2. Location, History and Economy
The city of San Diego is the southernmost urban area on California’s coast. The city encompasses an area of 372.03 total square miles and downtown is 17 miles from the US-Mexico border. San Diego occupies the ancestral territory of the Kumeyaay Nation. The Kumeyaay were seasonal hunters and gatherers whose lands ranged from the coastal region of San Diego, eastward past the Salton Sea, and south beyond present-day Enseñada, Mexico (Source). The Kumeyaay were avid fishers and harvested over 45 varieties of fish and 60 varieties of shellfish.
However, by the late 1800s, the Kumeyaay had been almost entirely displaced from the coasts as a result of colonization by European and American immigrants. There are currently 20,000 Kumeyaay living in San Diego County (Source). Of the current population, 10% live on the 18 federally recognized Indian reservations in San Diego County (more than in any other county in the United States) (Source).
Europeans first made contact in the area in 1542, when Portuguese ships landed at current-day Point Loma. In 1602 a Spanish merchant, Sebastian Vizcaino, landed in the San Diego on the feast day of San Diego de Alcalà. Formal settlement did not occur until 1769 when the Spanish Father Junipero Serra established San Diego de Alcalà Mission. During the mission period, the Spanish renamed the Kumeyaay the Digueño after the mission that colonized the area. When the mission was established in 1769 there were roughly 25-30,000 Kumeyaay/Digueño living in the area. The Spanish colonizers were unsuccessful at converting the Kumeyaay to Christianity, despite many efforts. Tensions rose as the Kumeyaay resisted colonization and revolted against the efforts of the Spanish soldiers to subjugate them. When Mexico declared independence in 1821 and assumed control of San Diego, the Kumeyaay fled to the mountains to escape forced labor by the Mexican army settlers. By 1846, San Diego was taken by U.S. forces (Source). The community was incorporated in 1850.
In 1867 the San Francisco businessman Alonzo Horton saw the potential for the city as a major port and acquired 960 acres of waterfront for what would become present day downtown San Diego (Source). Soon after, gold was discovered in the hills east of San Diego but the mining boom ended just a few years later in 1874. The aviation and maritime industries came to San Diego during the 1920s and 1930s, boosting the city’s economy. With the start of WWII, San Diego became the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, which transformed the city and provided employment for up to a quarter of the city’s population. Today, Naval Base San Diego is a homeport to nearly a third of the Navy’s fleet in the Pacific.
Southern California’s commercial fishing industry began with the influx of diverse immigrant communities from China, Japan, Italy, and Portugal. San Diego’s commercial fishing industry began in the 1860s and 70s with the arrival of Chinese immigrants, many fleeing anti-Chinese riots in the north (Source). Although many Chinese immigrants arriving in California in the late 19th century were forced into low-wage work, some found a niche for themselves as fishers. They dove for abalone and eventually started California’s squid fishery. By 1872, international fish exports out of San Diego were well underway. Although Chinese fishers made up a substantial proportion of the California industry, San Diego was unique in that it was the only California port in which Chinese fishers lead the industry. In the late 1800s, 12-18 Chinese fishing companies operated out of San Diego Bay (with competition from just four Euro-American companies) (Source). By the year 1880, the abalone fishery was producing seven hundred tons annually. The meat was primarily exported to China whereas the shells were sold locally to jewelry makers.
By 1881, three Chinese fishing settlements had been established on San Diego Bay (Source). Soon, however, regulations such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which forbid Chinese fishers from fishing outside of national waters or risk not being allowed reentry, profoundly impacted the Chinese fishing industry. In 1890, the industry came to a close with restrictions on the taking and export of abalone and shrimp. Only one Chinese fishing boat was left in San Diego harbor by 1893 (Source).
