Battle of Huntington Beach : Surfer-Angler Turf War at New Pier Escalating; City Sends In Peacekeeper

The scene is Southern California mellow: a gleaming new pier, dozens of fishermen dangling their lines into the azure waters and swarms of surfers performing their aquabatics.

But the tranquil look of this picture-perfect scene is deceiving. Since the pier opened on July 18, surfers and fishermen have increasingly been at odds, hostility surging virtually with every wave. The $10.8-million pier has become the scene of an ongoing turf-surf war.

“I got caught in a fishing line this afternoon as I went under the pier,” fumed Justin Knott, 19, of Huntington Beach, on a recent afternoon.

Above him on the pier several fishermen huffed about the surfers. “Sometimes they swim by and cut our lines,” said Ba Phan, who travels from Monterey Park for the fishing. Other anglers nearby said they can’t understand why the surfers aren’t banned from the waters near and under the pier.

Lifeguards are distressed by the friction between the two groups and the potential for injury.

“Some fishermen have thrown weights at the surfers,” said Claude Panis, a marine safety officer. “There’s been conflict between the two groups, because each group feels it has a right to the pier. Lifeguards have been trying to act as mediators.”

The Huntington Beach City Council has been getting an earful about the feud. And Saturday, city government launched an experimental program: deploying a “pier liaison officer.”

This officer will patrol the pier and act as a kind of pier counselor, mediating disputes and cooling tempers, explained Marine Safety Capt. Bill Richardson. “We’re going to try this out for a 30-day period, and if it’s successful maybe go full time with a program like this.”

Richardson said that so far he knows of no fisticuffs between fishermen and surfers, who are traditional adversaries in Huntington Beach. “But we’ve had some close calls,” he added. “Some surfers have gone up on the pier to confront the fishermen, but we were able to stop them before there was any physical contact.”

Huntington Beach loves its pier with a fierce civic passion. When winter storms in 1988 wrecked the 74-year-old municipal pier and forced its closure, the city went into mourning. “Huntington Beach without its pier is like Paris without is Eiffel Tower,” said then-Mayor John Erskine.

Thus the opening this summer of the replacement pier was a virtual love fest. Hundreds of thousands attended the pier’s ribbon-cutting in July, and thousands still flock daily to the new pier.

Many who come to the pier, including former Mayor Erskine, are lifelong surfers. Huntington Beach’s unofficial nickname is Surf City, and a Times poll of city residents in 1991 found that almost one-fifth are regular surfers.

So proposals by some fishermen to ban surfers from around the pier raise the collective hackles of the big surfing community here.

“Not at all!” thundered surfer Jack Flynn, 46, of Huntington Beach. “It shouldn’t be us; it should be the fishermen who have to move. The fishermen should be kept beyond the surf line. Their hooks are hazardous.”

“A lot of times,” said Jeremy Casteel, a 19-year-old surfer from Huntington Beach, “you’ll go swimming up to the pier, and you’ll yell a warning to the people fishing up there, but they’ll still go casting at you. It’s just all-around dangerous. One of my friends got a hook in his wet suit. They ought to put the fishermen out at the other end of the pier.”

Neither side wants to move because the surf line, where the swells begin, offers advantages to both. The surfers find a friendly rip current near the pier that carries them out beyond the breakers. At the same time, many anglers believe the surf line it is the richest spot for corvina and surf perch.

“All the water is not theirs,” said Henry Willingham, 65, of Fountain Valley. “We come out here for recreation too.”

Another fisherman, Glenn Hall, 48, of La Habra, suggested that surfers stay 100 yards away from the pier. “I think it would be safer for the surfers if there were restrictions on how close they could be to the pier.”

Though the fishermen said they bother no one and are simply enjoying their quiet, contemplative sport, they are starting to raise the ire of another group of pier lovers.

Residents have started to complain that many fishermen are littering and staining the once-gleaming new pier. Some anglers leave dead fish and pieces of bait on the pier, while others have been seen gutting and carving up their catch on the pier’s new benches.

“I’d have to say that we’re getting even more complaints about the litter left by fishermen than we are about the disagreements between the surfers and the fishermen,” said Ron Hagan, the city’s director of community services.

The new pier patrolman will, among other things, remind fishermen to be more tidy.

But most urgently the officer will have to be somewhat of a bridge over the troubled waters dividing anglers and surfers. Said Hagan: “Our object is to get people to get along.”