Assembly Bill 2026, authored by Assemblymember Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) and introduced Monday, would force the ecommerce industry to phase out some single-use plastic packaging such as plastic mailing envelopes, bubble wrap and air pillows. If amended into law, it would also require brick and mortar stores to keep records of single use plastic products such as bags and document how such products are disposed of, as well as offer recycling bins on-site.

Online superstores, such as Amazon, would be required to phase out such plastics by January 2024. Smaller ecommerce retailers would have until January 2026 more time to find replacement products.

Mark Stone, D-Scotts Valley, co-authored the bill and its predecessor, AB-1371, which did not collect the required 41 state assembly votes — but just by a hair. At one point during the voting session 39 lawmakers had shown support for the legislation.

Like AB-2026, AB-1371 would have mandated online retailers who ship or deliver goods wrapped in single-use plastic packaging to shift to reusable, or recyclable or compostable materials.

Stone told the Sentinel in an interview at the time that the bill was “the low hanging fruit” in terms of plastic legislation.

“Plastic policy, since I have been a legislator, has been a real struggle,” Stone said then.

“It is clear that the unnecessary amount of single-use plastic that proliferates online orders is of serious concern to Californians,” Blacow-Draeger wrote in an email. “I anticipate that California residents will be making their voices more loudly heard this session.”

The CZU Fire Recovery Permit Center Dashboard, published Friday, is a live database that shows where fire survivors are at in the rebuilding process. Those who lost their home in the historic wildfire — which burned roughly 86,500 acres from the Santa Cruz Mountains into San Mateo County — must go through a multistep process before beginning to break ground on a redo. In Santa Cruz County alone, the CZU Complex burned 911 homes.

Prior to submitting a permit to rebuild a single family home, fire survivors must obtain fire safety, environmental health and geologic hazard clearances. According to county dashboard data, 217 fire damaged properties have those clearances. More than half those property owners — 109 — have submitted their application packages to rebuild, whereas 80 have received final approval to break ground.

“We know there’s public interest in these numbers and we want to be transparent with the community as to where we are,” said Santa Cruz County Communications Manager Jason Hoppin. “We still have a long way to go.”

Before property owners can receive such clearances, a debris removal and environmental inspection — or Phase II — must be completed as well. As of August, the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services reported that 100% of fire-scarred properties enrolled in a government cleanup program had been cleared.

Until property owners got that clean bill of health from the state, rebuilds were largely at a standstill, said Hoppin. Officials say there’s no singular reason as to why many have not begun the permitting process.

“There are people that have all three clearances and never come in for a building permit — we’re not sure why — there are other things going on that may be holding people up in the process beyond permitting, whether it be insurance, family or banking issues, or trying to find a builder,” Hoppin said.

Fire survivors have criticized the county’s rebuild procedure, which is carried out by Santa Cruz County Office of Response, Recovery and Resilience, a special department formed in the wake of the CZU Complex.

“It’s completely understandable,” Hoppin said. “Especially if you’ve been traumatized by going through a fire — you want to get done as soon as possible and we want that too.”

Beyond challenging building conditions, a tight labor market and record-breaking inflation, Hoppin cited state septic regulations, which recently were updated.

In September, the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors voted to — in some instances — waive a requirement that fire survivor’s must receive a geologic hazard clearance to rebuild, which many residents said was a major obstacle in the process.

Still, progress is slow-moving and hundreds have not formally begun the process with the Response, Recovery and Resilience office. But Hoppin said in comparison to other California counties impacted by severe wildfires, he believes Santa Cruz is on track.

“There are logistical conditions that have to be dealt with,” Hoppin said. “It’s a difficult area to build in, especially after a fire … there are state requirements to deal with and then some people are held up because of things besides government. What we want to do is make the process as easy and transparent as possible, and this is part of us doing that.”

The studio-quality camera, which captures images in ultrahigh definition 4K video, will help researchers better document the creatures and rock formations which lie beneath the ocean’s surface.

“There are colors, textures, animals that just kind of blended into the background in the past that we will now be able to visualize,” said Lonny Lundsten, institute senior research technician. “It has so much potential.”

In collaboration with DeepSea Power & Light, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute scientists developed the technology, which will be used to capture images of rare jellies, neon corals and hydrothermal vents. The camera’s technology is similar to that of which is used in the Olympics, said MBARI Electrical Engineer Paul Roberts, which track skiers whizzing down mountaintops at 90 mph and ice skaters whirling and hurling through the air.

