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Dates: Tuesday, May 11th OR Thursday, May 13th, 9:30am
Location: Zoom! See your e-mail for the link!
Marine Protected Areas
Marine Protected Areas
This week we headed up the coast to Point Lobos State Natural Reserve for a talk titled “Kayak Quest: Explore Above and Below the Ocean’s Surface”. Everything about that sounds like it’s going to be a great time as we explore this beautiful area. But where is it and what is?
Point Lobos State Natural Reserve is located on the central coast of California. Its entrance is on iconic Highway 1 about 3 miles south of Carmel-by-the-Sea, 125 miles south of San Francisco, and 325 miles north of Los Angeles. Monterey is the largest nearby city.
The special purpose of a reserve is to forever protect an area of unique natural beauty and ecological significance. Afforded a higher level of protection, visitors are expected to protect this landmark for future generations. Please stay on marked trails, do not remove or collect natural objects and avoid approaching or disturbing animals.
The Reserve not only protects the land, but it also includes the Monterey Bay Marine Protected Area and its underwater area.
Before we have our visit with the ranger, let’s learn a little bit more about the park and Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) off our coast. Just like land parks, MPAs allow for the protection of entire ecosystems and provide amazing spaces to play! We will also learn about plastic pollution. In this week's online lesson, we'll go over just what MPAs are and why they have become so important.
To watch a nine minute video as an introduction to MPAs, click here:
(Point Lobos PORTS is even featured in the video!)
In 2004, following the adoption of California’s 1999 Marine Life Protection Act, California began a consultation and planning process that would culminate in 2012 in the implementation of the country’s first statewide Marine Protected Area (MPA) network. Approximately 852 square miles of ocean off the California coast – a little over 16 percent of the state’s waters – were placed under the protection of 124 MPAs.
An MPA is a type of managed area whose main purpose is to protect or conserve marine life and habitats in ocean or estuarine waters. California’s MPA Network consists of 124 areas with varying levels of protection and 14 special closures, all designed to help safeguard the state’s marine ecosystems. The ban on collecting and fishing in no-take marine conservation areas provides very high levels of protection. One goal for California’s MPAs was to strategically place them near each other to form an interconnected network that would help to preserve the flow of life between marine ecosystems. Within that network each MPA has unique goals and regulations, and non-consumptive activities, permitted scientific research, monitoring, and educational pursuits may be allowed.
To see where California's MPAs are, check out this interactive map:
MPAs protect the diversity and abundance of marine life, the habitats they depend on, and the integrity of marine ecosystems. The Marine Life Protection Act recognized that a combination of MPAs with varied amounts of allowed activities and protections (marine reserves, marine conservation areas, and marine parks) can help conserve biological diversity, provide a sanctuary for marine life, and enhance recreational and educational opportunities. MPAs can also provide scientific reference points to assist with resource management decisions, and protect a variety of marine habitats, communities, and ecosystems for their economic and intrinsic value, for generations to come.
The three main types of MPAs – state marine reserve (SMR), state marine park (SMP), and state marine conservation area (SMCA) – each have different rules about the activities that may or may not be undertaken within the MPA. In general, SMRs do not allow any type of extractive activities (including fishing or kelp harvesting) with the exception of scientific collecting under a permit, SMPs do not allow any commercial extraction, and SMCAs restrict some types of commercial and/or recreational extraction.
Early studies have shown that these protections are already delivering substantial benefits for fish and other wildlife and habitats.
A 2013 study of MPAs off the state’s Central Coast found a greater abundance of certain fish species, including cabezon, lingcod, and black rockfish, in protected areas than in non-protected areas.
The endangered black abalone (pictured, left) – a species of sea snail once numbering in the millions along California’s coast but now harvested almost to extinction — increased in numbers and size inside MPAs within five years of these protections being implemented.
Similarly, within five years of the establishment of the North Central Coast’s Sea Lion Cove State Marine Conservation Area (SMCA) – created in part to protect an important abalone nursery – populations of red abalone had experienced a “sharp increase.”
Research has also found evidence that California’s MPAs are benefiting the ocean environment outside their boundaries. A 2015 study looking at larval dispersal within and outside MPAs found “significant spillover” into surrounding areas, indicating that the protected areas are potentially important sources of new additions to the populations of a large percentage of resident species. Similarly, a 2019 study revealed connectivity between populations of kelp rockfish in a number of Central Coast MPAs and in non-protected areas nearby.
If you are interested in learning more about San Diego area MPAs, you may find this link interesting:
Point lobos state natural reserve
Point lobos state natural reserve
Point Lobos State Natural Reserve is sometimes referred to as the “crown jewel of the California State Park System”. So many parts of California are breathtakingly beautiful, but Point Lobos does protect an area once filled with many industrial activities, from whaling, to gravel quarries, to the largest abalone cannery on the West Coast. Landscape pointer Fancis McComas called the area “the greatest meeting of land and water in the world”. Photographers walk the footsteps of Ansel Adams and others, trying to capture this wild and beautiful landscape.
(Photo Courtesy of California State Parks, 2026)
Click here to see more stunning images of Point Lobos:
Let’s take a look at the Point Lobos brochure for some information about the park (you can view it online here: https://www.pointlobos.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Welcome-to-Point-Lobos-English-FINAL-102418.pdf ) Or scroll down for the highlights!
Working with Point Lobos is the Point Lobos Foundation, designed to help fundraise to preserve the park for future generations. They provide excellent resources for exploring and learning even more about the park. Check out their education pages here:
To see more excellent brochures from the Foundation (like the one above), go here: https://www.pointlobos.org/info/#brochures
You can learn about the cultural history of Point Lobos here: https://www.pointlobos.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Whalers-Cabin-2018-65164.pdf
Tune in this week to learn more about this beautiful and wild place!
works cited
works cited
https://wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Marine/MLMA/Master-Plan/MPAs#gsc.tab=0
https://slocoastjournal.net/docs/archives/2012/july/pages/marine_sanctuary.html
https://wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Marine/MPAs
https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=98222&inline
https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=571
https://www.pointlobos.org/info/
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