Unfortunately, tradition will have to wait one more year. The board of directors of the annual Festa Italia Fisherman’s Festival honoring the local fishermen of Monterey voted Saturday morning to cancel the 88th edition of their event, which was set for Sept. 10-12 at Custom House Plaza, due to the rise in COVID-19 cases caused by the delta variant.

“It was really a difficult decision,” said Joe Cardinalli, vice president of the Festa Italia Foundation. “Of course, we canceled last year and we’ve been working on it, we work on it all year-round.” Cardinalli said officials had been meeting once a week for the past six weeks to plan the event and this was their drop-dead date to keep moving ahead or pull back.