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VENTURA
For school kids journeying to the Channel Islands, a major highlight comes when Alex Brodie drops a camera underwater to fetch images of lush kelp forests, big lobsters and bug-eyed rockfish beneath the boat.
"The kids just love it," said Brodie, a captain for Island Packers. "We can take a whole group on a tour of the kelp forest, and they don't even get wet."
Brodie tends to find the most dramatic images in the 37-acre Anacapa Island Reserve, one of the few places off California's coast completely off limits to fishing.
"In the Anacapa Reserve, the fish are big and friendly. You see big sheepshead (fish) you rarely see anywhere else," said Brodie, who has been diving in the Channel Islands for 15 years.
Partly because of Anacapa's track record, "no-take" reserves are becoming the rage of the marine science world. Earlier this month, the California Fish and Game Commission began enforcing 175 square miles of new reserves around the Channel Islands. Federal officials are weighing proposals to ban fishing off other parts of the West Coast and Florida.
Advocates say reserves are a proven way to bring back fish whose habitats have been hurt by trawling and excessive fishing. In the Anacapa reserve, the kelp forests are healthy because abundant rockfish prey on sea urchins that would otherwise decimate underwater vegetation.
"The responses are striking," says Robert Warner, a marine scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has studied reserves near South Africa, New Zealand and other countries.
Last year, Warner and graduate student Ben Halpern examined studies of 80 reserves worldwide. They found that after a reserve was established, the total weight and the number of organisms generally tripled.
Critics say such no-take zones displace fishing pressure to surrounding areas, worsening conditions there. Warner and Halpern, however, found the no-take zones generally provide a "spillover effect," improving the abundance and size of fish in adjacent waters.
Such a spillover can be seen off Anacapa, where lobster fishermen crowd the boundary of the reserve from October to March, lured by the prospect of 10-pound lobsters.
Last fall, the state Fish and Game Commission approved a checkerboard of reserves off each of the five Channel Islands. By separating the reserves, scientists hope that fish eggs from one ecosystem will seed other areas.
Fishermen will continue to have access to 75 percent of the waters around the islands. Even so, the reserves face bitter opposition from marina owners and some recreational fishermen, who have sued to overturn them.
Tom Raftican, president of United Anglers of Southern California, said the areas outside the Channel Islands reserves are either difficult to reach by boat, or poor fishing grounds. "The most accessible areas are all packed into the reserves," he said.
One study, commissioned by sport fishing groups, claims the closures will cause $100 million a year in losses to fishing businesses.
If they survive legal challenges, the reserves are sure to further transform harbors in Ventura, Oxnard and Santa Barbara. A decade ago, such harbors were supported by tourists who wanted to go angling or spearfishing. Now many customers want to capture fish with cameras instead of hooks.
"Attitudes are changing," said Brodie, the tour boat captain. "Ten years ago, people wanted to go out and catch shark. Now I have people asking me, 'Do you think we will see a shark?'"
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