Protecting our precious coastal waters
There are places in the ocean that are important in maintaining healthy marine ecosystems or that contain important cultural artifacts.
Jerry R. Schubel
Press-Telegram
10/10/2009
Saturday marked a landmark in the history of California's dedication to ocean conservation. It was 10 years ago that the Legislature enacted our state's unique Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA), designed to protect our state's marine life, habitats, marine ecosystems, and marine natural heritage, and to provide opportunities for recreation, education and research.
There are places in the ocean that are important in maintaining healthy marine ecosystems or that contain important cultural artifacts. The basic strategy is to identify these places, to designate them for special protection, and then to manage human activities within them to achieve a set of desired goals.
The remarkable progress made in these 10 years has put California on the world map for a visionary ocean protection plan and has led to calls from around the world inquiring how they can replicate California's underwater parks plan, the MLPA.
The Marine Life Protection Act Initiative, funded in 2004 to implement the MLPA, calls for the creation of a network of protected areas — or underwater parks — along our entire 1,100 mile coastline. The coast was divided into five regions, one of which is the Southern California coast, which stretches from Point Conception in the north to the U.S.-Mexican border in the south. In many respects this is the most challenging of the five regions. Nowhere in the U.S. is there a greater diversity and intensity of human uses of the coastal ocean than here in Southern California.
More than 20 million of us live in its watersheds. We use the ocean as a receiver for our treated wastewater, as a source of water to cool the condensers of our electric generating facilities, as home for the nation's two largest container ports and the necessary shipping channels, as a source of millions of barrels of oil every year, as important commercial and recreational fishing grounds, and soon we will depend upon the ocean for a significant contribution to our fresh water through ocean desalination. And the ocean is our major source of recreation and a major driver of the region's economy, particularly through tourism, recreation, and international trade.
This anniversary is a good opportunity for all of us who depend on the ocean to take a moment to celebrate, and to ask ourselves what more we can do to move this visionary plan toward its final goal.
Here on the South Coast we are at a critical stage. On Oct. 20-22 the Blue Ribbon Task Force - the group charged with reviewing the stakeholder-produced protected area plans-will meet to review three proposed maps for the South Coast and make a recommendation to the Fish and Game Commission.
The stakeholder groups charged with designating the marine protected areas under the MLPA reflect a broad spectrum of interests: tourism-dependent business owners, commercial and recreational fishermen, conservation groups, scientists and the general public. Now is the time to tell the Blue Ribbon Task Force what you think of the plans — do they match what you think needs to be protected along our coast? Everyone has ample opportunity to voice an opinion during public meetings, or via e-mail.
Five years of monitoring of existing marine protected areas and reserves in our state, such as those designated in the Channel Islands region, are revealing the benefits of a network of marine protected areas and also adjustments that need to made to achieve the desired goals. A properly designated and managed network of marine protected areas is a scientifically proven tool that can help restore habitats, ecosystems, and species diversity and abundance.
