The Surfer-fishers of Monterey Bay

Calder Deyerle, photo credit: David Hills

Commercial fishing is unique: There’s no 9-to-5, no standardized wage, and no regularity to the schedule. In short, commercial fishing is a lifestyle more than a profession, and one that is tuned to the ebb and flow of the tide and the life cycles of wild fish. For many the water is not just an office, but a playground with a cadre of Monterey Bay fishermen also moonlighting as elite surfers who ride the giant—often 50-plus foot—waves of Monterey County and beyond.

“With both surfing and fishing you’re out in this cool environment, seeing amazing things, testing yourself against nature with a goal in mind,” says Calder Deyerle, who fishes for Dungeness crab, king salmon, California halibut, black cod, and rockfish out of Moss Landing on the F/V Sea Harvester. “For me, it’s almost one and the same.”

From Santa Cruz to Moss Landing and Monterey, every port boasts surfers who command respect on the water. The late Peter Davi was a commercial fisherman and professional surfer, and his son Jake has followed in his father’s steps chasing both fish and heavy swell. In Moss Landing the Deyerle family vaunts generations of fisher-surfers and in Santa Cruz the commercial fishing fleet includes elite surfers like Matt Rockhold and Jason “Ratboy” Collins who both pioneered aerial maneuvers in the 1990s. 

Matt Rockhold

“Surfing and fishing go hand in hand,” says Rockhold, who fishes for rock crab, California halibut, and lingcod on the F/V Friendliest Catch and also serves as marketing director for Buell Wetsuits. “When it’s flat you fish when there’s waves you surf—it’s utilizing the ocean to the fullest.”

The origin of the Deyerle family’s businesses—Sea Harvest restaurants and markets in Moss Landing, Monterey, and Carmel, and their wholesale company Deyerle Brothers Seafood in Moss Landing—comes from two brothers looking to support their surf habit. In the late 1970s, Richard and Daniel Deyerle wanted to find a way to make a living close to the water with enough flexibility that work wouldn’t interfere with surfing. They turned to commercial fishing, where they wouldn’t just work close to the water, but on it.

“I saw commercial fishing as a way not to have a real job,” says Daniel Deyerle, Calder’s uncle, who still surfs regularly as he approaches his mid-60s.

Daniel and his brother caught the surfing bug early as teenagers living in Pacific Grove in the 1970s. They shot a surf movie, Peninsula Perfection, on Super 8 film and soon after started commercial fishing for rock cod from a skiff off Mill Creek in Big Sur—all while still in high school. Lacking a market, they put out ads in the local newspaper and sold directly to consumers and by their early 20s they opened Sea Harvest Fish Market in Monterey. As they entered new fisheries and expanded their business, they continued to find time to paddle out and catch waves up and down the Central Coast.

“I’ve probably surfed more than the average person, well, probably a lot more,” Daniel says. “You either have a love of the ocean or you don’t. I appreciate the ocean and the solitude, it’s a good life.”

Calder and his brother Walter continued on in their father and uncle’s footsteps, chasing waves and fish on Monterey Bay. While Calder grew up working on his family’s fishing boat, he says his initial desire to pursue fishing as a profession was to support his surfing ambitions. He surfed competitively, traveling up and down the California coast for competitions—often with his friend Jake Davi—and has chased some of the largest waves on earth in Tahiti, Chile, Hawaii and beyond.

Calder made a Monterey-centric surf film in partnership with professional skateboarder and Monterey local Alex White around 2008 called Monterey Purple. The title pays homage to the legendary 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival that brought the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan to the coastal city. The movie is a who’s who of the Monterey Bay surf scene, including both Peter and Jake Davi. He also pulled footage from Peninsula Perfection, showing generations of surfer-fishers.

For Jake Davi commercial fishing goes back five-generations in Monterey to the sardine boom of the 1930s and likely generations more in Sicily. His father crewed on sardine and squid boats to subsidize his income from professional surfing, but the surfing lifestyle led the Davi family to split time between the North Shore of O’ahu and Monterey County. The elder Davi became so well-known at the Banzai Pipeline—a notoriously competitive break on the North Shore, he earned the nickname “Pipeline Pete.” He tragically died in 2007 as he paddled in after surfing 70-foot waves at Pescadero Point, aka Ghost Tree, off Pebble Beach.

While Peter Davi was an internationally known surfer, commercial fishing was in his blood. He told the Oakland Tribune in a 2004 article that he began fishing when he visited family in Sicily as a teenager. “He said of commercial fishing, “I love it…I like being at sea.”

Like his father, Jake Davi has also spent years working on squid and sardine seiners, and recently set out on his own acquiring the 26-foot F/V Native to troll for king salmon. The work is tough, with long hours and a grinding schedule, but when the work is done it’s done, giving him ample time for surf trips to Indonesia, Tahiti, and Mexico among other world-class destinations.

Jake Davi

“The ocean is super special for me, it’s a healing place that gives me a lot of solace,” Jake says. “At the same, I enjoy the adrenaline and excitement…surfing and fishing are pretty unique in that way.”

For Matt Rockhold, commercial fishing was a way to stay on the water and earn more money when he wasn’t traveling the world and surfing competitively. He started commercial fishing for California halibut and lingcod in 2001 during the prime of his surfing career. Just two years prior, 1999, Rockhold ranked second in the world in the Surfing Magazine Airshow Series. He was also featured on the cover of Transworld Surf in 2001 and Surfing Magazine in 2003. As his surfing career was slowing down he started fishing for rock crab in 2012.

Monterey Bay is known for many things, including a rich history of commercial fishing—with a pioneering turn to sustainable harvest in the recent decades, a pristine marine seascape, and world-class surf breaks. For those like Rockhold and the Deyerle and Davi families, the ocean serves as a place of both work and play, yet the connection is deeper than that binary, Jake Davi says. The two pursuits foster a deep reverence for the marine environment and great concern for its protection.