“When there’s a moment in a sports game that you absolutely have to catch because it’s only going to happen once … I think that’s analogous to some of the things that we do, where you might see an animal very briefly and you have to get a really good shot of it,” Roberts said.

Three years in the making, the MxD SeaCam is enclosed in a special titanium housing that protects delicate camera components from being damaged by the high pressures encountered in the deep sea. Catching a ride on a Remotely Operated Vehicle, or ROV, it can dive to depths of more than 13,000 feet below the ocean’s surface and capture video continuously for 12 hours. So far, the camera has accompanied an ROV on 19 MBARI missions, which range from day trips to week-long expeditions at sea.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, more than 80% of the world’s oceans remain unexplored. Using the MxD SeaCam, researchers have already documented parasitic organisms not seen in the past, Lundsten said.

“We’re seeing the surface of jellies and other animals that we couldn’t see before – it would just be no definition, no contour – and now all of the sudden we’re seeing all these little bumps and ripples on the surface, just textures we didn’t see in the past,” Lundsten said.

The images and videos captured by the camera will become a part of a larger database MBARI researchers have compiled over 35 years, which contains 8.5 million observations of the world’s oceans.

Prior to 2021, dive images were captured in high definition. The MxD SeaCam’s 4K ultra HD resolution and powerful zoom capabilities mean scientists will now be able to more accurately track creatures and geologic features, such as the Monterey submarine Canyon, in the Pacific and beyond.

In November, an ROV equipped with the camera captured an elusive giant phantom jelly. The invertebrate has a 3-foot-wide body and arms that span 33 feet, which presents a conundrum to researchers studying the jelly. Video imaging is vitally important to understand such creatures, said Roberts.

“It’s a hard to access environment for humans. Even when you go down in a vehicle, you don’t always get a great view of what’s there because of constraints on mechanical systems,” Roberts said. “The camera gives you the ability to almost be closer to being there in person. You see more of the colors, resolution and dynamic range you’d see with your eye.”

While the camera will be routinely used for scientific missions, it will also be used to bring the public along on dives, from the comfort of a couch or at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Lundsten anticipates MxD SeaCam footage will air on BBC programs and be used in aquarium exhibits.

That science communication, as climate change impacts seas, is equally important to the research mission, he said.

“Incredible imagery really helps tell the story of the deep sea, and conveys both its beauty and it’s fragility,” Lundsten said.

It stands roughly 3 feet tall and has a more than 5-foot wingspan. And here, form is function. The startup’s drones are specialized to transport heavy loads: firefighting supplies, industrial packages and even human organs for transplants.

“Drones are going to get bigger and we’re leading the way,” said Parallel Flight Technologies CEO Joshua Resnick. “We’re building something that’s an autonomous workhorse, that can actually carry big stuff around.”

Helicopters and aircraft have long been used to fight wildfires and ferry crews to remote locations. But those resources are expensive, often in high demand during peak fire season, and can be limited by bad visibility. Parallel Flight aims to fill that gap.

“What we don’t have are essentially pickup trucks of the sky,” Resnick said. “We don’t have workhorses that can bring supplies to firefighters on the front lines or drop off payloads to do controlled burns, and we don’t have drones that can put small fires out.

Parallel Flight drones are equipped to fly from two to seven hours continuously. Most other industrial drones on the market take to the sky for 15 minutes to an hour.

That, combined with the Firefly’s four propellers and hybrid fuel and electric power system, means it can reach speeds from 60 to 100 mph and carry up to 100 pounds over longer distances compared to competitors, Resnick said.

Another specialty of the long-distance drone? Scaling up prescribed burns.

Those intentionally lit fires — a practice established by Indigenous peoples millennia ago — reduce wildfire risk and provide ecological benefits to plant communities. The Firefly will be able to set 1,000 to 4,000 acres of land on fire in a single flight, according to Resnick. Drones in the sky now lighting prescribed burns only fly for about 10 minutes.

The company also plans to use its drones for industrial and shipping operations. Resnick spoke of the drones aiding in construction of wind turbines, carrying heavy magnets to map aquifers, dropping off packages to remote Arctic villages and supplying rural areas with crucial medical equipment.

Parallel Flight has institutional backing, too.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service’s parent agency, has supplied the company with $750,000 in grants. The National Science Foundation and NASA have also put up cash to fund the startup’s research.

