Sept. 7, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Cal Poly Professor Aiding Monitoring Effort for Protected Pacific Areas
SAN LUIS OBISPO -- A Cal Poly biology professor is assisting the California Sea Grant Foundation in a major effort to begin monitoring new protected ocean areas off the Central Coast.
Biology Professor Dean Wendt is working with Sea Grant Marine Advisor Rick Star to lead the collaborative fisheries project.
Scientists have been awarded $2 million to begin monitoring the ecological and economic effects of the recently designated Central Coast marine protected areas, which will ban or limit fishing in about 18 percent of state waters between Santa Barbara and San Mateo counties.
“We are beginning the most comprehensive survey yet of the status of marine resources in the Central Coast region," said the Ocean Protection Council's Christine Blackburn, who is managing the Baseline Data Collection Project, a one-year, state-funded effort to characterize marine life and habitats within and outside the Central Coast’s 29 marine protected areas before new fishing regulations go into effect and then in the first few months following their enforcement.
This “before” snapshot will serve as a reference point for detecting long-term ecological change associated with the Central Coast project. With future monitoring, scientists will be able to evaluate the network’s effectiveness in protecting marine habitats, preserving ecosystem integrity, and otherwise meeting the many goals of the state’s Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA). “What we learn from this work will help inform management decisions far into the future,” Blackburn said.
Administered by California Sea Grant, the Baseline Data Collection Project also initiates another of the act’s goals–“to monitor the new marine protected areas and to use what is learned to improve marine policies and management and to otherwise inform the ongoing process of establishing marine protected areas along all of the different regions of the coast." The Central Coast was the first region to get marine protected areas. The next will be the North Central Coast.
For more details visit the California Sea Grant Web Site.###