Activist fisherman, local hero
Steve Fitz photo, credit: Kurt Rogers of San Francisco Chronicle
Steve Fitz, left, at work on the FV 'Mr Morgan', photo credit: Juan Carlos Pometta Betancourt, special to The San Francisco Examiner)
The FV Mr Morgan is 58.8′ in length, weighing 87 gross tons, built in 1978, captained by Steve Fitz of Half Moon Bay, California. Its home port is Pillar Point Harbor, the gateway to northern California’s Monterey Bay. After noticing the boat several times, impressed by its great size and dark hull standing out from most other local commercial boats, I created this ink drawing.
Eventually I learned that the skipper is prominent, not only as successful flatfish provider to retail outlets locally, but an articulate voice for local commercial fishermen. Steve Fitz mainly fishes for petrale sole and sand dabs, whose populations remain healthy, so he has managed to maintain operations in hard times.
“We have a saying on this boat,” said Fitz, a slim, sinewy man with a mop of salt-and-pepper hair and a wry smile that sometimes verges on bitterness. “Every ‘dab a dinner.” The plump sand dab is a flounder-like creature. That adds up to a lot of dinners coming off Fitz’s trawler, the Mr. Morgan. Based in Half Moon Bay, the boat lands up to 10,000 pounds of sand dabs a week at the Pillar Point Pier.
Fitz became a lead plaintiff on the suit filed in the case of the 2002 Cosco Busan oil spill in San Francisco Bay. He and John Tarantino, a longtime friend and fellow fisherman out of San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, decided to seek protection for local fishermen’s interests in this legal battle. At the request of local commercial crabbers, the the Dungeness Crab season was cancelled, for example, with major financial consequences for them all.
He has been active with the local commercial fishing industry. When local authorities wanted to use the harbor as dump for contaminated material dredged from the bottom of San Francisco Bay in 1988, Fitz took up the battle. The environmental impact on Monterey Bay fish populations would have been disastrous. The newborn Half Moon Bay Fisherman’s Marketing Association opposed the Port of Oakland and the Army Corps of Engineers in their heedless plan. That was a time when environmentalists began to realize they had allies in the local fishing industry.
This “local hero” grew up in a small Cape Cod fishing village, Chatham, Massachusetts. As a young man, he became aware of small fishing boat crews. But it was only an idea until 1972, when he transferred from Boston University–to the deck of a 40′ wooden long-liner named “Destiny.” And never looked back. Since then, he has crewed upon and captained commercial boats in New England, the North Sea, Alaska and California.He later took advantage of a grant for a fisherman to learn the environmentally-friendly method of harvesting bottom fish known as Scottish Seining.
Here Fitz had found his true niche. He equipped a small fishing boat with seine gear and used it on Georges Banks of the Atlantic with great success. Eventually that same fishing boat and rig was moved to Half Moon Bay on the Pacific Ocean. The beginning of the safe sand-dab fishery! Fitz’ method offers the Bay Area high quality flatfish without harm to the ocean floor.
Tagged California, Cape Cod, flatfish, Half Moon Bay, Massachusetts, petrale sole, pillar point harbor, sand dab, Scottish seining, Steve Fitz