The idea for Parallel Flight ignited in 2017, when the Tubbs Fire devastated parts of Santa Rosa. Later that year, the Bear Fire erupted in Boulder Creek, close to Resnick’s home.

“I had friends in Santa Rosa who lost their homes. Then we had a smaller fire in Boulder Creek,” Resnick said. “My house is in the Santa Cruz Mountains, not too far from there … so that was kind of a wake-up call.”

Firefighting agencies such as Cal Fire and the Forest Service already send drones into the sky to scout smoke and monitor fire behavior.

But Resnick, who co-founded the company with David Adams and Bobby Hulter, discovered no one was flying drones to aid wildland firefighters with supply drops.

That’s largely because many drones can’t go the distance when it comes to enough battery life and ferrying supplies. Parallel Flight aims to aid wildland firefighters by delivering tools, such as chainsaws and fuel, in remote locations.

“If you get a hot meal or a fresh sandwich, if you don’t have to hike as far to get your supplies … this all makes the firefighters more efficient, increases their stamina and makes them safer,” Resnick said.

Maxing out its carrying capacity at 100 pounds, the drone can complete a two-and-a-half-hour flight. But the company plans to build out drones that can hold up to 1,000 pounds of gear.

Parallel Flight sits on a campus shared with private school Monterey Bay Academy, where acres of empty fields stretch out to meet the coast. It’s perfect flying grounds for drones.

The aircraft is preprogrammed to travel certain distances and hit targets on a flight course. But when it comes to actually piloting, the drone can do that by itself.

“When you’re tuning the aircraft, it’s almost like a baby is learning to walk,” Resnick said. “It has a lot to learn before it can actually control those muscles. Then once it knows how to walk, you can take a step back and say, ‘Just follow this path’.”

Inside the Firefly, hundreds of sensors alert the drone’s computer to what’s happening in the airspace it is flying through. The computer then takes that information — air pressure, temperature, acceleration data — and adjusts accordingly.

At the same time, engineers monitor critical information streaming from the aircraft: GPS data, battery voltages, fuel levels and rotor speeds.

Resnick and the team are pushing the drone’s limits, before Firefly rolls out to its first customers sometime this year.

Drones have already been sent into airspace to light prescribed burns. These aircraft deploy so-called “dragon eggs” — containing potassium permanganate — that ignite when injected with coolant.

But those flights are short-lasting. Prescribed burns performed in helicopters have turned deadly and can be imprecise in targeting specific types of vegetation.

A Parallel Flight drone can carry 4,000 dragon eggs, according to Resnick, whereas drones currently lighting prescribed fires only take 400 on board. The Firefly will be able to ignite upward of 2,000 acres in a trip, depending on vegetation dryness and equipment weight.

Jared Childress, burn coordinator with the Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association, said he’s excited for such technology to come online.

“To go from ‘maybe we could burn 100 acres in a day’ to 1,000 acres in a day is obviously a game-changer,” Childress said. “And to do so at an affordable cost is a big deal.”

Currently, the company produces about a drone a month, Resnick said.

But how quickly the aircraft will become standardized in the wildland firefighting and land management worlds remains to be seen.

Fireflies taking flight to complete industrial jobs, Resnick predicts, will happen in the nearer term, since most workers in those industries don’t face the same dangers firefighters do.

But the company’s mission to address increasing wildfire risk remains front and center.

The notice gives people 72 hours to pack up and leave the area. On Monday morning, cleanup and evictions will be handled by Caltrans in partnership with the CHP, according to Kevin Drabinski, Caltrans public information officer.

Wayne Bloechl is a pancreatic cancer survivor whose treatments have left him wheelchair-bound. He’s been camping near the highway for a couple of nights after leaving a medical care facility.

“Nobody wants to have humanity sitting on the side of the road,” Bloechl said. “If you can hide us, that’s the best thing for everybody, but unfortunately there’s too many people.”

Bloechl has lived in Santa Cruz County for 35 years, is a geologist by training, and formerly taught at Cabrillo College. The 60-year-old said after years in hospitals and long-term treatment facilities, he was itching to be outside.

“I just couldn’t take being in that anymore, it’s a slow death and I just wanted to be out in the world while I can,” Bloechl said.

“Everything I’ve had is gone, it’s hard to keep your chin up,” Bloechl said, tearing up. “I don’t know what to do.”

