MORRO BAY, Calif. — Just about everyone on the docks knows the Gianninis.
For 46 years, the family has run a marine supply house a couple of blocks from the wharf. When times were good, they would outfit whole fleets from aisles crammed with such items as tiny brass grommets and huge spools that could spin out miles of line and countless acres of net. When times weren't so good, they would carry debt-ridden fishermen on their books season after season -- until the next big haul, or maybe the one after that.
But that was before competition from cheap imported fish, before diesel fuel that runs upward of $3 a gallon and before environmental rules that severely limit the amount of fish a fisherman can catch, and when and where and how.
Now the fishing fleet at Morro Bay is down from several hundred boats to perhaps 50. And, amid coils of anchor chain and crates of engine parts, Giannini's is hung with hand-painted signs that say, in big red letters: "ALL SALES FINAL."
In a month or so, the business will close for good.
On a cold morning in a back room of the store's nearly vacant second floor, 90-year-old Joe Giannini sat with his daughter-in-law Eileen, who has run Giannini's Marine Service & Equipment in its waning days. Wearily, Giannini, a trim man with a crown of white hair and a voice that still can boom through the fog, issued an obituary for the way of life that has defined his community for generations.
"When you think about it, it breaks your heart," he said. "But there's just no future here."
In 1973, Giannini sold the store he had established 13 years earlier to his son Jody, who had started working there in high school. But, beset by health problems and depressed over the store's prospects, Jody, a well-known advocate for the local fishing industry, committed suicide last June. He was 57.
"He knew the business couldn't be a business much longer," said Eileen, his widow, her eyes filling with tears. "His biggest regret was shutting down what his dad started."
Joe Giannini pursed his lips and nodded. He is a former mayor of Morro Bay, a former publisher of the town newspaper, a former commercial fisherman -- and soon he will be a former owner of a defunct business that served a dying industry.
In its day, the store was so successful that it sprawled into an adjacent building. Shelves that now are just about bare were piled high with hip waders and rubber boots, bluejeans and yellow slickers, coils of rope, anchors of every size, bilge pumps, diesel stoves, hydraulic whatnots and steel chains with links as big as a fist.
