Commercial fishermen along California’s Central Coast are facing multiple, simultaneous, potential threats. State-designated marine protected areas, a national marine sanctuary, a new designated Indigenous heritage sanctuary, an offshore wind energy area, an aquaculture opportunity zone, and a statewide conservation mandate are all operating across the same tri-county waters off San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura counties. Each program is individually defensible. None was designed to strangle commercial fishing. But no agency is tracking the cumulative impact, no compensatory mechanisms exist, and there’s no clear group accountable for the fishermen caught in between. 

This isn’t an uncommon challenge. Commercial fishing grounds across the nation face intensifying spatial pressure. And unlike agricultural lands or wetlands, fishing grounds lack statutory frameworks that require mitigation or trigger protections when access falls below what a working port needs to survive.  

This session puts that problem in front of the people who understand it best. Speakers will examine how this situation developed, what it is costing fishing communities in the region, what a durable legislative and regulatory fix could look like, and how to prevent it from recurring in other regions across the nation.