2-Year Ban on Collecting Fish for Sale Off Catalina : Conservation: New law sets tough controls on commercial divers who capture marine creatures and sell them to pet stores.

Beginning next year, the entire north side of Santa Catalina Island will be closed to deep-sea divers who collect colorful fish for the aquarium trade, state fish and game officials report.

The ban on harvesting the fish for sale will last two years and is part of a new marine environmental protection law signed by the governor Sept. 17. The north, or lee, side of the island is the closest to the mainland, lying just 24 miles off San Pedro.

The new law imposes tough controls on unregulated commercial divers who each year capture thousands of marine creatures and sell them to pet stores. The divers, who have been working in relative obscurity for years, work alone or in pairs and can make hundreds of dollars a day by capturing baby sharks, red-gold Garibaldis and other colorful marine life.

Their operations came to light last year when one of the divers drowned in 73 feet of water off Catalina’s Isthmus Cove.

The investigation into that death revealed the devastating impact this form of commercial fishing was having on the ocean environment off Catalina, officials reported. With some species of fish, so many of the young have been taken that the populations have been decimated and the breeding cycles disrupted.

News of the fatal accident and the findings that resulted from the investigation shocked marine environmental groups such as the Catalina Conservancy Divers.

“The death of that diver opened Pandora’s box. We had no idea that kind of commercial fishing was going on or how destructive it is,” said Harry Pecorelli, 61, of San Pedro, a retired commercial diver who heads the conservancy divers. “They’re raping the ocean.”

The conservancy divers took their protest to state fish and game officials and to Assemblyman Gerald N. Felando, (R-San Pedro), who introduced regulatory legislation.

“We’re really happy to see this new law,” Pecorelli said.

The law requires that a diver obtain a $330 annual aquarium fish collection permit, starting Jan. 1. Wholesalers and retail pet stores buying live aquarium specimens will also have to obtain a “receivers license” at a cost not to exceed $1,000, officials explained.

The law specifies exactly what marine life can be legally taken and what species must be left alone. It limits the collection of the popular Garibaldi to specific months of the year to protect their reproductive patterns, state marine biologists said.

The law states that the closure will be in effect until 1995, giving state and university marine biologists time to study the impact of fish collecting on the reefs and coves, Felando said.

“It was imperative that we take steps to ensure the future protection of marine life,” Felando said.

Though the law covers the entire California coast, marine biologists have been focusing primarily on Catalina’s lee shore.

State fish and game biologists had recommended the closure of a much smaller area, proposing to protect only Isthmus Cove in the Two Harbors area because it had been the hardest hit by the divers.

“The decision to close the entire lee side of the island was not a biological one; it was political,” said one state fish and game official, who did not want to be named. He said closing the entire coast could not be scientifically supported because little is known about the impact of the diving in other areas.