FORT BRAGG, CA., 9/26/2026 — A small nonprofit in Fort Bragg owns the right to catch fish, and it rents that right to local boats before it can go to anyone else.
Each year, the federal government sets how many pounds of each kind of groundfish can be caught off the West Coast. Groundfish live near the ocean floor. They include petrale sole, Dover sole and sablefish. Many are caught by trawlers, boats that drag nets along the bottom.
Since 2011, the catch for each kind of fish has been split into shares, like slices of a pie. Fishermen, companies and groups like the trust own the shares. Each share is a percentage of the catch.
Every year, after the government sets the catch limit, each percentage is translated into pounds. Someone who owns 1% of the petrale sole catch, for example, can land 1% of that year’s petrale limit. Those pounds are what fishermen call quota.
A trawler needs quota for every pound of every kind of fish it brings to the dock. The catch is weighed and taken off the boat’s quota.
A net doesn’t sort fish, though. A boat can come back with more of one kind than its quota covers. When that happens, it can’t fish until it finds more quota, according to The Nature Conservancy, which has worked with California’s groundfish fleet since 2003.
“A boat cannot go out if it’s in a deficit of any species,” said Michelle Norvell, president of the Fort Bragg Groundfish Conservation Trust. “You can have a zero allocation, but you can’t be in the red.”
So quota is bought, sold and leased, which means rented for a season. Owners list quota for lease on an online auction site called Jefferson State Trading Co.
That market can pull fishing rights away from a small port. If quota once used by Fort Bragg boats is sold to an owner in another harbor, the fish can be landed at that other port instead.
Where the trust comes in
The Nature Conservancy bought out some trawl permits and boats in 2006. It later helped five California ports, Fort Bragg among them, set up nonprofit trusts to hold fishing rights for their towns. It handed over the last of its groundfish rights to the trusts in September 2019.
“We anchored that right here in Fort Bragg for our boats to access in perpetuity,” Norvell said.
“We bought it for $30,000, which was a phenomenal price,” she said. “They gifted us about $1.2 million, $1.3 million in assets.”
“The Nature Conservancy did everything right,” she said.
Local boats first
Fishermen apply each year to lease the trust’s quota. First in line are those who land most of their groundfish in Fort Bragg, keep their boat there, live in town and hire local crew.
Local boats also get a discount off the going price on Jefferson State, the quota marketplace website. Petrale sole was going for 77 cents a pound there, Norvell said. “I think the last time we leased it to our boats was for 50 cents a pound,” she said.
On cheaper fish, the discount is smaller. “The trust has to still stay in the green,” she said. “But we would give a 10 or a 20% discount.”
Quota that Fort Bragg boats don’t need can go to fishermen in other ports at full price. That makes cash for the trust. “We need to make sure that we’re financially stable,” Norvell said.
Why it matters to the harbor
Keeping the quota in Fort Bragg, Norvell said, “helps keep our processors going. It brings buyers into the community. It helps keep our ice plant going.”
“When our ice plant’s going,” she said, “that means the sport fishermen have ice. That means the crab boats have ice. That means the salmon boats have ice.”
The trust has one employee, according to its 2024 federal tax return. “We’re super small,” Norvell said. “We work really close to the bone.”
“We don’t have enough quota to provide for everybody,” Norvell said Sept. 9. That week, she said, the trust was leasing “the very last of the quota to our boats.”
“The quota that we own, that our boats need, we could probably use double that,” she said.
“We would never want to lose the groundfish fishery in our port, ever.”