news story / By Jennifer Fumiko Cahill

On the Waterfront

Fish everywhere at Eureka’s new Fisherman’s Terminal — but not a bite to eat

(Jan. 26, 2012)  On a strangely warm, cloudless January morning, a handful of people stroll along the boardwalk, stopping to point across the water at the crowd of boats docked at the Woodley Island Marina. Behind them, where the boardwalk ends at the foot of C Street, stands the newly opened Fisherman’s Terminal with its sea-green roof. The other side of the building is a maze of pallets stacked with crab pots ready to be loaded onto boats. Sandy Ryan, lifelong commercial fisherman and weighmaster for Wild Planet Foods, squints in the sun at her watch and gives a freckled grin. “In 20 minutes, the fishermen will be able to drop their pots.” It’s almost noon on Jan. 13, on the cusp of a crab season that’s been delayed a month. In a few hours, the nearly empty dock will be humming with forklifts and dock workers. “Look at them,” she teases her crew, who are breaking for lunch before the boats arrive, “like lizards sunning themselves!”

The terminal took 15 years, $2.4 million from the federal Economic Development Administration, $800,000 from the Eureka Redevelopment Agency and a tremendous amount of luck to build. It is a critical piece of the waterfront revitalization plan, and it squeaked in just months ahead of the state’s virtual elimination of all redevelopment agencies. Aside from a few outdoor sculptures, there is as yet little for visitors to see, and the terminal’s opening ceremony in September may have seemed anticlimactic.

Crews loading crab pots at the Eureka Fisherman’s Terminal. PHOTO BY JENNIFER FUMIKO CAHILL.

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Those who planned the terminal hoped it would bolster the fishing industry, providing work space for industrial processers, room for commercial fish buyers to connect with sellers, and warm space for workers to take a break. For workers, residents and tourists alike, there would be a fish market, a café and an oyster bar. So far, though, only the work space has materialized. The Shelter Cove café owner who wants to set up shop there is still negotiating with the city over financing, now that the redevelopment agency has been disbanded.

At around 4 p.m., the Pacific Seas pulls into the dock, and Ryan’s crew starts shuttling crab pots onto the deck. Two men hook ropes onto a stack of pots, then raise the stack with a hoist and slowly swing it out from the dock to the boat. Captain Tom Wallace, a lanky man with sandy hair, meets his wife at a side gate to retrieve a pot of beef stroganoff for dinner aboard the boat. Wallace likes the new terminal, and won’t mind tourists watching him work. He hopes a restaurant overlooking the dock will help sales.

There are still some glitches, though. It can be downright dangerous out here with all the forklifts zipping around, and some crews on the dock have complained about homeless people wandering into the work area and either tampering with equipment or using the area as a bathroom. Wild Planet, which has set up shop in the new terminal, is looking into whether a chain or some other barrier can be installed. Eventually, the showers Wild Planet plans to install will be welcomed, too. Showers are especially important during salmon season, Wallace says, “when you’re on the boat for a week at a time.”

Still, Jeff Huffman, Eureka Dock Manager for Wild Planet, says, “this is like a Cadillac to us now,” waving a hand at the part of the building the company leases. It will likely be another year before Wild Planet has all its equipment squared away, but it can do what’s needed for now.  The building not only offers a break room with heaters for warming up on cold, wet nights, but also the option to process fish or cook crabs in the future, which can’t be done outdoors. That kind of processing, if and when it happens, could mean more jobs.

Wild Planet has already expanded from eight or nine workers banding crab during the day to 15, and from four or five on the nightshift to eight. Vice President and co-founder Bill McCarthy says he expects to hire more. On top of that, Coast Seafoods, which buys and processes oysters and was recently bought by Pacific Choice, has signed a lease and started moving gear into the terminal. Coast Seafoods Operations Manager Greg Dale is enthusiastic about the possibilities in the structure, saying, “Over the years, it’s going to turn out to be a good transition … from the T-shirt shops to the industrial processing” section of the waterfront.

The Wild Planet crew is also unloading for another processing company, North Coast Fisheries. Huffman says the building, with its loading docks and staging area, makes it easier to unload for more companies. Currently, fishing crews can sell to Pacific Choice, Caito Fisheries, Wild Planet, Nor-cal Seafoods, North Coast Fisheries, and Ocean Gold, a buyer out of Washington. Ryan, the Wild Planet weighmaster, says that having multiple buyers on the waterfront is healthy for the market. “We need more buyers on the dock. More buyers [mean] better prices for the fishermen,” she smiles, adding, “[and] more jobs.”

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