As his crew motored farther out to sea, a pandemic was declared, though Haworth didn’t know it because his radio was broken.
It wasn’t until they were returning weeks later and were within 50 miles (80 kilometers), or about five hours away, that they picked up a signal for their TV to work and learned from the news of the worldwide closures, including in California and the Philippines, where many of his crew members have family.
California on Friday confined its 40 million residents to home in the strictest response yet.
“The second we saw the news, I knew we were screwed,” Haworth said as he drove a boat filled with thousands of pounds of fish toward home. “We were all like, ‘What the hell is going on?’”
The wholesale buyers who agreed to buy the fish reneged, he said.
Haworth was grateful people were lining up — keeping a safe distance apart, of course. The fishermen were also offering home deliveries.
For the past few years, boats have been allowed to sell from the downtown dock on Saturdays as part of a large farmer’s market. Haworth hopes the city will allow the dockside market to stay open regularly during the lockdown.
Local fish advocate Tommy Gomes, known as Tommy the Fishmonger, was helping with the impromptu fish market at the city’s G street dock, allowing only about a dozen people on the dock at a time.
“Wholesalers are stuck with all this fish and they’re not taking more, so fishermen are in a tight spot,” he said. “This stuff doesn’t get better with age, like beef.”
