‘No Signs of Recovery’
With kelp forests still struggling, the North Coast’s abalone fishery heads toward an additional 10-year closure BY KIMBERLY WEAR
Cover Stories
‘No Signs of Recovery’
When the California Fish and Game Commission took the unprecedented step of shuttering the North Coast’s red abalone season back in 2017 due to a precipitous decline in the population amid the larger collapse of the region’s kelp forests, there was hope that the temporary moratorium would give the fishery a chance to rebound. But,…
Signs of Soulatluk Revival
As you look out over the water along Eureka’s boardwalk at the foot of F Street, a small placard at your elbow might catch your eye, reading “DA’GURR, Known in English as Sea Otter,” above the illustration of a mustachioed specimen drifting on his back and waving a paw. Just a few inches below its…
Music Tonight: Monday, Sept. 1
Fresh of the success of last week’s 24-hour telethon, Savage Henry Comedy Club still has the lights on and is putting on the good stuff for the all-ages crowds who just want something fucking loud and heavy in their lives. I’m talking about another installment of Metal Monday. This week’s lineup is an international affair,…
Local Filmmaker Griffin Loch’s The Distilled Screens at Ferndale Rep
He’s already scared the pants off you at the Ferndale Scaregrounds and the Scream-a-Torium Haunted House. Now Griffin Loch is bottling up the terror for the big screen. The Undistilled, Loch’s fourth feature film, pours out Sunday, Aug. 31, at 6 p.m. at the historic Ferndale Repertory Theatre ($15). Filmed in Humboldt County (with plenty…
Anita Marie “Stapp” Gibbs, Diaz 1952-2025
Anita Marie Stapp was born in Eureka, California to Marvin and Isabel “Peterson” Stapp February 29, 1952. She passed away August 6, 2025, in Cottonwood, AZ. Anita was a fifth generation of Humboldt County, CA. Anita married Roy Alan Gibbs in 1971 and together they raised three sons: Andrew Alan, Marley Evan, and Kyle Joseph…
Music Tonight: Saturday, Aug. 30
Local beach-pop vibe merchants and purveyors of tunes retooled from the age of eight-track stereos in shag carpeted boogie vans, The California Poppies are finally ready to present their concert film The Holy Rainbow at the Minor Theatre, its place of conception two years ago. The Poppies will be joined by director Griffin Loch for…
Music Tonight: Friday, Aug. 29
Here’s a good one for all you headbangers and boppers out there. Tonight’s 7 p.m. show at Moss Oak Commons features Portland’s bubbly doom and pop act Fox Medicine, along with local heroes Image Pit (hiya Dylan, it was nice meeting you the other week), Brain Dead Rejects, and the ever-heavy Psyop Victim. Roll through after 7 p.m.…
Music Tonight: Thursday, Aug. 28
Hermit Crab, Death Doula play tonight at The Epitome Gallery. Hermit Crab is a multi-instrumental duo that comes together to create a musical fusion of punk, dance, rock and groove music. Death Doula from Portland is in Eureka on a west coast tour.
California GOP Takes Newsom to Court Over Redistricting, Again. Will Trump Sue Next?
This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. Fresh off their failed attempt to kill Gov. Gavin Newsom’s redistricting plan in the Democratic-controlled Legislature, California Republicans and anti-gerrymandering groups this week launched an all-out resistance to defeat what they regard as an unconstitutional ballot question. Republican legislators in particular, many of…
Music Tonight: Wednesday, Aug. 27
The Miniplex is hosting a mid-week creepshow with Loveland, Colorado’s Doom Scroll, an acoustic crust punk band with a unique sound built on heavy picking and the loud/quiet dynamics and bratty singing from the heyday of American emo music. If that scratches your itch, come get some relief tonight at 7:30 p.m. Also on the…
Music Tonight: Monday, Aug. 25
I’m going to keep pumping up shows at Savage Henry Comedy Club for as long as it takes for the ship to right itself, the public to keep it afloat and beyond. I have an agenda when it comes to keeping our offbeat and one-of-a-kind clubs alive, particularly those who host all-ages shows, because Lord…
Abalone, Sea Stars and Possibly Too Much Pie
This week, we’re looking at the 10-year ban on abalone and the newly discovered cause of the starfish wasting disease that is among the die-off’s major factors. We’re also behind the scenes at the Humboldt County Fair apple pie contest. Hit subscribe for weekly updates on Humboldt stories.
The Vanishing Hitchhiker
I’ve got rambling on the mind, and not the verbal or written sort in which I usually engage. I’m thinking about traveling because I’m going to be doing some of that in a short while. I won’t say where and I won’t say when, but I will be doing the rare move of breaking containment…
Twenty-nine Pies
Given our collective scientific knowledge and culinary skill — and here I mean the “we” of humanity — should we not have adjusted our flour and fat ratios, balanced our spices, determined the proper slice dimensions and cooking temperature to have already, some 700 years into baking variations of it, arrived at The Apple Pie?…
Riding All the Way
Three years ago, when I wrote about cycling from the Crannell Road exit of U.S. Highway 101 to the end of the Humboldt Bay Trail (“Cycling Along the Water,” March 10, 2022), I was not optimistic about being able to ride past the “End of Trail” sign in the foreseeable future. It wasn’t because I…
Night Always Comes
NIGHT ALWAYS COMES. Since 2007, Willy Vlautin has been publishing novels about the new American West, which means he specializes in stories about life at the end of empire, lives lived in the absence of opportunity and the presence of addiction, poverty and the occasional fleeting opportunity. The books draw a taut line between Reno…
So Now What
Editor’s note: This is the third of a three-part series exploring ableism and the rhetoric that sustains it. This may sound stupid, but there used to be these bushes on a railing where I work at Cal Poly Humboldt that made me mad nearly every day for two years. The railing is there to keep…
Milky Way Over Benbow Inn
The historic Benbow Inn keeps quiet watch along the South Fork Eel River, a century-old host lit in gold while the stars swing silently across the sky each night. In summer, the Milky Way takes its turn, marking time as it sweeps by like a clock hand through the night. I traveled down there the…
