CFSB Board Meeting Minutes - March 7, 2023
Attendees: Kim Selkoe, Chris Voss, Shane Robinson, John Colgate, Harry Liquornik, Chris Nelson, Bernard Friedman, Mike Nelson, Nick Tharp, John Hoadley, Michael Harrington, Garrett Rose, Tony Luna, Ray Kennedy, Gary Burke, Andy Rasmussen, Ben Hyman, Mary Nishimoto
Notes: Ava Schulenberg
Agenda:
Ron Ellis
Update from Ray Kennedy
Disaster Relief Information - Lobster Fishery
Ben Hyman
Jerry Wetle - Leasing groundfish quota? (10 min)
Financials
Vote on 2022 year end financials
Vote on 2023 budget
Commercial Fishing Subcommittee Update
Harbor Dredging Letter
Slips
Update on Mapping fishing grounds project
April Board Elections
All CFSB members may vote
SBCC Update
Travel Funds
Trap Cleanup Friday 3/10 -CANCELED, HTO Cleanup today, Gear available at Launch Ramp Tomorrow-Friday
Chris Voss opened the meeting on March 7, 2023 at 3:04pm. Meeting was held in person in the harbor classroom and via Zoom.
Agenda:
Ron Ellis
Update from Ray Kennedy
Ron’s body was found by the Coronado islands in Mexico and a memorial service will tentatively be held in the Santa Barbara harbor at the end of March (shooting for the 25th, may be a later date, Ava will send details when confirmed).
Disaster Relief Information - Lobster Fishery
Ben Hyman
After the January swell event, the lobster guys on the coast got hit very hard. Ben went to FEMA to see what recovery efforts were worth pursuing and unfortunately the door was closed in his face time and time again. The only real option potentially worth pursuing is the SBA loan and even that is a difficult process. After a number of weeks, someone from the NMFS office named Frank Lockhart got back to him and Ben explained the issues the fleet had been facing with gear loss and the harbor closure etc. - Ben did start the disaster claim process though nothing is guaranteed. He still has to get in contact with DFW to quantify lost revenue.
Ben says we need a letter of support signed by an elected official that could be a Waterfront Dept. member or a City Council member, it would give more weight if it was someone in congress. Ben reached out to Carbajal’s office and they have voiced their interest in signing once the letter is prepared. It won’t be a massive bill but something that we can piggyback onto something else potentially.
Ben will hear back from Mr. Lockhart in the next couple weeks and will move forward once he gets more guidance from him.
Chris says CFSB has agreed to help disseminate information and also do anything we can to help get congressional support in this effort. The challenge is that this is a regionally specific issue so there may be a more small-scale way to bring this about and we will try to help anyone who was impacted with Ben’s leadership.
Ray says there is some relief for fishermen that were impacted by the Esperanza Marie grounding fishing at Santa Cruz in that area that was a mandatory closure while there was an oil spill. Ray has circulated this to a few fishermen who were affected but there was something that was published in the Independent a couple weeks ago - Ray will share this with Ava and it will be distributed amongst the fleet accordingly.
Jerry Wetle - Leasing groundfish quota? (10 min)
CFSB holds Sablefish quota with a trawl permit that was given to us years ago by the Nature Conservancy that had to be distributed.
Chris got a call from Jerry who fishes up and down the CA coast but primarily out of Monterey. He is interested in purchasing our trawl permit because you cannot access trawl quota without a trawl permit and all the rules and regulations around landings, buybacks, and paying management fees to the government around trawl caught Sablefish apply whether you're using traps, longlines, or trawl. So when you’re gear switching, you have to have a trawl permit even if you’re trapping or longlining sablefish if you’re going after trawl quota so he was struggling with getting a trawl permit so that he could access trawl quota and gear switch. He is proposing to CFSB that he lease our trawl permit and potentially access our quota close to Monterey in a way that wouldn't impact the guys that fish fixed gear/longline out of Santa Barbara. We collectively have agreed not to use our quota because it will impact the fishermen on our grounds if it’s taken through longline or trapping so we’ve agreed to shelve it and hold it and it’s Southern Sablefish quota so it’s not available to guys that want to fish in our area.
Comments: It's possible that Monterey Bay Fisheries Trust will not lease him Southern Sablefish quota due to all of his current arraignment with multiple federal agencies. It's hard to trust that this won’t impact our fishing grounds.
