Dark Night at Plane Crash Site for Crews of Squid Lightboats

For Brian Koerner, crossing the Santa Barbara Channel will never be the same.

“In fact, I don’t think there’s a person among us who can cross that channel again without all this going through our mind,” he said. “I’ll never forget it. I’ll probably be telling this story when I’m 90 years old.”

Koerner is only 19, but a seasoned fisherman nonetheless, having worked his way from deckhand to captain of a commercial fishing boat.

Like many fishermen, he has spent most of his life on the water, and has seen his share of blood and guts. But countless hours of cutting bait and slicing into fish could not have prepared him, or any of the other fishermen involved, for the grim task set before them in the hours after Alaska Airlines Flight 261 plunged into the chilly Pacific Ocean on Monday afternoon, killing 88.

Koerner was at the helm of Squid-a-Lot, trying to earn a living in the waters off Santa Rosa Island, when he was asked to aid the Coast Guard in what then was a search-and-rescue effort. His was one of about 10 lightboats involved in the effort.

Lightboats illuminate the ocean during the night, attracting enormous schools of squid, which in turn are wrapped by the nets of purse-seine vessels and sold for about $200 a ton.

As volunteers, their job was to provide light after sunset during the tireless search for survivors. Some were asked to pick up and store debris as well.

“A lot of these guys are going to be traumatized for quite some time,” said Bill Hargrave, owner of a Southland bait company and the lightboat Little Jack, which was one of the first to arrive at the site of the crash, having been anchored fairly close at Santa Cruz Island.

Hargrave said his skipper, Tommy Holland, picked up a shoe with the severed foot of a young boy in it. Because he has a young son of his own, Holland was particularly troubled by that.

Koerner, who had more ground to cover from Santa Rosa Island and didn’t arrive until about 7 p.m., declined to itemize his findings, saying friends and family of the victims had endured enough.

“When I left Santa Rosa to help out, I didn’t know what to think,” he said. “I didn’t know what I was about to see, and when I got there and started hearing about what we were expected to see, it was, like, a total shock.

“I saw a few big pieces, but everything else was just little pieces, like fiberglass and insulation. . . . I saw about 13 seat cushions and a couple of shoes. . . . There basically was nothing big left in the water.

“As for human remains, we were told to stand by if we saw any and that someone else would pick it up. I didn’t want to see it. I was just there to lend a hand.”

Holland said that after the first hour or so, he went about his task methodically, although he did shed some tears. In a satellite phone interview Thursday with Philip Friedman of the fishing hotline 976-TUNA, he said he was glad to have been able to help, despite the nature of the work.

“God rewarded me with 200 tons of squid the next night, so I guess I feel pretty good about that,” he added.

Indeed, it was immediately back to business at the islands. The fishermen, working by night and sleeping by day, can’t afford to take time off, what with the fishing as good as it is.

Besides, they had already lost one night’s work--and on a good night, a lightboat and seiner team can gross $10,000.

Not that any of them are complaining.

“Losing money and working with basically no sleep [to help in the rescue effort] was the last thing on my mind that night,” Koerner said during a phone interview Thursday before heading back to the islands. “How do I feel? It’s hard to feel good about something like that. It’s a weird feeling, mostly. Crossing that channel right now . . . it’s the only thing on my mind.”

BAJA BEAT

Great news for those bound for the Baja peninsula: Tourist visas are finally available north of the border, meaning you no longer have to endure the frustrating process of obtaining a permit at an immigration office and finding an open bank to pay the 150-peso fee before getting your permit stamped.

But there is a catch: The only organization authorized to sell permits north of the border is San Diego’s Discover Baja travel club, and only to its members. Annual memberships are $39.

This is undoubtedly a major coup for the club, which has 7,200 members. But it also can be viewed as a sign that Mexican immigration officials are feeling the pressure to simplify a cumbersome process of obtaining a visa in the interest of tourism.

Ruben Aguilar, promotions director for the Baja California department of tourism, said other travel groups, perhaps even the Automobile Club of Southern California, might also be offering the visas in the near future.

“Of course, they’ll have to prove they are a solid and trustworthy organization,” he added.

The 150-peso levy, required of anyone staying in Baja for three days or longer, or of anyone traveling beyond San Quintin south of Ensenada, went into effect last July to raise money to improve immigration services and subsidize tourism promotions.

SUPER SUNDAY

The first big-fish story of the year is a whopper spawned in the sparkling blue depths off the Big Island of Hawaii, where Japanese angler Daisuke Yamasaki spent Super Bowl Sunday battling a blue marlin that tipped the scale in Kona’s Honokohau Marina at a whopping 1,213 pounds.

It’s the largest marlin to come out of the Kona area since a 1,356-pounder was subdued aboard Spellbound in 1992.

Capt. John Rooney worked the controls of the 38-foot Renegade, helping Yamasaki win his battle in only 1 1/2 hours.

It was quite a weekend for Yamasaki. He and his brother each got married the next day in a double wedding ceremony.

The marlin, which died late in the fight and came up amid a school of hungry sharks, was caught on 130-pound test and falls well short of the 1,376-pound line-class and all-tackle world record set off Kona in 1982.

ROCK BOTTOM?

The two-month rockfish closure that went into effect Jan. 1 has been bad for business, but it has also spurred some creative thinking at Southland landings.

At Virg’s Landing in Morro Bay, just beneath the southern closure zone (the northern zone is closed March and April), they have turned their attention to sand dabs, small flatfish that aren’t much for fight but taste great sauteed in butter and garlic.

“We’re catching over 100 per person; you can have all you want,” says Darby Neil, co-owner of the landing. “It’s delicate meat, though, so it doesn’t keep well in the freezer. Some people up here call them toasters because, if you wanted, you could put one on its side and slip it right into the toaster.”

Off Port Hueneme, captains and crews of some of the vessels received a financial boost when they were pressed into service as media escorts, charging as much as $300 an hour, after the crash Monday of Alaska Airlines Flight 261.

Off Oceanside, anglers have abandoned the rocks for the sandy bottom and discovered the halibut to be surprisingly cooperative, considering the time of year. Farther south, the San Diego and Mission Bay fleets have learned that they can get around the closure merely by crossing the border and dropping their lines in Mexican waters.

The loophole is Fish and Game Code 2353, which allows for possession in California of fish taken legally in another state, or in this case, another country. All that’s required is a declaration form that must be filled out by each angler

“We worked it out that the declaration form be made available and that would allow to us to go fishing in Mexico and simply declare that our fish were taken legally in Mexico,” says Bob Fletcher, president of the Sportfishing Assn. of California, which represents Southland sportfishing interests.

WINDING UP

Time to officially label the 1999-2000 ski and snowboard season a bust? In Southern California, perhaps. Man-made base depths have shrunk to about a foot at the four resorts that are open, thanks to last week’s rain and this week’s heat wave.

But Eastern Sierra and Tahoe-area slopes, patchy and largely barren in early January, are finally fluffy and white, thanks to a series of storms that swept through during the last several days. Mammoth Mountain reports a base of about 15 feet and nearby June Mountain, which wasn’t able to open until Jan. 20, is operating at about 80% with about five feet of snow.

Tahoe-area resorts have received a whopping 13 feet in the last 10 days, enabling 100% operation for the first time this season.

“It was everything [groomers] could do to stay ahead of the accumulations, which at times were as much as four inches per hour,” said Carl Ribaudo, executive director of Ski Lake Tahoe, which represents six major resorts.