For California fishermen, squid means big money As the sun sets over the ocean, the six crewmen on the Cape Blanco are starting a long night's work off the far side of Santa Catalina Island, putting on orange slickers and hard hats to fish for the milky white mollusks that have become California's most valuable catch. Below the gentle waves off the side of the boat swims an immense school of market squid. Capt. Nick Jurlin, pacing impatiently with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, is eager to pull in as much of it as possible. Five nights a week, the third-generation fisherman from San Pedro steps into a pair of rubber boots and hunts for squid along the Southern California coast. The 50-year-old with spiky blond hair and wraparound sunglasses looks the part of a man who's wrestled with nets in the salty air since he was a teenager - his arms are taut, his neck creased and weathered, his voice gravelly from going without sleep. On a night like this, the 90-foot steel vessel can bring in as much as $50,000 worth of the seafood so popular worldwide that all but a fraction is shipped overseas to be served as calamari. But for the Cape Blanco and dozens of squid fishing boats working out of ports like San Pedro and Monterey, the boom is an uncertain one. Doubts are emerging about how long one of California's last remaining money fish will stay bountiful. Though Jurlin and his crew are four hours from shore tonight, they are not alone. Rocking in the waves around them are a dozen other purse seiners beginning the same ritual: encircling the darting mass of tentacled, hot dog-sized sea creatures with huge nets that will be cinched up like the drawstring of a purse. A flotilla of smaller boats assists by following the swarms and coaxing them to the surface with 30,000-watt lanterns that light up the ocean with an otherworldly green and white glow. On Jurlin's signal, a deckhand swings a hefty metal bar above his head and slams it into a pelican hook, freeing a clunky metal skiff that plunges into the water and rumbles away, its motor filling the night air with exhaust. Each man takes his position on the Cape Blanco's deck, working among strained cables and ropes as thick as fire hoses. A hydraulic winch whirs, engines roar and propellers gurgle as a tangle of black netting, yellow floats and steel rings tumble into the water off the back of the boat. The skiff tows it all in a wide circle around the squid, trapping the school. Most of the world's market squid is harvested from California's shallow waters, where they gather in enormous schools each year to mate, deposit their eggs on the seafloor and die. Cold ocean conditions have drawn them in such numbers lately that fishermen have handily caught their 118,000-ton limit - enough to fill 60 Olympic-size swimming pools - and the state has shut them down early two years running. Surging demand in China, Japan, Mexico and Europe has boosted prices and launched a fishing frenzy worth more than $70 million a year. The good times have drawn the attention of conservationists, who fear such abundant catches are threatening the foundation of a delicate marine food web. Groups like Oceana and Audubon California are pushing for new protections for squid, sardines, anchovies, herring and other small, schooling prey known as "forage fish." A bill moving its way through the California Legislature would require the state to leave more small fish in the water for seabirds, whales, dolphins and other natural predators to feed on. Those like Jurlin, whose families have fished these waters for generations, say a smaller catch could be crippling. During the squid season, Jurlin pushes off each afternoon from Terminal Island, where a few other purse seiners dock along a waterfront of weedy and abandoned lots where street names - Sardine, Cannery and Wharf - reflect a fish-packing industry that is largely gone. He follows the squid from the Channel Islands to San Diego, setting out net after net and returning before dawn the next morning.