Colgate says no one with a boat larger than 43 ft can fish this quota. In 2023, for Sablefish, we have 237,609lbs. For Thornyhead we have ~7,000lbs. The permits have all been kept current by Michael Harrington and if anybody needs to go into the NMFS to get more information, you can access this online by reaching out to Harrington for login information.
Chris says as far as we know none of the fees associated with harvesting have been removed, so that’s a total of ~11% of the gross gets taken off by the management fee and the buyback - There’s talk of that going away at some point, but today, Santa Barbara doesn’t have a licensed receiver, so there will be overhead costs associated.
Financials
Vote on 2022 year end financials
Kim says we did well overall last year, we netted ~$6,000. We’re often taking in a bunch of grant money that we don’t spend in that given year, and we are still spending grant money that came in in previous years.
The Admin income at the very top of the spreadsheet is a new category that is 10% we’re taking off the top of grants received as ‘indirect costs’ whenever we can, not every grant allows that but most do. Harrington has been going through each grant and setting aside that amount from each eligible grant. We have about $24,000 in that Admin category now. The board hasn’t spent money in that category yet so that’s a discussion we need to have of how we want to do that, it could be treated similar to the general fund.
Looking at the “Budget vs. Actuals” tab in the spreadsheet, it shows what is over/under budget so if you look at Boat Yard for example, we were under by $1,400. On donations we did well but that has to do with the fact that we did the Fishermen for Ukraine event so all those donations came in and we wrote a check so none of that remained in our account. The grants category totals look like we didn’t bring in as much as we hoped, but this is likely because we expected to spend the whole USDA grant last year which didn’t happen. USDA money comes in by invoicing, so it doesn’t hit our books in advance. Overall, we ended the year about where we expected.
Shane notes how complicated the formatting is and Kim says it’s how we have to have it set up for QuickBooks for the CPA. He asks about how the grant money works, to which Harry explains that you don’t always spend all the money in one year, sometimes we don’t spend the money until years later. Kim says sometimes you get a grant like the USDA grant where you have to bill them and they reimburse you and sometimes you get funding in lump sums up front, not every grant is the same so it definitely can be confusing.
The other thing we look at is the “Statement of Financial Position” which tells us what we’re worth and how much money we have in the bank. You can see as of Dec 2022 we had $113,500 in the bank so that’s how we closed out the year. That’s including all accumulated from years past. We also have our asset which is the quota bank groundfish permit which has a monetary value but until you actually lease or sell it, it doesn’t really have value.
Our net worth is $315,000, which is pretty much the sum of the bank account and the quota value, minus a few small liabilities related to credit card balance and security deposits for yard sub leases.
This document is what will be submitted to our CPA to do our taxes.
John Colgate makes a motion to approve the 2022 financial statement. Harry seconds the motion, unanimous approval in favor from other board members (Gary, Garrett, Bernard, Chris) 6-0-0 vote stands.
Vote on 2023 budget
Chris makes a general comment around our budget - It is created to reflect our priorities for the coming year so we can estimate expenses in certain categories based on what we collectively agree are things we want to pursue, so just keep that in mind as we go through this.
If you look at the columns across the top, those are previous years so you can look at how we estimate what we’ll be spending in 2023 is usually just a straight average of what we spend in recent years.
You can see the boatyard revenue is stable year over year for the most part, so that’s budgeted at $36,000.
Donations are variable but we try to be conservative basically you don’t want to overspend in any year so we want to be conservative of what we think will come in, which is why it’s estimated at $1,100, hopefully we can get more than that.
The grants section is where we strategize on where we can get more income to support the programs that we want to pursue.
Coastal Conservancy is a new one that we’re going to apply for the boatyard project at City College (to be discussed later). This grant would include a large budget for construction, permitting, etc that would go into our account and go right out again. Here we just focused on budgeting the amount that would cover staff time for this project, $40,000.
The money from the City of Santa Barbara is from the $25,000 from 2021, which we are claiming to date because it takes a full budget cycle to get that money into our account, this is part of the USDA grant from the boatyard.
At the end of 2022 there was $46,000 left in the USDA grant and we will definitely spend that all this year.
Gary says we might be approved for $15,000 for the Cable grant so that’s what we’ve estimated.
There are $5,000 grants that are like an “operations grant” from the Santa Barbara Foundation which we’ve estimated at $4,500 because we are accounting for that 10% overhead.
Membership is an average of past years. Harrington notes that memberships are strong this year.
