Fish--and Doubters--Are Drawn to the REEF : Sportfishermen are thrilled by a spate of man-made habitats, but gill netters and some coastal experts remain skepticl about the ambitious program

Time was, Dick Helgren could pilot one of his lumbering sportfishing boats onto the sea off Oceanside and, invariably, the flock of eager anglers on board would return home with a decent catch of fish.

In recent years, however, it has grown harder and harder to hook ‘em, a ready sign of what Helgren and others believe is a decline in sportfishing stocks off the Southern California coast.

So it was with open arms that Helgren and other sportfishermen along the northern San Diego County coast welcomed a plan to construct an artificial reef a mile off Oceanside harbor. Designed to serve as a spawning ground and lure more fish into the area, the reef was completed in February--10,000 tons of quarry rock dumped into more than 45 feet of water.

An Early Harvest

To the delight of Helgren, customers on his fleet of seven sportfishing boats have already begun to reap a respectable harvest of fish from the new undersea outcropping.

“We figured it would take a year or two before we’d get any results, but we’ve had some good days on it already,” said Helgren, a sportfisherman for more than three decades. “I think it’s great. Over the years, we’ve seen a drop-off in fish, so any enhancement program is very, very positive.”

Along the coast from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border, man-made fishing reefs are sprouting in shoreline waters as part of an ambitious $1-million-a-year effort by the state Department of Fish and Game to enhance sportfishing in the region.

In recent years, the department has overseen construction of half a dozen reefs, among them a subsurface structure off Mission Beach in San Diego and a pair in Santa Monica Bay, including a 20,000-ton behemoth that is the largest of its kind in the world. A reef off Santa Barbara is in the planning stages and Fish and Game officials hope funding will soon be available for four more.

“The goal of our program is to produce more fish,” said John Grant, a Fish and Game marine biologist who is helping to lead the reef-building effort.

“These reefs act as a sort of condo complex for fish. They’re a place to live. The fish can find food as well as protection from predators and protection from the currents.”

Recreational anglers in Los Angeles, San Diego and other Southern California communities are thrilled about the program. They hope it will prove a boon to the region’s depleted fish populations, which have dwindled because of pollution and sediment, which has built up on the ocean floor from beach erosion and shoreline runoff and covered natural reef formations.

“Basically, the majority of area off our coast is a sand bottom, which doesn’t attract habitat-type fish,” said Jim Manues, the Oceanside harbor director. “It’s like a desert and the fish are looking for an oasis. You put a rock reef out there and it serves as that oasis.”

Despite all the plaudits, some coastal experts remain skeptical, questioning whether the reefs will serve simply as magnets for fish rather than highly productive spawning grounds.

Moreover, the project has been panned by some in the commercial fishing industry, particular those who use gill nets. These commercial fishermen worry that the proliferating reefs pose an obstacle for their nets, which can snag on the rocky structures.

Voices of Opposition

“I’d like to see them disappear,” said Nello Castagnola, a San Pedro fisherman and president of the California Gill Netters Assn., which represents 120 commercial fishing outfits from San Francisco to San Diego. “My feeling is they should just leave nature alone. They say they’re enhancing the ocean, but I can’t see it. All I see them doing is concentrating some fish in one spot where they (sportfishermen) can go and knock them off all the easier.”

Some sportfishermen, in turn, blame part of the decline of fishing stocks on gill netters who have “fished out” certain areas. Artificial reefs are one of the few options left to try to increase the dwindling numbers of fish, they say.

Artificial reefs are not new. The Japanese first built them in the 1700s, filling old wooden boats with boulders and sinking them.

These days, Japan employs far more sophisticated efforts to harvest the sea’s bounty, submerging complex frameworks of steel and reinforced fiberglass that quickly grow algae and other food sources that fish find delectable.

“They’re amazing-looking things. Some look like domes, others like submerged oil platforms, some like spaceships,” Grant said.

In the United States, fish reefs have been decidedly more low-tech. Just about everything imaginable has been dumped into the ocean at one time or another to create a fish habitat--trolley cars, derelict merchant vessels, tires that have been lashed together, even discarded toilet bowls.

