CFSB Board Meeting Minutes - April 7th, 2026 4PM

Attendees: Jeff Hepp, Chris Voss, Bernard Friedman, Jason Woods, Ray Kennedy, Dave Colker, Michael Harrington, Ed Anderson, Jeff Buchanan, Garrett Rose, Mike Zertuche, Shane Robinson, Blake Hermann, Harry Liquornik, Gary Burke, Tony Luna

Notes: Ava Schulenberg

Agenda:

*Housekeeping, time limits, 3 minute maximum policy on individual comments

2026 Budget and Q1 financials - board vote
Purple urchin removal/kelp restoration project update
1. Vote to accept funding from OPC/Bay Foundation: $50,000 for programming and $90,000 direct payments to urchin divers
2. County Fish and Wildlife Commission likely to approve $29,000 for longer film about the project
Board Elections
1. Ray’s VP seat replacement
Marine Resources Committee Meeting Recap 3/12 8:30AM
1. Minutes
Icehouse
1. Scheduling around salmon season
Commercial fishing slip lottery
Hilary Hauser Event
Local Seafood Gala at the Sea Center?
Coastal Conservancy Grant -
1. Ocean Collective update
  1. Roles & hourly rates
  2. CA Ocean Summit Dec 8-11
  3. Baker’s Square idea
  4. Forming an advisory board
MPA Bioregional Meetings
1. Blake Hermann
  1. CDFW determinations, OPC determinations coming
2. 4/13 MPA Collaborative Meeting at Hendrys Watershed Building
3. 4/21 San Mateo
4. 5/5 - 5/6 Santa Barbara
5. 5/19 Oceanside or San Clemente
6. MPA Collaborative April 13th meeting
County Supervisors - Support
Deepset buoy gear permit available for lease through Sean Hasting’s friend, Tobin Rippo
1. Available now, if interested, reach out to Ava for his contact information
Washington DC Trip - Ava, FCC
Sea urchin market - Jeff Maassen
Update from Boston seafood expo - Dan O’Shea
2026 Dues
1. Please don’t forget to sign up if you haven’t already! Thanks to those who have.
Miscellaneous (brought up at the end): see below

Recording: Link

Chris calls the meeting to order at 4:06PM upstairs in the harbor classroom.

Agenda:

