Mailbag: ‘Breakers’ preceded ‘Artists’ as mascot

I’ve been doing research on Laguna Beach High School since 1993.

The mascot background:

The core of the existing school was built in 1927-28, opening for instruction for the fall 1928 term as the K-8 “Laguna School.”

The high school was added in the fall of 1934. Laguna teams went without a nickname until Dec. 7, 1934, when “Breakers” was adopted by the high school. This was after the Fall 1934 sports season.

Laguna Beach already had a reputation as an art colony even before the establishing of the Festival of Arts (1932) and the famous Pageant of the Masters (1935).

Civic pride with Laguna’s art community culminated in a student body vote June 4, 1936, to change the nickname to “Artists” after only 19 months as the Breakers. Not all students were happy with the decision in 1936. I spoke with the late Rollo Beck, who graduated in 1938 as part of the first class to attend Laguna for four years. He felt the Artist theme was not supported by all the athletes when it was forced on the school. Again, back in 1936 Laguna was a small town and the Artist theme was very important to the town’s economy.

Vestiges of the “old” Breakers remained at the school even after the mascot change in ’36. The yearbook, first issued in 1935, remained “The Nautilus.”

The school paper is the “Brush and Palette,” from the Artist era. The theater was built as part of the original 1928 campus and was renamed “Artists Theatre” many years after it was built, long after the mascot change to Artist.

As for the nickname “Beach” used in cheering, this was a term never used by the high school prior to the ‘90s. LBHS was always referred to as “Laguna.” “Beach” was Huntington Beach, a term they still use. Because H.B.’s mascot is the Oilers and the community was a blue collar oil town, the term Beach took a class distinction and using “Laguna” for the local school could be considered somewhat an elitist move.

The term “Beach” for Laguna was pushed locally by coaches in the athletic department that were uncomfortable with their teams using the “Artist” term, again a move that began in the 1990s.

Now if you ask coaches at the high school who went to Laguna as students, they are still Artists (Lance Stewart, Jonathan Todd, Dave Brobeck). The “Beach” term was a push by newcomers just as the return to “Breakers” was pushed by people who were uncomfortable with the some teasing our sport teams endured from their opponents.

FRANK D. ARONOFF

Laguna Beach

Council acted too hastily on reserve

Upon returning from a recent out-of-town trip I was stunned to learn that the Laguna Beach City Council passed a resolution that the city was in support of a marine reserve for the entire length of Laguna’s coast from Abalone Point in the north to just south of Three Arch Bay. In essence, sending a message to the Marine Life Protection Act committee (the state policy maker’s that are mandated to establish marine protected areas along California’s coastline), that Laguna Beach is in favor of a blanket closure of our coast to fishing.

This is far from true. Not everyone in Laguna Beach is in support of this resolution as the letters and columns in our papers have reflected. Our council, as someone suggested, put the cart before the horse and leaped ahead to endorse a plan that is not supported by socio-economics or by science, or has overwhelming support or input from the community. It is not a done deal. Part of the heritage of Laguna is to be able to fish along our coast. Historically and currently, Lagunans have fished along our beaches, often bringing home their catch to share with their friends and neighbors. Fishing off their kayaks or off the beach by our residents is a source of enjoyment to many. Local and visitor fishing interests should be given consideration, as the MLPA has acknowledged.

According to MLPA guidelines, the minimum size for these new marine protected areas is nine square miles, three miles of coast and three miles out. In fact, those who fish have said they could live with this plan. Not all of the new marine protected areas established to date are “no fishing” reserves. Seven are Marine Conservation Areas with limited sport take and only commercial lobster take. Two are “no take” reserves, one of these is a state park. There are alternatives.

Whatever the outcome, the Department of Fish and Game estimates that enforcement of the marine protected areas will cost the state $30 million to $60 million annually. How the state will pay for enforcement should be of concern. As they say, there are no free lunches.

What you need to know: The state is using a regional approach to the MLPA process to establish marine protected areas as mandated along California’s 1,100-mile coastline. The coastline has been divided into five study regions by the MLPA. The Central Coast was the first region to have marine protected areas implemented, in September 2007. The North Central Coast areas are scheduled to be adopted next month.

The MLPA is currently working on the South Coast Region, which includes Laguna Beach “” from Point Conception to the Mexican border. There are three groups that make up the MLPA. There’s a Blue Ribbon Task force, which oversees the planning process, a Scientific Advisory Team and Stakeholders who represent various groups that have a stake in the decisions made regarding the final marine protected areas. The planning process is stake-holder driven and is dependent on local knowledge of the marine environment under consideration.

Since the council resolution, people feel they were shut out of the process. The MLPA wants to hear from you.

