This quaint village with its large fishing fleet is the current home for my boat.
It is located 75 miles NW of downtown Los Angeles and has five marinas with approximately 1,500 boat slips.
The harbor, and the close-by city of Ventura, has a year-round sunny climate with gentle off-shore breezes. We enjoy clean, fresh air, endless magnificent sunsets and almost no traffic congestion with its associated road rage. It rates in the top 10 of the safest metropolitan areas in California in which to live. Perhaps, best of all, the residents here are simply friendly, down-to-earth, unpretentious people.
The Ventura Harbor Port District, home to the Channel Islands National Park, provides a safe and navigable harbor and a seaside destination that benefits residents, visitors, fishermen, and boaters. With 152 acres of land and 122 acres of water, it was originally a private airfield and agricultural land growing lima beans. In the early 1950s the State of California bore most of the cost to excavate the harbor in order to obtain fill dirt to build Interstate Highway 101 through this area.
It has a quaint village with shops and restaurants and many weekend activities including entertainment, car shows, art events, and a variety of different fetes.
Surprisingly, this relatively small harbor is the second largest fishing port on the West Coast of the US (Alaska is the largest). Over 80% of the catch is squid, which are packaged and flash-frozen, with most of it shipped to Asia! The hive of activity with some 150 fishing boats and over 100 huge refrigerated trucks is carefully managed with a skill comparable to air traffic control. This is done so efficiently that it is almost transparent to the many visitors to this friendly village, which is an integral part of Ventura Harbor.
The fishing fleet brings in some 50,000 tons of fish per year, some 80% of which is squid. The fishing industry here is a $200 million/year business. Just one large “Seiner” fishing boat can hold up to 100 tons, usually caught in one trip of a day or so. Squid currently sells for about $650 per ton, so that a full load can bring the captain close to $65,000! Of course, not all runs are full loads and there are a lot of expenses incurred. A typical fishing seiner can cost upwards of $2million and is expensive to operate and maintain. Another major cost is for permits. For example, the permit to fish squid in California is $1.4 million or more depending on the amount of tonnage on the permit. If you also wish to for fish crab, it will cost another $500,000 for permits and additional different fishing gear.
All in all, Ventura Harbor is a delightfully quaint and pleasant environment to live in or visit.
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