Marine LIfe Protection Areas initiative comes to town
by Joel Hack
Posted Friday March 23, 2007 -------- State Fish and Game came to town Wednesday. They made a presentation designed to include local “stakeholders” to identify areas of the Coast in need of protections.
A majority at the meeting were commercial or sport fishermen at the Bodega Bay Grange Wednesday. The process the Fish and Game folks are beginning again is the result of a law passed in 1999. The process started then and floundered because of a state budget crisis. A second attempt met the same fate. This time the process is funded with a combination of state money and private donations. Notably the Packard Foundation contributed to sustain the process through December 2008.
Fishermen fear the Marine Life Protection Act will shut them out of fishing grounds and seasons. Much of the meeting held Wednesday evening was to allay those fears.
The MLPA does not set a minimum or maximum percentage of the Coast that should be in a protected area, several of the Fish and Game coordinators said at the meeting. Fish and Game presents this process as a means for fishermen and others to point out areas and ecosystems that do need protections. At the meeting, the failure of the Central Coast process to designate the entire coast as protected was cited. The committees that oversee the stakeholder’s information gathering stopped that concept with “that would defeat the entire purpose of MLPA.”
The process for the North Central Coast area from Alder Creek near Manchester to Pigeon Point consists of the five workshop meetings now underway. The Bodega Bay meeting is the second of the five. Those interested in the process are asked to nominate folks to represent their interests on the “Regional Stakeholders Interests Group.” That committee will have 15 members. The Chief of Fish and Game and the Chairman of the Blue Ribbon Task Force will determine the final roll of the Regional Stakeholders.
The Chief of Fish and Game and the Resources Agency have already selected the Blue Ribbon Task Force. They are Susan Golding, Chair, former Mayor of San Diego; William W. Anderson, President of Westree Marina Management; Don Benninghoven, retired as executive director of the League of California Cities; Meg Caldwell, Director, Stanford Law School’s Environment and Natural Resources Law and Policy Program; Catherine Reheis-Boyd, CEO and Chief of Staff for the Western States Petroleum Association.
The Blue Ribbon Task Force selected 19 members and eight alternates to the MLPA Statewide Interests Group. They are:
* Carol Abella, California Marine Affairs and Navigation Conference
* Dan Berman, Marine Interests Group of San Luis Obispo
* Steve Campi, Central California Council of Diving Clubs
* Don Canestro, UC Santa Barbara Natural Reserve
* Kevin B. Cooper, San Diego Freedivers (alternate for Ken Kurtis)
* Eric Endersby, California Association of Harbor Masters and Port Captains (alternate for Steve Scheiblauer)
* Dr. Ronald Fritzsche, Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District
* Karen Garrison, Natural Resources Defense Council
* Vern Goerhing, California Fisheries Coalition
* Zeke Grader, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations
* Joel Greenberg, Recreational Fishing Alliance
* Nancy Hastings, Surfrider Foundation (alternate for Linda Sheehan)
* Pam Heatherington, Marine Interests Group of San Luis Obispo (alternate for Dan Berman)
* Bill G. James, commercial nearshore fisherman
* Ken Kurtis, Reef Seekers Dive Co.
* Roberta L. Larson, California Association of Sanitation Agencies
* Dr. James Liu, United Pier and Shore Anglers of California (alternate for Tom Raftican)
* Corrine Monroe, Aquarium of the Pacific
* Mike Osmond, World Wildlife Fund
* Tom Raftican, United Anglers of Southern California
* Mike Ricketts, commercial fisherman (alternate for Zeke Grader)
* Jesús Ruiz, YMCA SCUBA Program
* Steve Scheiblauer, California Association of Harbor Masters and Port Captains
* Linda Sheehan, California Coastkeeper Alliance
* Ben Sleeter, Coastside Fishing Club
David J. Whittington, Central California Council of Diving Clubs (alternate for Steve Campi).
