A Fishing Family Deals With Changing Times

By ?Sona Patel, The Tribune, San Luis Obispo, Calif.

Mar. 1–The sportfishing business on the Morro Bay Embarcadero started by Virgil Moores in 1954 was for decades a busy hub for fishermen and visitors from all over the state.

But today Virg’s Landing is struggling to survive, and the collapse of Morro Bay’s fishing industry has meant changes that Moores could never have foreseen.

As a way to make ends meet, his descendants today are offering recreational cruises and whale watching tours in hopes of drawing tourists.

Instead of hunting for salmon, Virg’s captains are taking clients out for squid. Their sportfishing boats are carrying just a fourth of the customers they had in the 1990s.

The family business taken over by Moores’ daughter, Sharon, and later by her son, Darby Neil, has had to drift away from its roots in a thriving fishery.

In 1990, the total commercial fishing take in Morro Bay amounted to more than 7,000 tons. In 2005, total tonnage had dropped to less than 1,000, according to statistics compiled by the state Department of Fish and Game.

During the 1990s, Neil’s skippers took as many as 25,000 passengers a year out to fish, running about five boats per day. For the last three years, visitors have dropped to about 8,000 people fishing and 2,000 whale watchers annually.

Now, as Sharon Moores prepares to retire, Neil is trying to come up with ways to keep the local business afloat.

To Neil, politics and regulations have virtually crushed his business on the Morro Bay waterfront. State officials in recent years have sharply limited the take of certain species the regulators said were being overfished.

“It’s politics,” Neil said. “They have the most pressure,” he said, referring to environmental lobbyists urging tougher restrictions.

The family has been forced to lay off some of its longtime employees, many of whom they considered like family. That has been one of the most difficult and emotionally daunting challenges for Neil and his mother, they said.

Long family history

Rows of black-and-white pictures matted in dusty frames and mounted neatly along the walls show Virg’s employees throughout the years, each one holding their latest catch.

Many of the pictures included John and Sharon Rowley of Morro Bay, who worked at Virg’s Landing as boat captains in the early 1970s.

Their daughter, Michele Leary of Morro Bay, remembered helping out in the tackle shop and working as a deckhand learning how to filet fish. She earned her captain’s license in 2002.

Leary said that working at Virg’s full time taught her enough to survive in the industry.

Now she has scaled back her hours and works at Virg’s mainly during the summer, helping out with whale watching tours and crab fishing trips.

“I think they’re doing the best they can to keep crews working,” she said. “I’m surprised they haven’t had to close shop at all.”

Not as much fun

Neil vividly remembers following his grandfather around when he was shorter than a boat rail, walking around the Embarcadero and experiencing the bustling fish market in the 1960s.

He never had intended to take over the business, according to his mother, but ended up doing so because he would frequently help out at the shop.

“This place used to be buzzing,” he said. “It was always a bustling little harbor.”

In recent years, however, state and federal regulators have imposed a variety of restrictions on fishing that are intended to protect species that are considered overfished.

The salmon fishery, for example, was severely reduced in spring 2005 because of forecasts that salmon would be returning to spawn in the Klamath River in numbers below what is needed for healthy propagation.

One result has been fewer sportfishing opportunities.

Sharon Moores said Neil had intended to gradually turn day-to-day operations over to a manager and stay in the business until retirement.

Now she worries about the future of the business, and she fears for her son, who took over the enterprise, and his family.

She also questioned the financial repercussions of the slowing business for her granddaughters.

“They’re at an age where we should be planning for college,” Sharon Moores said.

Realizing the financial hardships of a slowing business pushed the family to make money in new ways.

Hoping that she could help supplement the family’s income, Neil’s sister, Tracy, opened an art gallery in Morro Bay.

“We’ve talked about doing other things,” Tracy Neil said, referring to one idea of opening a restaurant. “This was the most feasible, though.”

Although business won’t be exactly like it was in the mid-1950s, Sharon Moores said she is still proud of her son for keeping Virg’s Landing in the family.

“We still enjoy what we do,” she said, “but we don’t have fun like we used to.”

What do you think of the declining fishing industry’s local impact?

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Tribune, San Luis Obispo, Calif.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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