April 2024 - Director's Corner

By Melissa Mahoney - April 9, 2024

Trent Wakenright illustrating the Moss Landing round table meeting in late March

In early March, after many weeks of outreach and planning, we held our first community roundtable meeting in Moss Landing to continue progress on one of our top priorities: improving working waterfront infrastructure. As part of the Future of Blue Initiative, we gathered with local fishermen, seafood related business owners, and representatives from Monterey County and Moss Landing Marine Labs (MLML) to discuss what a thriving and resilient waterfront community could look like.

Given MLML’s future plans to re-develop their marine operations facilities, they were interested in understanding the fishing community’s infrastructure needs. Knowing full well that development costs will be significant and time consuming, they are committed to ensuring community support and input in the hope of not only providing great amenities for students, but a better outcome for all. 

With our partner, Regenerative California, MBFT acted as a facilitator and convenor, a role that we are well suited for. With the help of a talented graphic recorder, Trent Wakenright (Marker Ninja), we visually captured the discussion and have come away with a set of ideas as a touchstone for what might be. The chance to meet directly with community members and come up with new ways to help each other was inspiring!

There is much work to be done to design, fund and build out truly thriving and viable working waterfront communities. But after many months of planning, it feels good to have launched together. This month we’ll continue our outreach by presenting to the Monterey County Economic Development Committee on April 20th, Moss Landing Harbor Commission on April 23rd, and asking for their support of the Future of Blue Initiative. If you have interest in this initiative and want to be involved, reach out to us at info@mbfishtrust.org.