Getting into expenses, most are charitable contributions which we discussed at the last board meeting. We’ve allocated $5,000 in this category and have already distributed a few checks to the CFRA, PCFFA, The Maritime Museum, and the SB Chamber of Commerce as discussed in previous meetings. We also discussed potentially joining RODA at our last meeting so we’ve accounted for that but it’s totally flexible and we can choose to donate however we feel comfortable as the year goes on and we continue to assess our balances.
Insurance is shown as being increased a little for inflation, but we have been receiving some refunds since we switched to a cheaper policy. Harrington will call and clarify how they should be applied.
Staff costs
We’ve budgeted $9,200 for accounting which is Michael Harrington’s services and a few other small fees. Harrington has increased his fees by $5 for all his clients. The board needs to approve this.
John Colgate makes a motion to increase Michael Harrington’s rate by $5. Harry seconds the motion, unanimous approval in favor from other board members (Gary, Garrett, Bernard, Chris) 6-0-0 vote stands.
We’ve budgeted $4,000 for grant writing so if we want to use a grant writer (i.e. we’ve used Kelsey in the past), we will have funds again to do so.
Kim estimates $55,000 for herself under “non-profit consulting,” which Harry remarks seems “pretty profitable.” Kim states that this is very low actually if compared to Executive Director roles at other non-profits/elsewhere in the open market. This is an increased dollar amount due to budgeting conservatively for a potential need to increase hours worked, not a change in hourly rate. Kim’s last wage increase took place in 2021.
Kim estimates $35,000 for Ava. An increase in Ava’s hours was approved in July of 2022 moving her from 80hrs/month to 120hrs/month, however she has not been able to reach that amount consistently due to her simultaneous work as a deckhand. Other than the hours increase, Ava’s hourly rate has not been raised since she joined in 2021.
Rent at the boatyard is the same which is $22,480/yr (not including insurance and admin) - This is not expected to go up.
The safety line item is to reimburse fishermen for safety gear - We’ve got $10,000 available.
The way it penciled out shows about an $8,000 net revenue which is a little more than last year.
If you go to the “Grant Funds Available,” this is a snapshot of active grants right now, where they came from, and what remains to be spent.
Without raising any grant money at all this year, we still have $107,000 of grant money that could be spent which accumulated from previous years.
John Colgate makes a motion to approve the 2023 budget. Garrett seconds the motion, unanimous approval in favor from other board members (Gary, Harry, Bernard, Chris) 6-0-0 vote stands.
Commercial Fishing Subcommittee Update
Chris and Ava attended a recent Harbor Commission meeting where the City/ Waterfront Department discussed the transition from subcommittees governed by the Brown Act (meaning no one on the committee can talk to each other) to ad hoc working groups. Chris spoke in favor of this transition on behalf of CFSB as it allows for items to be brought to the full Harbor Commission in a more efficient/faster way vs. the traditional protocol required by the subcommittee methodology.
Mike Nelson says there have been standing committees governed by the Brown Act that require scheduling meetings with public notice and it’s a complicated process and typically the Waterfront Department drives that process. The City is trying to move away from this because it’s so much work to manage. CFSB met with the Commercial Fishing work group (formerly the Commercial Fishing Subcommittee) last week to discuss recent topics listed below.
Harbor Dredging Letter
In CFSB’s meeting with the Commercial Fishing work group, we discussed a letter that was produced by CFSB staff (with input from members), that basically asked the commission to weigh in on this issue because there was such a great impact to the fishing community. The working group said they would work with CFSB to craft something that goes to the full harbor commission that basically says we want to bring in the Army Corps of Engineers, etc. to do a full examination of what happened in order to hopefully avoid this type of event mismanaged again in the future.
Harry asks what the Waterfront Dept.’s plans are outside the federal channel? He says the West Beach side of the channel has gotten extremely shallow and there’s a huge high spot next to Stearns Wharf that’s creating breaking waves. Chris says the Waterfront Dept. made a presentation to the Harbor Commission at the meeting about the small-scale dredging including that high spot so there’s an understanding that the channel is the channel and somehow the Army Corps is only going to permit the dredging company to take the sand of a certain amount out of that space - Who knows how deep they will go and the deeper they go and the more they remove, the longer it will stay open, but with respect to the smaller-scale dredging operations there’s about 4 or 5 zones along the breakwater that need dredging in addition to that high spot by the Wharf. In summary, they are aware of that high spot and hopefully it will dissipate during regular dredging because even though the sand runs from west to east down the coast, that breakwall with the mouth of Mission Creek right there might enable that spot to be mitigated.