In the late 1950s, state officials undertook a substantial reef-building effort, but the program died out in the mid-1960s as scientific interest and funding ran out. The current undersea construction boom dates from 1980, when an experimental reef was built near the San Onofre nuclear power plant to offset any potential impact of the plant on sea life. A 1983 conference of coastal experts in Newport Beach, where the San Onofre results were discussed, sparked further interest in the concept as a lure for fish, Grant said.

Rash of Reef Building

In 1985, Assemblyman Steve Peace (D-Chula Vista) shepherded a bill through the Legislature directing the state Department of Fish and Game to study the effect of artificial reefs on renewing fish populations in waters close to shore. The result was a rash of reef building: Mission Bay in San Diego, Oceanside, another in waters near Marina del Rey, the two in Santa Monica Bay off Pacific Palisades.

Money for the reefs is derived primarily from a special federal tax on fishing equipment and fuel used for sportfishing.

Each of the reefs is something of an experimental testing ground, Grant said. Biologists are investigating a spate of different factors--the size of rock, the depth, the locations--in pursuit of the perfect reef. Eventually, experts hope to determine precisely what types of fish are attracted to a certain habitat.

Constructing a reef is no small feat. To build the two completed last month in Santa Monica Bay, a barge full of huge riprap boulders from a Santa Catalina Island quarry was moored in place more than a mile offshore and a bulldozer aboard began dropping the stones into the sea.

It may have appeared haphazard, but the effort was as well choreographed as a Balanchine ballet. Using sonar to take depth soundings, workers on the barge spread the rock over an expanse of sea floor in scores of wide, cone-shaped piles up to a dozen feet high. The larger of the two man-made reefs in Santa Monica Bay covers an area of about one square mile, twice as big as any previously built.

Once in place, the structures almost immediately begin attracting fish, biologists say. “We dove those reefs about a week after we finished and there were fish everywhere,” Grant said. “It was like a damn aquarium.”

Indeed, a cycle of life erupts on the new rock outcropping. Early on, fuzzy types of algae begin growing on the reef. Eventually, barnacles and small invertebrates take up residence, drawing increasing numbers of fish.

The reefs are especially effective once kelp takes root, Grant said. Often compared to a rain forest in terms of complexity, a kelp bed provides a rich food source and shelter for numerous forms of marine life. Indeed, studies have shown that kelp forests typically contain nine times as many fish as areas devoid of the plant.

Seeded With Kelp

Some of the reefs built by the state Department of Fish and Game have been seeded with kelp by biologists. Among those is the smaller of the two Santa Monica Bay structures, dubbed the Topanga Kelp Reef.

Grant figures it takes about five to 10 years for a reef to become a fully effective ecosystem serving as a productive breeding habitat. Nonetheless, some coastal experts remain unsure that the reefs act as the sort of potent spawning ground needed to boost the region’s depleted fish stock.

“There are skeptics and there are a lot of unanswered questions,” said Dr. Richard Ambrose, a research biologist at the UC Santa Barbara Marine Science Institute. “It’s a pretty young science and there hasn’t been a lot of good rigorous research done yet, so a lot of the questions about how artificial reefs function remain to be answered.”

Others say it’s a question of dollars and cents. The reefs aren’t cheap. For instance, the two structures built in Santa Monica Bay cost a total of $600,000. At that price, some experts say they want to see solid proof that the reefs are providing a significant bang for their buck.

“They shouldn’t be seen as a panacea just yet,” said Carl Nettleton, executive director of the San Diego Oceans Foundation, a regional coalition that advocates improved management of the sea’s resources. “In the worst case, what these reefs will do is make fish potentially easier to find and catch. In the best case, they will increase the biomass of the ocean and aid in restoring our fish populations.

Limited Resources

“The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. But I really think we need to know more before we invest too much of our limited resource funds into artificial reefs.”

In the meantime, Castagnola and other commercial gill net fishermen complain that the reefs threaten endless difficulties.