The eviction has been a long time coming — Highway 1 and River Street are set to undergo construction to widen the area. The city’s public works project will include the building of additional traffic and bicycle lanes, among other public works improvements.

Still, many residents of the highway encampments, such as Bloechl, don’t have a clear path forward.

According to Jason Hoppin, Santa Cruz County communications manager, there are currently more than 800 people staying in various shelter types. That includes COVID-19 state-funded Project Roomkey, where motels are rented out to unhoused people who are at greater risk of the virus, as well as semi-congregate shelters at Veteran’s Halls, and the National Guard Armory shelter.

“We don’t have really a great deal of capacity in that system, and we still have hundreds and hundreds of people on waiting lists to get into that system,” Hoppin said.

Those accepted into various shelter programs are prioritized based on medical need, Hoppin explained.

“There’s not enough shelter in the county, and the city is doing the very best we can with the resources we have available, within its purview — like the Benchlands, where we have 120 people camping,” City Communications Manager Elizabeth Smith said.

The Benchlands is a city-managed camp in San Lorenzo Park, but Smith said there are only a “few spots” left there for the unhoused.

While both city and county officials deferred to Caltrans when asked if additional spaces were being created for those evicted, Caltrans Public Information Officer Kevin Drabinski said their efforts go so far.

“We have long worked with, and continue to work with the city and county of Santa Cruz,” Drabinski said. “When we say we’ve been working with city and county, and trying to get people into safer situations as available, we mean through those resources.”

Brent Adams, who runs Footbridge Services, providing showers and other services to unhoused people, more recently opened up a managed “agreement camp” at Harvey West. Residents must opt-in to the community’s guidelines to be able to stay at the camp.

More should have been done to assist highway campers in transitioning to different living situations, Adams said.

“The city, county and state play hot potato with this issue,” Adams said, adding the community at large is also a part of addressing homelessness in Santa Cruz.

“I think ultimately, we as community members, don’t find ourselves responsible for this, and they’re our neighbors. We’ve all let these people down,” Adams said.

“We all had an opportunity to do something before this moment and we didn’t, so here it is.”

According to a letter obtained by the Sentinel, Wildfire Defense Systems firefighters could be dispatched beginning April 1, to the homes of policyholders in California, Arizona, Washington, Colorado and Oregon. The private firm provides wildland firefighting and property defense services at a “wildfire-agency scale,” according to its website.

“If your home is located in an area within an active wildfire, WDS may visit your property to assess the threat and may take proactive measures,” the State Farm letter reads.

Actions taken by Wildfire Defense Systems, could include extinguishing fires or embers on the property of the insured, applying a flame-retardant gel, clearing brush and leaf litter away from the home and setting up sprinkler systems.

“This service is not about fighting wildfires but about protecting property, and we believe it is an important benefit to our customer. While Wildfire Defense Systems Inc. focuses on protecting property, firefighters can concentrate on fighting the wildfire,” State Farm Spokesperson Jordi Ortega wrote in an email.

Beginning in 2020, the insurance company began offering wildfire mitigation services as a pilot program with Wildfire Defense Systems to customers in Oregon and Colorado.

In 2008, the private wildfire defense firm launched wildfire loss-prevention programs for insurance agencies, and states it is “the nation’s largest insurer wildfire service provider.”

“We’re a contributor, we don’t replace or supplant or assume the responsibility of any of the public sector firefighters or resources on the incident,” David Torgerson, president of the Bozeman-based Wildfire Defense Systems said. “We simply provide additional support and help insured properties so they have a better chance of surviving the fire.”

Before beginning work on a wildland fire, Torgerson said firm crews must get permission from the state or federal agency leading the response, to access insured properties.

The firm uses the same methodology federal and state firefighting agencies use to assess which homes are most at risk, Torgerson said. Wildfire Defense System crews defend those most vulnerable insured properties first.

Last year, the company responded to more than 160 wildfires across the U.S.

According to a press release, these efforts were spurred after workers were asked to come back to the bookshop without health care or a voice in safety measures, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Workers also are requesting increased hourly wages.

For the union to form, the vote needed to pass by more than 50% voting to unionize. The vote to unionize captured 58% of the vote.

Next, workers must negotiate a contract with management. In December, Casey Coonerty Protti, the long-time owner of Bookshop Santa Cruz, told the Sentinel that she would work with employees if they successfully unionized.

