Rural reinvention, in the face of climate change and a shifting economy, in coastal California

Hailey Branson-Potts reports for the Los Angles Times from Fort Bragg, California, population 7300, in Mendocino County.  Her subject is boat captain Dan Platt who has achieved "rural reinvention" to make a living in the era of climate change:  

[I]n this Northern California harbor town of 7,300 people, Dan Platt — a skipper with a salt-and-pepper mustache, quiet demeanor and affinity for being alone on the ocean — became the epitome of rural reinvention. About five years after he began, rides on his 18-foot Duffy boat, the Noyo Star, are booked almost every day.

Platt certainly didn’t guess life would turn out this way. 

* * *

Along the economically distressed rural North Coast — where the future lies not in the fishing and logging jobs that once defined it but, increasingly, in tourism — climate change has forced those who live by the rod and the reel to consider their options.

The rest of the story--the backdrop really--is the decline of fishing in the area, including the ban on abalone diving, which have fisher-folk turning to interests like tourism--and creating products for Etsy.   

An earlier post about the drought in Mendocino County, which relates to what is happening to Platt and the tourists who take his harbor tour, is here.  The initial declaration of the current California drought was made in and about Mendocino and Sonoma counties.