4.8 Socioeconomics
Recreational Fishing and Diving
Impacts to the recreational fishing and diving include potential loss of resources, exclusion from
fishing/diving areas, and decreased visibility for divers due to turbidity plumes. Sport diving for lobster and
fishing for halibut in the nearshore area could be affected by the project as sand moves off of the receiver
sites. Turbidity from the beaches and presence of pipelines will preclude usage of small areas for short
periods. In the longer term, access for shore diving and surf fishing may improve with the placement of
sand on the beaches.
Because the borrow sites are located offshore of the beaches, surf fishing and beach diving most likely
would not be affected by dredging and therefore no impacts are predicted. However, as discussed in
Section 4.6, dredge area MB-1 is within the Mission Bay Artificial Reef (which includes Wreck Alley) and
is adjacent to the San Diego Underwater Recreation Area. Wreck Alley contains the most popular local
wrecks for dive charter businesses as well as recreational divers, but turbidity plumes are not projected to
reach the dive sites. Divers may experience increased underwater noise at nearby wrecks, and dive boats
and fishing vessels transiting between features may have to maneuver to avoid the dredge operations, but
these inconveniences will be of short duration as dredging operations are only anticipated to last 11 days
under Alternative 1a. Risk to the safety of divers from straying underwater into the dredge area is not
expected to be an issue, as the closest wreck/sunken structure artificial reef is approximately 1,000 feet
away from the dredge area. Further, divers typically descend to and ascent from the these offshore sites
using permanently attached buoy/mooring lines, and normally do not stray from the structures farther than
the limit of visibility. Therefore, these effects are considered less than significant.
Sport fishing boats could be affected by dredging operations and turbidity plumes from the beaches. Some
loss of sport fishing area would occur during actual dredge operations but this area would be substantially
less than the available nearshore areas for sport fishing and short-term in nature at individual dredge
locations. The impact would be less than significant.
Mitigation Measures for Alternative 1a
There would be no long-term significant impacts to commercial fisheries. As described in Section 2.4, a
coordinated protocol would be implemented to notice commercial fisherman of dredge areas and transit
locations and a gear compensation method is provided. This would provide fisherman the knowledge to
Page 4.8-10
Regional Beach Sand Project EIR/EA
99-69\SANDAG EIREA 4.1 to 4.13.wpd 7/17/00
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