“Bookshop’s general stance is that if our workforce votes to unionize that we will happily work with them to continue to make Bookshop the best place it can be,” Coonerty Protti said.

Jessica Irish, who works at Bookshop Santa Cruz, wrote a Guest Commentary in a December Sentinel edition. Irish voiced her reasoning for supporting the formation of a union:

“With this union, we are harnessing that power and using it to further invest in our community, and in the bookstore that we love. Our union will allow us to feel confident in our positions at Bookshop Santa Cruz, granting us job security during a pandemic, giving us the power to bargain on behalf of the most vulnerable members of our team, and creating the opportunity for every employee to invest in solutions that will uplift the bookstore,” Irish wrote.

At noon Saturday, Bookshop Santa Cruz workers will hold a rally in front of the iconic shop, according to Veronica Hamilton, a Democratic Socialists of America local chapter organizer who’s been working with bookshop employees. There, representatives from different unions will be speaking on the decision and what it means for service workers in Santa Cruz at-large, according to Hamilton.

Last fall, during the raspberry season, a crew member in his cohort got sick with COVID-19. According to Naranjo, the grower laid him and the rest of the crew off for two weeks without pay, as a result. Then, Naranjo’s right shoulder started to hurt and his doctor told him he wasn’t in a condition to work, so he’s been on disability for four months.

Still, Naranjo said he wants to get back in the fields, to be protected from COVID-19 – and that means getting vaccinated.

“I’m concerned about the side effects on my body from the vaccine, but I would still take it,” Naranjo said through a translator.

At this point, Naranjo said he hasn’t been contacted by the county or community-based organizations about the vaccine.

“If I see a lot of other farmworkers and people like me taking the vaccine, that’s an encouragement to take it, although it’s scary,” Naranjo said.

The majority of farmworkers remain unvaccinated, as health care providers struggle to inoculate those aged 65 and up across Santa Cruz County. Pop-up clinics could fill some of that gap, though. Wednesday marked the first local mass COVID-19 vaccination clinic aimed at inoculating Santa Cruz County agricultural workers, in Watsonville.

Thomas Am Rhein, the co-chair of the Santa Cruz County Farm Bureau’s COVID task force, echoed Naranjo’s sentiment during Wednesday’s vaccination clinic in Watsonville — put on by Dignity Health Dominican Hospital, the Farm Bureau, and the California Strawberry Commission.

“Many of the people who work through the winter are key people, crew leaders…if we could get some of those people through a vaccine program — as the harvest folks and larger crews come in in a few weeks — they’ll set an example that this is a good thing,” Am Rhein said.

The clinic vaccinated 486 local agricultural workers Wednesday, that includes harvesters, greenhouse workers, poultry industry employees as well as grain and fiber production workers. It aims to vaccinate 500 additional agricultural workers this coming Friday. The second round of shots, required for the vaccination to be effective, will take place in approximately three weeks.

But vaccine doses are still tight and some community members’, such as Naranjo, concerned about vaccine effects. Any campaign’s success will largely depend on successful outreach and education, an easy-to-access signup process as well as centrally located mass vaccination sites, advocates and officials say. Further complicating efforts is that this time of year many growers are in their slow season and fewer workers are on the ground.

Wednesday’s clinic simply required agricultural workers full name and date of birth, according to Paul Angelo, disaster coordinator with Dominican Hospital.

Making the vaccination process as anxiety-free as possible will be key, Santa Cruz County Agricultural Commissioner Juan Hidalgo said.

“We need to make sure that people understand that the vaccine is available to anyone, regardless of their migratory status,” Hidalgo said. That is going to be absolutely essential, that people understand that, and that message gets across.”

Hidalgo’s agency estimates at peak season, around June, there are 9,000 farmworkers on the ground. But as many local fields sit idle now, that staffing number is currently much lower.

That presents a double-edge sword, Hidalgo said: on one hand, since there are fewer farmworkers in the fields, with current limited quantities of vaccine, Hidalgo said it won’t be as challenging to vaccinate those actively in jobs.

At the same time, Hidalgo and advocates say, many farmworkers are currently unemployed, but still living in Santa Cruz and the Monterey Bay area, waiting for work to start up. It’s a challenge to reach out to farmworkers who aren’t in the fields now, Hidalgo said. And many of those community members are undocumented, with the Center for Farmworker families estimating up to 83% of local farmworkers have an unauthorized immigration status.

