CalOceans News

Studying southern California's ocean

Southern California will soon have a new system of underwater parks to keep treasured ocean areas thriving. The state has announced an October 1 effective date for the marine protected area approved last December.

Community and nonprofit groups are already gearing up to help spread the word and steward protected areas in their backyards. A number of citizen science programs are also underway to track activities in and around the parks, and a set of official baseline monitoring projects will kick off shortly.

On July 15, the Ocean Protection Council awarded $4 million in funding for a series of research projects that will help scientists understand the current health of planned protected areas. The projects, which will collect baseline information for up to three years, will target marine life and habitats, as well as commercial and recreational activities, inside and outside the protected areas.

Teams of researchers, citizen-scientists, and fishermen will survey southern California’s sandy beaches, rocky shores, kelp beds and deep-water ecosystems to increase our understanding of marine science and enable the state to track results from the network of protected ocean areas.

• Tags:
• Marine Protected Areas
• monitoring enterprise
• ocean research
• mlpa