BajaNews - 3-5-2006 at 10:55 AM
http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/outdoors/20060305-9999-...
March 5, 2006
After catching potential world-record fish, two San Diego-area lady anglers are going to keep the record keepers at the International Game Fish
Association busy for a while.
Bernice ?Bea? Stark's catch of a 59-pound white seabass on 40-pound test line off Puertocitas, below San Felipe on Baja's east coast, was documented
in last Saturday's Union-Tribune. Turns out Stark landed another whopper white seabass on her next trip down to that area of the Sea of Cortez last
week with her boyfriend, Myron Nodecker. Even if Stark's 59-pounder somehow doesn't qualify, this latest one, a 52.62-pound croaker, also will break
the 50-pound line-class record (there is no 40-pound class) of 44 pounds, 3 ounces set by Gail Cruz May 2, 1968.
Stark had her catch verified by Don Kent, president of Hubbs-Sea World Research Institute, which last year released its one millionth juvenile white
seabass into Southern California waters since its inception.
Last week I received a couple e-mails from readers who swore the fish Stark was pictured with was a totoaba, the endangered cousin to the white
seabass that lives in the Sea of Cortez. Kent said several of his field technicians as well as a colleague from the Southwest Fisheries Science Center
reviewed the photos Stark and Nodecker provided and concurred that the fish Stark caught is a white seabass, not a totoaba.
?We've certainly seen enough (white seabass),? Kent wrote in an e-mail, and added: ?We are particularly interested in this small group of white
seabass since they are isolated from the rest of the fish that live in the eastern Pacific, and we will be using the samples Bea and Myron brought by
as part of our genetic analysis of the entire population.?