‘Condominium’ for Fish Makes a Big Splash : Environment: Tons of concrete are pushed into Pacific to form artificial reef off Huntington Beach. Fishermen are delighted.

About 3.4 miles offshore, a very unusual tableau unfolded Friday morning.

Yellow bulldozers assembled on a red barge pushed tons upon tons of rejected concrete fireplaces into the ocean. The dumping was not any sort of massive pollution, but rather a new addition to what some describe as a “condominium project for fish.”

In fact, several environmentalists and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents circled the ocean dumping site on yachts, overseeing the expansion of an underwater reef. The project is expected to be a major environmental plus for Southern California and a boon for sport fishermen.

“This will make a great habitat for fish,” said Michael Kiehn, a Torrance-based wildlife inspector with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Friday’s work provided the first addition to an artificial underwater reef created six years ago. In 1986, about 10,000 tons of concrete from an old Long Beach highway was dumped into the ocean, off Bolsa Chica State Beach, to start the reef.

“The work done (Friday) added another 1,000 tons to the Bolsa Chica reef,” said Dennis Bedford, a marine biologist with the state Department of Fish and Game. “It’ll create a new module for providing food and shelter for fish.”

Federal and state officials have been building similar artificial habitats off the Southern California coast mainly because nature has provided very few. Reefs form homes for sea plants and sea life. Whole food chains evolve, benefiting the ecology as well as sports and commercial fishermen.

Bedford said there are 35 artificial underwater reefs off Southern California, but only three off the Orange County coastline. One is near Bolsa Chica, where the new work was done Friday; another is near the mouth of the Santa Ana River; and the third is offshore from the Newport Harbor entrance.

All of the reefs in Southern California are in heavily traveled shipping lanes, but federal and state officials say none poses any danger.

Bedford said the reefs are usually only a few feet tall and in water deep enough to allow safe passage of all types of vessels.

“I’d guess this new module we created (Friday) is going to be about 10 feet tall,” Bedford said. In 90 feet of water, the height poses no problem to shipping.

An artificial reef site is something like a vast housing tract for fish, Paulk said.

State Department of Fish and Game specialists said the latest underwater “fish city” will be expanded in future years. “We’ve got about 11,000 tons of concrete down there now,” Bedford said. “It can be increased to a total of 40,000 tons.”

Jim Paulk, director of the United Anglers of Southern California, said that within six months there should be a noticeable increase in the fish population.

Some fishermen in Friday’s dumping area had nothing but praise for the new work on the underwater reef. “I think it’s great,” yelled Sam Sogoian, from his boat I-Got-Um as it cruised the scene.

Numerous smaller vessels circled the big barge during the reef-building activity just northwest of the end of the new Huntington Beach Pier. And the scene was worth the gawking.

Bulldozer operators on the barge worked with surgical skill as they moved 28-foot-tall fireplaces off the barge without falling into the drink themselves.

The plan called for the long concrete fireplaces and chimneys to pile like jackstraws on the sandy ocean floor, 90 feet below the water’s surface.

“They’re going to stack up like fiddlesticks,” Paulk said as he watched the concrete forms plunge into the choppy, blue Pacific waters.

In addition to 172 fireplaces with chimneys, the bulldozers unloaded about 30 tons of coral valued at $1.5 million. The coral had been seized by federal officers after being illegally imported into the United States. Instead of being destroyed, the coral was donated by federal officials to the offshore reef expansion.

New material will be added to the reef when money and material are donated, Bedford added.

The United Anglers of Southern California, a private organization of fishing enthusiasts, raised $10,000 to pay for the barge costs of dumping the concrete on Friday. The concrete fireplaces were donated by Rampart General Inc. of Irvine. Rampart General makes precast concrete fireplaces and chimneys at its Long Beach plant.

“The fireplaces we donated were rejected by our inspectors for various reasons,” said Bill Harris, who with his brother, Ben, owns Rampart General. “Ben and I have been fishing these local waters since the 1940s, so we’re interested in helping with these efforts” to build underwater reefs.

Warren Taylor, another official of Rampart General, said the company’s donation had a secondary environmental goal: to help save vanishing landfill space. Taylor noted that the rejected concrete fireplaces would have been hauled to landfills had they not been donated for the underwater project.

“Just about everybody is enthusiastic about this project, including the City Council of Huntington Beach,” Paulk said as he watched the completion of the dumping Friday.

Philip Arciero, a fisherman-yacht owner from Huntington Harbour, said: “This is great for the fish. They’re going to love these homes that are being made for them down there.”