You don't often get email from Learn why this is important From: Nils Nehrenheim
To: CityClerk
Subject: FW: Dredging, thanks, giant sea bass doing well Date: Tuesday, October 1, 2024 6:46:16 PM
Please include this as part of the record, thanks. Item H10. -Nils
(424) 374-7168
All communications are accessible via Public Records Act requests From: Roger Carlson
Sent: Monday, September 30, 2024 12:57 PM
To: Greg Kapovich <[email protected]>; James Light <[email protected]>; Geraldine Trivedi <[email protected]>; [email protected]; Todd Loewenstein <[email protected]>; Mio Iwasaki <[email protected]>; Dave Charobee <[email protected]>; Mike Witzansky <[email protected]>; Nils Nehrenheim <[email protected]>; Paige Kaluderovic <[email protected]>; Zein Obagi <[email protected]>; Scott Behrendt <[email protected]> Subject: Dredging, thanks, giant sea bass doing well
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I’d like to thank everyone for accommodating the dredging schedule for the giant sea bass calendar. Biologist Mike Couffer has started his surveys of young of the year giant sea bass, and is finding record numbers of juveniles, in Redondo and at other sites. The dredging operation seems to have had no impact on the site, on what is a banner year for numbers. I have also heard no complaints about trash from the operation, at what is a very popular beach diving site and a training site for classes. Please forward to the contractor and the the army corp and anyone else who might be interested, I know that in these operations people rarely get thanked when something goes well.
Below is Mike’s email on his first dive of the season at redondo, and some photos.
Mikes studies the species, and has found heavy concentrations of juveniles in shallow water at the heads of undersea canyons. La Jolla canyon and Redondo Canyon are hotspots, with juveniles present in the second half of the year, so the dredging had to be done in the first half of the year.
https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=175914&inline We also pushed the storage site for the dredged material further south to keep the material from sliding into the canyon, and to keep the material and any trash from affecting the site both for wildlife and divers, the new site is also closer to the county’s heavy equipment garages.
These fish grow to 8’ long and 500 pounds. They are pretty docile, and were once very popular gamefish, but are now endangered and protected. They are coming back well, I see them somewhat often on local dives.
I’ve attached some photos from Mike, of juveniles at Redondo canyon, and two photos from me of the biggest one I have seen, this one was about 7’ long, much bigger than me, on a wreck off of Santa Monica. The juveniles are unbelievably cute. Mike and his grad students also studied several individuals, and determined that the fish’s spot pattern does not change as it grows, so there is now a citizen science program to record the spot patterns on the fish when they are seen and watch their movements. Some also have acoustic tags and are tracked by the same receivers used by the CSULB sharklab project.
https://spottinggiantseabass.msi.ucsb.edu/
Begin forwarded message:
Here are some photos off my website, and I think it's a GREAT idea to thank the commission for what was a job well done, from my point of view! The dredging was done at the right time of year, the spoils didn't harm the Giant Sea Bass nursery site, and the nursery site was left in good condition. The evidence for this I saw on Sunday when I found a LOT of baby Giant Sea Bass on a single dive. Sunday was actually the secondbest day of baby sea bass surveys I've ever had during the last TEN YEARS! And you can quote me on this!
On Sep 15, 2024, at 23:37, Mike Couffer wrote:
I went bassin' this (Sunday) morning at Redondo Beach, LA County between Topaz Jetty and Redondo Pier looking for young-of-the-year (baby) Giant Sea Bass. Waves 0-1 foot, surge low, visibility about 8 feet away from the submarine canyon but improved to about 12 to 15 feet where the canyon comes close to shore off Veteran's Park showers. Temps were 65 to 70 degrees to my max extreme depth of... 21 feet. This was near the top of the incoming tide. The bottom today was INFESTED with baby Giant Sea Bass! I made a transect in 18 feet from the jetty to the pier and then returned to the jetty in 13 to 14 feet so that I'd be highly unlikely to double-count baby GSBs (count the same fish twice). I found SEVEN baby Giant Sea Bass in an hour and a half, most on the 18-foot transect. I found my first fish 12 minutes after hitting the bottom. In spite of taking time to measure it, write down its depth and behavior, and surfacing briefly to look at my position along the shore, I found my second baby GSB only 5 minutes after finding the first! This dive, I found 3 orange phase, one brown phase, and three tiny black phase GSBs, the smallest being 20mm or 3/4 of an inch total length. Today was one of the most productive baby GSB dives I've ever made.
Michael C. Couffer
Grey Owl Biological Consulting
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