Courtesy of http://www.976tuna.com
Saturday morning, July 18, starting at 11:00AM, the white seabass outgrow facility, housed inside the Sea Lab in Redondo Beach, plans to release several thousand juvenile seabass. The Sea Lab is located at 1021 North Harbor Drive, just south of Herondo Street. Facilities are not conducive to casual observers, but volunteers who would like to help move the small fish from the tanks to a truck for transfer to the harbor are urged to come down.
The current batches of seabass were delivered late last year to the Redondo Beach facility via tanker trucks from a hatchery in Carlsbad. They have been raised in the two above ground tanks for over 6 months, under the care and feeding of a large crew of volunteers. The hatchlings, around 3 inches in length when they arrived, are now 9 to 10 inches. The release this weekend is expected to be the Redondo facilitys largest, with an estimated 6000 juvenile seabass to be released.
The Redondo Beach outgrow has been around since the late 90s, under the King Harbor Ocean Enhancement Foundation. The initial pen was a fiberglass enclosure held in the boat docks at King Harbor. After 3 or 4 years of marginal success, they entered into an agreement with Southern California Edison and the Sea Lab to utilize an unused portion of their lot. With the help of the King Harbor Marlin Club, a large outdoor tank was built and used for a year, again with limited success. Then in around 2000, Marline club member Chuck Ullick procured over $300,000 in local donations, and the club and a host of other volunteers banded together again and built a pole tent structure with two smaller above ground tanks. Water is circulated in from the Harbor, providing fresh water and an ocean like environment for the young fish. This facility has housed and released 2 to 4 broods of fish each year, with anywhere from 1500 to 3500 fish being released in each brood. The group estimates that to date they have released over 80,000 seabass.
The program behind all this, the Ocean Resource Enhancement and Hatchery Program (OREHP) was started in 1982 by Assembly Bill 1414, written by California Assemblyman Larry Stirling. That bill funded nine years of research into the severe decline in the number of sport-caught white seabass; from a high in the early 1950s of around 55,000 per year, down to 3500 per year in the 60s, and barely in the hundreds in the late 70s and early 80s. After the initial research, the program was reauthorized for an additional ten years by Assembly Bill-960. Continuing research into the success of the program is funded through the sale of marine enhancement stamps on recreation and commercial saltwater fishing licenses purchased south of Point Arguello, California. No federal or state tax revenue are used to fund this program.
Hubbs Sea World Research Institute (HSWRI) and the Ocean Resource Enhancement and Hatchery Program (OREHP) provide the facility in Redondo Beach, and 11 other out grow facilities from San Diego to Santa Barbara, with juvenile white seabass. Established in October, 1995, the Leon Raymond Hubbard, Jr., Marine Fish Hatchery can produce over 350,000 hatchlings a year. The 22,000-square-foot hatchery is located near Agua Hedonia Lagoon, near Carlsbad, California.
Each of the four tanks is set to its own spawn cycle, using variations of temperature and duration of daylight, to force one tank to spawn approximately every three months. When the water temperature is raised to approximately 66 degrees, and the fish enjoy 14 hours of light a day, it forces the fish into a spawn cycle, and the fish produce and fertilize a brood of eggs.
The eggs are collected and moved to incubators, where they hatch in two days. The hatchlings live off an egg sack for about two days, and once that is absorbed, they are ready for a real meal. Brine shrimp are raised in a separate section of the facility, and for another 15 days, the tiny hatchlings are kept in the incubators to dine on microscopic shrimp.
From there the fish are moved to larger swimming pool sized tanks, where they start on a diet of specially formulated pellet food. The size of the pellets increases as the fish grow. The fish are raised here until they get to a length of about 3 inches.
As they start their journey out of the hatchery to be transferred to an outgrow facility, the tiny fish each have a microscopic stainless steel chip implanted in one cheek. The chip is inscribed with a number, and the number can be traced back to when the fish were spawned, at which facility they were raised, and when they were released. The success of the program can be tracked by a special instrument, by scanning the heads of seabass captured in the wild. In October 2004, OREHP released its one millionth white seabass, and is currently releasing more than a quarter of a million fish each year. Adult fish have been recovered up to 12 years after release and as much as 185 nautical miles away from their release site.
Volunteers are always needed at the Redondo Facility. It requires about 2 hours, once a week, to clean the tanks, fill the feed feeds, and take statistics on the fish and water conditions. Interested parties should contract Richard Ford, at 310-379-6716.
