A Boon In The Brine : Ongoing Artificial Reef Program Is Providing a Better Future for Fish and Fishermen

With the phone call comes an invitation to go out on a boat at 7 a.m. to watch a bulldozer push 750 tons of concrete rubble off a barge into the ocean.

This is a joke, right?

No, Jim Paulk insists, this is important. The future of sportfishing in Southern California is at stake.

Paulk is president of United Anglers, a conservation organization. The project is to expand the Bolsa Chica artificial reef 4 1/2 miles southwest of Anaheim Bay, part of the state’s program to create habitat for homeless fish.

Since 1958, the California Department of Fish and Game’s Nearshore Sportfish Habitat Enhancement Program has supervised the construction of 35 reefs off the Southern California coast. Old automobiles, old tires, six old wooden streetcars, quarry rock from Santa Catalina Island, even an old Liberty ship and a kelp harvesting vessel have been deep-sixed for the cause. The program won an award from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1991.

The local coast is mostly featureless sandy or muddy bottom, and, as most fishermen know, fish like to hang out on the corner, watching all the gills go by. Why? Maybe they get tired of swimming and need something to lean on. Maybe their old clubhouse was torn down for a parking lot.

“We’re not really sure,” said Jerry Kashiwada, a DFG marine biologist. “Fish just like to be near structure--anything.”

The phenomenon has a name: thigmotropism, the tendency of fish to gather close to a solid object.

But no structure, no corners. Lamp posts, rocks, coral, kelp, old boots or bathtubs--almost any kind of junk will do.

John Grant, who worked in the program for 10 years before transferring to another division, said, “You put a beer can or an anchor down, fish are gonna be attracted to it.”

But that’s not enough. It’s also important that they set up housekeeping to sustain the species. If they’re only dropping in for a bite, it may be their last. The fishermen know the location of every reef. Navigation coordinates are printed in a DFG booklet, “A Guide to the Artificial Reefs of Southern California.”

Bolsa Chica, on the Huntington Beach Flats, especially is “a pretty good twilight fishing spot,” said Joe Sandoval of Seal Beach Sportfishing. “It’s about 15 minutes from the pier.”

For those with magic boxes or skill with a sextant, that’s 3339’19.64”N and 11806’3.68”W. You’ll need a lot of anchor line because it’s 90 feet deep, and diving isn’t recommended because the water is so murky. But trust the experts: The fish are there. Build anything and they will come.

Paulk said, “They way I look at it, coming from a farming family in south Georgia, the more pasture you have, the more cows you can have, so the more structure you have, the more fish you can have. But it’s logical to presume if you’ve got structure and can create an ecosystem, then you can generate fish, as well.”

Japanese commercial fishermen have been building artificial reefs for about 200 years--high-profile, open structures with little surface area or shelter, with the emphasis on attracting fish, not growing them. The DFG scientists had a better idea.

“Production comes in when you have biomass,” Grant said, “stuff growing on the rocks that fish can graze on.”

They also learned that streetcars were OK, but automobiles tended to deteriorate over time and tires were difficult to keep in place. Rocks worked better. Grant and former associate Ken Wilson developed rock pile reefs with crevices and faces--”holes and cracks for things to grow,” Grant said. “When you have that happening, you get recruitment out of the water column.”

Grant is proud of an underwater color photo on a wall at DFG Region 5 headquarters in Long Beach. Taken on the program’s pilot reef offshore from Camp Pendleton, it shows a cabezon roosting on a rocky nest next to thousands of eggs it has laid.

“This picture proves productivity . . . that picture right there,” Grant said, tapping the photo.

“We found the most productive areas were where we had two habitats meeting, such as rock and sand, with kelp on it.”

One problem with Bolsa Chica is that it won’t grow kelp, which supports the food chain necessary for ideal habitat. Kelp needs light for the photosynthesis process to work, and not enough light reaches the cloudy depths there.

