Over the past 15 years, California ‘has upended nearly every aspect of its fisheries management” to create 124 marine protected areas covering 850 square miles, more than 16 percent of its ocean holdings, where fishing is banned or severely curtailed, writes avid angler and author Paul Greenberg in California Sunday magazine. “By creating an interconnected stretch of no-fishing and restricted-fishing areas up and down the coast, scientists and conservationists theorize they can weave back together the elements of an ecosystem that two centuries of exploitation has blown apart.” Greenberg went scuba diving in Monterey Bay, joined scientists in fish censuses and went sport fishing to see if the string of protected areas is rebuilding the fishery.
Research biologist Jean Caselle UC-Santa Barbara says fish populations are rising inside and outside of reserves near the Channel Islands, a welcome trend considering commercial fishing is now crowded into a smaller area by the reserves, writes Greenberg. Fisheries science professor Ray Hilborn of U-Washington says there is no evidence the protected areas are the reason. He says the scientific guidelines behind the protected areas are not sufficiently rigorous. Considering the long lives of fish sheltered by the reserves, “it may be a long time until we know the extent to which reserves populate other fishing grounds,” says Greenberg. The story was developed in partnership with FERN.