Ventura Harbor is one of Ventura City’s centers; it serves as a hotspot for locals and tourists to visit restaurants, browse through the various stores and look over the distant Channel Islands at sunset. However, one lesser-known storefront only appears before the sun rises. From six to 10 a.m. on Saturday mornings, the Ventura Fish Market opens to the public, offering locally caught seafood from the California coast.
Before the sun rises, local fishermen from around Ventura County gather beside the Ventura Harbor Boatyard. They fill ice chests with freshly caught, local seafood, offering their catch to the public. While the larger fish industry avoids working with these fishermen, many customers prefer the locally caught seafood to anything you could find in a supermarket.
The bond between the fisherman and their customer is still vital to many. Fish markets such as this one rely on local participation and exposure to the public, since most larger companies won’t take their product.
“I like to think of my community as my extended family. My customers – some of them – have become my extended family,” Katy Bordovski, a local fishery owner, said.
Jason Woods, another fishery owner, spoke of the struggle to do business with restaurants and other companies. “It’s the availability, restaurants need a very consistent supply, they want to order [fish] how you can online … somebody’s gonna fill that, but where is it gonna be filled from … some foreign country, who doesn’t have the regulations and stewardship we foster.”
Fish sourced by larger corporations have a deficiency in quality. Buying from a supermarket might be more convenient and more consistent, but the freshness of the fish and how it was caught is far below the standard of local fisheries.
“In the store, I don’t know where it comes from, and I don’t know when they got it,” an anonymous customer said. “And here, if the weather was bad yesterday, then today I can’t get the fish, so I know it’s from yesterday. It’s as fresh as it gets.”
Commercial fishing is one of the largest industries operating in Ventura County. According to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Ventura is a key contributor to California’s multi-million dollar fishing Industry, specifically from its output of squid. This not only supports the fishermen, but also deckhands, vendors, restaurants, transport services and processors. Every boat that docks contributes to Ventura County’s wider community, strengthening fishing’s role as a foundational business rather than a niche practice.
“People don’t realize how much goes into it … I mean, these guys work hard. Some of them risk their lives; unfortunately, one or two passed this year,” Katy Bordovski said, in relation to the fishermen.
Injury is common at sea, as conditions lead to a bad mix of various dangerous working conditions. A combination of terrible weather, long nights and wet surfaces, while operating heavy-duty equipment, leads to many deaths per year. As seen in a 2023 mortality rate chart, fishing was ranked as one of the most dangerous industries, along with agriculture, forestry and hunting, which all experienced the highest death rate per 100,000 workers.
Brian Cunningham of the Channel Watch Marine Services, a towboat organization, said that “commercial fishing vessels which are fishing offshore, in rougher weather, longer distances from their home port … a lot of times can become disabled.”
With fishing being so important to the Ventura community, it is an extremely dangerous profession. Brian Cunningham highlights the unpredictability of the ocean and weather, as well as long hours, “ commercial fishing vessels which are fishing offshore, in rougher weather, longer distances from their home port … a lot of times they can become disabled.”
“California is phasing us out. They’re phasing us out on purpose. And in favor of imported junk, that takes a ton of energy to produce, a ton of energy to transport, and we don’t have a say in how things are raised,” Woods said.
With fewer and fewer commercial opportunities for local fishermen, the need for local participation grows and grows. To breed diversity and quality in a community, supporting local businesses is key. Without them, a town or city will become a corporate jungle, boring, flat and without any personality or culture. Besides, who wants to eat fish that’s been sitting in a freezer for days on end?