The late 19th century saw a wave of immigration from Italy and Portugal to California. Between 1900 and 1910, Italian immigration to California nearly tripled. Although many settled near San Francisco Bay, the San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906 brought a wave of Italian fishers to San Diego. Portuguese fishers had moved into the abandoned settlements of the Chinese fishers. The city’s newest immigrants brought with them a variety of boats and fishing gear. The introduction of the Italian lampara net in 1907 greatly expanded the San Diego sardine fishery. By 1910, the capabilities of the fishery exceeded market demand. To be able to continue developing, the San Diego fishing industry needed to build canneries to access national markets (Source). San Diego’s first cannery opened in 1909, dedicated solely to sardine processing. Around that time, a sardine canner in nearby San Pedro, California began experimenting with canning albacore, which they marketed as “chicken of the sea.” By 1911, the Pacific Tuna Canning Company began canning albacore in San Diego. Over the next 50 years, the city would come to be known as the “tuna capital of the world” (Source).
South of San Diego, Japanese fishers settled in Mexico’s Magdalena and Turtle Bays. In the early part of the 20th century, these Japanese fishers specialized in abalone, which they dried and shipped internationally through San Diego’s market. During the 1920s, the operation transitioned to tuna fishing with the arrival of seventy Japanese tuna fishers who brought a new technique – pole fishing with long, flexible, and strong bamboo. San Diego tuna canneries favored the pole technique because it reduced damage to the meat. Japanese fishers began migrating north from Mexico to San Diego, and by 1923 Japanese fishers made up 50% of San Diego’s fishing crews (Source).
Between 1919 and 1921, California was the US’s leading domestic seafood producer by tonnage (Source). At the same time, the state began implementing spatial restrictions as well as regulations on fishing gear and processing in response to concerns about overfishing. Depletion of local fish stocks impacted the San Diego fishing fleet (Source). Boats needed to fish farther away and for longer periods, meaning they both needed to be bigger and have the technology for keeping fish cold on long trips. San Diego fishers began targeting fish in Mexican waters. Even these opportunities were greatly reduced in the 1930s when Mexico began taking regulatory action to limit foreign involvement in the fishery. Distant water fishing was not a viable option for all, so many fishers left their boats to become involved in the fish processing and marketing sector. San Diego quickly transitioned from being a seafood exporter to an importer. As fishers moved to deeper water, they began targeting yellowfin and skipjack tunas.
Although processing techniques had improved making the canning of these other tunas a profitable enterprise, San Diego fishers were competing with cheaper imported tuna from Japan. In 1930, Edward Ghio helped found the American Fishermen’s Tunaboat Association, the forerunner of the present-day American Tunaboat Association. This effort united fishers in their dealings with the canneries.
Wartime efforts during WWII had profound impacts on the San Diego fishing community. Tuna boats were given new territorial restrictions, and boats over 90ft were commandeered by the US navy. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, anti-Japanese sentiment led to racist acts of violence against Japanese Americans in San Diego and all over the country. An executive order brought about the forced removal of people of Japanese descent from what were termed ‘exclusion areas’ all over the United States. More than 1100 Japanese Americans, many of whom were US citizens, were forcibly removed from their homes in San Diego and relocated to a concentration camp at the Santa Anita racetrack (Source). Today, a local non-profit, the Japanese American Historical Society of San Diego, preserves and promotes the history and legacy of Japanese Americans in the San Diego Region (Source). Italian fishers who were not yet citizens were subject to new citizenship laws that froze their financial resources. Of the 1511 Italian fishers in the state, 787 were forced out of offshore fishing jobs (Source).
After WWII, territorial restrictions eased and tuna boats became larger and more expensive. This resulted in changes to ownership from owner-operators to ownership concentrated with individuals not actively engaged in fishing. As relationships became more tenuous between boat crews and their owners, unions played an important role in mediating relations (Source). However, two important changes in the 1950s led to a decline in the tuna fishery. First, changes to tariff policies allowed canneries to begin importing large quantities of cheap tuna from Japan. Second, many Latin American countries closed their borders to foreign fishers. The San Diego tuna fishery, which relied on large volumes of baitfish, obtained 85-90% of its baitfish from Latin American waters. When they lost territorial access to bait fisheries, the tuna clipper fleet in San Diego decreased by 30%, from 210 to 149 vessels by 1960.
