Fishermen Learn How to Fight an Ocean Oil Spill : Classes: An emergency team is being taught to lay booms, move injured marine life and dispose of oil-soaked refuse.

In the first such program in California, Ventura County fishermen are organizing an emergency response team that will be on call 24 hours a day in case of an oil spill.

About 20 commercial fishermen have taken classes on how to contain spills, and another 50 fishermen have signed up for the classes, which continue through April.

The training includes instruction on transporting aquatic life covered with oil and handling refuse, such as oil-soaked seaweed.

“The ocean is their livelihood, and it’s good to put them to work helping clean up if there’s a problem,” said class instructor Skip Onstad. “Most of all, the fishermen are very experienced mariners.”

The program is sponsored by Clean Seas, a nonprofit cleanup organization owned by 19 area oil companies, and by the California Coastal Operators Group, an oil industry association based in Santa Barbara.

Clean Seas, which covers the counties of Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo, has about 25 vessels at its disposal for emergencies, Onstad said. However, a large spill would require many more boats and additional manpower, he said.

Under the program, the fishermen, who ply local waters for such fish as Pacific red snapper and abalone, sign contracts that spell out the requirements of the duty. The men would be paid an undetermined wage for any work they do in an emergency, Onstad said.

Tim Athens, 33, a Mako shark fisherman who took the class, said he would not hesitate to offer his services.

“I make my living on the ocean and we already have enough problems with pollution,” Athens said. “It’s just a matter of time before we have an accident.”

Athens said the fishermen could provide useful information on the area’s weather and ocean conditions during a crisis.

“It’s an asset that oil companies have not used in the past and should,” Athens said. “I’m just looking forward to having this program develop into a household word.”

During training the fishermen practiced deploying booms, the floating rubber barriers that help contain spills. The booms are about three feet high and between 500 and 1,500 feet long.

“We’re intending to use this as a model to build other programs in California,” Onstad said.

Coastal Resources Center, a nonprofit statewide agency dedicated to preserving fisheries, has been keeping tabs on the Ventura effort. The agency hopes to implement similar programs up and down the coast of California, said Eugenia Laychak, director of marine and environmental affairs.

In addition, Assemblyman Ted Lempert (D-San Mateo) has introduced legislation that would mandate extensive oil spill prevention measures and call for state and industry funding for the training of groups such as commercial fishermen.

“Basically, we need everyone who is qualified to help with the prevention of and response to oil spills,” Lempert said. “The fishermen can do that.”

Oxnard resident Roy Raynor, who runs a commercial maco shark fishing business, started pushing for the Ventura program a year ago, after the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska and spilled nearly 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound.

Despite a cleanup effort that included nearly 12,000 workers and 1,200 boats, the response to the spill was criticized by state officials and environmentalists as tardy and inadequate.

Raynor said he believes the cleanup would have been more effective had fishermen who helped clean up the disaster been trained beforehand.

“I felt if the fishermen could have been more organized and pre-trained they could have responded faster,” Raynor said.