Taking the Burden of COVID-19

At-large, the Pajaro Valley community has been hit exceptionally hard by coronavirus. More than 54% of all documented cases of COVID-19 in Santa Cruz County have been within the Latino community – which only accounts for 33% of the county’s total population.

A similar disparity can be seen in the geographic data – 60% of all COVID-19 cases have clustered in South Santa Cruz County, while only 29% of the total population reside.

“If we’re really serious about curbing case count in Santa Cruz County, we need to begin to tackle the hot spot and the hot spots has continuously been the Pajaro valley,” Erica Padilla-Chavez, CEO of Pajaro Valley Prevention and Student Assistance told the Sentinel.

“We’ve got 11 months of data to show that. We’ve got 11 months of data to show that death rate, has been here. Contagion has been here,” Padilla-Chavez said.

Padilla-Chavez is heartened by Wednesday’s clinic, and said that model must be scaled up. The nonprofit leader wants to see coordinated messaging, and vaccination campaign efforts across agencies and community organizations.

Efforts to date

Nonprofits including Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County, Pajaro Valley Prevention and Student Assistance, and Center for Farmworker Families, as well as clinics such as Salud Para la Gente have been doing coronavirus outreach to Santa Cruz County’s farmworker population, and at-large the region’s Latino community. The South County COVID Support & Triage Group, which includes many of these organizations, gathers every week to assess the COVID-19 pandemic response in the region.

Since mid-January, Hidalgo, the county agricultural commissioner, has been convening weekly meetings with stakeholders, the Farm Bureau, and other organizations on how to best approach vaccinating agricultural workers. The County COVID-19 Ag Liaison, Socorro Gutierrez, has been attending those meetings.

“In terms of concrete efforts, we are in the planning phases,” Gutierrez said.

Fluctuating state guidance on vaccination prioritization, and shifting vaccine supplies has meant challenges in inoculating farmworkers, Gutierrez said.

“Vaccine availability is very fluid. And it’s definitely outside of our local control. So it all depends on availability of vaccine,” Gutierrez said.

At this point, there’s been no coordinated campaign launched to educate, recruit and vaccinate local farmworkers. That’s largely a function of scarcity of vaccines, according to the county. And the fact that California Department of Public Health guidelines means that Santa Cruz County is still following and fulfilling vaccinations in an age-ordered based system, rather than occupation-based prioritization.

The County Public Health Division is still finishing vaccinating the 75 and older age group, and next will begin vaccinating the 65 and older population. Last month, State Epidemiologist, Dr. Erica Pan, estimated that it could take up until June for that 65 age group to be vaccinated.

“There’s not enough vaccine to meet demand right now. We’re getting tons of occupational-based interest, but we’re going to be in the 65-plus group for a while,” Jason Hoppin, county communications manager, said.

If a farmworker is in a current age-criteria vaccination group, their occupational status may boost their chances of getting a vaccine, according to Hoppin.

While the county public health division is leading vaccination efforts for farmworkers – in part because many in that community don’t have health insurance – other organizations and medical providers, such as Dignity Health–Dominican Hospital are involved in the effort, too.

“One of our missions is to support the community and that’s what we’ve been doing, but if our vaccine availability changes then some of that might change… we’re just not sure, what the future is going to look like,” Paul Angelo with Dominican Hospital said.

According to the county, the best chance farmworkers who are not age-eligible currently have at being vaccinated for COVID-19 is through pop-up mass vaccination sites, such as the one Dignity Health — Dominican Hospital and the Farm Bureau hosted Wednesday.

Still, those pop-up sites are inconsistent, and happen quickly, so workers must be ready to get the call. This week’s site was set up in a matter of days, and growers directly contacted workers through the phone to get sign-ups.

Barriers to access

Even when appointments open up to Santa Cruz County’s agricultural workers, many vaccinations are currently scheduled through health care providers’ websites, or on online portals.

MariaElena de la Garza, executive director of Community Action Board of Santa Cruz, worries about that. Those vulnerable communities, she said, often don’t have access to the internet.

“All of our systems are going online, with meetings and submitting applications online, and we have segments of our community that don’t have access. There’s just barriers that exist for people to access the support,” de la Garza said.

Beyond digital-access challenges, language barriers exist. Many indigenous farmworker families in Santa Cruz County speak Mixteco, which is an oral language, not communicated through the written word, or Triqui, an indigenous language spoken by the Trique people of Mexico. De la Garza and others want to see outreach efforts and resources put toward reaching those indigenous communities.