CFSB wrote a strongly worded letter to the Waterfront Department and Chris met with Mike Wiltshire the day we sent the initial letter and there was some anxiety around the aggressive nature of the letter. He wanted us to adjust some of the language we stated for factual clarity which we did once given updated information. We are still working through some of the friction that the letter caused but Chris believes it’s important that the frustration that the fleet felt was real and justified and that it should be communicated. Also it’s important to emphasize that this frustration is not just from the commercial fishing fleet but also Sea Landing (whale watching, sportfishing, etc.), the kelp cutter for the Cultured Abalone Farm, the Danny C - There are numerous other commercial vessels that were impacted by the closure beyond just the fishing fleet, and it’s important that all frustrations are heard. We are not alone in our concerns around this issue so hopefully we can get our partners with the City to be more proactive about this in the future. We are asking for a formal evaluation/report of what happened and also a strategy moving forward that will avoid this from happening again - These are the goals we are shooting for with this letter.
Slips
Ray Kennedy and Tony Luna have been helping put attention on the issue of commercial fishermen in guest/recreational slips. They don’t have the discounted commercial slips and they, in addition to several other fishermen in the same position, are paying exorbitant amounts for slip fees due to a lack of commercial slips. As we have discussed before, in the master plan for the harbor, it states that 19% of all slips should be designated commercial, however, only ~7% are commercial today. Notably, the development permit issued for Marina 1 said in the staff report that the Waterfront Dept should seek to maintain that ratio (19% commercial as listed in the master plan).
The idea is to go back to the full Harbor Commission and basically say we need the Waterfront Dept. to acknowledge the need for more commercial slips, these guest slips are out of control in terms of the price folks have to pay, and emphasize the fact that the municipal code says that City Council can deal with commercial fishing/aquaculture interests in a preferential way. Also, the City Council in 1980 said they wanted to make local seafood a priority in a way of diversifying the economy and contributing to the economy. All these points put us in a good position to ask the Harbor Commission to direct the Waterfront Dept. to come up with a proposal that does at least 2 things: We know they are not going to suddenly be able to provide 11% more slips, but they do have the ability to potentially help reallocate guest/vacant slips to commercial fishermen and maybe even reduce some of the costs for commercial fishermen that are in non-commercial slips in lieu of being able to provide a separate, new commercially designated slip. Tony had an idea for having “temporary commercial slips,” showing that there are ways in which we can get creative about solving this problem.
The working group is in support and wants to go forward with the focus on dredging and making a point to relieve those in unfair slip situations. In the next month or so, they will put together an item and in terms of the way it’s structured now, it will be much easier to put in front of the full commission (vs. the prior subcommittee structure).
Update on Mapping fishing grounds project
We’ve discussed this at various board meetings over the past year to try to get input on whether people are interested in participating in this group project.
This project is in response to Ocean Rainforest trying to go after a permit for a commercial grow out, which we think might be 1000 acres somewhere in the channel. They basically want us to map our fishing grounds so they can avoid siting a farm anywhere that would unleash the ire of the fishermen on them. So we have a group called SeaSketch that has a tool that makes it easy to collect data anonymously in a protected way for fishermen to enter important fishing grounds and put a value to it so you draw circles on a map and numbers as to the relative ranking of them and you don’t have to put your fishing grounds down specifically you can just put for example “this is a heavily fished zone” - The important part is just to get everyone’s input because the NOAA Aquaculture Opportunity Atlas (AOA) is flawed and doesn’t give the right averaging data. It puts every possible fishery in there including Dungeness and Pink Shrimp which don’t typically exist in our channel so it just muddies the water in terms of trying to clarify what the most important fishing grounds are.
We are trying to be very careful when deciding how to do this and so far we’ve gotten enough fishermen that are supportive and want to move forward. There is a man named Ken Riley at NOAA who has spearheaded the AOAs, and he has asked us to put in a 1-page proposal to get funded for this process so that our fishermen and also fishermen out of Ventura can potentially be compensated for this effort. Ken says the Dept. of Energy feels that Ocean Rainforest, which has been receiving Dept. of Energy money for their project, could take the budget for our project out of their own budget, and/or maybe the Dept. of Energy will potentially push more money into Ocean Rainforest’s budget that would be transferred to us in order for us to take on this work and do this project. We have not yet met with Eliza from Ocean Rainforest on this topic specifically but we think she will be supportive unless the actual bureaucracy of it turns out to be more complicated and Ken is mistaken in how that might work, but that’s sort of the update for now, we don’t have any concrete plans yet.
