Karlee Prazak

J407- profile

Fishing to find success

He was three days into it. Three days with no sleep and constant physical exertion from

fishing salmon. He was counting on a digital watch to beep every 30 minutes to stay awake.

Mark Tognazzini was drifting near Point Sur, off the coast of Big Sur. It was 5 p.m., and the sun

was setting.

Crash.

“Oh shit,” he said.

He often to works solo and knew not to panic.

“I put her in reverse until the propeller kicked the shoe back down, got clear of the rocks

and anchored,” he said. He was taking on water, but the internal pump system kept him afloat.

Then he made the calls. First, he radioed the Monterey County Coast Guard, who said

they were on their way. Next, his wife of 30 years, Bonnie.

“It’s like your spouse being on an airplane, and this is their last phone call,” she

said. “The coast guard was on their way, but they can’t be on the spot at the right second all the

time.”

The next call Bonnie received was from Monterey; Mark was safe at the docks.

The split-second lapse in attention cost him 30 days and $25,000 in repairs. But his trip

didn’t end there. Mark spent the next four days fishing in Half Moon Bay, and returned home

with 500 fresh salmon and a lesson learned.

In his 43 years working at sea, this was the Morro Bay-native’s only close call.

“It was my most humbling experience.”

The damaged propeller still hangs as a reminder in Tognazzini's Dockside Restaurant,

one of two restaurants Mark owns in Morro Bay; the other is the Dockside Too Fish Market. This

is where the now 57-year-old fisher/businessman has found success in a difficult industry.

It’s early on a Friday, and the sun beats back the marine layer of fog. The two Dockside

restaurants are vacant at the end of the Embarcadero, closest to Morro Rock. Mark’s boat,

the Bonnie Marietta, is anchored nearby with an empty deck; her signature hydraulic fishing

equipment is locked up in storage. It’s the off season, so he deep-cleaned her before the

season starts in December.

The rumble of a white Dodge pickup breaks the silence as it pulls through an ally and

parks by the fish market.

The license plate reads “MTog,” and out jumps two adult labs.

“Montana. Kora,” a voice yells as they trot up to the fish market’s dockside patio’s locked

gate. Out steps Mark, no taller than 5-foot-10, with a muscular build, wearing a warm jacket,

working bluejeans, sturdy boots and his signature “Tognazzini's Dockside Too Fish Market” cap.

Mark works in an industry consistently named the most dangerous in America’s

workforce. The fatality rate is 116 per 100,000 workers, work hours are around the clock and

compensation rates rise and fall with the tides. But for fishermen, this man-versus-nature career

is their lives — and Mark prefers to do it alone.

“Without a crew, you catch less, but you can net the same because you aren’t paying a

crew,” he said.

Wages and money were at the forefront of Mark’s mind from a young age; this helped

him find his niche in the local industry.

In 1996, prices for his favorite fish, salmon, starting rising due to poor production from

leading fisheries in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Mark felt this was unfair, so he took matters

into his own hands.

“I sold straight off my boat for a lower price.”

This was a first for the historically successful fishing town, and a popular destination for

fishermen since the 1940s. But Mark found success when he brought his fishing mentality to the

docks: “If you know where the fish aren’t, that’s just as important as knowing where they are.”

He took the business to where others weren’t — from his deck to the consumer because

for him, “fishermen are strictly the avenue to the fish for people.”

Mark was the first to let his consumers know when, where and what kind of fish he’d be

selling fresh on the weekends. Plus, he had a website. But pioneering this new concept was

hard work.

Mark’s son, Marc, said he remembers his dad fishing 300 days a year to bring home a

profitable catch. This turned into missed childhood events, but never hard feelings.

“He taught me at a young age it’s hard to raise a family and do that” Marc said. “Its a

hard life, but it’s a rewarding life,”

This work ethic spread throughout his family. Every weekend they worked together

selling fish off the boat from sun up till the ice melted and the fish were sold.

“I would stand and listen to Mark, how he was educating people while talking to them —

it was so much more than selling fish off the boat,” Bonnie said. “People would stand in line for

over an hour and didn’t mind.”

