Go out of the way to protect otters and sea lions and you get more sharks.
Researchers say 2016 has been an interesting year for great white sharks in the Monterey Bay. Sean Van Sommeran with the Pelagic Shark Research Foundation monitors white shark activity and in 2016 his team recorded 12 juvenile great whites. Until 2014 there were no recorded sightings of juvenile white sharks.
Go out of the way to attract tourists and you get more crime.
Is this what we hire?
Salinas police arrested a 35-year-old man on Thursday on charges of unlawful sex with a minor. The alleged victim is a 17-year-old girl.
Juan Govea was a well-liked teacher at Salinas High School until about six months ago when he wrapped up the 2015-16 school year and left for a new job at the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History, where he is currently the director of exhibits and education.
He taught biology at Salinas High for 11 years before going to the museum.
Govea faces two felony charges connected to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, and one misdemeanor charge of annoying or molesting a child.
City wants more Cannery Row style franchise stores and their sky high rents. Times are changing, catch a part of the Old Fisherman’s Wharf while it’s still there.
Balesteri said the city wanted to double the rent at the location in the new lease, and while he did not give the exact price, he said the proposed rent was in the neighborhood of $9,000 a month.
The space Balesteri’s rented included three business fronts, in addition to the coffee shop and the gift shop the owner of Paluca Trattoria sublet the restaurant space. Paluca will remain open and has worked out a separate deal with the city.
Balesteri’s is the first of two family owned businesses vacating the wharf over lease negotiation problems. Liberty Fish is not re-upping its lease and is expected to leave early in 2017.
Another long time wharf shop to pack up and not come back.
Liberty Fish Company, a seafood and fish market that’s
been in operation on Wharf 1 since 1950, will be closing by the end of January, according to both its owner Lucy Ann Higuera and Monterey officials.
Higuera who runs the business with her sisters Mary Liguori and Donna Duvall and her son Nick, said she was caught off guard when she recently received a letter to vacate.
Higuera said the businesses that made the wharf what it is are now steadily disappearing.
“We remodeled our building, we paid for the pilings,” said Higuera, noting that they hope to re-open in a different location. “After I walk off, it will be the last time I come on this wharf.”
Gang hits, knife fights, it just aint as safe anymore.
The gunman who Monterey police believe murdered a 28-year-old man on Cannery Row last month was identified Tuesday as Jorge Luis Mendoza.
The murder victim, Raul Melendez of Monterey, was followed from the restaurant to the Cannery Row Parking Garage on Wave Street at 1:40 a.m. on Nov. 23. He was shot multiple times. He was transported from the bloody scene to Natividad’s trauma center, where he died.
Monterey police also released the names of the men who were behind a double stabbing during a fight at the Blue Fin Billiards and Cafe at 685 Cannery Row.
Joel Robledo, 40, of Salinas and Frank Guzman II, 27, of Castroville, stabbed each other while fighting on Dec. 3.
Police described the two men as “rival gang members from Castroville and Salinas.”
Just because it’s not Salinas or Watsonville doesn’t make it any safer.
Jorge Luis Mendoza, 21, is wanted by the Monterey Police Department as the possible culprit in the killing of Raul Melendez, 28, who was shot Nov. 23 at the entrance to the Cannery Row parking garage on Wave Street.
Monterey police detectives say Mendoza is a gang member who most recently lived in Salinas. He’s currently on parole for assault with a deadly weapon and is considered armed and dangerous.
Melendez suffered several gunshot wounds and was transported to Natividad Medical Center, where he died of his injuries.
Monterey investigators also identified the men who stabbed each other Saturday at the Blue Fin Billiards and Café, as Joel Robledo, 40, of Salinas and Frank Guzman, 27, of Castroville. Both men were transported to Natividad Medical Center for their injuries.
Wonder why.
According to a population census taken on Nov. 25 by husband and wife Thom and Kim Akeman, volunteers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s shoreline program Bay Net, the Pacific Grove Harbor seal population has declined by one-third. Numbers have plunged from about 700 individuals, based on preliminary counts taken by Monterey Bay Aquarium researcher Teri Nicholson in the 1990s, to fewer than 500 in the last couple of years, the Akemans reported. Uncharacteristically warm waters, which depleted the marine environment of oxygen and food, are to blame, they added.