Nick Tharp asks about Ocean Rainforest’s location plans and Kim says their current demonstration site is not necessarily where they will grow out commercially. The current demonstration site is 86 acres and will be fully removed in approximately 16-18 months.
There is no information available currently about where they might put a “permanent” site. Last we spoke with Eliza they said they are going to base their operations out of Ventura Harbor because they are worried about causing extra congestion on the pier here because that was part of the feedback they got back from fishermen that it would be better to operate out of a bigger port. The nice thing is they seem to be responding to feedback so far and they do want this to be as painless as possible for fishermen.
Shane asks why they are not penalized for whale entanglement risks like fishermen are because they are also using fixed gear like many fishermen do - Bernard says they are required to do their own monitoring and thinks they might have video requirements, etc., but they are not exempt from whale entanglement penalties should that occur. Kim also doubts that they are getting a pass on that.
Kim says if anyone sees the site out in the channel and has feedback, please report it to us and send us your comments and/or relay that to Eliza directly.
The concept here is to provide Ocean Rainforest with a map of our fishing grounds (an anonymous map) that allows them to avoid asking for a permanent site that will impact fishermen based on data that the fleet would provide.
Hoadley asks if Ocean Rainforest is trying to regenerate kelp or what their goal is - Kim and Bernard say they’ve heard the goal is to commercially sell kelp to farmers as cow feed to reduce methane gas emissions; Harry says it’s essentially commodified carbon capture. Kim also says there is a potential benefit to fishermen by attracting fish around the site - we will learn more from their demonstration site over the next 18 months.
Kim urges folks to go to their website because we do not have all the answers about why they are choosing this area vs. other locations worldwide. We can also have Eliza come to another meeting to provide more information - She has spoken at CFSB meetings in the past so if the fleet wants us to set up another meeting with her to answer your questions directly, we can absolutely coordinate that.
Harry asks if the commercial kelp installation needs to be inside the bounds of the zone highlighted in the NOAA atlas and Kim says it does not; but we do think it will be sited in federal waters, not state waters.
If we move forward, Ava will be the one working with fishermen to gather their data by sitting down with groups and marking areas on a laptop. We can also do it manually but the margin of error is increased when doing this method vs using a more robust tool like SeaSketch.
SeaSketch is based in Santa Barbara and has offered their services - Harry says when you get down to it, you want someone independent doing any mapping work. Hoadley asks how that would work with data protection - Kim says it would be our data that CFSB would own and it could be set up where you can’t even look at it with individual data so it could only be aggregate if folks are worried about that element of privacy even though everything would already be anonymous in terms of any data points being entered. You don’t have to have Ava there doing this, it's just an option of facilitating it. We could also just send a link out for people to fill it out on their own.
To be clear, this would not be funded by the state or any federal agencies, it would be us controlling it and designing it from start to finish.
The next step would be to approach Ocean Rainforest and make sure they understand what we were told by Ken Riley and see how they react and if there are any hurdles to starting that process with funding.
Chris says this seems like a smart, collaborative way to go that doesn’t have a lot of risk if we’re dealing with industry to industry and we own the data and are working in a proprietary way with them. If Ocean Rainforest provides us with funding then that is even better.
April Board Elections
All CFSB members may vote
Elections are coming up next month so we want to make sure anyone who wants to join the board or be an alternate is there. There are 7 board seats and 7 alternate seats and everyone is able to be elected/re-elected so it would be great to have more folks involved.
Chris says there is plenty of room especially in the alternate area. Kim says we tie an alternate to each board member so if a board member is not able to attend a meeting where a quorum is needed, the alternate can step in and vote on their behalf. It’s always good to have more votes so we can avoid split votes.
Chris says if you’re interested in being an alternate or a board member, be sure to show up to the next meeting and reach out to current board members if you’re curious about what it’s like to have a seat on the board.
SBCC Update
Kim shares that we did a presentation to the board of trustees at SBCC about taking a piece of their parking lot 3 for a storage yard for fishermen. We also pitched that this could potentially be a great educational opportunity for their students and increase their engagement around local jobs in fisheries. They liked it and were supportive - The man leading the charge is the new Vice President of Business Administration, Brian Fahnestock, and he is enthusiastic and supportive about this project.