But if you ask Mark, he’d just say he was selling fish for prices he felt were reasonable.

Mark wasn’t born into a fishing family; in fact, he spent most of his youth working on his

uncle’s farm doing odd jobs and splitting the meager 30 cent pay with three of his eight siblings.

He wanted to make his own money — “punch his own time card.”

At 15, he got a job as a retail clerk and fish cutter at Port Morro Fish Market.

Then one day, Mark picked up a knife and said he wanted to learn to fillet. But every

first-timer butchers the fish beyond a usable state, so his boss sent him to the back of the

market with a box of rotting rockfish and a few tips.

“I just started hacking at them until I figured it out.”

Forty-two years and a few minor cuts later, he still accredits Port Morro for teaching him

the high standards for filleting and handling fish that allow him to boast some of the longest fish

shelf life on the Embarcadero.

These experiences led to Mark working weekends and holidays on deep-sea fishing

party boats while in high school. During this time, Mark left the fish industry just once. His first,

and last, job was installing plumbing and pipelines in the desert.

“I said this is fucked up. I got to get back in the ocean”

Steve Clark was the first deckhand he worked under when he returned to the docks, and

the now 72-year-old retiree still remembers meeting the teenage fisherman.

“With his enthusiasm, you could tell he wasn’t definitely wasn’t going to be a farmer,”

Clark said. “He was the kind of guy, when he was a kid, he knew he was going to be a

fishermen — and a good one. You see other guys, and just by talking to them you know they

wouldn’t make it.”

Clark called the fishermen who didn’t make it “one-trippers,” the type of guy who he

couldn’t wait to get off his boat. Unlike the one-trippers, Mark wanted to get off Clark’s boat for

his own reasons — he was done being a student and a part-time fisherman.

“I went to a JC for a couple of years, but that wasn’t working for me,” Mark said.

So, he asked his father for a $1,000 loan, packed up his few belongings, found the

cheapest rent he could near Crawford’s Nautical Academy in San Francisco — he settled on

one for $90 a month — and enrolled. He was left with less than $300.

“I lost 28 pounds in 28 days. I ate one peanut butter sandwich, one hot dog sandwich

and a glass of milk each day,” he said. “It takes some guys six, seven months to get their

license. I got mine in 28 days.”

Mark was officially a “captain,” but he needed one more asset — a boat. In 1981, he

invested in the Bonnie Marietta. The name is a compilation of the “important women in his life:”

his wife, Bonnie; sister, Mary; and mother, Henrietta.

Today, Mark traverses her well-kept, 38-foot deck skillfully. But unlike the Bonnie

Marietta, the years of manual labor show on Mark’s permanently callused hands and sunburned

neck. And behind his religiously-worn glasses that leave permanent indentations on his temple,

are crystal blue eyes that hold his history — the same goes for the Bonnie Marietta; her history

is on the inside.

Mark still has the original map he used to navigate his trips in the 80s, but he doesn’t

use it anymore. His navigation systems are now electronic and bolted bolted to the ceiling

above the antique wheel — he has two of each.

“I like standalone equipment, other guys are turning to one laptop with all the equipment,

but what happens when that fails. I’m either too old school or not technically advanced enough.”

That’s the way the fishing industry is, though — old school — the average age of a

fisherman is 50.

As he walks around the docks, he is stopped every few minutes by someone.

“Captain Mark, what do you think about this,” Marc says, handing him a piece of

albacore.

A few minutes later, “Hey Captain,” says a saxophonist setting up in Fast Eddy’s Music

Corner — named after a captain Mark worked for who was the first to play live music on his

restaurant’s deck.

Finally, a local customer stops by the deck, “Hey Captain Mark, will there be a fish sale

tomorrow?” “No, not this Saturday.”

The captain title only caught on recently, when Bonnie used it around the docks to

differentiate between him and his son. But Mark isn’t a fan of it.

“It’s not me, I’m just not that”

Mark is content running the docks and occasionally fishing.

“The ideal day is when the weather is flat and the fish are biting”