A Place Fish Could Call Home : Decrease in Sea Life Spurs Plan for Artificial Reef

The last artificial reef off Huntington Beach--25,000 old tires lashed together with nylon cord and anchored with concrete weights--was anything but a success.

Less than a year after its placement a mile offshore in 1976, winter storms tore loose the bonds, littering Bolsa Chica and Huntington Beach state beaches with thousands of tires.

A spokesman for the fishing club that sponsored the 700-foot-long reef said ruefully at the time, “The road to hell is paved with our good intentions--and our tires.”

State Running the Show

Now, there is a new plan for a reef to attract fish, whose populations along the coast are in decline. This one would be made of concrete rubble and located about four miles off Bolsa Chica. This time, the state Department of Fish and Game is running the show, and sportfisherman Russell Izor couldn’t be happier.

“There are too few places to fish, and too many fishermen in these waters,” said Izor, skipper of a San Pedro-based charter boat who led the charge for the tire reef, and for years after its demise lobbied for more artificial reefs to attract fish.

Kenneth C. Wilson, a state marine biologist, said the proposed reef would act as “underwater condominiums” for fish, providing new grounds for feeding and spawning, as well as protection from predators in an area of otherwise barren, sandy bottom.

It would be one of a half a dozen artificial reefs Wilson and marine biologist John Grant plan to install from Santa Barbara County south to San Diego Bay as part of the Department of Fish and Game’s Near Shore Sportfish Habitat Enhancement Program.

When finished, it would be one of the largest man-made fishing reefs in California.

Near Many Marinas

It also would be within easy reach of numerous marinas in Orange County, San Pedro and Long Beach, providing an alternative to San Pedro Bay’s heavily fished Horseshoe Kelp reef, which is smack in the middle of some of the world’s busiest commercial shipping lanes.

Some agencies initially opposed the reef. Wilson and Grant said most of the objections have been worked out, except those of commercial fishermen, who fear their catch would be jeopardized.

But the marine biologists argue that everybody benefits from the plan, which awaits final approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

“Over the last 50 to 60 years, there has been tremendous fishing pressure along the Southern California coast,” Wilson said. “Man’s impact on the environment through pollution and fishing has caused a diminishing of the fishing stock and the habitat that supports it. . . .

“We can see the impact of sewage outfalls, the decline in the clarity of the water, the reduction of kelp forests and the reduction in numbers of fish and invertebrates” such as lobster, he said. “It is very important for us to restore the stock of organisms, not just for the sportfisherman, but for aesthetics.”

Five Reefs Already

There already are five artificial reefs off Orange County shores, including a string of four mounds of quarry rock dumped off Huntington Beach in the 1960s, but Wilson said their exact location and condition are unknown. A fifth, known as the Newport Reef, was constructed near the mouth of the Santa Ana River.

The new reef would be fashioned in a rectangle from old naval barges and rubble from a San Pedro-area causeway. Each mound, to be constructed of 1,000 tons of concrete, would be 6 feet high, 100 feet long and 50 feet wide. Each would be separated by one-quarter to one-half mile from its neighbors in depths of 75 to 105 feet of water, well outside the area of upswells that took out Izor’s tire reef.

Surplus barges, provided by the U.S. Navy, would be sunk along the center of the reef, which would stretch 1 1/2 miles long and a quarter of a mile wide.

Wilson credited Izor with finding materials for the project, and for his efforts to obtain low bids on behalf of the Department of Fish and Game.

The rubble is stored on vacant land owned by the Port of Los Angeles at a cost to the department of $3,500 a month.

Approval Expected

Grant said that once the Corps of Engineers approves the project, probably by mid-September, the materials would be barged out to sea at a cost of $126,000, to be paid with a grant from the state Wildlife Conservation Board and state fisheries enhancement funds.

Small crustaceans and other marine life should begin to collect on the new reef “within hours,” Wilson said.

“But it may take 10 to 15 years to become fully developed,” he said. “That is when all the plants and animals establish themselves in the sizes and densities you would expect to find them in a natural reef.”

Izor, speaking as a sportfishing enthusiast, was more optimistic.

“It’s amazing how quickly the fish come to something like that,” said the 63-year-old skipper of the First String, who says he has fished in Southern California waters since 1949.

“Fish are like nomads and the ocean bottom is like a desert,” he said. “An artificial reef becomes like an oasis in the desert. . . . If we put it in this fall, by next spring, it will be fully encrusted, and there will be resident fish populations right away. You can expect to see sculpin, sand bass, calico bass, sheepshead and numerous other rock fish.

‘Important Enhancement’

“For the immediate area of Los Alamitos Bay, Huntington Harbour and Sunset Harbor, I think it will be a really important enhancement,” Izor said.

Not everyone has been so enthusiastic about the project.

Initially, the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach objected to the reef because it was considered too close to the outer perimeter of the shipping lanes. The U.S. Coast Guard and the marine pilots that guide the large vessels to anchorage also expressed concern. Even the Navy raised the issue of proximity to sea lanes leading to the U.S. Naval Weapons Station at Seal Beach.

Then there was concern over underwater pipelines and utility cables to and from offshore oil drilling rigs.

To solve these problems, the proposed reef was moved a few miles from the original location, south of Anaheim Bay, to the area off Bolsa Chica. It also would be placed half a mile closer to shore, well away from an important buoy marking the turning point to harbor sea lanes.

Foes Remain Steadfast

But the California Gillnetters Assn. remains steadfast in its opposition to the reef.

Association Vice President Anthony West said the rubble mounds would tear and tangle nets in an area where gill-net operators have fished without trouble for years.

“The area they are talking about is a 20-square-mile area of absolutely clean ocean bottom--there are no snags at all,” said West, who represents an organization of 120 commercial boat operators from San Francisco to San Diego.

“Now granted, when you figure the square footage (of the reef), it’s a mere pinpoint. However, all it takes is one (gill-netter) to get his coordinates incorrect and set his nets atop the mounds. It’ll cost a lot--roughly $800 to $1,200 a net.”

More important, it would mean more recreational fishing enthusiasts competing with professional gill-net operators, West said.

Although West conceded that an artificial reef will attract more fish for commercial fishermen, too, he still insisted that the mix of commercial and pleasure fishing was incompatible. He compared it to “putting a telephone booth in the middle of a football field.”

‘Going to Be Friction’

“Suddenly, you’ve created a haven for 30, 40 or 60 sport boats to come in to an area where the commercial guy has been working for years. There’s going to be friction,” he said.

“I’ve got a lot of fellows in the association that are immigrants. They’re desperate; they’ve got families to feed. Suddenly some yachtsman comes by and cuts this man’s net and his livelihood with it,” West said.

“He’s not going to see that this recreational fisherman has as much right to the ocean as he does. He’s going to see some rich guy is out there hurting his livelihood. There are going to be blowouts.”

Department of Fish and Game officials, obliged to enhance sportfishing as part of the return for the cost of fishing licenses, said gill-netters traditionally have viewed the waters offshore as their private fishing grounds.

Izor maintained that the billion-dollar sportfishing industry was a far bigger business anyway in recreation-minded California.

From the biologists’ perspective, anything that can be done to enhance marine life near an urban area is a plus.

“Our ocean is not pristine anymore and it never will be again,” Grant said. “So anything we can do to help nature along, we should do.”