2026 Budget and Q1 financials - board vote
1. Kim goes through the budget and the sentiment overall is that we’re doing well financially
2. Jason asks about the quota in the budget and Chris explains the situation and how we got it with TNC and Michael says it’s approximately $200/year to renew
  1. Garrett says there’s plenty of quota in Southern CA so what we have is not enough to necessarily incentivize someone to set everything up
3. Jason makes a motion to approve the Q1 financials and 2026 budget, Ray seconds, unanimous approval, 5-0-0 vote stands
4. Dave Colker asks if we’re part of RODA? Chris says we might use our South Bay Cable Committee funds for 2026 to pay for our dues; They’re more west-coast focused now than they have been in the past so we need to have a pitch from Steve Scheiblaur to decide what value our membership would bring when the time comes perhaps when we know what amount we’re getting from the cable committee
Purple urchin removal/kelp restoration project update
1. Vote to accept funding from OPC/Bay Foundation: $50,000 for programming and $90,000 direct payments to urchin divers
  1. Shane asks if it’s just for commercial or recreational too? Kim says just commercial
2. County Fish and Wildlife Commission likely to approve $29,000 for longer film about the project
3. Kim says the urchin project is going really well
4. Jason asks about smashing and permits for that? Kim says the Bay Foundation has a great track record of getting permits to do that
5. Shane asks about sites - Kim says they are thinking of one at Santa Cruz and one at San Miguel. There are other components to the project that factor into site selection: testing a high priority and low priority site for restoration according to the Caselle Lab model, and an analysis of the oceanography to understand bottom up forces on restoration success that the Scripps institute is doing
6. Jason asks whether Jenn Caselle picked the Tyler Bight site? Kim said she sent her team out to gather data and they also provided bathymetry maps and other data to help decide, but she didn’t choose - the whole team did.
  1. Kim says what they’d like to do next is train the urchin divers how to do that survey work so they can get paid for that part too
  2. Jason says he worked for uchinomics for 2 years and says it was very labor intensive and they wanted him to get little ones and empty ones (he said some of them were like button sized); He’s trying to say for ranching you have to really be super selective
  3. Kim says they ended up paying about $9-9.50 per pound with this project. The divers were harvesting about 40-50 lbs per hour, and what they figured out is they can up that rate if they leave some of the smaller ones so next month when things pick up again.
7. Shane asks why the guys involved aren’t here for this meeting? Kim said Jonathan came last time, and Harry is here now. Ava will send him the presentation from the last meeting.
8. Harry makes a motion to accept these funds and engage in another purple urchin project, Ray seconds, unanimous approval, 6-0-0 vote stands (Gary joined late)
9. Jason says the Paul Westocott is making a film about Mike McCorkle
Board Elections
1. Ray’s VP seat replacement
2. We will take a vote on this and do full board elections at the next meeting due to a limited attendance at this meeting
Marine Resources Committee Meeting Recap 3/12 8:30AM
1. Minutes
2. Bernard gives a quick recap because it was largely aquaculture-based; the recording is linked in the minutes above for anyone who wants to watch
  1. Shane brings up this article from Surfer News discussing statewide aquaculture efforts but Kim says that’s super aspirational
3. Chris also gives a recap about the halibut trawl fishery and bycatch as it pertains to the CDFW presentation during the meeting
4. They’re going to increase the White Seabass limit but it’s more for the sport fishermen (proposed size minimum going from 28 to 36? inches, not official yet), only 6% of commercial take is below the size limit
Icehouse
1. Scheduling around salmon season
2. The timing is unfortunate but Garrett says they have ice in Morro Bay
Commercial fishing slip lottery
1. There’s been 8 applicants
2. Shane says Jason tried to get in on the lottery but wasn’t able to due to complications with the Waterfront Department but we suggest that Jason go to the actual Harbor Commission meeting on the 16th and ask for his name to be entered even though it’s past the deadline
3. The lottery will take place on Thursday 4/16 6:30PM at City Hall
Hilary Hauser Event
1. Kim ran into Hillary recently and she says she wants to host a big party for fishermen
2. Everyone asks what the goal is of the event? Chris says connect CFSB’s members with local donors and build broader support for our goals
3. Ava will talk to her to coordinate a date and let everyone know the details accordingly
4. Jason mentions the summer bbq with VCCFA will take place in August so we think this one with Hillary should be sooner
Possible Local Seafood Gala at the Sea Center
1. Devin/Kim will coordinate with the Sea Center and circle back when we know more. Idea is to have a ticketed event and pair fishermen with chef to showcase local seafood, promote sat market and other local producers.
Coastal Conservancy Grant -
1. Ocean Collective update
  1. Roles & hourly rates
    1. Kim proposes that Devin be allowed to do 10 hrs per week on the Ocean Collective/Coastal conservancy project. Devin was at the Ab Farm and now is an independent consultant. She’s doing really great work already the past 2 months on the SBCC grant project.
      1. Chris says she’s doing a quality job and can come and report back at a meeting
