Catch Of The Day? It's Now Tourists

The boats still come into Morro Bay on California's central coast, but the catch of the day just isn't what it used to be, CBS News correspondent Jerry Bowen reports. It's not even close.

"Twenty years ago, we used to unload nearly half a million pounds a month across this dock as compared to this year, we're lucky to unload a couple of thousand pounds a month, if any at all," says Giovanni DeGarimore, who owns a fish market.

Many factors are involved, from ocean pollution to overfishing. A half-dozen species that used to be caught for market have been depleted. These days, the most promising catch in the two-legged variety: tourists.

"We've changed our focus on not so much unloading the fish as feeding the tourists when they come here," DeGarimore says.

There are fewer fish, and fewer boats going after them. Nearly all of Morro Bay's bit-bottom trawlers are out of business. They were bought out by The Nature Conservancy in an effort to spare the sea floor from further damage by the massive nets.

One solution for the ailing Pacific is to simply leave it alone to heal itself. That's what's being tried off Southern California's Channel Islands. Scientists are just now getting indications of how the patient is doing.

"It's a lot like flying an airplane," Konstantin Karpov explains.

With a joystick guiding a camera equipped submersible, Karpov, a California state marine biologist, looks for initial signs of a comeback in a marine protected area — essentially an underwater park that's off-limits to commercial and sport fishing.

"For example, the giant sea bass. They were protected decades ago, and here we are starting to see them at numbers that are exciting," Karpov says.

California is moving to establish 29 new reserves off the central coast. That's in addition to nearly 4 million acres already off-limits to the destructive bottom trawlers.

Marine protection areas have long been in place along much of America's eastern and southern coasts. The theory is that, left alone, the fish will become abundant inside and outside the "no fishing" zones.

Back in Morrow Bay, many fishermen aren't convinced. They believe both the problems and the solutions are exaggerated. For them, the ocean seems to be getting smaller.

"Whether or not we are going to continue to make a living, we'll see how that turns out," fisherman Roger Cullen says.

If the science is right, less fishing today may mean many more fish in the sea tomorrow. The problem: "Tomorrow" may be decades away.