We are having a meeting on March 17th with the deans and admin staff at SBCC to answer questions and tell them more about the project and better define the process moving forward of applying for the Coastal Conservancy grant and also defining academic engagement.
Kim met with Michelle Paddock who is one of their marine biology/environmental studies professors on Monday and she is also really enthusiastic about potential opportunities for academic engagement.
A big end result to pitch that would be exciting would be building an interdisciplinary program about ocean tech/ocean entrepreneurship that would allow their Marine Diving Technology (MDT) program to help recruit their graduates into more local jobs because we recently learned that the vast majority of MDT graduates end up relocating to the Gulf to pursue jobs over there.
Colgate asks how many boat storage spaces there would be - Kim says it would depend on the ratio of containers to boats but maybe 14? The hypothetical map that Kim sketched out would have about 14 boats and 5 containers. With the way we’ve laid it out, they would be giving up about 25 parking spaces which is about 15-18% of their parking spaces. Colgate asks where they will park their cars and Kim says they don’t have as much of a need for parking anymore because enrollment is down and a lot of courses are taking place online. So essentially this would be a way for them to monetize some of their unused space and create an additional revenue stream for them making it a win-win situation for us and City College.
Chris emphasizes that we will still have the current storage yard on Garden St.
Hoadley asks about security - Kim says we would fence the site completely, there would be a code to get in and out, it is a well-lit area near a somewhat busy street, and there is also likely video surveillance in that zone.
Ben says he is in need of space. He says his business, Wild Local Seafood, had ~150 interns from 2012-2022 through UCSB and he’d be interested in helping in any way career wise with some sort of fisheries workshop to show there’s another business that can facilitate possible internships/jobs.
Harry asks if we’ve followed up on the temporary site on Salsipuedes St. (right before West Marine) and Chris says he has not and apologizes for the delay, but he will follow up and report back at the next meeting. Marco asks who it’s owned by and Kim says it’s owned currently by the Fess Parker folks. Marco says he knows a man named Brian who owns West Marine’s property next door and he will speak with him about potential opportunities that might coincide with this space.
Colgate asks if we’re still talking to the Wright family about extending our zone at the current yard and Kim says we are not right now because we got shut down pretty hard, but there is potential in a few years to revisit the issue with them and see how the area develops with all the efforts going into new hotels, etc. in the funk zone.
Nick asks if there’s a way to quantify people in need of storage for the SBCC yard - We can look at Ava’s 2022 survey results more in depth because the results show a high volume of fishermen in need of storage space. Also, Nick’s wife is a landscape architect and he said she would be willing to help put together a site plan because she does that type of work all the time so if it comes down to it and we need someone to do that type of analysis she would be happy to help. We are very grateful for this generous offer and will likely pursue it once we learn more at the next meeting with SBCC on March 17th (next Friday).
Hoadley asks if there would be electricity at this site and Kim says there are street lights there so we just need to look into if it’s possible, we will learn more at the meeting next Friday.
Hoadley also brings up the issue of lack of storage at the launch ramp with the City’s new guidelines around storing traps there - He suggests maybe there’s a way this yard could help at least partially resolve this issue.
Hoadley states that fishermen pay for several things to be able to work out of the SB harbor (i.e. taxes, parking passes, slip fees, etc.), so if we need to start paying to store traps at the launch ramp then that’s what we’ll need to do, but we need to know if that’s something the Waterfront Dept. would even allow us to do so. If we’re not allowed to store traps at the launch ramp at all (even with paying a fee), there will be major traffic issues with everyone going in and out on trailers more frequently, etc.; Banning the storage of traps will just open up the possibility of issues in other ways. A lot of lobster fishermen store their traps far away (Lompoc, Santa Maria, Carpinteria, etc.) so not being able to put our traps there for that week before the opener is going to be a major disruption.
Nick mentions that when they do sailing races the majority of the launch ramp is taken up by those boats for multiple days and it’s a similar issue so we’re curious how they got permission to do that/if they needed special permission because we are going to need to figure out how we can get a resolution.
