Fish Farm Lands Its 2nd Batch of Bass

Cries of “the fish are here” heralded the arrival Tuesday of 5,000 tiny white sea bass to a Port of Hueneme aquaculture facility from a Carlsbad hatchery.

“This is an exciting event,” said Tom O’Neill, chairman of the Oxnard College science department. “It’s kind of like having a child.”

The placement of the wriggling silver fish into a pair of 5,000-gallon tanks at the facility--operated by the nonprofit Channel Islands Marine Resource Institute--represented a birth of sorts. It marked a new beginning for the institute, the aquaculture industry and a depleted fishery.

The fish are part of the state Ocean Resources Enhancement and Hatchery Program that is intended to boost the number of sea bass in the ocean.

Formerly an important commercial and sport fishing species, the sea bass catch off California’s coasts has crashed from a high of 3 millions pounds a year from 1957 to 1959 to a mere 50,000 to 75,000 pounds today, said Steve Crooke, coordinator of the program.

“They were overfished,” he said. “This is the first effort on the West Coast of the United States to try and enhance an ocean species through artificial means.”

The modest marine institute facility--Oxnard College’s new marine studies program is a partner in the effort--is the newest of about a dozen facilities along the coast raising sea bass.

The facility is located at Port Hueneme’s aquaculture business park, which remains under construction on the site of a former military installation. It is one of only two aquaculture facilities based on land, rather than ocean holding pens.

Tuesday’s delivery represents the institute’s second crack at raising the fish. A bacteria wiped out the first batch of juvenile sea bass about a month ago, said Tom McCormick, the group’s vice president of operations.

“This is a new area,” he said. “It’s biology, it’s farming and things happen. . . This is the future--farming them, instead of catching them.”

However, many of these fish may well be caught.

After spending the next three to four months in nearly 70-degree water, the fish will have grown from their present 5 inches in length to about 8 inches and will be released into the ocean.

It’s hoped the 12-year-old program--it has taken researchers about a decade to figure out how to cultivate the fish--will raise 350,000 sea bass in a year. The institute’s goal is to use the program, via research and education, to promote the fledging local aquaculture industry.

“They’re looking quite a way into the future, saying will aquaculture provide some money not only for Port Hueneme, but for Ventura County?” McCormick said of the city’s aquaculture business park. “Where agriculture was 10,000 years ago, that’s where we are with fish farming. We’re crossing the barrier from hunters and gatherers to farmers.”