Saturday morning, July 18, starting at 11:00AM, the white seabass outgrow facility, housed inside the Sea Lab in Redondo Beach, plans to release several thousand juvenile seabass. The Sea Lab is located at 1021 North Harbor Drive, just south of Herondo Street. Facilities are not conducive to casual observers, but volunteers who would like to help move the small fish from the tanks to a truck for transfer to the harbor are urged to come down.
The current batches of seabass were delivered late last year to the Redondo Beach facility via tanker trucks from a hatchery in Carlsbad. They have been raised in the two above ground tanks for over 6 months, under the care and feeding of a large crew of volunteers. The hatchlings, around 3 inches in length when they arrived, are now 9 to 10 inches. The release this weekend is expected to be the Redondo facilitys largest, with an estimated 6000 juvenile seabass to be released.
The Redondo Beach outgrow has been around since the late 90s, under the King Harbor Ocean Enhancement Foundation. The initial pen was a fiberglass enclosure held in the boat docks at King Harbor. After 3 or 4 years of marginal success, they entered into an agreement with Southern California Edison and the Sea Lab to utilize an unused portion of their lot. With the help of the King Harbor Marlin Club, a large outdoor tank was built and used for a year, again with limited success. Then in around 2000, Marline club member Chuck Ullick procured over $300,000 in local donations, and the club and a host of other volunteers banded together again and built a pole tent structure with two smaller above ground tanks. Water is circulated in from the Harbor, providing fresh water and an ocean like environment for the young fish. This facility has housed and released 2 to 4 broods of fish each year, with anywhere from 1500 to 3500 fish being released in each brood. The group estimates that to date they have released over 80,000 seabass.
The program behind all this, the Ocean Resource Enhancement and Hatchery Program (OREHP) was started in 1982 by Assembly Bill 1414, written by California Assemblyman Larry Stirling. That bill funded nine years of research into the severe decline in the number of sport-caught white seabass; from a high in the early 1950s of around 55,000 per year, down to 3500 per year in the 60s, and barely in the hundreds in the late 70s and early 80s. After the initial research, the program was reauthorized for an additional ten years by Assembly Bill-960. Continuing research into the success of the program is funded through the sale of marine enhancement stamps on recreation and commercial saltwater fishing licenses purchased south of Point Arguello, California. No federal or state tax revenue are used to fund this program.
Hubbs Sea World Research Institute (HSWRI) and the Ocean Resource Enhancement and Hatchery Program (OREHP) provide the facility in Redondo Beach, and 11 other out grow facilities from San Diego to Santa Barbara, with juvenile white seabass. Established in October, 1995, the Leon Raymond Hubbard, Jr., Marine Fish Hatchery can produce over 350,000 hatchlings a year. The 22,000-square-foot hatchery is located near Agua Hedonia Lagoon, near Carlsbad, California.
Each of the four tanks is set to its own spawn cycle, using variations of temperature and duration of daylight, to force one tank to spawn approximately every three months. When the water temperature is raised to approximately 66 degrees, and the fish enjoy 14 hours of light a day, it forces the fish into a spawn cycle, and the fish produce and fertilize a brood of eggs.
The eggs are collected and moved to incubators, where they hatch in two days. The hatchlings live off an egg sack for about two days, and once that is absorbed, they are ready for a real meal. Brine shrimp are raised in a separate section of the facility, and for another 15 days, the tiny hatchlings are kept in the incubators to dine on microscopic shrimp.
From there the fish are moved to larger swimming pool sized tanks, where they start on a diet of specially formulated pellet food. The size of the pellets increases as the fish grow. The fish are raised here until they get to a length of about 3 inches.
As they start their journey out of the hatchery to be transferred to an outgrow facility, the tiny fish each have a microscopic stainless steel chip implanted in one cheek. The chip is inscribed with a number, and the number can be traced back to when the fish were spawned, at which facility they were raised, and when they were released. The success of the program can be tracked by a special instrument, by scanning the heads of seabass captured in the wild. In October 2004, OREHP released its one millionth white seabass, and is currently releasing more than a quarter of a million fish each year. Adult fish have been recovered up to 12 years after release and as much as 185 nautical miles away from their release site.
Volunteers are always needed at the Redondo Facility. It requires about 2 hours, once a week, to clean the tanks, fill the feed feeds, and take statistics on the fish and water conditions. Interested parties should contract Richard Ford, at 310-379-6716.
