First plan for MPA along coast submitted

Proposal pursues ‘balance’ between fishing, protection

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The yellow area shows Crescent City’s prime commercial and sport rockfishing, while the red area is the proposed marine reserve, according to the North Coast Workgroup The Daily Triplicate/Bryant Anderson

The state-sponsored Marine Life Protection Act Initiative includes an option that allows MPA proposals to be submitted by individuals and groups outside of the official process.

These external proposals were due Monday. While eight were submitted, there was one that a majority of the officials from counties and municipalities along the North Coast signed off on, along with many representatives of tribes, the fishing industry and environmentalists.

The proposal was the product of a combined effort of Del Norte, Humboldt and Mendocino counties, according to the Del Norte Workgroup Coordinator Zach Larson. He said it seeks to satisfy science guidelines for where MPAs should be placed and what size they should be while minimizing the economic and cultural impact of closing areas of the ocean to harvesting.

“We tried to find a balance between how economically damaging the process could be and how ecologically beneficial,” Larson said.

While Larson was happy with the proposal, he cautioned that “these external array proposals are definitely not final products.”

“They still have to be evaluated by the stakeholder group and science advisory team,” Larson said. “It is almost guaranteed that things will change.”

The Science Advisory Team (SAT) and Regional Stakeholder Group are part of the official process, and both groups will be responsible for developing the state-sponsored proposal for the location and types of MPAs along the North

Coast.

Part of Larson’s worry about possible changes to the external proposal stem from the fact that it doesn’t quite meet the science guidelines due to the unique nature of Del Norte’s continental shelf.

For much of Del Norte’s coastline, the shelf extends into the ocean, creating a shallow bench.

This presents a problem because to meet the MLPA’s science guidelines, proposed MPAs must protect a variety of habitats, and one of those habitats that Del Norte doesn’t have in abundance is deep water.

Larson said one of the only places that a suitably deep water habitat can be found along the county’s coast is smack dab in the middle of prime fishing grounds.

“The only way to meet the deeper water habitats requirement would be to place a marine protected area at either Point St. George Reef or Redding Rock,” Larson said. “Those two areas are very important for our commercial and sport fisheries.”

This has Larson worried that both those important fishing areas might get taken away.

The North Coast Workgroup’s external proposal is based upon three main components that local interests felt were important for protecting the local economy and cultural resources.

The proposal seeks to protect traditional tribal uses, maintain a 10-mile port safety zone and protect important fishing grounds while maximizing ecological protections, Larson said.

The proposal places one marine reserve, a no-take area, in Del Norte waters. The more than 21-square-mile reserve would start at the Oregon border and end just beyond the mouth of the Smith River. It would extend out three miles to the boundary of California’s state waters.

A marine reserve is the most restrictive of the three possible designations for an MPA, and it would mean that nothing could be taken from the ocean anywhere in the protected area.

“The reserve meets all the other science guidelines other than deep-water habitat,” Larson said. “There is some deep water, but it isn’t enough.”

While size matters in meeting science guidelines, so does the distance between protected areas.

“The spacing requirements are because of larvae dispersement,” Larson said. “MPAs have to be between 31 and 62 miles apart; we meet that requirement because the next protected area is about 42 miles away center to center.”

In an effort to protect traditional summer Tolowa harvesting grounds, the proposed marine reserve excludes a narrow section of water along the coast.

“To acknowledge the tribal use issue we carved out an area along the beach that would allow for traditional harvesting,” Larson said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen but we wanted to make sure that those traditional uses still were allowed.” 

According to Harbormaster Richard Young, the North Coast proposal goes a long way toward minimizing the economic impact of impending closures.

Young was part of the group that came up with the proposal, and is also a member of the regional stakeholder group that is responsible for submitting a final product.

“It’s pretty remarkable that so many diverse interests could come together and get along, let alone come up with a proposal,” Young said. “We tried to shape this to minimize the social, economic and cultural impact on the region.”

Young also worries about the possibility of the proposal not meeting the science guidelines due to the dearth of deep-water habitat. He said the area can only hope there is some flexibility built into the system.

“Is there a get out of jail free card?” Young quipped. “Or is protecting this habitat (deep water) so important that even in a region where there isn’t much it still needs to be done.”

Ultimately, Larson says, only time will tell.

“We are still early in the process,” Larson said. “The stakeholder group will now start looking at these proposals, and you can pretty much count on there being changes.”

MLPA Initiative executive director Ken Wiseman agrees with Larson that there is still long ways to go before anything gets decided.

“Everything’s on the table till the very end,” Wiseman said. “The goal is for a final submission to be presented to the Fish and Game Commission in October.”