Aside from tearing nets that can cost more than $500 and several days of work to repair, the rocky mounds are sometimes placed in areas the commercial fishermen have been working for years, he said. That creates a situation where commercial fleets are vying with sportsmen for the catch, a sure-fire prescription for friction.

Sportfishermen, however, are firm boosters.

“This is going to be a great help to us,” said Mike Cody, assistant manager at Malibu Pier Sport Fishing, which operates two charter boats in Santa Monica Bay. “It’ll really bring the numbers (of fish) back to where they should be and it’ll build the food chain back up.”

Aside from seeing a drop in the bay’s yield, Cody said the size of the fish being pulled from local waters has dipped. Calico bass, which averaged eight to 10 pounds a decade ago, now typically weigh in at just two to three pounds, he said. Similarly, 300-pound black sea bass were once plentiful around Malibu, but the few that are caught today tip the scales at 30 to 40 pounds.

Kenneth Wilson, a state marine biologist who designed many of the subsurface structures, said construction of artificial reefs is the only option left to coastal experts eager to increase fish stocks without tightening catch limits.

“Outside of cleaning up the bay and reducing the amount of commercial netting in certain areas, this is the most important thing we can do,” he said. “It’s worked in other areas and we expect it will be successful in enhancing sportfishing here.”

HOW SEA LIFE DEVELOPS ON THE REEF 1. Within the first year the reef begins growing algae and attracting small invertebrates such as barnacles. Fish that begin to congregate include sand bass and surf perch, as well as lobsters that seek shelter among the rocks. 2. In the following two years, the outcropping starts developing soft corals and larger species of sea life, including star fish, snails and sea urchins. Resident fish would include blacksmith. 3. The reef reaches maturity in five to 10 years, developing into a marine community similar to those on natural reefs. In some cases, kelp forests can develop. EXPERIMENTAL REEF SERIES Following is a list of the experimental reefs built by the state Department of Fish and Game since 1980: 1. Santa Barbara, (PLANNED) to be built in spring 1988. 10,000 tons. $185,000 in state funds. Exact location yet to be determined. 2. Ventura County, off Pitus Pt. Completed in spring. 1984. 7,200 tons of rock. $187,000. Also, $360,000 was spent for kelp enchancement on the reef. Financed with state funds. 3. Santa Monica Bay reef, about a mile off Pacific Palisades. Completed in October, 1987. 20,000 tons of quarry rock. $375,000 in state funds. 4. Topanga Kelp Reef, about one-third mile off Pacific palisades (landward of its bigger neighbor). Completed October, 1987. 10,000 tons of rock $220,000 in state funds. 5. Marina del Rey, Augmentation of an existing artificial reef in May, 1985, with 11,000 tons of quarry rock. $245,000 from state funds. 6. San Onofre. Built in the fall of 1980. 10,000 tons of quarry rock $250,000. Funded by Southern California Edison Co. 7. Oceanside. Completed May, 1987. 10,000 tons. $223,000 in state funds. 8. Mission Bay in San Diego. Completed in Spring. 1987. 10,000 tons of quarry rock. $223,000 in state funds. BUILDING THE SANTA MONICA BAY ARTIFICIAL REEF The reef developed off the pacific Palisades is a pattern of 20,000 tons of quarry rock arranged in varying heights at depths of 42, 57 and 72 feet and covering an area of one square mile of the sea floor.

The rock was methodically dropped froma barge and positioning lines were lowered to determine the location and height of the rocks.

PLANTING GIANT KELP Closer to shore, 10.000 tons of additional quarry rock are being developed as a kelp reef. Divers are attempting to reintroduce giant kelp into the area.

Phase 1 - Large chains of the type used to anchor buoys are strung across the reef. Nylon lines with floats are tied to the chain.

Phase 2 - Young kelp plants, with 6 to 8 branches each and 15 to 20 feet in height are tied to the nylon lines at the point of the floats.

Phase 3 -Assuming the kelp survives, in about 8 months, it will grow to the surface. as the reef matures, fish there will begin derivingnutrients from the plants and algae growing on the reef.