Prized Jewels of the Sea : Collectors, Protectors Clash Over Garibaldi

They are a brilliant sight in the ocean of Southern California.

Named after an Italian general who wore garish tunics, the bright orange Garibaldi can be seen from the piers of Catalina Island to the jutting rocks of Laguna Beach. Scuba divers routinely feed them sea urchins and snap their pictures to take home to friends. And in recent years, the flamboyant-looking fish, averaging more than a foot in length, have been showing up in private aquariums from California to Asia, where they are prized as bringers of long life and prosperity.

“They are a symbol of abundance and hospitality,” said Jim Hall, spokesman for a group called Ocean Futures in Huntington Beach. “They are living jewels representing all that’s good about California.”

Which is why he hates seeing them plucked from the ocean for the multimillion-dollar aquarium trade. Hall maintains that the practice depletes the species’ population and that the captured fish usually languish and die.

Commercial collectors and aquarium hobbyists deny both assertions.

Yet Hall and his group feel strongly enough about it to have proposed a bill that would make Garibaldi the state marine fish and place a six-year moratorium on capturing it.

“They’re a perfect symbol of the state,” he said. “They match the color of the poppy--the state flower--and California is the only state in which they are found. They’re a world-famous fish; if you don’t care about sunshine, pretty flowers, baby birds and monarch butterflies, then you won’t care about the Garibaldi.”

In fact, state officials cared enough about the Garibaldi to prohibit underwater hunters from spearing them in the 1950s.

For most of the years since then, according to Hall, the fish lived relatively unmolested, with others assuming, erroneously it turns out, that they were the official state fish.

Then in 1991 a tragic accident renewed interest in the Garibaldi. A diver drowned while collecting them off Catalina Island. And environmentalists realized, with a start, that such collecting had been going on for some time.

“We’d all been seeing fewer of these fish but assumed that it was pollution,” Hall said. “We didn’t know that the collection was happening.”

Officials at the state Department of Fish and Game said they have no evidence that commercial collecting has seriously depleted the Garibaldi population. A total of 104 aquarium permits were issued last year, they say, with about 108.25 pounds--462 adult-size fish, or several thousand juveniles--reported legally caught.

Collectors characterize that take as a drop in the bucket with no serious environmental effect.

“There is no threat to the species,” said Charles Winkler, a San Pedro-based biologist who has raised Garibaldi under laboratory conditions and collected them in the past. “The issue is entirely inflated.”

Steve Robinson, a Los Angeles-based importer and exporter of aquarium fish, agreed that the Garibaldi “is not in trouble. It’s the right words, but the wrong animal; they should save it for animals that really need to be saved.”

Despite those arguments, lawmakers in the past two years have enacted legislation banning the collection of Garibaldi off Catalina Island, although the back side of the island is scheduled to reopen to Garibaldi collecting in the year 2000. State legislators also restricted collection everywhere else to November, December and January and imposed stiff new permit fees for collectors and wholesalers ranging from $330 to $1,000 a year.

“The collection of Garibaldi is effectively banned,” Robinson said.

But Hall and his group are pushing for passage of AB 2812, a bill by Assemblyman Bill Morrow (R-San Juan Capistrano) that would designate the Garibaldi as the state marine fish and place a statewide moratorium on its capture. Last week the bill cleared the state Assembly’s Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee by an 8-4 vote and is expected to be considered by the Ways and Means Committee soon.

“I’m sure it will fly right by,” said Dan Chick, Morrow’s legislative aide.

The only other state fish is the golden trout, found in California’s fresh waters.

Hall says he is motivated in part by his belief that many of the captured fish are placed in tropical aquariums (heated to about 80 degrees) despite their need for colder water of 60 to 70 degrees.

“The result is that they eventually die,” said Will Borgeson, an aquaculturist at the Bodega Marine Lab in Bodega Bay and outspoken supporter of the bill. “The temperature tortures them.”

Local aquarium dealers dispute that. Customers, they say, routinely are instructed to keep the fish in 75-degree water--about room temperature--an environment in which they seem to do well.

“We don’t get many back,” said Stephen Paccione, the owner of Strictly Fish in Garden Grove, which sells about 20 Garibaldi a year at $40 to $60 per fish. “It’s strong and fairly popular.”

Brian Powers, a clerk at Wooten’s Aquarium and Pet World in Huntington Beach, said he thinks he knows why.

“Everybody knows about them,” Powers said of his customers. “They see those fish, and if they have a big enough tank they want them because they’re just so beautiful.”

Garibaldi Profile

Name: Named after Giuseppe Garibaldi, a 19th-Century Italian general who wore garish outfits and led the movement to unify the country.

Family: A member of the damselfish family.

Habitat: Clear, temperate water, often near crevices and small caves, occasionally in kelp. Can be found from Monterey Bay to Baja California, including the Channel Islands off the California coast.

Size: Roundish oval fish has a compressed body and grows up to 14 inches.

Color: Adults are bright orange or yellow-orange with green eyes; juveniles are reddish-orange with iridescent blue spots that disappear after fish reach 6 to 8 inches.

Diet: Feeds mostly on parasites attached to other fish.

Mating: A male creates a nest of algae; female lays up to 80,000 eggs and the male fertilizes them. Male chases female away and stays to guard the nest.

Life span: A short-lived fish, especially in captivity; five years at most.

Remarks: Hobbyists have paid as much as $125 for one fish. In California, it is illegal to spear or retain this species. Currently, commercial divers may catch the fish if they have a marine aquarium collectors permit.

Sources: Peterson Field Guide to Pacific Coast Fishes, California Department of Fish and Game