Central Coast Fishermen Fight Plan for Transpacific Fiber Optic Cables

MORRO BAY, Calif. —  An underwater controversy is bubbling to the surface in San Luis Obispo County, where commercial fishermen fear that proposals for new transpacific fiber optic cables will tie up prime fishing grounds for Dover sole, shrimp and prawns.

Billion-dollar business consortiums hope to build landing points along California’s Central Coast and lay at least 11, and as many as 32, cables on the ocean floor for communications and Internet links to Australia, New Zealand and Asia.

Telecommunication experts say this area is ideal for landing cables because it is equidistant between cyber-busy San Francisco and Los Angeles, and it has a relatively short stretch of shallow water where the cable must be buried. They say construction would help the local economy while meeting the growing demand for fast worldwide e-mail and telephone service.

Fishermen, however, have another view of the cables.

“If they put in as many as they say they are going to, and they tell us to stay away, it will take all of our fishing grounds,” said Roland Eugene Thompson, 66, a prawn fisherman who owns the Slick Chick trawler out of Morro Bay.

Fishing boats are not banned by law from dragging their heavy netting equipment along the bottom near communication cables. But fishermen worry that they could face all sorts of problems, including fines or lawsuits, if they snap the flexible steel and plastic casings that cover the strands of ultra-thin glass fiber optics. Fishing gear can also be caught and lost in the cables, which are usually less than 4 inches in diameter.

“To be honest, this huge number of cables just comes down to another piece of bad news,” said Craig Barbre, president of the 55-member Morro Bay Commercial Fishermen’s Assn. He trolls for salmon and tuna.

In waters deeper than 6,000 feet, past the trawlers’ range, the cables usually rest on the ocean floor. In shallower spots, the companies bury lines 2 to 6 feet under the floor and leave them exposed on underwater rocks and cliffs. Even if the cables are buried, trawling fishermen say, their heavy equipment may disturb the bottom and accidentally break cables that are carrying millions of phone calls.

Much of the debate focuses on the widths of the swaths of sea--from 2,000 feet to as much as two miles wide--that cable builders say they need to put between their individual lines. Only with such big distances, they argue, can they use a high-tech grappling hook for maintenance without damaging other lines. Also, company representatives stress that the cables are more at risk from sabotage or accidents if they are bundled close together.

Fishermen complain that open and productive fishing territory would turn into a region of anxiety for them.

Representatives of cable projects recently began meeting with the fishing industry to adjust cable routes and address other concerns. The firms involved in the cable proposals are AT&T;, MCI WorldCom, Global Crossing, Global Photon and Chevron.

“We are trying to find out what some of the fishing issues are,” said MCI spokeswoman Linda Laughlin. A lot of government review is ahead for the proposed cable routes.

The State Lands Commission is working on 11 preliminary applications for cable landings in San Luis Obispo County. A proposal before the county Planning Department from Chevron would turn its old oil terminal north of Morro Bay into a landing for up to 21 fiber optic cables, but there are no offshore routes or cable companies associated with that project yet. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the California Coastal Commission must also grant permits, and cities and the county must approve on-land facilities.

“We haven’t really received a valid reason for why they need such a huge distance between the cables,” said James Caruso, a planner for San Luis Obispo County. “Why not have a corridor where they are just 500 feet apart?” Caruso said it might be more expensive, but companies “can do that.”

Mary Griggs, environmental planner with the State Lands Commission, said each company will be forced to look at its project’s impact on fishing.

“These fishermen do feel like tiny gnats in this whole thing. But they’re important gnats, and they just don’t want to get swatted,” said Bob Hardy, marine biologist at the California Department of Fish and Game. He said the cables are harmless to the environment but the agency will be asked to review the projects.

Federal law, crafted in the telegraph era, requires fishing vessels and their nets to stay one mile away from boats that are laying cables. The law makes no mention of fishing near the cables after installation, but allows for penalties, from $500 to $5,000, for anybody who willfully or negligently harms a cable.

“Bury the damn things and let me fish over them, or pay me. That’s all I’m saying,” said Ed Ewing, 53, who lives on the boat Shirley J. “If it’s so important, why can’t they just pay us to stay off their wires?”

Ewing has worked out of Morro Bay for 30 years and drags the depths for halibut at this time of year. About 15 to 20 trawlers usually operate out of Morro Bay and Avila Beach, and more boats from Oregon and Washington work the area in winter months.

Commercial fish from boats in San Luis Obispo County brought in $6.7 million in 1997, according to state figures. Observers say the area’s seafood industry totals $18 million a year when processors, truck drivers, dockworkers and ice vendors are included.

Economic forecasters for the county said the construction phase for the cables could produce employment for a few hundred people. But the fishing industry is expected to employ more people once the low-maintenance cable switching facilities are in operation.

AT&T; has three fiber optic cables that were installed in the mid-1990s off San Luis Obispo County at Montana de Oro State Park, south of Morro Bay. Only two additional commercial fiber optic cables exist off all of California, at Point Arena in Northern California. Older coaxial cables that carried transpacific phone conversations in past years are out of use. State officials acknowledge that they don’t know where military or advanced government research cables are located.

AT&T; and MCI have met with the fishing industry to discuss the possibility of establishing a corridor for future cables off Montana de Oro State Park. The proposed corridor is cone-shaped: two miles wide at the shore, 20 miles wide in deep sea, about 45 miles offshore where the water is 6,000 feet deep.

AT&T; is also proposing a graded burial of their cables, up to 6 feet underground close to shore and 39 inches underground farther out to the end of trawling range, AT&T; spokeswoman Pat Robinson said.

Former Morro Bay Mayor Cathy Novak has been negotiating with the companies as a paid consultant for the fishermen. She said the proposed zone would in effect bar fishermen from a huge swath of ocean. “That’s unacceptable,” said Novak, who is married to a commercial fisherman.

Robinson, speaking from AT&T;’s New Jersey office, said the company does ask fishermen to stay away from cables and probably will continue to ask it. “We’re concerned about them as much as we are about our cables,” she said.

Robinson said the fishermen’s concerns can be addressed in the state’s environmental process. “We’re going to make sure everybody is well informed about our issues and everybody has their say.” But she acknowledges that the conflict between fishermen and cable companies is more “emotional” in San Luis Obispo County than anywhere else because of the sheer number of proposed cables.

Morro Bay Mayor Rodger Anderson said the town’s largest industry, tourism, is directly dependent on Morro Bay’s historic reputation as a quaint fishing village. “If there’s a spider web of cables out there, and they have to fish around them, you’ve killed the fishing industry,” Anderson said.