3. Port Governance and Infrastructure

The Ventura Port District is an Independent Special District within the City of Ventura. Special Districts are independent, special-purpose governmental units that exist separately from local governments and deliver public services. The Ventura Port District was established in 1952 and is governed by a five-member unpaid Board of Port Commissioners who are appointed by the City of Ventura’s Mayor and confirmed by the City Council. Ventura Harbor is owned and operated by the District. The Harbor is a 274-acre multiple-use recreational and commercial fishing small craft harbor.

Ventura Harbor offers nearly 1300 berths across five marinas and two dry storage areas. Harbor facilities include showers and laundry, a bait shop, an ice facility, two fuel docks, two haul-out devices, a boat launch, two hoists, retail seafood locations, seafood buying stations, and the only boat repair yard between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The Harbor has a visitors’ center with a museum, a living tide pool exhibit. The area also features a resort, a support facility for offshore oil drilling, and headquarters and the main departure point for Channel Island National Park. Ventura Harbor plays a significant role in the city’s economy through harbor employment, harbor business revenues and the fishing sector.

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 Ventura by commercial fishers (Table 1). These include businesses that lease and operate the fish receiving stations located at Ventura 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, 18 fish business licenses had a mail, street, or plant address of Ventura (Table 1). Forty-seven unique fish business licenses received catch at the port. Those based in Ventura 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 Ventura have declined overall since 2003 (34), with 18 businesses in 2021 (Figure 2). However, in the decade between 2003 and 2013, fish business declined but then rebounded from a low of 24 in 2005. After reaching 32 in 2013, fish businesses continued to slowly decline hitting just 12 in 2013. 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). With the decline in the year-round, high-volume groundfish fishery and the declines in other important fisheries such as sea urchin and swordfish, fish receiving and processing businesses struggled to stay afloat. However other fisheries such as lobster and spot prawn underwent ebbs and flows with periods of growth and expansion in-between periods of regulatory constraints. About half of the multifunction fish business licenses present in the port in 2021 were large regional firms. The other half were locally-owned restaurants and/or retailers.

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

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