Van Damme - 7/22

Headed south out of Van Damme a week ago today, and met with some success in variable swell 4-6 ft: 2 Canary RF, 3 Gophers, & a 26” Lingcod. Caught most of the rockfish on pieces of a small Gopher I caught early on. RF do love RF! Highlight was catching the smurf on a “recycled” octopus, taken from the maw of a lingcod on another trip & frozen for the purpose. Worked like a charm!

Jeff P
Richmond, CA

Tasty looking stringer,
Best bait on earth, recycled octopus, hows the kelp up there this year?

 Pretty sparse, sadly. Cove seemed virtually empty of it.

So far I think there is less bull kelp showing along the Mendo coast than ever before - it's worse than last year. There's a small patch off Portuguese Beach (north side of Mendocino Bay) but elsewhere there's almost none showing.

Purple Urchins continue to carpet the bottom, so until that changes it's not going to get much better. I am concerned about the future of rockfish populations here...

Is there an urchin removal event on the horizon, Tim? I
don’t dive but I’d sure like to lend a hand.

Thanks for the VD fishing report and picture Jeff.

Is there an urchin removal event on the horizon, Tim? I
don’t dive but I’d sure like to lend a hand.

Check here for future urchin removal events. 
https://www.facebook.com/groups/158992911481142/

Is there an urchin removal event on the horizon, Tim? I
don’t dive but I’d sure like to lend a hand.

Check here for future urchin removal events. 
https://www.facebook.com/groups/158992911481142/

Unfortunately, I understand the removal events are more symbolic than effective.  Certainly not opposed, but until the sea stars rebound enough to eat the little purple bastards, it's going to be a lot of tilting at windmills. 

Urchin removal guys know or should know that they aren't actually gonna dent the population. their aim is to create some Kelp banks to keep it going and to supply spores in the event that the urchins do get under control someday.

https://farallones.org/climate/kelp/

Van Damme was hit hard by the urchins over the years. Used to take newer freedivers there for abalone and as each year went by it got worse and worse. Finally we just started to collect urchin and eat so much uni. We just need to have commercial urchin take off and have it sold everywhere. Also need them to allow to take in MPA's

hows the kelp up there this year?

Silent Hunter and I did a 6 hour shore dive last year during the Albion Tourney. We were on a hunt for a greenling for his JDOTY. I've always seen some pretty big ones there in past experiences. So was hoping to score one for some decent points.

There was only one patch of kelp that we saw inside the cove right in front of the parking lot maybe 150 feet long by 20 feet wide in about 15 FOW. That was it the rest was barren. 

We easily saw 10's of thousands of those little purple bastards everywhere. We didn't see many fish there and the greenlings were far and few between. Silent Hunter did manage to shoot one about 16 inches but ended up shooting a bigger one later that year a 16.5 inches for 181.5 points.

That place use to be littered with abs everywhere the only place we really saw them was around the patch of kelp in front of the parking lot. During our dive we swam from the parking lot all the way to the South side of the big island and back.

It was like walking through a neighborhood that was just hit by a hurricane. I was in shock as to the lack of kelp, sea stars , fish and abs. 

Sonny aka Sailfish said he stopped by there right after Albion this past weekend and took this picture. There is no kelp in front of the parking lot so it looks like it's gotten worse since last year. 

Nov 2017,

there was a nice size kelp bed to the northwest of the far washrocks, then there were a few patches to the south of the far washrocks on top of some pinnacles, where to fish were. And the patch out in front of the parking lot.

pic pf parking lot  kelp Nov 2017.

Nov 2017,

there was a nice size kelp bed to the northwest of the far washrocks, then there were a few patches to the south of the far washrocks on top of some pinnacles, where to fish were. And the patch out in front of the parking lot.

pic pf parking lot  kelp Nov 2017.

The closest patch is the one I was referring to late July/early August 2018.

Sonny's pic is last weekend same time frame a year later. 

Here is another picture from VD.  There aren't kelps in sight! 

Just from personal observation, I think this is the worst year yet for bull kelp. Fortunately there are a few small patches, and if those make it to maturity, there will be spores for next year.

My understanding is the grants for urchin-removal efforts did not get approved this year. Without money to pay the urchin boats, it doesn't happen.

On the plus side - during the minus tides, people reported hundreds of Abalone on the rocks, where just a couple of years ago (pre-closure) there were none. Urchins avoid the intertidal, so there is still a narrow strip of algae-rich substrate for the abs.

Long-term, there is reason to believe the ecosystem will correct. Where this has happened before, disease and/or starvation have reduced the urchin populations and kelp has returned. The big problem is lack of sea otters; nobody seems to know why they haven't spread north of Pigeon Point. Transplantation efforts have frequently failed and I don't know of any currently being contemplated. Now of course it's a Catch-22: Otters and kelp need each other, and neither can thrive without the other.