Travel Funds
Kim sent an email out recently requested by Jeff Maassen asking if he could receive funding to travel to the Marine Resources Committee meeting in Monterey next week and the joint review meeting of MPAs that we want fishermen to be represented at, so she sent the board a note specifying what grant money we could use for that and we got a response from Gary saying he supports any fisherman who wants to attend meetings. It would be great to have a vote or discussion at least around this topic so we can set a precedent moving forward.
Harry asks if Jeff gave a number of how much he might need - Kim says no but he said a couple nights in a hotel, rental car, and per diem for food.
Chris reiterates this would be for the 14th, 15th, and 16th in Monterey - The 14th is MRC, the 15th is reviewing the MPAs, and the 16th is another MRC that goes over what was talked about on the 15th.
Kim says we have $11,000 in our cable grant from 2022 for advocacy which would be appropriate. We also have $24,000 in the Admin fund that’s built up from that 10% overhead. And we have $9,000 in our 2020 cable grant for safety gear.
Harrington believes it’s important for fishermen to go to these meetings and represent the fleet’s best interests and Jeff is a great networker so the fact that he’s interested means a lot.
Kim wonders if we should publicize this information so other people know about it.
Chris says there will be a reporting need for anyone who is funded by CFSB to attend something like this, in this case, Jeff would be expected to provide us with a recap on what was covered and how he engaged during the trip.
Harrington says receipts are automatically required and would need to be shown once he returns.
Harry says he’ll support it as long as there’s a daily cap and he shows receipts. Gary agrees and says we should definitely help him out so long as funding is taken advantage of - He says when he goes to meetings, fishermen don’t show up, so anything we can do to incentivize guys to go is worth it. Gary says at these meetings in Monterey in particular, halibut is a big thing, so Zack, Cliff, or Andy should definitely try to be there because it’s a big item on the radar for Fish & Game against that fishery.
Harrington suggests we put together a general travel policy to help expedite similar instances in the future.
Colgate emphasizes how important it is for folks to actually speak up at these meetings - We can sponsor guys to go but he says he’s been to a lot of these types of meetings where guys go but say nothing, and that’s no good either. So it’s essential that if we sponsor someone to go, they need to be sure to voice their concerns and be able to report back on how those interactions went.
Harry makes a motion to support any fishermen members’ travel efforts to fisheries meetings (such as the ones listed above) and cover expenses deemed reasonable with receipts. Garrett asks if there is a dollar limit - Kim suggests $200 a day but it can’t all be food so maybe $70/day in food and the rest for lodging/gas, etc. - Garrett seconds the motion, unanimous approval in favor from other board members (Gary, John, Bernard, Chris) 6-0-0 vote stands.
Trap Cleanup Friday 3/10 -CANCELED, HTO Cleanup today, Gear available at Launch Ramp Tomorrow-Friday
There was supposed to be a cleanup this Friday that Ava just found out about yesterday initiated by a resident of Hope Ranch who’s been cleaning the beach with her son and she got in touch with Channelkeeper who connected us and we were planning to do that Friday but we’ve canceled this due to poor weather/tide conditions also because Heal the Ocean (HTO) is doing a cleanup as we speak in the same area that we were just notified of last night. Ben has been involved with this but more so with the cleanup that took place today with Heal the Ocean. If we had known about the HTO event sooner we would have postponed this board meeting and been there to help. They are cleaning up over 80 traps and bringing them to the launch ramp by tomorrow morning around 9AM for folks to dig through and they will have 48hrs to go through everything and hopefully find some salvageable items before everything that remains is taken to the dump. In addition to the cleanup that we will do in April, this was a strong effort put forth by Heal the Ocean today and we are grateful for their help and wish we could have known about it sooner to organize a more concerted effort on our part. We are grateful that Ben was able to be there the whole time and represent the lobster fishing fleet. He says a lot came off the beach and they were planning on taking it directly to Marbourg but he helped ensure that they brought gear to the harbor first before throwing it all away so some items could be retrieved.
Chris reminds everyone that we will be doing our normal annual cleanup with Channelkeeper in early April (likely April 1) and we will send out more details once we’ve confirmed this information. Ava will send out an email about this cleanup once confirmed and also will put flyers around the harbor (per Hoadley’s suggestion).
Chris emphasizes that we are lucky that Ben was there today and we hope that in our future cleanup opportunities, more guys show up because it’s not a good look for us. This time we were not notified enough ahead of time but with our planned cleanups, it is essential that we demonstrate to the public we do care about this issue.
Kim Selkoe ended the meeting at 5:09pm.