Technological advances soon solved both of these problems with the advent of nylon nets and the Puretec power block. This new purse seine gear made the San Diego tuna fleet competitive with Japanese exports. However, the shift from pole to purse seine fishing resulted in porpoise deaths, and environmentalists soon began seeking change in the tuna industry. The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 brought on a series of regulatory measures to reduce porpoise kills in the commercial tuna industry. As the National Marine Fisheries Service attempted to establish porpoise kill quotas and other regulatory measures, US tuna boats began transferring their registration to foreign flags in protest (Source). Some numbers suggest that the tuna/porpoise regulations resulted in a $135 million loss for San Diego’s fishing industry in 1977 alone. However, others argued that over-expansion, rather than environmental regulations, were the cause of the loss (Source). In the early 1980s, two events further impacted the industry. The El Nino current of 1982-83 caused the tuna to migrate into cooler waters in the Western Tropical Pacific (Source). Additionally, as a result of labor costs and foreign competition, Bumble Bee Seafoods and the Van Camp Seafood Cannery, two of San Diego’s most iconic canneries, had relocated internationally.
In 1971, the red sea urchin fishery began in San Diego as part of a National Marine Fisheries Service program to develop new fisheries. There was concern about sea urchins’ impact on kelp forests, and harvest was intended to help control the population. The fishery expanded rapidly as a lucrative export market to Japan, and by the late 1980s landings averaged 23.5 million pounds per year (Source). The early fishery was unregulated, and soon 75% of California’s sea urchin population was depleted (Source). The industry initiated a moratorium on new permits in 1987 and regulations were put in place to reduce fishing effort and protect the stock. In 2000, the Japanese economic bubble burst negatively impacting the market for urchins, however, the processing sector developed a domestic sea urchin market which helped to buffer these impacts. Currently, there are only 18 urchin divers in San Diego and no new dive permits can be issued. This leaves some concern about the future of the fishery since the average age of currently permitted divers is over 50 years old depleted (Source).
The California spiny lobster fishery started in the late 1800s in Santa Barbara County and is predominately fished in the Southern California Bight. The fishery peaked in the 1950s, but then went into decline in the 1970s. Since 1975, San Diego has dominated the commercial fishery, and the species is also important to San Diego’s recreational fishery (Source). In 1994, the state issued a moratorium on new commercial permits and in 1996 it became a limited entry fishery. The fishery is primarily an export market to China, and the average landing price has consistently increased since the early 1990s (Source).
The spot prawn fishery began in the 1930s as a bycatch from octopus traps, but it wasn’t until 1979 that it was officially recognized as a separate fishery from other California shrimp. It was primarily fished by bottom trawlers, however, in the 1980s trap fishing gave spot prawn fishers access to the live markets. Due to concerns over the impact on other species, spot prawn trawl was prohibited by the Fish and Game Commission in 2003. This brought about both a decrease in landings and an increase in value (Source). The fishery has grown in San Diego in the 21st century, particularly as other fisheries such as red sea urchins have waned.
Swordfish has also been an important commercial and recreational fishery in San Diego. The fishery started in the early 1900s when fishers used harpoons. The harpoon fishery hit peak landings in the late 1970s. Around the same time, the fishery transitioned to using drift gillnets instead of harpoons because they were more efficient and allowed fishers to also target sharks. However, drift gillnets are problematic because they also catch marine mammals and sea turtles. In the 1990s, fishers also began using longlines to fish swordfish in international waters. Due to concerns over bycatch, state and Federal managers began issuing a series of gear, season and area restrictions, including the creation of the Pacific Leatherback Conservation Area in southern California in 2001 and a pelagic longline ban in 2004. These restrictions have successfully reduced bycatch, however, the California fishery has also significantly declined (Source). The drift gillnet fishery is now being phased via legislative action due to bycatch concerns. Deep-set buoy gear has been promoted as a potential replacement gear type with less bycatch, however it is also less efficient at catching swordfish.