3. Port Governance and Infrastructure

The Port of San Francisco manages 7.5 miles of waterfront adjacent to San Francisco Bay. The Port Commission is made up of a five-member board that is appointed by the Mayor and confirmed by the City’s Board of Supervisors. Commissioners are appointed for four-year terms. The Port Commission is responsible for developing and marketing the port area, administering leases, and maintaining the property. The Port’s operating portfolio is composed of over 550 ground, commercial, retail, office, industrial and maritime industrial leases, including landmarks such as Fisherman’s Wharf, PIER 39, the Ferry Building, and Oracle Park (the San Francisco Giant’s ballpark).

The Port supports maritime industries including cruise and cargo shipping, ship repair, commercial and sport fishing, ferry and excursion operations, and other harbor services such as shipyards and drydocks and service facilities for pilots, tugboats, barges, lay berthing and other ship services. The Port offers more than 1500 berths and four boat launches. Fisherman’s Wharf and Hyde Street are the Port’s commercial fishing harbors. Fishermen’s Wharf provides berthing for commercial fishing boats. The Port offers full-service ship repair, a boatyard and haul out, 15 hoists, two dry docks, fuel, ice, bait and other supplies, and numerous portside facilities. The Wharf’s Pier 45 is home to the West Coast’s largest concentration of commercial fish processors and distributors (Source). Hyde Street Harbor, a commercial fishing harbor between Aquatic Park and Fisherman’s Wharf, was built in 2001 to accommodate the seasonal fishing fleets that deliver herring, salmon and crab to the fish processors at Pier 45. The Harbor prioritizes commercial fishing vessels for berthing space, however, recreational vessels can dock for up to 10 days a month when space is available (Source). San Francisco’s sportfishing fleet resides in Fisherman’s Wharf at Hyde Street Harbor and the lagoon at Jefferson Street (Source). Fishing is allowed from public spaces along the Port waterfront. There are several public piers across the waterfront and waterside parks, including Agua Vista Park, Pier 94 wetlands and Brannan Street Wharf, which all offer ample space for fishing (Source).

San Francisco falls under the jurisdiction of the USCG Marine Safety Office San Francisco Bay, one of the largest and busiest marine safety units in the Coast Guard. The office is located on Yerba Buena Island in San Francisco Bay between San Francisco and Oakland. There are several organizations based in San Francisco that focus on marine conservation including Waterkeepers Northern California, Aquatic Outreach Alliance and Kids for the Bay, which promote environmental consciousness among Bay Area children. Additional local facilities include the Aquarium of the Bay and the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park’s Visitor Center.

3.1 Commercial Seafood Handling Infrastructure

A variety of commercial fish businesses receive, and in some cases, process the catch landed at the Port of San Francisco by commercial fishers (Table 1). These include businesses that lease and operate the fish receiving stations located on Pier 45, other local and non-local businesses that receive the unloaded catch from these receiving station operators, and some fishers who handle their own (and in some cases others’) catch. In 2021, 98 fish business licensees had a mail, street, or plant address of San Francisco (Table 1), including 61 distinct fish businesses that received catch at the port. Fish businesses in San Francisco included commercial fishers licensed to receive and sell their catch, and several smaller locally owned receivers that also had retail storefronts and/or restaurants.

Like most ports along the California coast, commercial fish businesses in San Francisco have slowly declined since 1999 (144), with 98 businesses in 2021 (Figure 2). The contraction of the processing sector is in large part due to the 2000 groundfish disaster and subsequent (2003) coastwide federal trawl buyback program (Table 2). Between 1998 and 2000, San Francisco Harbor lost more than 200 commercial fishing vessels––almost half of its fleet (discussed in greater detail in Section 4.2). With the decline in the year-round, high-volume groundfish fishery and increased dependence on the seasonal Dungeness crab fishery, receiving and processing businesses struggled to stay afloat. At the same time, the herring fishery was facing increased variability and depressed prices. Salmon also declined during this time. As a relative proportion, the port has lost more fish receiver and fish processor licenses than multifunction fish business licenses (defined in the table above) since the early 2000s. This trend reflects a shift towards vertical integration––the combination in one company of two or more stages of production normally operated by separate companies––which accompanied the dominance of large firms in the seafood sector. Over the same period, the number of fishermen’s retail licenses fluctuated, but overall declined, totally just 11 in 2021 (Figure 2). This loss also mirrors an overall reduction in fishing licenses affiliated with the port (discussed in section 4.2.1).

Figure 2: Fish Business Licenses held locally, by type, in San Francisco, 1993-2021

Table 2: Timeline of selected events affecting San Francisco’s primary fisheries.