A press release from the Department of Fish and Game says, “All members of the Statewide Interests Group were nominated by various interests involved in the MLPA process. The group will not vote or otherwise take formal positions on any procedural or substantive issues, but instead will alert the task force to issues and opportunities that may improve public involvement in the process.”
The Science Advisory Team consists of:
Dr. Steve Barrager (chair), Environmental and Natural Resources Law & Policy Program, Stanford Law School
Dr. Loo Botsford, Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology, University of California, Davis
* Dr. Mark Carr, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz
* Dr. Steven Gaines, Marine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara
* Dr. Doyle Hanan, Hanan and Associates
* Dr. Rikk Kvitek, Institute for Earth Systems Science and Policy, California State University, Monterey Bay
Dr. Steven Murray, Department of Biological Sciences, California State University, Fullerton
Dr. Jeff Paduan, Naval Postgraduate School
* Dr. Steve Palumbi, Hopkins Marine Station, Stanford University
* Dr. Linwood Pendleton, Department of Environmental Health Sciences, UCLA School of Public Health
Dave Schaub, Natural Heritage Section, California Department of Parks and Recreation
Kenneth Schiff, Southern California Coastal Water Research Project
Susan Schlosser, University Extension, California Sea Grant Program
Dr. Astrid Scholz, Ecotrust
* Dr. Rick Starr, University Extension, California Sea Grant Program
Dr. William Sydeman, PRBO Conservation Science
* Dr. Dean Wendt, Center for Coastal Marine Science, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
* Mary Yoklavich, Southwest Fisheries Science Center, NOAA Fisheries
* denotes a member of the Central Coast Science Sub-Team
The charge to the Science Team is to provide the scientific knowledge and judgment necessary to assist the Blue Ribbon Task Force with meeting the objectives of the Initiative.
In the scheme of things devised by Fish and Game, the North Central Stakeholders Interests Group will make recommendations to the Blue Ribbon Panel that, with the advice of the Science Advisory Team, will propose what areas will become Marine Protected Areas (MPA) under the MLPA law. The Fish and Game Commission will make the final decision.
Local fishermen are very skeptical of the MLPA and the process underway. Chuck Wise, local salmon fisherman and President of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, would prefer to see the law repealed. His thinking is that there are enough fishing regulations and marine protected spots and no further regulations or bureaucracy is needed.
Dave Yarger, local salmon fisherman and President of the local Bodega Bay Fishermen’s Marketing Association, is reserving judgment. He is skeptical that the process will be completed, that the outside money will skew the results toward environmental idealism, that MPA’s are needed on our stretch of the Coast. The North Central area in this part of the Fish and Game process already has 13 different Marine protected areas.
Facilitators at the meeting repeatedly said, the MLPA only applies to State waters – less than three miles from high tide line. They make the point that the fishing regulations are federal with State rules applying within the three miles. The State rules closely follow federal regulations.
Yarger also also said that the MLPA effort would be of little value if river pollution sources weren’t a part of the process. Yarger recalled the fishing along the Sonoma Coast when it was plentiful. He said, the tidepools are barren, the rubberlip perch are gone and the sweet fishing spots for rockfish around Bodega Head are unproductive. Certainly all the agricultural pollution from the miles of grapes up the Russian River have changed that. Currently the Act is limited to Ocean resources.
Fish and Game says this initiative process is possible because of support of private and government partners providing funding and in-kind services. These include: the California Resources Agency, California Department of Fish and Game, Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and MPA Science Institute of the National Marine Protected Areas Center. The Resources Legacy Fund Foundation (RLFF) is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to maintaining and enhancing the quality of life by supporting projects that conserve and restore natural landscapes and marine ecosystems. Funders of RLFF's work to conserve and restore marine ecosystems include the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Marisla Foundation, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
For more information about the MLPA Initiative, visit the Department of Fish and Game's MLPA Initiative website at www.dfg.ca.gov/mrd/mlpa.
