Contaminated Fish Being Sold, Speakers Charge : Santa Monica Rally Hears Call for Controls on Commercial Operations in Bay

The decades-long battle over pollution in Santa Monica Bay flared up again Sunday as environmentalists and politicians charged that fish contaminated with carcinogens are being caught in the bay and sold at local seafood markets.

The group, which held a rally on Santa Monica Pier, said they have determined that several area fish markets are selling white croakers, Pacific sole and white sand dabs contaminated by DDT and PCBs (polychloral biphenyls). But they did not identify the markets by name, and they could not say how much of the fish is being sold.

Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) called on state health officials to ban the sale of all fish from the bay that contain cancer-causing substances.

“It is clear that we need to revise the laws,” Hayden told a lively crowd of environmental activists. “People are basically entitled to know that the fish they take home is safe to consume.”

Hayden was joined by state Sen. Herschel Rosenthal (D-Los Angeles), Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, who represents Venice, actress Morgan Fairchild, and members of Heal the Bay, an environmental organization. Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy and Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica) sent letters of support.

Dorothy Green, the leader of Heal the Bay, said the state has posted warnings about the possible dangers of eating sport fish but has ignored commercial fishing. She said that the health warnings should be broadened.

“Eating this fish ups the acceptable cancer risk,” Green said. “We want the state to let people know what the risk is from eating commercially caught fish.”

Rosenthal agreed that people have a right to know about contamination. “I am angry that people are eating fish caught along the coast and there are no signs warning them of the dangers ,” he said. “The health department does the tests and they know which fish have problems. Why don’t they tell us?”

State health officials declined comment on the group’s charges, saying they would wait until they had fully reviewed the matter. But an official with the state Department of Fish and Game said the law permits commercial fisherman to operate in areas that are known to have severe contamination.

Gordan Cribbs of the fish and game department said several varieties of fish, including the highly contaminated white croaker, are legally caught in the bay and sold.

“As a commercial fisherman, all waters of the state are open if you use hook and line fishing gear (as opposed to nets),” Cribbs said. “Some of the fish may be sold to local markets around San Pedro and some may be transported out of the basin. . . . Some people may not want it, but that doesn’t stop the mom-and-pop operations or people who sell it from the back of trucks.”

The Santa Monica Bay area extends from Point Dume south to the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Concerns about bay contamination have existed for decades but became more severe in 1985 when officials acknowledged that certain fish were severely contaminated and posted signs warning of the hazard to consumers.

Since then owners of many seafood markets claim that they have stopped selling locally caught fish.

Hayden said that new laws may be the only way to end the contamination. Campaign California, his political organization, is considering a 1988 initiative that would force officials to reduce contamination in the bay.

All of the political rhetoric was lost, however, on Housten York, a sport fisherman who stood with his line in the water during Sunday’s rally.

York said that he’s not worried about eating fish from the bay. “I think that they ought to clean it up,” he said. “But I really don’t think that the contamination matters when it comes to the amount that I eat.”