FEATURE
Living like fishermen isn’t for the meek. They tackle long hours at sea away from their families, risking catastrophic vessel disasters, element exposure, accidental falls overboard, and troublesome heavy deck machinery in unpredictable maritime settings.
The lives of the women close to them are no less devoid of sacrifice.
“Some of the women in this group have raised their kids when their husbands were gone for weeks at a time, and all they could do was talk to them on the radio once a week,” Arroyo Grande resident Lenore Ward said.
Ward is the president of Central Coast Women for Fisheries. It’s not a group of women who fish—a common misconception. It’s a support system and nonprofit comprising women who belong to commercial fishing families.
Get caught up
Send contributions or sign up for Central Coast Women for Fisheries’ newsletter by emailing ccwf@womenforfish.org with “Pelorus” in the subject line. Submissions and requests can also be mailed to CCWF Newsletter Committee at 785 Quintana Road #106, Morro Bay, CA 93442-1948.
The organization took off in 2006 with the help of a grant from the Central Coast Joint Cable Fisheries Liaison Committee. For 20 years running, Women for Fisheries has been educating San Luis Obispo County about the value of locally caught seafood and the hard work that goes into bringing home the bounty. Membership has swelled to 30 people.
They pool funds through fundraisers like the Morro Bay Harbor Festival every October, an annual albacore enchilada feast the day before the Super Bowl that often tops 500 trays, fish fry gatherings, rummage sales, and raffles.
One of the outcomes is the For Those Who Wait statue next to Morro Rock. Designed and constructed by sculptor Elizabeth MacQueen, the bronze monument is a fisherman’s family sculpture depicting a mother, Marie, and her son, Joseph Albert David, and daughter, Rita Michele, as they wait for their loved one to return from sea. These figures are named after some prominent fishing families on the Central Coast.
Women for Fisheries eventually gifted the 5-year-old statue to the city of Morro Bay.
“It’s where the families would go out and wave goodbye because fishermen are gone sometimes, like for albacore, from Fourth of July until Thanksgiving,” Women for Fisheries Secretary Sheri Hafer said. “I mean, they’re gone a long time.”
Funds raised by Women for Fisheries help both fishermen and their families. The Fishing Heritage Scholarship awards $1,000 every year for people wanting to enroll in community colleges and trade schools. They must be related to a commercial fisherman to qualify.
The Fisherman’s Relief Fund is a pot of money kept aside for fishermen who are unable to work for various reasons, including injuries or capsized boats, and for families who’ve experienced a tragedy like a death at sea. The group started the fund in response to the 2023 closure of commercial salmon fishing due to drought-affected waterways that caused salmon population to plummet.
Commercial salmon fishing reopened this spring but with fewer fishing dates and harvest limits for both commercial and recreational fishing.
“A lot of our salmon fishermen were really starving to death because they just shut it down for three years,” Hafer said. “We started offering $100 grocery cards to people that were salmon fishermen. After that, we just decided to do this fund for anybody going through bad times.”
The group dabbles in education too. Under the care of Women for Fisheries Vice President Sharon Rowley, its quarterly newsletter Pelorus informs subscribers about happenings in the community.
A pelorus is a fixed compass used to take bearings relative to a where a ship’s headed. Its namesake newsletter gives group members the chance to weigh in through news stories, event reminders, featured articles on interesting community members, poems, short stories, and brief advertisements.
Women for Fisheries is also constantly thinking about the next generation. Hafer said that with the escalating costs of living and fishing permit prices, it’s hard to make a living in fishing.
‘I think people get ideas that there’s overfishing … but fishermen have to be environmentally minded because California has the most highly regulated waters in the entire world.’
—Sheri Hafer, Central Coast Women for Fisheries secretary
“The education system has really pushed people to be marine biologists. … There are more marine biologists than there are fishermen,” she said with a laugh. “In some places like Japan and Alaska, they have schools to become a commercial fisherman because there’s a lot to know. Engines, electrical, navigation, how to catch a fish.”
She pointed to California Sea Grant, which operates a fishing apprenticeship in San Diego, as the group’s inspiration for wanting to offer something similar on the Central Coast. But not enough people want to bite the hook.
Still, a learning avenue exists for local kids who want to cast their line into fishing: Women for Fisheries’ Kids at Sea program.
The group rents a commercial sportfishing boat and pays for 20 kids—those in fishing families get first preference—to experience how fishing works. This year, Women for Fisheries wants to take three such trips.
The first Kids at Sea session kicked off on June 9 aboard the Black Pearl sportfishing boat in Morro Bay. The plan is to host events in Morro Bay in July and in Port San Luis in August.
“I think people get ideas that there’s overfishing … but fishermen have to be environmentally minded because California has the most highly regulated waters in the entire world,” Hafer said.
Her husband, Tom, used to fish for albacore and lobster when the couple lived in San Diego. On the Central Coast, he’s into live nearshore fishing, catching spot prawns and salmon off his 43-foot Nova Scotia boat docked in Morro Bay.
Ward’s husband, Bill, is 81 and still fishes occasionally even though his family threw him a retirement party last year. He used to fish crabs, salmon, halibut, and sea cucumbers out of Avila Beach.
Despite the push and pull of being married to fishermen, both women agree—it’s worth the fresh fish, working on boats with their husbands, and living off the coast.
“It’s a way of life. I’ve been fishing with Bill a few times and just really enjoyed being out there,” Ward said. “When we talked about retirement, one of his comments was, ‘What? Am I going to retire so that I can go fishing?’”