2024 Year End Newsletter

Hello and Happy New Year! We hope you and your families have had a wonderful holiday season. 

As we reflect on 2024, CFSB marked its 53rd year of championing our fisheries' biological and economic sustainability. Our key initiatives included opposing MPA expansion, participating in the Offshore Wind 7C Working Group, and developing the Ocean Collective Project. We also conducted beach cleanups, launched the Urchin Removal/Kelp Restoration Project, conducted participatory SeaSketch mapping to demonstrate the value of our fishing grounds, managed the Saturday Fishermen's Market, and advocated on critical issues including AB2220, Ocean Rainforest, and SpaceX.

We are proud to have reached a record 86 active memberships in 2024— A milestone we aim to surpass in 2025. With the commercial fishing community facing unprecedented challenges, your involvement now is more crucial than ever.

Please renew your membership before it expires at the end of January 2025. You can pay online, hand your payment to Ava Schulenberg, or leave it in harbor mailbox #155 or at the fuel dock. Remember, expired memberships will be deactivated across all systems. Thank you for your continued support in strengthening our fishing community.

CFSB 2024 Activities & Accomplishments

 

 

  • Education and Outreach

    • CFSB conducts tours of Santa Barbara Harbor for student classes and other local groups to learn about our fisheries. This year we ran 2 tours each for Santa Barbara City College and Santa Barbara Newcomers.

    • Kim guest lectured about local fisheries to classes at Ventura College and Westmont College.

    • Chris and Ava guest lectured with Bren students over the summer courtesy of Professor Dawn Murray’s invitation.

    • CFSB participated in outplanting of Red Abalone on the Gaviota coast with The Bay Foundation, Paua Marine Research, and NOAA with help from the Cultured Abalone Farm that reared the baby abalone.

    • We arranged many guest speakers to attend our monthly CFSB meetings, including Alyson Santoro, a UCSB scientist working on developing bioplastics for fishing gear, and Chris Free, a fisheries scientist at UCSB studying ways to minimize negative impacts to fisheries from misguided environmental campaigns and offshore wind siting.

 

  • The Ocean Collective 

    • CFSB met regularly all year with SBCC leadership to move this collaborative project forward.

    • We helped to guide the creation of a blue economy labor market analysis for Santa Barbara County by Dr. Peter Rupert that showed positive growth in living resources jobs is expected.

    • We held our first Blue Economy Symposium at SBCC on September 4, with over 100 people attending. 

    • We partnered with CSU Channel Islands in the spring to vision a planning process to build a multi-institutional blue workforce pipeline.

    • CFSB contracted a local design firm ‘rrm’ to conduct a feasibility study for building a boat, gear and cold storage facility at SBCC on a parcel of undeveloped land. The results were highly encouraging.

    • We are grateful to the City of Santa Barbara for funding this engagement and the feasibility study, and to the Economic Development Collaborative for their strong support and sponsorship of our process.

 

  • Advocacy Issues

    • Offshore Wind Energy (BOEM)

    • Aquaculture Opportunity Areas (NOAA)

    • Marine Protected Areas

    • Set Gillnet Fishery management AB2220

    • Ocean Rainforest

    • Chumash National Marine Sanctuary Proposal (NOAA)

    • Domoic Acid Events

    • SpaceX Expansion

    • Santa Barbara Ocean Collective infrastructure project

 

  • Staff and Board Training

    • Ava Schulenberg was awarded a full scholarship to Writing for Green, an accelerated eight week grant writing course with certification upon completion.

 

  • Board of Directors

    • New Members: 

      • Jeff Hepp

      • Jason Woods

    • New Alternates: 

      • John Colgate, alternate for Garrett Rose

      • Ben Hyman, alternate for Jeff Hepp

      • Tony Luna, alternate for Ray Kennedy

      • Shane Robinson, alternate for Harry Liquornik

      • Joe Garrigan, general alternate

    • Appointment: 



As always, never hesitate to reach out if you have any questions, and thank you for being a supporter of the Commercial Fishermen of Santa Barbara. Cheers to 2025!


- Ava Schulenberg and Kim Selkoe