Snorkeler’s Treasure Is Finding That All Is Not Lost at Sea

It’s comforting to be reminded that not everything is nuked, tainted, obsolete, extinct or plastic. I’m referring to fish.

A few years ago, when El Nino was warming the Pacific, I noticed while snorkeling around Catalina and Santa Cruz islands that many of the usually abundant fish were absent. It was depressing to think that yet more species had gone the way of lobsters and abalone--still there, but ever harder to find. (Experienced scuba divers will contest that, but I’m talking about snorkeling, and I say that they’re scarce. Their prices in stores and restaurants prove my point.)

And then last week a marvelous, reassuring sight swam past. I was snorkeling in Descanso Bay, just off the shore from Avalon’s Casino, when I was treated to a view of a school of thousands--not dozens or hundreds, but thousands-- of 10- or 12-inch striped fish cruising through the bay like an underwater river of living things. The school was on the order of 6 to 10 feet wide and deep, and who knows how long? It went on and on, finally swirling into the nearby kelp beds. It was like a Jacques Cousteau film, except that I have seen only one larger school in Cousteau’s programs.

“School” seems inadequate. A mass of fish like that should be called a herd, or a flotilla, or an armada. Maybe a riot.

But “riot” would be wrong, because they looked so lazy. When they assembled in the kelp forest, they just hung there, waiting . . . for what? Food to drop into their mouths? Someone to come by with a net?

I dove into their midst (after stifling the thought that if that many creatures decided to attack at once it would be horrible and disgusting), and they only reluctantly moved away from my hands. They stared incuriously for a moment, then returned to their waiting. Or resting.

I found out later that they were striped mullet, “common in the back bays of the south coast,” according to marine biologist Dennis Bedford. That’s easy for him to say. To a Sunday snorkeler it was a major find.

Earlier, I’d been delighted by the return to Lover’s Cove of large numbers of fat kelp bass, opal-eye and garibaldi. Driven off by El Nino, they remembered the easy feeding provided by Catalina’s glass-bottomed boats.

It felt good to reaffirm that, try as we might, we haven’t destroyed everything. We have left some fish alone. Lots of them. Animals that congregate in large enough numbers that we put funny names on their groups: a bed of clams, a pod of whales, an exaltation of larks . . . .

How about an exuberance of mullet? They weren’t very excited, but I was.