Spadework Done for Shellfish Farm : Entrepreneurs to Put Mussels to the Test in Waters off Seal Beach

With coastal waters becoming increasingly “fished out,” what else would an ex-commercial fisherman and marine biologist do but team up to ride the aquaculture wave?

Boyhood chums Dominic E. Gregorio and John G. Balesteri have won state approval to begin the first experimental underwater shellfish farm off Orange County’s shore.

The San Pedro men hope eventually to raise commercial quantities of mussels and oysters--and possibly abalone and scallops--in unsheltered coastal waters off Seal Beach.

Although state health officials are skeptical that the water is pure enough to produce edible shellfish, marine biologist Gregorio is convinced that the waves lapping the beach north of Anaheim Bay adequately cleanse the area.

Control Over the Catch

“We think the future lies in seafood harvesting--in farming, as opposed to hunting,” said Gregorio, 32, who works for an oil company and teaches college classes part time.

“Commercial fishing is basically hunting. But with aquaculture, you have some control over what you are going to catch.”

With consumer demand growing steadily even as the numbers of many kinds of fish, especially shellfish, are declining, they think raising their own stock makes good economic sense.

“Yup, it’s the wave of the future,” echoed the 32-year-old Balesteri. The third-generation fisherman said he abandoned his 8-year gill-net operation seven months ago for an assured paycheck as a crane mechanic in the Los Angeles Harbor.

“There was no future in it,” Balesteri explained from the deck of his 36-foot boat, Rughead, a childhood nickname for his thatch of dark curls.

Asked what his wife, Christine, a 31-year-old accountant, thinks of their novel venture, Balesteri said, “She thinks we’re dreaming. . . . But she loves mussels.”

Known variously as aquafarming, fish ranching or sea farming, the art of aquaculture is an ancient practice in Europe and the Orient. It can be done in lakes, streams, bays or in artificial tanks, ponds and long troughs called raceways.

On the Eastern seaboard, oysters and other fish have been cultivated for almost 200 years. During California’s gold rush, oysters were farmed in San Francisco Bay to keep up with the appetites of hungry prospectors. Trout farming has been common in many states, including California, since the early 1900s. Much of it is to keep lakes and rivers stocked for sportfishing.

In recent years, however, cultivating fish has been viewed as a more efficient means of providing protein for a hungry world.

By 1984, aquaculture accounted for 8% of the aquatic food produced in the United States, according to Agriculture Department estimates. The National Academy of Sciences forecast that as methods improved, annual production would reach 2 billion pounds by the year 2000.

Aquaculturists have succeeded in artificially spawning salmon in Oregon and Washington. Ambitious research is continuing in an effort to raise lobsters in the hot waters generated by coastal utility plants. Efforts also are under way in Northern California to raise a particular type of kelp, considered a delicacy by the Japanese.

Successful Elsewhere

Shellfish cultivation has been quite successful in Northern and Central California coastal waters, said Emil Smith, a supervisor of marine resources for the state Department of Fish and Game. Since 1980, state officials say, the number of shellfish aquaculturists has more than doubled.

Most of the two dozen or so shellfish operations with permits from the state Department of Health Services are in sheltered waters off Eureka, Marin County, Morro and Monterey bays, said Doug Price, shellfish specialist with the agency’s sanitary engineering branch.

But several experimental mussel, oyster and abalone growers in the area of Santa Barbara and Ventura are beginning to raise and market commercially, Smith said. A pair of San Diego-area aquaculturists have been successful with oysters, scallops and mussels in a lagoon near Carlsbad, he added.

It comes none too soon.

Smith said some species of shellfish, especially the Pismo clam and abalone, have been all but eliminated in many coastal areas, despite regulations on the number and size that can be kept.

Take Outstrips Production

“There’s just too many people and animals like sea otters fishing for them,” Smith said. “They’re harvesting them faster than nature can reproduce them.”

Efforts to raise shellfish in the murky waters of Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors are still in the experimental stage, Smith said.

In December, Gregorio and Balesteri were granted the first aquaculture lease off Orange County by the state Fish and Game Commission. The five-year lease is for a one-acre underwater plot about 540 feet northwest of the west jetty at Anaheim Bay.

Last week, the California Coastal Commission approved their application for a pilot marine mussel ranch. The state Fish and Game Commission has already granted them approval, and all that remains before they begin operations is a go-ahead from state health officials.

Price, the health department’s shellfish specialist based in Santa Rosa, said last week that they “should be getting their permit in a matter of a week or less.”

When the conditional permit arrives, it will carry some tough restrictions, Price said.

Change of Water

They will be required to regularly test site waters for bacteria, and the shellfish must be placed in--or “relayed” to--cleaner waters for 30 days before they can be sold. Tissue analyses of the shellfish for chemicals and potentially toxic metals will also be required before any can be sold for human consumption.

Price noted that state tests of mussels from adjacent Anaheim Bay in recent years have shown elevated levels of heavy metals and other chemicals.

Levels turned up in Anaheim Bay in the Mussel Watch program are “much lower than would pose a health hazard,” Price said. But it is reason enough to require careful monitoring of the Seal Beach shellfish project, he said.

“We don’t think the area is that bad since it does get the ocean wave action,” Price said. “But it’s a very complex body of water and not one I would consider ideal for such purposes . . . but maybe I’m just being too pessimistic.”

Gregorio, who has a master’s degree in biology from California State College, Dominguez Hills, acknowledged that the waters are far from pristine.

Hopes for Catalina

“But we feel the water quality is adequate. Our sampling so far has proved that,” Gregorio said. “But we won’t know for sure until we grow them.”

Price holds out more hope for two one-acre parcels off Catalina for which Gregorio and Balesteri are also seeking health permits and Coastal Commission approval.

“That water is pretty darned clean,” Price said. “Now that might be the place they could do the relaying. But that gets expensive because you have to handle them twice.”

Gregorio agreed that the Catalina plots, which they have just leased from the state Department of Fish and Game, have far more potential for commercial success.

On the other hand, since they must work it between their regular jobs, Gregorio said the more convenient Seal Beach plot will be ideal to test his ideas.

They plan to string about 300 feet of line anchored on the bottom at depths of about 18 feet. Buoys attached to the line will keep it floating several feet below the surface, well out of the way of boaters, Gregorio said. But the plot’s nearness to the Anaheim Bay jetty will afford extra protection from wave action.

May Progress to Abalone

Gregorio said they hope to cultivate the mussels from seed (a stage of early development) on lengths of vinyl piping hanging vertically from the line. They might try oysters later, but they must be seeded, as well. Abalones may follow in cages on the bottom. But unlike the mussels and oysters, which feed on plankton filtered through their shells, abalone must be fed.

They expect initial equipment costs to run a minimal “$4,000 to $5,000,” Gregorio said. Water sampling and tissue tests will add considerably to their expenses.

The two won’t begin laying any lines until the Department of Health Services permit arrives. Even though Price said to expect it before the end of the month, Gregorio laughed and said, “We’ve heard that before.”

“I think we’re both skeptical about this,” said Balesteri.

The two men, who still live within blocks of each other in the same San Pedro neighborhood where they attended Catholic grammar school together, say they are under no illusions that a quick fortune awaits them.

“This is not a get-rich-quick scheme,” Gregorio said. “It’s going to take a lot of work, a lot of time and a lot of trial and error.”

‘This is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It’s going to take a lot of work, a lot of time and a lot of trial and error.’--Dominic E. Gregorio