Fish Counters : Channel Islands: Nearly 50 divers, toting pencils and waterproof slates, are taking first notes on what is hoped will become an annual survey of undersea life.

Wet-suited, goggle-masked census takers swam through the undersea kelp forests off the Channel Islands on Friday, counting fish.

Drifting through turquoise water and clouds of brilliant gobbies, the volunteer divers began taking the first notes in what organizers hope will become an annual federally supported survey of undersea life along the entire U. S. coastline.

“As divers, we understand that . . . we’re in the wilderness,” said dive instructor John Curtis, one of the pilot program’s organizers. “Because it’s a wild environment out there, we know very little about what’s going on.”

To find out what’s going on, nearly 50 divers are drifting beneath the waters of the Santa Barbara Channel this week--National Fishing Week--armed with scuba gear, pencils and waterproof slates.

The fish-counters are modeling their program after the Audubon Society’s annual Christmastime bird count. They plan to guide other volunteers to chart the rise and fall of the ocean’s myriad species on an annual basis.

Sponsored by the National Park Service, the first-ever fish count was born of ignorance.

Several months ago, environmentalists who were fighting the tropical fish industry in the California Legislature found themselves ill-equipped, Curtis said.

“Large commercial operations are going in with a dredge and sucking up an entire reef,” he said. “The industry spokesmen would say, ‘Hey, we don’t want to be regulated, so provide us with numbers that say we’re harming anything.’ We had no data.”

So on Friday, Curtis and four other divers plunged off the stern of the Pacific Ranger, a National Park Service boat, and into the waters of Cathedral Cove at Anacapa Island.

Glassy bubbles rose from their scuba gear as they descended between ocher towers of bladder kelp, and began counting.

Divers saw a writhing, silver wall curve past them, a school of what National Park Service biologist Dan Richards later said were jack mackerel. With plastic slate in hand, Richard began drawing a short line for each fish, crossing off every fifth one, then every 10th fish. Finally, he gave up and estimated that the school was 2,000 to 3,000 strong.

The fish counters dove to the cove’s sandy bottom, where sheepshead, calico bass and rubberlip perches darted amid the kelp like exotic birds.

They also spotted their most unusual fish, a large bat ray that skimmed over the rippled sand, its wings waving about four feet apart as it sucked plankton and worms off the bottom.

Their air tanks depleted, the divers surfaced after 35 minutes, dragged their gear onto the boat and tallied up the nine species that they had counted.

This week, the divers are trying to devise a universal method for counting the species--one that can be printed and distributed to divers who volunteer to join future fish counts.

The scope of the Santa Barbara Channel census is narrow, Curtis said. Although it may soon include dives to count fish near the oil rigs and in open water, divers now are limited to species that swim near areas around the islands frequented by recreational divers.

“We’re not going to see every species,” he said. “We’re not going to see the fish that live at 4,000 feet, and we’re not going to see the fish that are so sensitive to the sound of your bubbles that divers never see them.”

But they can count fish that no one else is counting, such as those not caught by commercial and sportfishing boats, which must report their takes to the U. S. Fish and Game Department.

The divers hit the water again at Landing Cove, spotting 17 more species that nosed in and out of the seaweed, anemones and urchins attached to the sheer wall of Anacapa Island’s base. Opaleyes, garibaldis, senoritas and a grazing, blue swarm of blacksmiths--all were penciled onto the plastic slates strapped to the divers’ wrists.

“Once you get a chance to actually start counting fish instead of just watching them swim by, you realize how many there are, the abundance,” said Andy Barberena, a Cal State Northridge student of marine biology who works as a volunteer for the park service.

The first fish count drew novices such as Barberena, and veteran divers such as 72-year-old Paul Doose, a retired schoolteacher and member of the Channel Islands Council of Divers.

“It’s something they need, to start a survey and just find out what’s actually out there,” he said. “It’s good to see what’s actually under the water.”

It also is fun, the volunteers said.

“A lot of fish are just plain curious,” Richards said later, totting up his list over bagels in the Pacific Ranger’s warm cabin as he cruised back to Ventura Harbor. “They like to look over your shoulder, like, ‘Hey, what are you writing?’ ”

Curtis said he is recruiting more volunteers for the census, which ends Sunday. He suggested that they call him at 644-8156.