PROTECTED AREAS EXPANDED: Central Coast: Marine Life Protection Act Goes into Effect Next Week
By Kevin Howe, The Monterey County Herald, Calif.
Sep. 13–California’s landmark Marine Life Protection Act will go into effect from Pigeon Point to Point Conception on Sept. 21, with establishment of a Central Coast Region composed of 29 state marine protected areas from San Mateo County to Santa Barbara County.
Designation of a marine protected area significantly increases protection of marine life, protections that include long-term safe havens for rockfish and other bottom fish, migration corridors for salmon, and a diverse environment meant to ensure survival of abalone, kelp and numerous marine mammals and seabirds.
The protected areas, adopted unanimously by the state Fish and Game Commission in April, were recommended last year by a task force that conducted a series of public meetings to hear comments from divers, coastal residents, business owners, and recreational and commercial fishermen on which areas should be designated and what regulations should apply.
The regulations are designed to maintain the diversity of a marine population that includes mammals, such as otters and whales; crustaceans, such as crabs and abalone; and migrating coho salmon and steelhead trout.
Among the regulations adopted by the Fish and Game Commission for these areas affecting commercial operations in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary are:
–Allowing the current leaseholder to commercially harvest kelp by hand only at A o Nuevo state marine conservation area until the lease expires.
–Allowing fishing for finned fish only at the Soquel Canyon and Portuguese Ledge state marine conservation areas in Monterey Bay.
–Allowing recreational hook-and-line fishing and commercial kelp harvest within limits set by the state Department of Fish and Game and Edward Ricketts state marine conservation area off Monterey’s Cannery Row.
–Allowing commercial kelp harvesting by hand only for the current leaseholder at White Rock state marine conservation area in Cambria until that lease expires.
The package approved by the commission wasn’t all that fishermen had hoped it would be. Some said ending prawn fishing in Soquel Canyon and Portuguese Ledge would put them out of business.
Others have repeatedly protested limits on net fishing and contend that there is no basis for claiming that coastal waters are overfished.
State officials note that 90 percent of the Central Coast remains open to fishing, though that percentage includes the limited fishing that is allowed within the marine conservation and marine reserve areas as well as the areas outside of them.
Department of Fish and Game marine wardens will patrol and enforce the new areas and continue to monitor fishing activities in other open areas of state waters out to three miles from shore.
A main goal of the Marine Life Protection Act is to use the marine protected areas as research sites where scientists can gain a greater understanding of the marine and coastal environment and how marine animals and plants interact, with little or no disturbance by people, according to state spokeswoman Chamois Andersen.
The protected areas “are designed to protect special places and ecosystems and provide a unique opportunity for scientific study,” said Dr. Amber Mace, executive director of the California Ocean Science Trust and science adviser to the California Ocean Protection Council.
“We are now developing a long-term monitoring system to better understand MPA effects and to help inform how they are managed over time,” she said. “MPAs can help the state’s most important marine ecosystems to thrive, while potentially enhancing other uses such as wildlife viewing and fishing.”
The Department of Fish and Game and the Ocean Protection Council has provided $2 million to launch a variety of research projects designed to gauge the ecological and socioeconomic effects of the marine protected areas, and scientists are working with recreational anglers to help monitor fish stocks.
The 29 protected areas comprise approximately 204 square miles — about 18 percent — of state waters.
State Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman said the Central Coast is the first of five regions that will eventually lead to a network of protected areas along the state’s 1,100-mile coastline.
Implementation of the second phase of the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative, which will cover the North Central Coast from Pigeon Point north to Alder Creek in Mendocino County, is already under way.
Kevin Howe can be reached at 646-4416 or khowe@montereyherald.com.www.dfg.ca.gov/mrd/mlpa/ccmpas_list.html
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Monterey County Herald, Calif.
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