Noelle Barger, San Diego Oceans Foundation

Noelle Barger is operations manager for the San Diego Oceans Foundation (SDOF), a nonprofit organization devoted to promoting ocean stewardship through community-supported projects.

What a view! I am standing among hundreds of beautiful sailboats and pleasure yachts. The air around me smells crisp and fishy -- the perfect combination for a deep inhale of that sensational ocean smell. All around me are avid sea-lovers working diligently on their pristine boats, some humming a familiar tune, others making a racket with their cordless sanders. There isn't a cloud in the sky, but you would think there was with the number of white seagulls swooshing over my head. I am at the Marina Village marina in Mission Bay -- home of the San Diego Oceans Foundation's white seabass restocking program.

Today I am at the marina to perform a site inspection of our white seabass grow-out pen. We maintain one boat slip space that has been rigged with PVC pipe, two-by-fours, and mesh nets to hold over 800 seabass. The grow-out pens have two nets: a predator net and a white seabass net. The seabass net keeps the fish confined to the boat slip area, while the predator net hangs about one foot off the fishnet to keep other animals away from the seabass. To date, the seabass' worst enemy has been a sea lion that has grown accustomed to having many late-night meals at the grow-out pen.

One of the many people who volunteer their time to feed the fish told me an unusual story today. From the sparkle in his eyes, I could tell he had been waiting to tell me this for quite some time:

"You'll never believe what I saw, Noelle!," Joe shouted, throwing up his arms.

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"What did you see, Joe?," I asked, thinking to myself, "This one ought to be good."

He told me, "Several weeks ago, that darn sea lion -- you know, the one that always swims around here -- did some crazy things to the white seabass. I came down to feed the fish and it was getting dark, so I was concentrating real hard to see to make sure they were eating, when all of a sudden the sea lion swam near the nets and started pushin' up the nets with his back! I nearly fell over backwards because I couldn't believe it."

"You're kidding!," I exclaimed.

Joe continued, "Nope. He pushed up the nets and started blowing bubbles underneath the fish. The bubbles scared the fish so bad that they started zipping back and forth in all directions. I'm tellin' you -- these fish were freaking out! Some fish got so confused by all the action that they swam to the surface and escaped the pens! They were scared out of their wits, I have never seen anything like it before."

"What happened next?," I asked curiously.

"The hungry Mr. Sea Lion gobbled them up! All the ones that escaped the nets were eaten; it was very sad," Joe said, tilting his head down. "I have been feeding those critters since they were fingerlings."

I said, "If only they would have known their fate on the other side. Mr. Sea Lion had a good dinner that night, wouldn't you say?"

"I guess so. He ate a lot of our white seabass that night. I was so mad," Joe said solemnly while walking back to his boat.

I couldn't believe the story that he had just told me. A sea lion blowing bubbles to scare the white seabass? It's amazing to me how brilliant some animals are. I am no longer surprised by the common presence of Mr. Sea Lion -- now I know how he became so fat. I guess the predator net doesn't work exactly like it should.

So, now you're probably wondering, "What is a white seabass, and how does the restocking program work?" The white seabass is a sport fish that often reaches 30 to 50 pounds. It is a shallow-water fish that is usually caught near the shore, typically around kelp beds, rocks, and piers.

The white seabass population along the Southern California coast is currently at dangerously low levels due to overfishing and habitat destruction. Our white seabass restocking program was initiated to reintroduce the seabass to San Diego's coastal waters. Since 1950, the populations of this fish have become so scarce that most fishermen have never caught an adult white seabass. (They can be 28 inches long!) To change this course, SDOF formed a partnership with Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute and the California Department of Fish and Game in 1996 to build facilities that would breed, raise, and reintroduce the white seabass into the wild.

The program starts at the Leon Raymond Hubbard, Jr. Marine Fish Hatchery in Carlsbad. Here they breed and raise the young bass, called fingerlings, to a length of three inches. The fingerlings are then transported to the grow-out facility at the marina, where they are hand-fed three times daily by volunteers. It takes four months for the seabass to reach 10 to 12 inches, at which time they are released into the bay. Currently, SDOF is growing about 700 fish for release every four months.

All the white seabass are internally tagged with a tiny "coded" wire so that the recaptured fish can be identified by egg batch, location, and date of release. So far, fish released in Mission Bay have been recaptured as far away as Marina del Rey (nearly 100 nautical miles away) up to five years after release.

Our program has been extremely successful to date. Last week, we released over 600 fish into the bay, which is why I am here today. On Friday, a team of volunteers will be pulling the heavy (and I mean heavy) nets out of the water to clean them. It will be quite an undertaking! We will be using brushes and a high-powered pressure system to remove all the algae and other gunk that has festered on the nets. Once they are cleaned, we will reattach them to the docks and prepare the pens for the fingerlings that will be delivered next week.

Everything looks to be in order here at the docks; there is water pressure and electricity. My next challenge will be to find willing volunteers to help clean the nets -- it is a smelly and dirty job, but someone has to do it! Now it's time to head back to the office to call some volunteers.