3. Port Governance and Infrastructure

The Santa Barbara Harbor and Stearns Wharf are on property owned by the State and held in trust by the City. Unlike other City departments, the Waterfront is an Enterprise Fund that operates from revenues generated from waterfront activities such as tenant rents, boat fees, parking fees (Source). The Santa Barbara Harbor includes a breakwater, four marinas, loading dock, fours hoists, two boatyards, two boat ramps, fish cleaning station, fuel dock, two ice facilities, marine services and repair, a bait shop and shower and laundry. The harbor has mooring space for more than 1,100 pleasure and commercial vessels.

3.1 Commercial Seafood Handling Infrastructure

A variety of commercial fish businesses receive, and in some cases, process the catch landed at the Santa Barbara by commercial fishers (Table 1). These include businesses that lease and operate the fish receiving stations located at the 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, 55 fish business licensees had a mail, street, or plant address of Santa Barbara (Table 1). Seventy-six unique fish business licenses received catch at the port. Those based in Santa Barbara 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 Santa Barbara began to decline after 1999 with the number of businesses dropping from 49 to 25 by 2006 (Figure 2). With the decline in the red sea urchin fishery during , receiving and processing businesses struggled to stay afloat. However, beginning in 2007 the number of fish businesses began to increase, rising from 27 to 55 by 2021. Notably, the number of fishermen’s retail licenses almost tripled during that time (e.g. from 11 to 31), whereas fish receivers and multifunction fish businesses increased by about half (e.g. from 6 to 9 and 10 to 14 respectively). The growth in fishermen’s retail licenses is largely due to local efforts to grow direct markets. Commercial Fishermen of Santa Barbara, a non-profit, has allocated significant effort towards promoting direct marketing opportunities for local fishers. Examples include, the Santa Barbara Saturday Fish Market, Community Seafood (a community-supported fishery program), and a program started in 2015 in partnership with the Chamber of Commerce that aims to create new seafood marketing initiatives that improve local access to local seafood (Source). Furthermore, both rock crab and California spiny lobster fisheries have expanded in the 2010s, and these species are good for direct sales as they do not require processing.

Figure 2: Fish Business Licenses held locally, by type, in Santa Barbara, 1993-2021

Table 2: Timeline of selected events affecting Santa Barbara’s primary fisheries.