“Collectively, we do not have a system to reach out to a grandmother who speaks Mixteco, who takes care of her kids’ children… we don’t have a system that is readily accessible, that can touch necessarily that abuelita — that grandma — with the information she needs to ensure she gets the vaccine,” de la Garza said.

Many farmworkers are forced to live in multigenerational homes, as a result of lower-than-average wages, and the high cost of living on the Central Coast. Those living situations also present a higher risk for virus transmission.

Trust, established through outreach and education, will be paramount in the success of vaccinating farmworkers, their families, and at-large the Latino community of south county, de la Garza said. In order to do that, boots-on-the ground and when possible, safe, in-person efforts, involving county agencies, nonprofits, food banks and churches, will be crucial, de la Garza said.

“We’ve learned in this pandemic is that our agricultural community is essential. They work every day to ensure that we have food on our table,” de la Garza said.

But even with the societal reckoning that farmworkers are crucial, Naranjo, who’s 62, is just fighting to get back to work and feel safe doing his job.

“The word ‘essential’ is a very nice word, but it’s not the reality in the fields,” Naranjo said, through the translator.

He’s still not sure when his turn will come for the COVID-19 vaccine.

“Not enough has been done for farmworkers,” Naranjo said. “The work we do, we deserve it.”

Humpbacks are still actively feeding in the Monterey Bay, and north into Santa Cruz waters, according to Ryan Bartling, a senior environmental scientist for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife Marine Region. The agency has been conducting aerial and ship surveys from the Humboldt coast, to the California-Mexico border.

“There are a large number of humpback whales still foraging off our coast,” Bartling said. “If we were to allow the fishery to proceed as planned, there’s conceivably a great risk of entanglement.”

Even still, there are potentials for further delays in the season. In mid-November, the agency will reassess whale entanglement risk and evaluate if the now scheduled Dec. 1 opening date is feasible.

The recreational crabbing season opened Saturday.

Whale entanglements in the Monterey Bay Area are not a new issue. Through the fall, the Pacific Ocean is a rich feeding ground for humpback, grey and blue whales. As whales move through waters off the Central Coast, they can get caught in various types of fishing gear, including Dungeness crab gear.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has tracked a weekly average of more than 11 whales per survey, in a zone that stretches from the northern Santa Cruz coast, south to Big Sur waters.

Under new regulations that went into effect Nov.1, the agency can delay the opening of crabbing season if the average of whales sighted per week exceeds five. As part of those regulations, the agency can also make in-season changes.

Overall, whale entanglements in California have decreased in recent years. The National Marine Fisheries Service reports in 2019 there were 17 entanglements in California, and 30 in 2018. That’s compared to highs of 57 and 66 in 2015 and 2016, respectively.

Bartling thinks the overall decrease in entanglements is in part because of actions taken by the Department of Fish and Wildlife and others, to reduce the risk of whale run-ins with fishing gear.

“A season delay is more recoverable than losing the season entirely due to a high number of entanglements,” Bartling said.

Still, for a waning local commercial fishing industry, that’s already taken financial hits this year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, not being able to sell Thanksgiving crab is a gut punch.

“Our season just keeps getting cut narrower and narrower,” local crabber Dave Toriumi said. “I just don’t see the crabbing industry in Monterey Bay surviving.”

Toriumi, who fishes out of Moss Landing and Santa Cruz, relies heavily on earnings from salmon and crab season. The crab season delay, he estimates, could cost him and other small commercial fishing businesses anywhere from $20,000 to $60,000.

Crab is the first major money-making opportunity after salmon season ends for mom and pop fishing operations. And money is especially tight during those in-between months.

“We’re literally just trying to pay our bills and not go under,” Toriumi said.

Mike Conroy, the executive director for the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, said the impacts of the delay are wide-ranging.

“That Thanksgiving market can’t be recovered,” Conroy said. “It’s not just crabbers who are harmed by this though, it’s the processors, the offloaders, the fishing vessel crews, the restaurants, and the seafood consumers.”

But beyond that, Toriumi said this year’s delay means many on the Central Coast will be without an endearing holiday tradition.

“It’s always really cool to hear from friends and family saying ‘we had crab for Thanksgiving,’ ” Toriumi said. “Just knowing you’re a part of that industry, and that tradition… it’s so sad it’s going to be thrown away for us.”