lb of black cod on the dock at Morro Bay after a long night in an open boat. When he left port and steamed north up towards Big Sur, the sea along the rocky central California coast was glassy calm, the sun was beating down and weekenders were out driving convertibles, camper vans and riding customised Harleys along the spectacular coast road, Highway 1, stopping occasionally to point their cameras at formations of low-flying pelicans and elephant seals moulting on the beach at San Simeon.
But when California’s Central Valley heats up, cold air from the ocean is sucked towards the land. The fog comes off the Pacific and stretches its fingers into the parched valleys of the central California coast. A brisk westerly got up as well as the fog, and Cullen and his crew of baiter and boy found themselves in horrible weather. After 24 hours of rolling about in a confused sea on the deck of their 30ft boat, Dorado, they are delighted to be back in home port – though its distinctive rock and three-stack gas-fired power station are still almost invisible in the enveloping mist. Keen to get home and sleep, they unload in 15 minutes.