Kelp or Tourists, Take Your Pick
The willingness of the City Council to ban all types of angling and spear fishing here reflects a desire to raise the "sea life" levels. This is despite the fact that angling and spear fishing actually do not take many fish from the local ocean.
What has actually caused the fish population to decrease over the last few decades? The destruction of the kelp/seaweed beds is what has limited the growth and size of the fish in our waters.
Our family has been in Laguna since 1926, when we purchased land and had a cabin on Cliff Drive right above Crescent Bay. We have pictures of Crescent Bay when the bay when it was 20 percent covered by seaweed! In fact, many other beaches in Laguna were covered by seaweed.
This seaweed allowed a habitat for the fish to live in that would protect the little fish from the bigger fish, while allowing the bigger fish places to hide from the spear fishermen.
Where did all of the seaweed/kelp go? My grandfather told me "kelp harvesters" had moved into Laguna to cut the kelp and harvest it! I was amazed. Who would want to harvest kelp?
A number of supporters of banning fishing and spear fishing in the city limits of Laguna Beach cited studies of fish populations up in Palos Verdes, the Santa Barbara Channel Islands, etc. I would suggest that all of these places have plenty of seaweed and kelp. I would also suggest that nobody in those areas cares because they live far enough away from it not to smell it or the flies it draws.
A year ago, I visited Palos Verdes. From the vantage of the huge point, you can look down to the rocky beaches inundated with seaweed and kelp. I would estimate I was 1,000 feet above sea level and could smell that rotting kelp from a long way away. What I smelled in Palos Verdes was the same smell I recalled when I worked as a lifeguard in Laguna Beach back in 1969 on north Main Beach. Back then, the kelp was such a problem that the city of Laguna Beach had a tractor that would rake the kelp that ended up on shore every morning. Some kelp would get stuck under the sand and it would later rot and stink.
Folks, I hated the smell of rotting kelp and the flies that crawl on you that result from it. I was not alone. That area of Main Beach was the least populated area on any crowded day.
Instead of an outpost of civilization as it was in the 1920s, today Laguna is a year round vacation destination for those who love the beach. Residents need to ask themselves a question: Do we wish to continue to be a tourist community and a vacation destination, or do we wish to allow the state to turn our town into one smelling of rotting seaweed and kelp where the beaches are teaming with flies, but which has a large population of healthy fish?
I suggest that if we choose the latter, we will have far fewer vacationers and visitors. Revenue will drop, hotel rates and taxes will drop and real estate values will decline as well.
For example, take Clear Lake in Northern California. In the 1920s, tourist enjoyed the clear lake, warm water and hot weather. It attracted crowds from the Bay Area. So many people began to live around the lake that nitrates began seeping into it from septic systems. The algae and seaweed began to grow in the lake. Today, Clear Lake smells like a sewer of dying and decaying seaweed. The old signs of "resort, swimming and boating" are still all there, but the room rates are well below those of any Motel 6 in California and the only thing that is thriving there are drugs, the homeless and those subsidized by food stamps.
The state of California knows that in order to bring back the fish population, they will need to rebuild the environment necessary for those populations to grow. That means growing back the large and extensive kelp beds that were here in the early part of the last century.
I do not believe that we beach lovers will be excited about beaches covered by kelp. I also know that the state of California could care less what we want after they get what they want. By then, it will be too late for the citizens of Laguna Beach to fight back.
