Voices of the Bay

  • Collection DOI:
    Principal Investigator:
    Chelsea Prindle, Lisa Uttal
  • In The Capturing the Voices of the Bay Education Program, students take responsibility for their own learning experience as they research, plan, and conduct personal interviews, first with each other and then with citizens of the community, to capture the rich stories, traditions, and knowledge that define Monterey’s fishing legacy. This place-based learning experience allows students the opportunity to deeply explore the historic, economic, environmental, and cultural dimensions of their particular “place” in the world and, perhaps more importantly, how all these dimensions inter-connect through the lives of those who live and work in the region.

Interviewee Sort descending Collection Description Interviewer Date of Interview Location of Interview Affiliation
Joey Jones Voices of the Bay

Joey Jones was a commercial fisherman who fished for salmon, albacore, anchovies, and herring along the central California coast. He speaks of how he got into commercial fishing, the boats he owned, and how the industry changed during the forty years he fished. Unfortunately, Joey Jones was lost at sea on April 3, 2008.

Lisa Uttal, Seaberry Nachbar Unknown Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary
John Del Rosario Voices of the Bay

John is Northern California Abalone Farmer. In this interview he starts with the history of abalones; how they were mainly found in Asia and Asian cultured dishes, and the main consumers of abalones in America are the Asian community. Then he shares to his audience the hardships of raising baby Abalones to adulthood in their facility. He also makes a comparison between ocean-caged raised abalones and land farm abalones, and how his land-farmed facility has more controlled over raising abalones.

Unknown Unknown Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary
Michael Zucker Voices of the Bay

Michael Zucker is a Pacific Salmon and Albacore Fisherman. At first when he started in 1971 in Santa Barbara he fished for rockfish and a decade after that, in 1981, he owned his first boat named "The Alliance." He has the resources and networks to change his lifestyle and career but he stayed in the fishing industry because he was greatly attracted to the fishing lifestyle. He saw the fishing industry as a tribe that would gather together during salmon season, which would make him so much more excited about fishing The U.S.

Unknown Unknown Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary
Mike Hudson Voices of the Bay

Mike Hudson is a very selective Northern California Salmon and Crab Fisherman born in Reno Nevada, raised in Germany, and he currently reside in Berkeley. Hudson comes from a long line of Native American fisherman from Canada. He finds joy in catching fish and going to the Farmer's Market with his wife and seeing the satisfaction in his buyers' faces. Hudson explains to his audience that a fisherman hardly gets lost at sea because of the technologies and gizmos in the boat, and if that fails fisherman analyzes which way the waves and wind blows then sail towards shore.

Unknown Unknown Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary
Tim Thomas Voices of the Bay

While not a fisherman himself, Tim is a master of a history that spans more than the lifetime of any one fisherman. Starting with the indigenous tribes of the area and ending right here in the present, Mr. Thomas relates a captivating story of boom and bust, and an ongoing cycle of life both of the bay and its inhabitants. This unique perspective provides a bird's eye view of the story of fishing in the bay and takes us on a journey through time and centuries of socioeconomic change that have produced the bay we know today.

Unknown Unknown Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary