A King Harbor dredging project last winter timed to avoid disturbing baby giant sea bass has succeeded, according to a local wildlife consultant.

Over the past 10 years, Mike Couffer has spent more than 600 hours underwater observing baby giant sea bass in four spots along the Southern California coast.

He reports that the dredging done in February and March along the Redondo breakwall - and more importantly where and when the spoils were dumped - has not hurt young giant sea bass numbers.

The fish are an endangered species known to inhabit shallow water by sandy beaches with a submarine canyon, Couffer said, who has published work on the subject with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and Southern California Academy of Sciences.

Four years before the dredging, done by Manson Construction, Couffer spoke to the city's harbor commission and requested that the project avoid the second half of the year, mid-July through December, to not affect the baby sea bass nursery site, which runs ¼-mile from the Pier south to the Topaz (Street) rock jetty.

"You want to do your work around this site from January to mid-July, because this protected fish is not there," Couffer said. "The commission and the (Army Corps of Engineers) already knew where to put the spoils, they just needed a bit of help when to do it."

Couffer did underwater surveys once the dredging and dumping of the spoils was complete.

"The proof is in the pudding," he said. "I found many more baby sea bass this year than the past two years. I see this as a real victory. We successfully completed a project without damaging this nursery site. I think it was a fantastic project. Harbor commissioners listened to me."

Before the work, the harbor commission sent Couffer's information to the Army Corps, which maintains the breakwater.

The commission also advocated to move the location of where dredged sand is usually dumped.

The excess sand this time was dispatched south of Topaz Jetty, in the ocean off of Knob Hill, "kind of right in front of the county garage," said Roger Carlson, harbor commissioner.

Sand such as this is often strategically dumped, to keep it accessible, out of the submarine canyon, where it can be retrieved if needed, by a giant vacuum and used to shore up beaches.

Couffer addressed the harbor commission in 2020, during the planning to obtain the permit to dredge.

"Without (Couffer), it might've played out differently," Carlson said.

Aside from the interest of the baby sea bass habitat, hauling the sand farther away had another benefit.

"It's really cool that we did this dredging process and we didn't silt up the visibility, didn't impact the beach and divers (in that popular area)," Carlson said.

Historically, the dumping site for dredged sand in Santa Monica Bay is just south of Redondo's Veterans Park.

A 2012 dredging at Marina Del Rey brought garbage-laden sand and "p -- ed off a lot of divers, including me," Carlson said.

"Through (Couffer's) studies and kind of our suggestions, we dumped by the garage for the first time."

The digging work, using a scoop dredge, tugboat and spoils barge, focused on two areas in the harbor - starting with a sandbar inside the breakwall from Marina Way to Yacht Club Way, taking out 60,000 cubic yards of sediment. The second stretch was next to the short breakwall by Kincaid's Restaurant, where 2,000 yards were hauled away.

Couffer did his post-dredging dives in July and early August, in two-hour sessions between the Topaz jetty and the Pier.

"I found seven fish in one day," he said, referring to babies three inches long maximum. "A good survey is when you can find two fish."

In total, his three dives turned up two fish, seven fish and three fish. The counts are meaningful because baby giant sea bass each have a different spot pattern, like a fingerprint.

"I found this was a particularly good year," Couffer said. "Because it was such a productive time for baby sea bass, that proved that (the dredging and dumping) hadn't damaged the site. Basically, everyone can go about their business at this point."

To reproduce, adult sea bass spawn and, in June, thousands of eggs hatch, and the larvae float in plankton for a month.

"They become a bona-fide fish and they look like a black housefly for a week or two, and then turn brown, then orange," Couffer said.

"The Redondo submarine canyon - that is like a river of nutrients. Huge shoals of tiny shrimp to be eaten by baby giant sea bass. And there are not a lot of predators off of Veterans Park. Then they outgrow their food source and leave the area."

"The next time you see the fish they are two feet long. We don't know where they go in the meantime," Couffer said.

He named four nursery sites - Redondo Beach, the Newport Pier, Big Corona Del Mar State Beach and La Jolla Shores, San Diego.

Baby giant sea bass are only found in California and Mexico, on both sides of the Baja Peninsula.

"Redondo has the highest density anywhere, that we know," said Couffer.

Young giant sea bass are compact and orange, while the elongated adults are green-gray, silver or black.

"They will come right up to you - they're really docile and curious," Carlson said of the mature fish.

The largest he has seen while diving in the area (farther off the coast) was "bigger than me," about seven feet long.

Couffer makes his living from his company, Grey Owl Biological Consulting, based in Corona Del Mar. He is hired to survey birds and butterflies for environmental impact reports for landowners, utility companies, cities and county governments.

His new project in the water is to find out how long the young giant sea bass stay at the nursery sites.

So far, what he knows is that it is at least two months. ER