Oil Spill Blackens Day for Fishing, Whale Boats

Although it is the height of the whale-watching season and the weather is superb, boats that take sightseers to sea to hail the gray behemoths on their southerly swim to Baja California will probably remain moored this weekend in Newport Harbor.

They are blocked from entering the ocean by the same booms that have been placed at the mouth of the harbor to keep the oil out.

Fishing, whale-watching and excursion boats stranded inside Newport Harbor so far seem to be the only casualties that the local tourism industry has sustained from this week’s major oil spill off Huntington Beach. Otherwise, the spill is having virtually no impact on beach tourism, part of the county’s $5.5-billion-a-year tourist industry.

Nevertheless, the disaster has “completely shut down” Jim Watts’ sportfishing and whale-watching business since Wednesday evening, when access from the harbor to the sea was closed off. Watts, owner of Newport Landing Sportfishing, said Friday that he is concerned about losing business on what promises to be a sunny weekend.

“We can survive losing a few days during the week. But we can’t survive losing weekends,” he said. “All we are doing is holding our breath and wondering how long it is going to last.”

Bob Black, president of Catalina Passenger Service--the only Catalina Island excursion operation in Newport Harbor--said the company’s 500-passenger catamaran, the Catalina Flier, also is grounded. He figured that he had lost about $15,000 in business Thursday and Friday and would lose about $12,000 more if he had to remain closed today.

Meanwhile, an Orange County Harbor Patrol spokesman said it is likely that the oil-containment booms would remain in place over the weekend, because some oil had been spotted just outside the harbor’s west jetty.

While the boat concessions in Newport Harbor are suffering, it is business as usual at hotels along the Orange County coast.

Diane Baker, director of the Huntington Beach Conference and Visitors Bureau, is hoping there will be a bright “flip side” to the oil spill disaster.

The oil slick does not seem to be harming the city’s tourism industry, she said, and in fact the national exposure could give it an unexpected boost.

“I saw the pictures on television and Huntington Beach has a beautiful shoreline,” she said. “It is gorgeous.”

Baker said she contacted the city’s 18 hotels on Thursday to see if they had received any cancellations due to the spill. The hotels, she said, reported they were busier than usual trying to accommodate curious sightseers and an onslaught of news reporters from around the country.

Steve Bone, executive director of the Robert Mayer Corp., said he expects the oil spill to be just a memory by the scheduled July opening of the Waterfront Hilton hotel that the company is building as the first stage of a $600-million oceanfront commercial development in Huntington Beach.

“You can go to the beaches now and see a marginal sheen at the shoreline, but there is no depth to it,” he said. “It is a serious spill. But it is not a disaster. We have every confidence that any oil that does hit the beaches will be rapidly cleaned up.”

Hotel representatives in Newport Beach and Laguna Beach also were optimistic about their chances of escaping virtually unscathed from the oil spill, which they expected to be cleaned up from the beaches well before the summer tourist boom.

In the winter, they said, most of their clientele consists of business travelers and local recreational travelers looking for a getaway that does not include the beach.

“Assuming that they get it (the oil) cleaned up in a timely fashion, I can’t see that it will affect anybody in this area,” said Greg Smith, marketing director for the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel and Tennis Club.

Tom Dusing, marketing director for the Hyatt Newporter, a 410-room resort hotel in Newport Beach, said, “My understanding is that it should be under control in a week and that a month from now it should be to the point that no one will realize anything happened.”

Like many others in the hotel business, Dusing said he is grateful that the oil spill was not as huge as the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska last spring.

“I’m thankful it didn’t happen in July and August,” during the peak tourist season, he said. “Then it would have had an effect on us.”