      2. Kim asks for a board vote to make it official - Bernard asks for her to share out what she’s doing first and Jason suggests maybe she does a presentation first; Harry vouches for her saying that she’s worked with her for years
      3. Harry says he would vote now in favor but because the other guys don’t know we’ll ask her to present at the next board meeting and then get the official vote
  2. CA Ocean Summit Dec 8-11 - Assemblymember Greg Hart and Laura Francis are organizing this to draw attention to Santa Barbara’s ocean community. They want Ocean Collective and fisheries to be showcased and want Kim’s help planning it. We can offer harbor tours, seafood tastings, etc during the summit.
  3. Baker’s Square idea
    1. Kim said Bryan Kelly is interested in finding tenants for a new space he’s developing in the funk zone and is offering to make one structure a blue economy hub specifically; they’d possibly pay for the buildout. They are thinking office space currently. We could explore more high priority infrastructure like cold storage and seafood processing, a local seafood retail and restaurant outlet that could do well with all the tourism the new development will probably attract. Please send ideas and interest. There will be an on site visit in May to brainstorm ideas for the space.
  4. Forming an advisory board
    1. Kim says we’ll be working on this in the next month or two and if anyone is interested in being on the Ocean Collective advisory board please reach out. She says there will be fishermen, aquaculturists, tribal reps, educational seats, other blue economy sector reps, etc. and there will be stipends for those who step up as advisory board members
MPA Bioregional Meetings
1. Blake Hermann
  1. CDFW determinations made, OPC determinations coming
  2. Blake says this was the big month for MPAs given that we got the CDFW bin 2 recommendations finally but they did not give their recommendations for tribal petitions
  3. Blake says they denied almost all as their recommendation and that’s a win for us overall but his HMS petition was recommended to be denied which is a bummer
  4. The OPC will give their own recommendations separate to CDFW because they want to give their own policy recommendations versus CDFW which is scientific, because they probably want some of them to be approved; The OPC cannot accept or deny a petition, only the Fish & Game Commission can do that
  5. At next week’s tribal meeting on Tuesday they’re basically starting over with a brand new process specific to tribal but we need to be sure to speak up and make our concerns heard.
  6. Kim says we need to start contacting elected officials to make sure they understand these proposals can have dire economic consequences and threaten sustainable local seafood supply.
  7. Harry says they never finished zone 5 to do an MPA Network in San Francisco Bay; this could be a good place for new 30x30 area.
  8. Jeff asks what they’re proposing at Duxbury Reef because it’s a vital salmon productions area; Blake says it would be turned into a shore-take only zone and would grow North and South at least doubling the size; CDFW didn’t outright deny this one and said the southern area is home to an important biodiversity/sensitive habitat area
  9. Dave says the VCCFA has put together a series of helpful MPA-specific webpages on their website; He also asks if Blake has anything planned to strategize before the May SB meetings? Blake says he’s scheduling at least one meeting in collaboration with rec guys (Chris and Ava are involved with the planning on this and will send a notice out asap once details are confirmed)
  10. Kim asks about Zoom options for all the bioregional meetings and Blake says there will be a Zoom option for those who can’t join in person but they will be limited to petitions for those areas only and you can’t discuss other locations’ petitions in a bioregional meeting for a different area
2. 4/13 MPA Collaborative Meeting at Hendrys Watershed Building
3. 4/21 San Mateo
4. 5/5 - 5/6 Santa Barbara
5. 5/19 Oceanside or San Clemente
6. MPA Collaborative April 13th meeting
County Supervisors - Support
1. Chris and Ava had a really constructive meeting with Supervisor Roy Lee and his staff who were willing to hear us out on our updates about MPA Petitions.
Deepset buoy gear permit available for lease through Sean Hasting’s friend, Tobin Rippo
1. Available now, if interested, reach out to Ava for his contact information
2. Ray has concerns about the legality of it all; according to Sean, Tobin claims the lease allowance is written into his permit and is happy to answer any further questions
Washington DC Trip next week - Ava, FCC 4/13-4/16
1. Ava will primarily focus on lobster (fishermen being equally categorized as farmers/food producers, tariff impacts, etc.) and the urchin market crisis
Sea urchin market - Jeff Maassen (Jeff’s not able to be here today so we will discuss at the next meeting)
Update from Boston seafood expo - Dan O’Shea (Dan’s not able to be here today so we will discuss at the next meeting)
2026 Dues
1. Please don’t forget to sign up if you haven’t already! Thanks to those who have.
Miscellaneous (brought up at the end):
1. Lobster Gear from Chris: Chris says he has frames for small traps a pile of 33 of them 1 inch sucker rod and a couple are bent rebar but a $1-200 donation to CFSB would be fantastic and the galvanized wire is great
  1. Tony asks how many rolls? Chris says 6 rolls, it’s not Chinese, worth $300 but a $100 donation to CFSB would suffice
2. Nautical Swap Meet: Tony asks about the nautical swap meet, Ava will notify everyone of details if CFSB participates but the date is May 16th
3. Salmon: Jeff says we’ll know more about salmon from Pigeon Point south in the next couple days

Chris ends the meeting at 5:59PM upstairs in the harbor classroom.

Commercial Fisherman of Santa Barbara