![]() ![]() Platt said out-of-town fishermen had been flocking to Fort Bragg, and that he was “leaving the fish to them” because he had so many tours. ![]() ![]() But the fish were biting - and a good day on the water can still bring in as much money as a week’s worth of tours. And it is increasingly salty thanks to rising sea levels and occasional “king tides,” exceptionally high tides which push farther inland when the river runs low.įishing and diving seasons have become shorter and more tightly restricted, if they happen at all.Įarly last month, Platt, who is known to his guests as Captain Dan, squeezed in two days of fishing aboard his commercial boat, the Zhivago, a converted Coast Guard vessel, as the salmon season opened. Flows in the Noyo River - Fort Bragg’s main source of drinking water in the summer - hit record lows this year. Mendocino County is experiencing its worst drought on record, and residents’ wells are running dry. ![]() “It got to the point where I’m doing so many tours, I don’t have any time to go fishing any more.”Īlong the economically distressed rural North Coast - where the future lies not in the fishing and logging jobs that once defined it but, increasingly, in tourism - climate change has forced those who live by the rod and the reel to consider their options. “I kind of figured the tours would be my retirement when I finally do retire from fishing,” said the 61-year-old Platt, who has spent his entire adult life commercial fishing. Drought and record-breaking heat are drying up the rivers where salmon hatch before migrating to the sea. Rising ocean temperatures have upended marine ecosystems. Platt certainly didn’t guess life would turn out this way.īut the planet is warming, and the waters are changing. About five years after he began, rides on his 18-foot Duffy boat, the Noyo Star, are booked almost every day. Who would pay for a ride in a busy port, with its foul-mouthed sailors, its harbor seals clamoring for discarded fish guts, its vessels with names like Kraken and Dirty White Boat?īut in this Northern California harbor town of 7,300 people, Dan Platt - a skipper with a salt-and-pepper mustache, quiet demeanor and affinity for being alone on the ocean - became the epitome of rural reinvention. Other fishermen chuckled when he started giving boat tours of Noyo Harbor. ![]()
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