Our inshore ocean ecosystem is suffering from multiple stressors and Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) could be helping us find causes and make improvements.
But sadly, the wrong goal was chosen when we designed and implemented the California network of MPAs.
What are the real stressors? The list includes agricultural runoff infused with chemicals used; urban runoff from communities; fecal bacteria and trash washed to sea from homeless camps along our creeks and freeway; and spills — sewage, chemical and others.
The combined effect of these pollutants is changing the chemistry of our inshore waters where millions of sea critters, both flora and fauna, strive to thrive. They fight to survive.
What are not stressors? Families out fishing for recreation and food for the table; subsistence anglers out trying hard to put some protein on the plates of their hungry kids; commercial anglers making a tenuous living.
These fishing activities are engaged in under the guidance of what is arguably the best fisheries management paradigm in the entire world.
The feds and the state collaboratively manage our fisheries exceptionally well.
We missed the mark widely when we designed and implemented MPAs because really, the only thing mandated is no fishing. That’s it. There is nothing about the real stressors affecting our inshore ecosystem.
The important point is the damaging human-introduced stressors from agriculture, communities, homeless encampments, sewage and chemical spills are largely unmanaged and unmitigated stressors that continue to harm the flora and fauna of the sea.
By comparison, our fishing activities and fisheries management are done under strict and science-based regulations, which are proven to be leading edge and the best on our planet.
Instead, the framers and proponents of the MPA network two decades ago, had only fisherfolk in their sites. They were protectionists who wanted to end fishing in vast areas of the ocean.
They talk about ecosystem management, yet all they do is keep out fisherfolk, to the detriment of the remaining good areas where we can fish. This is damaging to those few remaining productive areas.
Can we revisit and repurpose the California MPA network to protect our nearshore ecosystem from the real stressors, instead of locking out anglers?
I intend this to serve as the opening argument in a movement to help protect our oceans from human-introduced pollutants, and let well managed fishing occur.
