Tracking progress on the Marine Life Protection Act

Although Southern California’s new network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) don’t go into effect until January 1, new citizen science programs have been working with volunteers for several months to collect data on how people use the soon-to-be-protected waters and adjacent beaches, as well as the wildlife that calls them home.

The innovative programs will help inform the state’s management of the protected waters by collecting data on the activities happening in and around them.
On land, Heal the Bay’s MPA Watch program equips interested beach visitors to collect user info at Point Dume, site for a new MPA near Santa Monica. Santa Barbara Coastkeeper is hosting its own MPA Watch program focused on the three new coastal MPAs in Santa Barbara County - Point Conception State Marine Reserve, Naples Reef State Marine Conservation Area, and Campus Point State Marine Conservation Area.

At sea, Reef Check organizes a network of scientists and citizens in collecting fish population data while diving in and around protected waters. The collected counts are part of a larger baseline study that will give the state a snapshot of current ocean conditions and provide a yardstick against which to measure future changes.
Thanks to these and other innovative efforts by the state, ocean science groups, and community partners, we’re already well on our way to creating an integrated snapshot of marine ecosystems and human activities along the South Coast. One great example is the lobster monitoring collaborative between commercial lobster fishermen and scientists at Scripps and San Diego State University.

The network of protected waters, created under the Marine Life Protection Act, extends from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border, connecting with what will be a statewide system once planning is completed for the far north coast next year (click here for a full map of south coast MPAs). The marine protected areas, approved by the Fish and Game Commission last December, are designed to improve overall ocean health by protecting the fish nurseries that help to seed adjacent waters.

For more information on the Marine Life Protection Act, visit http://www.caloceans.org. To learn more about the plants and animals the new underwater parks were designed to protect, check out: http://snack.to/oiLCdk.
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