- [Narrator] On Oregon's south coast,
there's a community bound to the ocean.
You can see it in the daily morning ritual
down at the dock where fishermen
prepare to head out for the daily catch.
- Well, everybody compares me to Jack Sparrow
and the look I have is myself.
I came long before Jack Sparrow,
I'm the real deal, he's not.
- Commercial fishermen like Rodney
are Port Orford's anchor.
It's a tiny, one-stop light town
in an economically depressed county.
But fishing has an outsize presence here.
More than half of Oregon's total nearshore fishing permits
are held by Port Orford fishermen
and the catch they bring in account
for about a third of the local economy.
- I'm feeding hundreds of thousands
of people in my lifetime and that feels good to me.
- Today's catch in particular is a big ticket item.
Dungeness crab.
The single most valuable fishery in Oregon.
In 2017, this single crustacean
reeled in nearly one point five million dollars
for Port Orford, the lion's share
of the town's total landings.
That was a good year, but crabbing can be unpredictable.
- You don't know what you're going to get.
I mean, I've been out in years
where we've caught tens of thousands of pounds in our gear,
and I've been out in years where we haven't caught anything.
- And now the ocean waters may be changing for the worse.
In recent years, marine algae blooms
left behind a toxin called domoic acid.
- The crab concentrate that toxin
in their tissues and they become
toxic to us. So, we can't eat the crab
that have too much domoic acid in them.
- The state delayed the 2018 crabbing season.
Fishermen like Rodney had to wait
and wait until the crab were safe to eat.
Port Orford was finally given the green light
on February first but they missed
the Christmas season, the most profitable
time of year for Dungeness crab.
- A lot of these guys, that was almost a four month layoff
with no work before we went to work.
- This setback comes at a tough time
but Port Orford is no stranger
to cycles of boom and bust.
(upbeat music) Formally founded in 1856,
the town had a lot of promise.
Port Orford sits on the only deep water harbor
in Oregon without a dangerous river bar to cross.
For the settlers who lived here,
that meant more seafaring days per year.
Over time, Port Orford grew into
a major hub for lumber shipping.
The local cedar practically rebuilt
San Francisco after the quake of 1906.
But the lumber industry declined
and the hopes of Port Orford now rest
with its small but persistent fishing fleet.
And folks are finding new ways of living off the ocean.
Sometimes without leaving the dock.
This is dulse. It's an edible seaweed
and it might provide more stable income
for Port Orford.
The global market for edible seaweed
is predicted to reach twenty billion dollars in five years.
- Everything you see here started from five pounds.
I think we're sitting on about
seven hundred pounds of dulse at the moment.
- Local fishermen can grow dulse
in seawater tanks yearlong, unlike seasonal catch like crab.
When it's slim pickings in the ocean,
that means more options in their financial bucket.
Also, fishermen haven't given up on crabbing.
Some, like Steve Shelton, are getting bigger boats
that can go further out and bring in bigger catch.
It's so much bigger, he has to build a new boat trailer.
- My boat I'm on now
I can haul roughly 30 pots to 36 pots.
The new boat's gonna be 39 by 15
and I'll be able to haul 150 pots at one time.
- So, fishermen are leading the way.
You don't invest in a brand new, big boat
with, you know, great capacity
to make a living here if you don't believe
that there's a future.
- I love the ocean and I guess
I've learned so many years to live off of it
that I couldn't change my ways if I wanted to.
- Port Orford is just one of many
coastal Oregon towns dealing with a volatile ocean economy.
Their future depends on people like Rodney
to provide, adapt and lift up a new vision for the coast.
(gentle country music)