On land and at sea, two men grapple with a cursed summer

Greg Ambiel and John Lupul live about 100 miles apart. One earns his living fishing salmon. The other owns a small tomato sales company. But in many ways their stories are one.

In this summer of discontent marked by skyrocketing fuel prices, home foreclosures, bank failures and sagging stock markets, both men worry like all Americans. But for Ambiel and Lupul, a pair of economic curses appeared out of nowhere to threaten their livelihoods.

For the first time in history, the federal government has shut down the West Coast's ocean salmon season - putting Ambiel's life and work on hold - after scientists detected a dramatic drop in the number of adult Chinook returning to the Sacramento River to spawn.

Lupul, 35, is suffering from the aftermath of a nationwide salmonella outbreak - initially linked to tomatoes - that has already resulted in losses of more than $100 million nationwide.

Perhaps the cruelest part of their story is that salmon fishermen and tomato farmers both expected banner years.

It's mid-July, and Ambiel, a 40-year-old Scotts Valley resident, should be fishing. But his 48-foot salmon troller - the Tasu - is docked at Pillar Point north of Half Moon Bay.

When he steps onto the stilled, wooden boat, the Santa Cruz County native can still conjure the rush of chasing salmon through the deep canyons of the Monterey Bay and the chilly waters off the Farallon Islands and Fort Bragg. He still imagines the salt water spraying his face - and feels the eternal lure of the sea.

"I love this business. You just can't get this kind of adrenaline high anywhere else," he said. "But I can't fish salmon this summer, and it really feels weird."

In a packing shed on Roberts Island in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, Lupul is also in a kind of twilight zone.

In early June, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned consumers not to eat certain kinds of tomatoes. That all California tomatoes were cleared by the FDA did little to allay consumer fears.

As president and CEO of JTL Produce Sales, Lupul's life revolves around tomatoes - specifically Romas, the oblong, meaty kind that are ideal for tacos, salsa and spaghetti sauce.

A farming life

Lupul, whose Austrian-American family has been in the farming business around Stockton for more than a century, spends about 40 percent of his work hours getting buyers around the country to buy Romas. The rest of the time he runs the 35,000-square-foot packing shed, where Romas grown on 300 acres owned by Kent and Sandy Kiefer - third-generation farmers - are washed, packed and ripened before being shipped around the country in 25-pound boxes. He's also the exclusive tomato sales agent for the Kiefers.

"For me, it's all tomatoes all the time," Lupul joked as he gave a visitor a tour of the packing shed in Levi's and a tomato-red polo shirt.

He's now getting the packing shed ready for the 10 million pounds of tomatoes that will start coming off the vine at the end of next week. Workers are tightening conveyer belts, installing new brushes and sponges and sanitizing the machinery.

But a giant question mark looms over the shed. The salmonella crisis has reduced sales of Roma tomatoes by 40 to 50 percent. Farmers across the country are plowing under their tomatoes rather than sell them at a loss. Lupul has no idea whether the market will recover anytime soon.

"I've got four months to make up all my operational expenses," he said. "The salmonella warning could put my company out of business."

Making ends meet

Between the Ambiel and Lupul families, there are seven mouths to feed. Ambiel lives in a condo with his wife and two young children. Lupul and his wife, who live in Stockton, have a 2-year-old son.

Ambiel is also a crabber, but up to 60 percent of his income is from salmon fishing. He tried to make up for it by crabbing an extra three months, but an eye disease prevented him from tuna fishing this month. So he's spent a lot of time working on his boat.

Ambiel hopes to get by this year by securing his fair share of the $120 million in federal disaster aid for the California salmon industry. He's lucky, too, that his wife, Denise Quick, has a full-time job as a buyer for the county of Santa Cruz.

Lupul's family income is less diversified. In his mom-and-pop tomato business, his wife, Tiffany, handles all the accounting and administrative work.

Echoes of '06

Salmon fishermen had an easily identifiable villain in 2006, when the National Marine Fisheries Service imposed severe restrictions on the commercial salmon season but stopped short of canceling it altogether.

Back then the Klamath River was the problem. The water in the river had become too warm and shallow and clogged with toxic algae. And a parasite was killing about 80 percent of the juvenile salmon.

Fishermen and environmentalists blamed then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton's 2002 decision to release millions of gallons of water to southern Oregon farmers for drought relief - a decision that ended in the deaths of as many as 70,000 adult salmon in September of that year.

Why the Sacramento Chinook population suddenly collapsed is a mystery. Scientists have speculated that it has something to do with ocean conditions, habitat destruction, dam operations or agricultural pollution.

But 2008 had been looking so good.

In the last several years, consumers gladly paid premium prices for wild salmon over those grown in pens. So when Ambiel stares wistfully at the blue-green Pacific from the docked Tasu, he winces in pain.

"The ocean right now is fabulous - a lot of upwelling and feeding conditions that are just right," Ambiel said. "It really hurts.'

Toll on tomatoes

And the tomato market?

Just two months ago, a drought in the southern part of the San Joaquin Valley had reduced tomato plantings, as did bad weather on the East Coast. Demand and prices were up.

Then, in early June, came the FDA warning not to eat raw Roma, round red and red plum tomatoes unless they came from California and other "safe" states and countries.

Lupul says part of the blame rests with the media for conveying a somewhat garbled message that did not clearly identify California tomatoes as safe.

Earlier this month, the FDA message became even more tortured. Tomatoes, it said, might not be to blame after all. Then last week, the agency said it also suspected raw jalapeño and serrano peppers - but declined to clear tomatoes.

FDA inspectors are still collecting soil, water and produce samples in both Mexico and the United States. But the agency seems no closer to finding the source of the outbreak that has now sickened more than 1,000 people nationwide.

A life at sea

Ambiel was a Capitola kid who grew up fishing with friends and working as a deckhand on charter boats. The summer before his senior year at Soquel High School, several days of ocean fishing hooked him for good.

Once he graduated he went to work on several fishing boats with a dream of buying his own troller. In 1997, with his parents' help, he bought the Tasu.

Until two years ago, things were pretty good. The salmon fishery seemed well-managed. And Ambiel was earning a decent living.

Then came the troubles with the Klamath and the Sacramento rivers, and Ambiel lost trust in the National Marine Fisheries Service and state Department of Fish and Game.

"They have the scientists and are supposed to be managing the fishery with taxpayer money and money from fishing licenses,"' he said. "How could something like this happen?"

Lupul grew up in Stockton and attended Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, where he earned a degree in agricultural business. As part of his internship, he went to work for a family farm in Bakersfield. He then went to work as a grower relations manager at a San Benito County firm.

Lupul got a chance to run his own company several years ago after his father-in-law, who's also in the produce business, hooked him up with the Kiefers, who were looking for a new sales agent.

He cherishes his job - seeing the expanse of a field of tomatoes, his salt-of-the-earth co-workers, just being able to get out of his office and drive to the fields in his pickup.

"I love to walk into a supermarket and see someone buying tomatoes that I sold two or three days ago," he said.

Similarly, nothing makes Ambiel happier than seeing a restaurant patron enjoying some wild salmon he might have caught.

Sadly, both men wonder what the future holds for them. But they can't imagine life without fishing and farming.

"If you allow yourself to be a pessimist, you fall into a trap," Lupul said. "You have to think the next day will be brighter than the last - and pray for things to work out."

Besides, Ambiel said, it's not a good time to sell a fishing boat.

Said Ambiel: "You'd have to almost give it away."