The Ocean Around Us
The ocean around the rookery is subject to a number of protections: the federal government through NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) has established the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary and the State of California through the Department of Fish and Game has established Marine Protected Reserves, including one extending from south of the rookery to north of the light house at Piedras Blancas.
The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary is the largest of the five marine sanctuaries on the west coast. It extends from Cambria on the south to Marin County on the north where it abuts the Gulf of the Farallones and the Cordell Bank sanctuaries. The other two Pacific coast marine sanctuaries are the Channel Island and Olympic Coast sanctuaries.
The shape of the sanctuary is designed to encompass the most valuable features such as the Monterey Bay canyon.
Restrictions within the sanctuary include, among others, those against developing and producing oil, gas or mineral resources; discharging most materials within or near the boundary of the sanctuary; moving or causing damage to historical resources; drilling or dredging; taking any marine mammal, sea turtle or sea bird; as well as restrictions on motorized craft and airplanes.
In March of 2009 the sanctuary was expanded to include the Davidson Seamount, at the lower left on the image. The seamount, only seventy-five miles west of the rookery, rises 7500 feet from the ocean floor, its top 4100 feet below the surface of the ocean. This addition to the sanctuary added 775 square miles and is home to 237 species.
(MPAs) were recently established by the State of California. They are all within three miles of the coast. Unlike the federal marine sanctuaries, they provide protections to marine life from fishing. Some are "no take" areas, some permit certain forms of fishing and collecting. In spite of, or through, these fishing restrictions, a major purpose of the MPAs is to improve fishing off the central coast.
Movie, The Sheltered Sea on the MPAs
The figure to the right shows all of the central California MPAs including "ours" at Point Piedras Blancas and north to Pigeon Point and south to Point Conception. The red areas are no take areas, the blue allow certain fishing and/or collecting within their borders.
The MPA locations are selected to provide both species diversity and redundancy. Their size is selected to provide safety for resident species which live most of their adult life within a region of a few miles or less. The offspring of these species - larvae and roe - however, drift significant distances on the currents before they reach maturity and the spacing of the areas is designed to encourage repopulation of one area from its neighbors should an oil spill or some other disaster cause the population in that area to become seriously depleted.
Most of these offspring end up outside of the protected areas, however, and through this process help replenish the supply of fish available to both commercial and recreational fishers. The MPAs allow the resident fish to grow larger and that greatly amplifies the number of offspring: a 7.5 pound rockfish produces ten times as many offspring as a 1.8 pound rockfish.
The protection also gives rise to substantial increases in biomass and animal size and diversity.
The figure to the left shows the Piedras Blancas Marine Protected area. As indicated above, the red area is a no take zone while the blue area allows fishing only for albacore and salmon, fish that travel through the zone but are not residents.
A major part of this effort is monitoring the effectiveness of these reserves. That monitoring includes catch and release fishing and netting and sampling both through the volume of water and on the sea floor by divers and submersibles. Because such sampling goes on, you may see authorized fishing craft off shore from the rookery.