Sea Bass Releasing Marks First Attempt

The release of 2,000 young white sea bass into San Diego’s Mission Bay Thursday marked the first time in the nation that marine fish raised in a hatchery were introduced to the wild to replenish the stock for commercial and recreational fishing.

“It’s more symbolic than anything else,” said Don Kent, assistant director of operations at the Hubbs Marine Research Institute at Sea World, where the bass were hatched three months ago. “Right now, we’re at a point where we’re going to release some fish and see what happens to them.”

Kent and his fellow researchers hope the initial results are encouraging enough to expand the program to include more fish and more species. Marine biologists at Occidental College in Los Angeles are involved in similar work with halibut, and Kent looks forward to being able to hatch large numbers of kelp bass and yellowtail as well.

“The white sea bass is just a target species we’ve selected right now,” Kent said. “What we’re hoping to do is demonstrate the technology and the applicability of the technology.”

Thursday’s release at Sea World marked the culmination of a four-year effort by scientists and conservationists to raise marine fish in hatcheries successfully.

Kent said that, although a typical female white sea bass lays about 100,000 eggs at a time, in the wild the vast majority of these succumb to predators or other natural population controls, meaning that only one or two fish are able to spawn.

That low fecundity, coupled with intensive commercial fishing and destruction of habitat, has caused populations of species such as the white sea bass to shrink alarmingly, Kent said. In the early 1950s, San Diego fisherman caught more than 70,000 white sea bass a year; now the annual catch numbers less than 1,000, he said.

In the project’s first four years, Kent and other researchers have overcome most problems involved in trying to raise the fish in the controlled environment of the hatchery, such as setting the optimum water temperature and predicting when the fish will spawn.

Also working on the project are researchers at Occidental, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego State University and UC Davis.