Take the time to go to the Department of Fish and Game website. There’s a calendar of upcoming MLPA meetings, membership listings of the Blue Ribbon Task Force, Science Advisory Team and Stakeholders, and more importantly, you can get the facts and let your voice be heard, at www.dfg.ca.gov/mlpa. You can also fax a letter to (916) 653-8102 or e-mail your comments to MLPAcomments@resources.net, or write: MLPA Initiative, c/o California Natural Resources Agency, 1416 Ninth St., Ste. 1311, Sacramento, CA 95814.

PAT CARPENTER

Laguna Beach

Boyd not called ‘Nasty’ name

Kelly Boyd says I called him a “fish slaughterer” when we spoke at the Aliso Creek Inn a few week ago.

He is dead wrong. I called him nothing of the sort. Perhaps he heard me wrong. Perhaps he misconstrued what I did say. I cannot vouch for his hearing. I can vouch for what I said or didn’t say. I did not call him any name whatsoever.

What then did we talk about? We talked a Marine Reserve in Laguna Beach where no fishing would be allowed. In the process Kelly presented himself as a “sport” fisherman. I asked him what sport was involved in catching a fish. He did not respond.

Calling yourself a fisherman is OK; calling yourself a “sport” fisherman jangles a semantic nerve. To me a sport involves a contest between willing rivals of equal or near equal strengths. The Bears and the Packers. The Yankees and the Red Sox. Federer and Roddick.

But a man with a hook or a trap or a speargun, against a fish?

Incidentally I have done my share of fishing, though it all happened 60-plus years ago. I went crabbing with my grandfather on Long Island Sound. I caught cod in the waters of Attu in the Aleutians during World War II. I have since put aside my fishing pole.

But that does not mean I think of fishermen as some sort of vile creatures. The discussion with Kelly had to do with whether Laguna Beach would be a wise choice for a Marine Reserve. I think yes and he thinks no. And neither of us called the other any name.

I hope this clears the air though I doubt it will. Once something is in print, it takes on a life of its own. And Kelly becomes more insistent. He will maintain I called him a nasty name. I know I did not.

ARNOLD HANO

Laguna Beach

Kelp beds need to rest and grow

I am writing this letter as a 40+-year resident of Laguna Beach; a biologist with 36 years of teaching at Orange County community colleges; a scuba diver since 1970; a retired scuba instructor; a person who has dived in tropical and temperate reefs all over the world; who has led natural history tours that included diving at the California Channel Islands, Mexico, Palau, Bali, Australia, Tahiti, the Maldives, the Galapagos and the Caribbean. I have been spear fishing in Southern California and Baja since the mid-1970s.

When I moved to Laguna Beach from the San Gabriel Valley in 1968, I taught at Fullerton and then at Saddleback colleges. After teaching I would drive to 10th Street beach in South Laguna where a friend taught me how to body surf. When there were no waves we would snorkel and scuba dive at Ninth Street beach.

In the 1970s there were kelp beds offshore of many of Laguna’s beaches. In those kelp beds was a good variety of fish to watch and they were plentiful enough to spear or catch by line without depleting their populations. In and on the rocky bottoms it was common to find lobster and abalone along with a nice diversity of other invertebrates. Sport divers, following Department of Fish and Game regulations, could take lobster and abalone and there would still be some left.

The kelp beds, as they do wherever they occur, offer a habitat for other marine life to hide and find food in. The diversity of marine life along Southern California’s coast is in a good part due to the presence of kelp forests.

Kelp forests do grow larger, shrink in size, and occasionally they disappear due to various changes in the marine environment. It was obvious to me in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s that the giant kelp plants were having a difficult time surviving. Warmer waters negatively affected their growth. Powerful storms pulled the plants off the bottom and washed them ashore. As those 30 years progressed, the kelp was slower and slower to return and was absent for many years at a time.

When the kelp was absent, the balance of life in those areas changed. Some species became more common, other populations were reduced or disappeared altogether. There appeared to be one clear winner when it came to success in these areas and that was the sea urchin. The populations of the herbivorous purple and red urchins increased over these years and when the kelp began to re-grow, the urchins were there to chew up the new growth. Laguna Beach reefs became “urchin barrens” where one would see only a few species of algae, fish and invertebrates, but thousands of sea urchins.

There are certainly other factors involved with the urchin explosion (like divers and fishermen removing one of the only urchin predators, the sheephead) but the urchins are there and their numbers are a problem.

I gave up on diving in Laguna Beach back in the ‘80s as the kelp beds declined and along with them many of the species one enjoys seeing. I continued diving, at the California Channels Islands where the reefs are more like Laguna 30 years ago.

Now we are seeing kelp beds returning in Laguna thanks to a few years of some cooler water temperatures and the assistance of volunteer organizations that “plant” kelp and remove sea urchins. It seems to me to be the perfect time to protect these recovering kelp beds and all the life in them with a moratorium on taking anything out of the ocean in Laguna Beach.

The concept of Marine Protected Areas has worked elsewhere and there is no reason it can’t work here.

Let’s see what a five- or 10-year fishing closure can do to return our reefs to what they once were.

NORMAN COLE