San Diego Coastkeeper


Marine Protected Areas

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are areas of coastal ocean that are set aside to help ocean ecosystems recover. MPAs protect the health of entire habitats and food webs rather than just a single species. There are three types of MPAs outlined in the Marine Life Protection Act:

  • marine conservation areas – which allow some consumptive recreational and commercial activities
  • marine parks – which allow some recreational fishing
  • marine reserves – which fully protect all fish, wildlife and habitat from fishing and resource extraction

The time to implement these marine protected areas is now. Ocean users, activists, and scientists are becoming increasingly aware of the fragile state of the ocean as fish populations are being depleted and marine ecosystems are being destroyed. The ocean resources that humans have used and enjoyed for centuries are not inexhaustible as once imagined. Here is some compelling evidence of these observations:

  • Fishermen are now catching less than half of what they did in 1990 and the fish they do catch are 45 percent smaller.
  • Some fish populations in California are depleted to 10 percent of historic levels.
  • Seventy percent of California’s kelp forests, key breeding habitat for certain types of fish, have vanished in the last 50 years.
  • Many fish off California’s coast are in such decline that some species will take 50-80 years to recover to healthy levels. If current conditions persist, some never will.

MPAs provide safe refuge for fish to grow and thrive. Scientific studies have shown that marine animals living in MPAs are more diverse, abundant, and larger, than their counterparts outside the protective boundaries that a MPA affords them. This means that MPAs help to provide a more reliable source of food for larger marine animals that depend on these ecosystems and also provide much needed nurseries for sustainable fishing activities.

Resources

  • For more information on marine protected areas please visit www.caloceans.org
  • Click here to read a fact sheet about marine protected areas
  • Click here to watch the video, A Place of Their Own: Protecting Sea Life in California
  • Visit the MPA website from the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans.

For more information, please visit www.caloceans.org.