Halibut in at Monterey

Dear Dale,

Thought I’d let your readers know that the halibut have moved into Monterey Bay already this year. I dived Del Monte Beach in Monterey Bay on Saturday, March 24th and landed my limit of California halibut, including this 45-pound beauty using my Riffe speargun. We were lucky that day to have decent visibility of about 15 feet plus. These halibut were found around the areas that squid spawn in 50 plus feet of water.

Dave Edlunk
Los Gatos, CA

Rebreather Hunting Comments

Hi Dale,

Kudos on your response to Ray T. about hunting with a rebreather. I think the diving public would probably all agree with you. If Ray T. really wants to hunt and use his rebreather at the same time, he should try it with a camera in his hand. What a great tool he has at his disposal—one that many of us that have shot u/w photos for years can still only dream about. Ray, I assure you, your family would appreciate some nice prints you have taken on the wall of your living room for a lot longer than the calico bass you stuck last month. I also applaud you for taking the time to ask Dale’s advice on this subject. Nice Going.

Jens Rubschlager
30-year diver.
via e-mail

Habitat Destruction Discovered

On New Year’s day, three friends and I went out to greet the New Year and the new millennium by doing some diving. We departed Cabrillo Beach launch ramp at a leisurely pace and by 8:30 a.m. we were enjoying some of the best visibility I’d ever encountered on the old gambling ship Monfalcone. Twenty-foot visibility, a few bugs, myriad large sand bass and the chance to get a good look at the wreck made the first dive a perfect start for the day, year, millennium.

For our second dive of the day, we planned to just cruise around during our surface interval, running the fathometer looking for ‘bumps’ that might prove interesting. After about an hour we metered an area that had some small bumps, and despite the fact that it didn’t have the typical fish clouds over the area, we decided to dive it anyway. The saying on the boat is “If you don’t look, you don’t know.”

Since it was a recon dive, just one buddy pair went—Paul and me. Visibility on the descent was awesome, easily 50 to 60 feet. As with any dive on a new spot, I was keeping a close eye out for the bottom. As we descended, I kept thinking that we should have been able to see the bottom, but we couldn’t. At about 70 feet we entered a layer of yellowish-brown muck and a moment later found the bottom. Through the three to four feet of brown murk that blanketed the last part of our descent, I was looking at a bottom like I had never seen before. It looked like melted frosting or wax spreading across the bottom. The places where there was “structure,” and I use that word only in the most general terms, the perception of melting was even more pronounced. There weren’t any defined rocks or reef structure, just three to five foot mounds resembling brown, melting ice cream.

As most divers know, even in a barren-appearing, sand-bottom environment, there will be worms, starfish, crabs, tube anemones, and fish, but as I looked around I was struck by the fact that here, there was no life to be seen. No fish, no crabs, no growth on the “reef/rocks,” no nothing. Anywhere. The bottom was as close to sterile as I’d ever seen in 30+ years of aggressive diving. Even when I was commercial diving in some of the foul, polluted, stagnant corners of various harbors up and down the coast, there had been some life in the water and on the bottom. But, never, had I seen anything like this.

I began swimming to see how big an area this dead zone covered. I spent nearly forty minutes swimming patterns and never ran out of the melted “nothing zone.” I did in that time see two blennies, two bedraggled anemones, and an area with perhaps a dozen strands of ribbon kelp, that, as I watched, detached and drifted off with the surge. Several of the melted lumps had piddock (boring) clams in evidence, and that was the total flora and fauna inventory for the entire dive.

As I cruised over this incredible area of desolation, I finally realized what it was we had found. This was the new reef area that was built to replace the rocky reef structure that was destroyed during the Los Angeles Harbor approach deepening project (Deep Draft Navigation Improvement - DDNI). Our tax dollars at work. But instead of rock reef material, it was siltstone. The reason there was no life was because, just like a bar of soap in water, this siltstone was melting away, allowing nothing to attach to it, while maintaining a cloud of sloughed off silt in the water column, and coating the bottom with the glue-like silt, thereby smothering any possible chance of life taking hold.

After we returned home, I did some investigation and learned a bit more about the “reef.” It seems it was a last minute attempt to mitigate the loss of hard bottom reef structure in the Horseshoe Kelp, at the extreme offshore end of the new harbor approach channel. Complaints about the loss of habitat by such groups as the Sportfishing Association of California (SAC) and Anglers Unlimited of Southern California prompted several meetings (27 August 1997, and 29 October 1997) with representatives from U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Port of Los Angeles (POLA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), United States Coast Guard (USCG), National Marine Fisheries Service, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, California Department of Fish & Game and California Coastal Commission, to work out a mitigation process for the loss of the reefs from the Horseshoe Kelp area. Notably absent from the discussions (at that point, since they were not notified) were such environmental watch-dog groups as Heal the Bay.

Through the course of the meetings a “mitigation” process was developed. It consisted of depositing 260,000 to 780,000 cubic yards of rock material from the Outer Approach Channel (CD-172-97, Corps of Engineers, p. 3) over approximately 62 acres of sandy bottom (no wonder I couldn’t find the edge of the dead zone!).

A one-day marine biological survey was carried out to evaluate some 124 acres of the proposed new reef sites (why do I suspect that no one even got in the water on this survey?), and the then the final details were worked out.

At this point, the sport diving and sport fishing public were being bent over a barrel, but would not know it for a while.

It was decided that clean rock of two feet (or greater) in diameter may be transported to Site B by hopper (barge) load each estimated to cover a footprint of approximately 100 feet by 300 feet (CD-172-97, Corps of Engineers, p. 5). In addition to “mitigating” the loss of rocky reef habitat, the construction of a reef at Site B would save time and money for the contractors working the project, since the dredged material could reach the Site B location more quickly than the designated offshore dump site known as LA-2. Saved time, saved money, new reef structure, no long term fishing impacts anticipated. What could be better? And the deal was done.

And citizens and the environment got screwed.

One final piece of information I discovered: In a letter of 4 February 1998 from Port of Los Angeles Executive Director, Larry Keller to Peter Douglas, Executive Director of the California Coastal Commission, Mr. Keller states that there will be a five-year monitoring period on the site developed with National Marine Fisheries, California Department of Fish & Game and California Coastal Commission staff. This monitoring will generate two reports of transects made at the site and will include benthic and fish resources found. Oh, and cost shall not exceed $300,000.

Dale, Kim? You guys seen any reports? Heard of any reports? I would suspect the only report out there at this time is what I’ve written.

The public needs to know about this travesty.

Oh, by the way, if you want to check the new “reef” area, coordinates are: 33°40.358', 118°13.351' or 33°40.854', 118°13.339'.

Pat Smith
via e-mail

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