On Aug. 14, the Humboldt County Fair hosts Shell-ebration, celebrating all things related to oysters in Humboldt Bay. And there is much to salute. Our region produces most of the oysters consumed in California and a very high percentage of the shellfish seed — some 470 million baby shellfish in 2024 — grown out on the West Coast and beyond. These oysters, and the companies and families who rely on them for their livelihoods, deserve this recognition.
There should be a serious parallel debate about whether California should reindustrialize Humboldt Bay or instead direct massive heavy industrial development to already-industrialized Los Angeles Harbor. What we are talking about here is the proposed Samoa Heavy Lift Terminal Project and all of its long-term ramifications.
Before colonization, there was a string of major coastal marine estuaries in California that served as home and nursery to seabirds, fish, crabs, clams, oysters — everything that made California’s coastal waters rich with life. These estuaries had many names, more recently known as San Diego Bay, San Pedro Bay, San Francisco Bay, Tomales Bay and Humboldt (Wigi) Bay.
I grew up near San Pedro Bay, also known as Los Angeles Harbor. My grandfather and great-uncle were high-seas tuna fishermen. My father ran a marine electronics business in the harbor. During the summers, from elementary school through the end of middle school, I got to go to work with my dad — in shipyards, in Fish Harbor, in yacht marinas and at massive industrial sites throughout L.A. Harbor. In high school, I was employed as a deckhand on working harbor watercraft. I spent most of my young life in and around the water and lived with L.A. Harbor pollution every day, including bay water coated with floating oil and industrial grime, bay water with strange colors and bad odors, pier pilings without even barnacles growing on them and air pollution that made our lungs hurt by late afternoon.
After high school, I ran a boat owned by an environmental consulting firm. My job was collecting polluted water samples from pipes, drains, outfalls and stormwater runoff infrastructure in L.A. Harbor’s Main Channel, Cerritos Channel, Dominguez Channel and the mouth of the Los Angeles River. The polluted water samples were taken back to the laboratory, infused with oxygen for a couple of days, and then diluted with “clean” saltwater so fish could be added and the rate of fish mortality recorded — a process known as a bioassay. Needless to say, few of the fish survived the test.
The massive, long-term pollution of Los Angeles Harbor, San Diego Bay and San Francisco Bay did not happen in a single catastrophic event. It accumulated gradually, one small increment at a time. Imagine a house with five long-haired dogs living indoors for 10 years. They don’t shed all at once; they leave a few hairs behind every day. At first, it hardly seems noticeable. But over time, those hairs work their way into every surface, crack and crevice in the house. Pollution accumulates in much the same way. What begins as small, seemingly insignificant releases eventually builds into pervasive, long-lasting contamination.
Humboldt Bay will not be destroyed by a single massive pollution event but by a series of small, daily, seemingly insignificant ones: A workboat spills five gallons of hydraulic oil. Grinding dust laden with heavy metals blows into the bay. In the middle of the night, an offshore wind support vessel blows its stack, coating the bay’s surface with carbon from burning bunker C fuel. Yearly “maintenance” dredging that quietly destroys billions of Dungeness crab larvae or a foreign-flagged vessel that pumps out a small amount of ballast water that happens to contain an invasive species capable of wiping out Humboldt Bay’s shellfish, its shellfish mariculture industry and the 100-plus jobs that go with it.
People may not know just how polluted Humboldt had been. In 1968, when I came to the area, I was repeatedly told that Humboldt County — especially the Humboldt Bay area — was the second most polluted county in California. Only Los Angeles ranked worse.
It has taken the people of Humboldt County 58 years to put our estuary back on the path toward becoming an ecosystem and nursery capable of once again enriching our coastal waters — and our lives. It’s heartening that the water now is clean enough and disease-free so that we can grow all of those shellfish.
California’s other major estuaries are already wrecked. Let’s take a moment to consider the future of the natural systems we seem hell-bent on destroying and keep industrialization on the scale of the Samoa Heavy Lift Terminal where it truly belongs — in industrialized L.A. Harbor. We can then keep progressing toward a clean Humboldt Bay, a rare place that supports flora, fauna, human enjoyment and human livelihoods.
Ken Bates fishes commercially out of Eureka.
This article appears in ‘The Next Wave’.
Ken Bates is right. The wind energy and heavy lift terminal projects will be disastrous for Humboldt Bay.
Wind energy is a bad idea for many reasons! Humboldt bay and all it supports needs to be protected.
Thank you Journal and Ken Bates for the informative article about our beloved Bay. Timely indeed. It seems we would be creating possible jobs along the Bay while destroying other jobs, ones that are sustainable in the long, as opposed to many that would likely be short lived and destructive. Let’s continue to improve the Bay, not destroy it. Thanks again. Bill Hoopes