State officials in California have approved sweeping expansions of the state’s marine protected areas, closing or restricting fishing activities in a total of over 200 square miles. This legislation, authorized by the California Marine Life Protection Act of 1999, places California in the forefront of states taking action to restrict fishing activities in near shore waters.
This move, involving just the first of three coastal sections in the state that will have large areas of the ocean protected, has been hailed by environmentalists, but was greeted with skepticism and disapproval by some commercial fishing interests. “This is big. No other state has this,” said Warner Chabot, vice-president of the Ocean Conservancy. On the other hand, Steve Scheiblauer, Harbormaster of Monterey, focused on the economic consequences, predicting that his town would lose about 30 percent of its fishing fleet.
States have the authority to regulate fishing and other extractive activities out to three nautical miles, with the National Marine Fisheries Service taking control of waters farther offshore. The newly designated protected areas are all in the central coast, running from Half Moon Bay near San Francisco south to Point Conception near Santa Barbara. Point Conception is generally regarded as a biological break point, with warmer southern California waters to the south. Within the total area of 1,150 square miles within three miles of the central coast, roughly 20 percent will be affected by the restrictions, and half of that, or about 8 percent, has been designated as complete no-take zones where neither recreational or commercial fishing will be allowed.
The restricted areas are divided into 29 separate preserves, with 13 of them being no-take. There already were a dozen protected marine reserves in this area, but many regulators have long thought they were simply too little, and too scattered. The legislation enlarges this system.
Dr. Paul Dayton, professor of biological oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, stated, “these reserves must recognize the true ecological ranges of these species, and take into account their need for larval exchange, or they will just blink out as viable populations.”
Large marine protected areas have been encouraged by marine scientists as a way of rebuilding depleted fish populations, and have been long supported by many ocean environmental groups. The Pew Oceans Commission, a private bipartisan group formed to examine the state of American’s ocean resources, listed the designation of no-fishing zones as a cornerstone of future ocean conservation (The commission’s report, “Our Living Oceans,” was published in June 2003). California regulators have spent four years creating a network of preserves, but the final designation did not take place until April 13. The process was contentious, with the needs of commercial fishermen, recreational fishermen, kelp harvesters, surfers, environmentalists, whale watchers and others being taken in testimony right up to the final vote.
Many of the new regulations will go into effect this summer. The process will be repeated for the northern coastline of the state next year, and for the southern section the year after next. It is expected that designating protected areas in the heavily fished north and the heavily populated south will be even more politically contentious than it was for the central coast area. The long-term outcome is also still being debated, with Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, a commercial fishing industry group, noting “Just protecting part of the ocean won’t work. We can’t just restrict fishermen. We need to address pollution and acidification of the oceans as well.”
Marine protected areas have been discussed for the Gulf of Maine and near shore New England waters, but to date there is no coordinated plan similar to California’s. Several area nonprofit groups have investigated the issues surrounding the implementation of such reserves, including the Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment, which issued a 1997 report exploring opportunities for a coordinated international system of ocean reserves, including a survey of all currently protected areas and an evaluation of legal mechanisms for creating such areas.
According to George LaPointe, Commissioner of Maine’s Department of Marine Resources (DMR), this lack of a coordinated proposal reflects the difficulties in instituting such a system in Maine’s diversified fishing environment. “We have discussed this issue, with some folks calling for a 20 percent set aside [similar in scope to the recent legislation in California],” he said, “but frankly there was not a lot of comfort in these discussions. No matter where you look it will displace someone, and can you imagine asking a community of lobstermen to fish five miles down the coast from where they are now?”
Commissioner LaPointe recognized the potential benefits, but noted that if marine protected areas were to have traction in our coastal waters “we would need to see a specific proposal for one area at a time, outlining the biological benefits, and dealing with the impacts of those people who would be displaced.”
A former marine programs officer at the Island Institute, Ben Neal is a doctoral candidate at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.