3. Port Governance and Infrastructure

San Pedro/Terminal Island is home to the Port of Los Angeles. The port offers both passenger and cargo terminals accommodating cruises, container ships, and warehouse facilities. Fish Harbor, located on Terminal Island, is the commercial fishing district. The Port of Los Angeles is housed in the City of Los Angeles administrative unit, although it is not supported by City taxes. It is governed by the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners, which are appointed by the Mayor of Los Angeles. The port generates its revenues from leasing and shipping service fees and has more than 200 leaseholders. The Port’s jurisdiction is limited to the Harbor District, which includes property in San Pedro, Wilmington, and Terminal Island. The facilities at San Pedro/Terminal Island include two bait facilities, two cold storage facilities, a fish cleaning station, three fuel docks, a haul-out, seven hoists, two ice facilities, two boat launches, four marinas, laundry and shower facilities, moorings, four seafood buying stations, processing facilities, and retail locations. Terminal Island has no social amenities such as transient lodging, health care facilities, or schools.

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 Los Angeles by commercial fishers (Table 1). These include businesses that lease and operate the fish receiving stations located on Fish Harbor, 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, 27 fish business licenses had a mail, street, or plant address of San Pedro (Table 1). Forty-six unique fish business licenses received catch at the port. Those based in San Pedro included commercial fishers licensed to receive and sell their catch, and several smaller locally owned receivers that also had retail storefronts and/or restaurants.

San Pedro’s processing sector has primarily serviced the coastal pelagic fishery, and the market squid fishery in particular, since the mid-1990s and 2000s. Given these are both high volume fisheries, the relative proportion of fishermen’s retail licenses compared to other types of handling businesses has always remained relatively low for the port (i.e. compared to other California ports). The processing sector began contracting in the 1980s with the decline of the tuna fishery. The last tuna fish canning operation in the continental U.S., Chicken of the Sea, closed down in 2001, displacing 250 workers in San Pedro (Source). The decline in the international sea urchin market also impacted the port in the early 2000s. Commercial fish businesses in San Pedro ebbed and flowed through the 1990s and 2000s, however, they have slowly declined since 2012 (38), with 27 businesses in 2018 (Figure 2). This could be in part due to a decline in landings and ex-vessel value in both the coastal pelagic and market squid fisheries.

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

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