“At Catalina, you can grow kelp to 70 or 80 feet because the water is so clear,” Grant said, “but otherwise the limit is 40 or 60 feet.”

But Dennis Bedford, who now heads the program, said Bolsa Chica is more than merely a “fishing opportunity” reef.

“There’s no question it (produces fish),” Bedford said. “The smaller piles of concrete provide the holes, crevices and hiding places for small fish to recruit.”

Bedford said when he has dived on the reef he has discovered schools of small, non-game blacksmith fish.

“When you get close to them they dart into the rocks,” he said.

They also fool fishermen who use electronic fish finders.

“They’re seeing large schools of fish and wondering why there’s no bite at all,” Bedford said.

The approach to the Bolsa Chica reef has changed since it was first built in 1986 with concrete rubble and eight surplus barges donated by the U.S. Navy.

“We’ve learned a lot,” Bedford said. “Today we wouldn’t accept the barges. Those big flat surfaces don’t provide the habitat fish need.”

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The dump is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Rampart General Inc., a masonry manufacturing company in Long Beach, has contributed 100 faulty prefabricated chimneys and 150 8x25-foot soundwalls, as it had for a previous addition to the reef in 1992.

Connolly-Pacific of Long Beach is providing a tug and barge at the $10,000 cost, which was contributed by the Huntington Harbour Anglers, the Marina del Rey Anglers, the Los Angeles Rod & Reel Club, the Balboa Angling Club, the Southern California Tuna Club, EDF Investments and individuals L.D. Baumert and Chris Minnick.

The observer boats leave Huntington Harbour and Anaheim Bay in a light fog that soon puts them beyond sight of land. At 8:20 they arrive at the dump site, indicated by two buoy markers about 50 yards apart--but no barge.

At 9, however, a tug emerges from the fog in the west, with a barge on a long tow cable, a bulldozer aboard. The tug’s name is Larcona. Its home port, as indicated on the stern, is Minneapolis. The barge’s home port is St. Louis. Well, considering they had to come that far . . .

The Larcona does a long, slow turn, takes up the cable and the barge comes to a stop resting diagonally between the markers. Jason Chung fires up his Caterpillar 973 and goes to work. He is wearing unusual apparel for a bulldozer operator: a life jacket. A Cat 973 would probably make good fish habitat, should Chung accidentally hit reverse when he meant to go forward.

But when it comes to push and shove, Chung is an artist. With the touch of an Endeavour astronaut, he starts at the front end of the barge, using the big front bucket to nudge and flip the chunks of concrete over the side. It looks like great fun--better than skipping rocks.

In a half-hour the deck is clear. Kashiwada and colleague Greg Walls prepare to dive to see how the rubble settled on the bottom.

Bedford couldn’t be there. He was overseeing another reef project off San Diego that morning: the deposit of a 60-ton concrete and steel Trident missile launch pad donated by the Navy for the International Reef, originally built with Catalina quarry rock in June of ’92. That operation didn’t go quite as smoothly as the one at Bolsa Chica.

“We almost sent the thing to Mexico,” Bedford said. “There was a strong current running south, and the tug didn’t set its anchor. By the time they were ready we called ‘em on the radio and said, ‘You’re not only not on our reef site, I’m not sure you’re even in the United States.’ ”

The tug repositioned itself at the proper location.

As far as could be seen in the 3-to-5-foot visibility on the bottom at Bolsa Chica, Kashiwada reported later: “It’s as much as could be hoped for. Some of the stuff might have piled up as high as five feet.”

Walls says he saw some reinforcing iron that was exposed when material broke apart.

“That was kind of spooky . . . all jagged. People are gonna lose some fish hooksthere.”

But it will be worth it. In March and April, the sculpin fishing should be exceptional. Sand bass are also there, and perhaps calico bass and halibut will drop by.

Grant says, “These things are producing fish for those guys to catch. That’s a big deal. Any place else we’re losing habitat, (such as) wetlands, estuaries. These things bring fish back.”