Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary

Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary
Big Sur coastline looking north to Bixby Canyon Bridge. Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
Map of the sanctuary
Location	California's central coast, United States
Coordinates	36°48′N 122°30′W / 36.8°N 122.5°W / 36.8; -122.5
Area	6,094 sq mi (15,780 km2)
Established	1992
Governing body	NOAA National Ocean Service
montereybay.noaa.gov

The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary (MBNMS) is a

Description

The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary (MBNMS) is one of the largest of a system of 14 National Marine Sanctuaries administered by the

The sanctuary provides habitat for 36 species of marine mammals, 94 species of seabirds, at least 525 species of fish, four of turtles, 31 phyla of invertebrates, and more than 450 species of marine algae.^[1] Historical sites include 1,276 reported shipwrecks and 718 prehistoric sites. The MBNMS has major programs for research and monitoring, and another for education and outreach. Public recreation activities such as kayaking, SCUBA diving, and surfing are permitted, along with commercial fishing. Oil drilling and seabed mining are banned to protect the sanctuary.^[2] The sanctuary provides economic value via ecotourism as well as fishery resources including the Dungeness crab and market squid.^[3] Otter trawling has been shown to have significantly negatively impact the benthic invertebrate biodiversity in areas where trawling is less restricted.^[4] Despite its protection as a National Marine Sanctuary MPA, a study found microplastic concentrations were higher than the global average, with a higher amount closer to shore.^[3]

Visitors centers

A Coastal Discovery Center is located across the Pacific Coast Highway from the Hearst Castle visitor's center in San Simeon, California near the William Randolph Hearst Memorial State Beach.^[5]

The Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary Exploration Center opened on July 23, 2012^[6] at 35 Pacific Ave. in Santa Cruz, CA.

Collaborations

MBNMS collaborations include:

• The Sanctuary Advisory Council's twenty voting members represent a variety of local user groups, as well as the general public, plus seven local and state governmental jurisdictions. In addition, the respective managers for the four California National Marine Sanctuaries (
  Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, and the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary), the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve and the United States Coast Guard
  sit as non-voting members. Members are appointed competitively by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and serve three-year terms. The Advisory Council meets bi-monthly in open sessions located throughout the almost 300-mile boundary of the Sanctuary.
• Working groups of the council: Research Activities Panel, Sanctuary Education Panel, Conservation Working Group, Business & Tourism Activities Panel
• Regional partnerships
• B-WET (Bay Watershed Education and Training Program): a grant program to provide funding and support for environmental education for students, teachers, and communities throughout the Monterey Bay watershed.

See the MBNMS event calendar for a list of meetings, as well as volunteer events such as Snapshot Day, Urban Watch, First Flush (water quality monitoring programs), and TeamOCEAN (kayaker naturalist program).

The organization launched the Sanctuary Integrated Monitoring Network (SIMoN) website in 2003 to collect metadata for its various monitoring projects. In 2012, this information was released as an iOS application to allow visitors better access to the over 4,200 photos that have been collected.^[7]

History

A Marine Sanctuaries Study Bill was first proposed in 1967 with lobbying efforts by the Sierra Club. The Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 1972 authorized the United States Environmental Protection Agency to monitor off-shore dumping. In 1975, the California Coastal Zone Conservation Commission recommended a marine sanctuary and in 1976 Santa Cruz County and Monterey County joined the lobbying effort. In 1983 the Ronald Reagan administration dropped the area for consideration as a sanctuary.^[8]

In 1988 congress re-authorized the Sanctuaries Act and proposed a sanctuary in Monterey Bay. However, public hearings, with the memory of the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, brought protests demanding a larger size. The first Draft Environmental Impact Statement was released in 1990, and a final management plan in June 1992 proposing the extended area. On September 20, 1992, the MBNMS was authorized by legislation proposed by congressman Leon Panetta. It was the largest federal marine sanctuary.^[8][9]

Management

There have been five Superintendents of the MBNMS since its inception:

1. Terry Jackson (1992 to 1997):^[10] Jackson was a NOAA Corps officer that was assigned to the MBNMS as its first manager in 1992. As a NOAA Corps officer, Jackson's land-based assignment ended in 1997. Over the next year, Jackson hired the first MBNMS staffers. Jackson retired from the NOAA Corps in 1998.
2. Carol Fairfield (June and July 1997): A call for Superintendent applicants went out in the spring of 1997. However, that process was ended by the National Marine Sanctuaries Chief, Stephanie Thornton, because she "did not believe any of the current applicants had the skills she was looking for to be the MBNMS Superintendent."^[11] The call for applicants was re-advertised, and Carol Fairfield (with the NOAA's NMFS Protected Resources Program) was selected. Fairfield was selected in June and spent her first month at the Sanctuary Headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. Fairfield was reassigned on July 28, 1997, and Thornton said "Fairfield¹s reassignment is a personnel matter which cannot be discussed in detail."^[12]
3. Joanne Flanders (1997): At the time of Jackson's departure, Joanne Flanders (another NOAA Corps Officer) was Assistant Superintendent. Flanders was appointed Acting Superintendent for about six months.
4. William J. Douros (1998 to 2006): In January 1998 William J. Douros, who had previously worked for Santa Barbara County became superintendent.^[13]
5. Paul Michel (2007 to Present): In 2006 Douros was promoted to West Coast regional director for the National Marine Sanctuary Program. Paul Michel, who had worked at the
   Environmental Protection Agency since 1987, became superintendent.^[14]

There are oil and gas reserves off the coast, but exploration has not been permitted. In 1982, Interior Secretary James G. Watt proposed opening the Central California coast outer continental shelf to oil and gas exploration.^[16] California residents and politicians strongly opposed the proposal and it was defeated.^[17] In 1990, President George H. W. Bush used an obscure 1953 law to permanently ban oil and gas development in California's Monterey Bay. In late December 2016, President Obama used the same law to ban oil exploration from Hearst Castle to Point Arena in Mendocino County, California.^[18]

In July 2017, under the direction of

A large number of protected areas have overlapping jurisdictions. From roughly from north to south:[21]

Gallery

• 
  Young elephant seal at rookery, MBNMS
• 
  A

  purple striped jellyfish

  in the sanctuary
• 
  Anemone

  , MBNMS
• 
  Point Sur Lighthouse

See also

• List of marine protected areas of California

References

Further reading

• Michelle Ann Knight (1997). A Political Culture of Conservation: Citizen Action and Marine Conservation in the Monterey Bay.
  University of California Santa Cruz
  . Ph.D. dissertation
• Dave Owen (2003). "The Disappointing History of the National Marine Sanctuaries Act" (PDF). New York University Environmental Law Journal. 11. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 3, 2010.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

• Live HD Web Cam of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary
• California's MPAs
• Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary