Placing Marine Protected Areas Within a Broader Marine Landscape: the Role of Science in the Northward Expansion of Two West-Coast National Marine Sanctuaries

Off San Francisco, the coastal waters in the Gulf of Farallones and over Cordell Bank have long been valued as a key marine ecosystem. Two National Marine Sanctuaries were established to protect and steward the remarkable marine resources in this region: the Cordell Bank NMS in 1989 and the Gulf of Farallones NMS in 1981. There is an abundance of birds, fish, sharks, whales and other mammals that reside in or visit this region. Fed by the bounty of plankton served up by coastal upwelling, this is one of the most productive marine ecosystems on the planet.

In contrast to terrestrial systems, the components of marine systems are connected by water circulation – in the case of these west coast sanctuaries, this meant that the planktonic bounty was being imported from adjacent waters not protected by the sanctuary. In analogy to river systems, the headwaters were not included in the watershed plan. The Point Arena upwelling center represents a perennial supply of nutrients that are carried south into sanctuary waters, developing dense blooms of phytoplankton as they travel south, and in turn supporting an abundance of zooplankton and forage fish. With sanctuary waters derived from the Point Arena upwelling cell more than 90% of the time, this “food machine” is the foundation of the upper-trophic-level fame of the sanctuary waters.

The northward expansion of these sanctuaries in 2015 emerged when local politics met local science, allowing for an integration of science and management that reached to Washington DC. In an ocean where everything is connected, one cannot protect everything – by using science to understand landscapes, we can identify the primary source waters that are the very foundation of protected ecosystems. Linking to the theme of the session, this landscape also includes runoff that connects estuaries and watersheds to ocean waters. Too little attention has been given to the role of runoff in marine protected areas, both federal sanctuaries and marine reserves in California.