One of our ongoing projects is our White Seabass Program. For more than ten years we have been working with Hubbs Sea World Research Institute and the Ocean Resource Enhancement and Hatchery Program (OREHP) in their marine stock enhancement program by providing an out grow facility for juvenile White Seabass.

Each spring we receive between 5,000 and 10,000 juvenile White Seabass from Hubbs Sea World Research Institute. We receive the fish as fingerlings, usually between three and four inches long. They are placed in our floating pen located off the left side of Stearns Wharf. The fingerlings are fed and monitored twice daily by our volunteers. They are kept in the pen until around mid September when they have almost doubled in size and can fend for themselves in the wild.

Each fish is tagged internally with a small, stainless steel coded wire tag. The tag is used to identify the hatchery-reared fish. The tag is not visible and needs to be read by a special device. The tag contains the year the fish was hatched, the out grow facility it was delived to along with other useful information necessary for the success of the program.

To assist in the identification process, all fishermen are requested to save the heads of any White Seabass caught off the california coast and deposit them at any of a number of locations. A list of the deposit locations can be found on our website: Drop Off Locations (PDF). Local deposit locations are located at Boater's World (#:805-844-9988), California Department of Fish and Game (#:805-568-1221), and at Sea Landing (#:805-963-3564).

In April of 2004 an angler fishing near Santa Catalina caught a 25 pound, 44 inch female White Seabass released from our facility. There have been a total of four fish caught that were reared and released by Santa Barbara Sea. Each fish caught represents dozens of others still swimming free as well as well as ones that had been caught where the fishermen had not delivered the heads to deposit locations.