Cover
& Introduction

Sanctuary Program
Accomplishments

Beach & Coastal
Systems

Rocky Intertidal
& Subtidal Systems

Open Ocean
& Deep Water
Systems

The Physical
Environment

Wetlands
& Watersheds

Endangered
& Threatened
Species

Marine Mammals

Bird Populations

Harvested
Species

Human
Interactions

Site Profile:
The Montebello

Credits

Resource Protection
Education & Outreach
Reasearch
Joint Managmenent Plan Review
Program Operations

Dedicated in 1992, the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary is the largest of 13 sanctuaries nationwide managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Encompassing more than 13,725 square kilometers (5,300 square miles) of water, its boundaries stretch along the central California coast from the Marin County headlands south to Cambria. The sanctuary features many diverse communities, including wave-swept beaches, lush kelp forests and one of the deepest underwater canyons in North America. An abundance of life, from tiny plankton to huge blue whales, thrives in these waters.

Our mission -- to understand and protect the coastal ecosystem and cultural resources of central California -- is carried out through the work of four program divisions: resource protection, education and outreach, research, and program operations. A summary of each program's major accomplishments and activities for 2005 follows.

This year's report also includes a review of activities surrounding the Joint Management Plan Review (JMPR).

Resource protection involves a complex array of issues, habitats and human impacts, including consideration of water quality, coastal development, harvesting or disturbance of marine life as well as protection of the ecosystem as a whole. Addressing these issues in the sanctuary is particularly challenging given the long stretch of adjacent populated coastline and the need to protect resources while recognizing the many uses of the marine environment. The resource protection team works closely with a variety of partners to initiate and carry out strategies to reduce or prevent detrimental human impacts on sanctuary resources.

Staff continued to evaluate the potential need for marine protected areas (MPAs) that would limit harvest of marine resources in order to conserve habitats and ecological functions within the sanctuary. They are coordinating ongoing efforts of a working group composed of agencies, scientists, environmental organizations, fishermen and other ocean users who are evaluating the potential utility and design of MPAs in federal waters of the sanctuary, generally beyond three miles of shore. Efforts have included the development of detailed goals and objectives; collection and evaluation of biological, geological and socioeconomic data layers; and development of a decision-support tool that can be used to map and evaluate alternative MPA locations. Staff also participated extensively with the state's Marine Life Protection Act Initiative to develop proposals for MPAs in the state waters of the sanctuary, generally within three miles of shore.

The Water Quality Protection Program (WQPP) and its many partners continued efforts in the watersheds to reduce contaminated runoff to the sanctuary. The Agriculture Water Quality Alliance (AWQA), a coalition of groups that are working to carry out the sanctuary's Agriculture and Rural Lands Plan, has collaborated with local farmers and ranchers in 24 watershed working groups. These joint efforts, which included water quality training courses in six counties and targeted efforts to improve sediment, nitrate and pesticide management, received statewide recognition in 2005 in the form of a Governor's Environmental and Economic Leadership Award to the AWQA committee. To address the issue of contaminated runoff in our local cities, WQPP staff also conducted a technical training workshop for plumbers in Santa Cruz County, co-sponsored a workshop on low-impact development in San Luis Obispo County and performed technical outreach to 11 restaurants on best management practices.

Efforts to use trained volunteers to monitor water quality continued under the Sanctuary Citizen Watershed Monitoring Network, in partnership with the Coastal Watershed Council. First Flush, a volunteer event that monitors contaminants flushed off streets by the first heavy rains, held its sixth annual event in the fall. More than 80 trained volunteers in Pacific Grove, Monterey, Seaside, Capitola, Live Oak, Scotts Valley, Santa Cruz, Half Moon Bay and El Granada monitored 32 different sites. Staff continued to coordinate with local cities to use these data to identify and reduce sources of contaminants, improve permit programs and target public education.

Staff continued to implement two management plans that address issues related to coastal development: desalination and coastal armoring (see p. 6). Because of a proliferation of desalination proposals in the region, staff are coordinating with scientists and local and state agencies to develop guidelines for the siting, construction and operation of desalination plants within the sanctuary in order to minimize impacts to natural resources. To address and reduce the spread of coastal armoring such as seawalls and riprap along the sanctuary's beaches, staff are coordinating a regional approach to the issue of coastal erosion and armoring in the sanctuary's Southern Monterey Bay sub-region, from the Salinas River to Wharf 2 in Monterey. In 2005, the sanctuary hosted five meetings of the Southern Monterey Bay Coastal Erosion and Armoring Workgroup, which is comprised of local experts, regulatory agency and local government representatives, conservation interests, and elected officials. The working group compiled and analyzed information on erosion rates and corresponding threats to private and public structures within this region and has identified and begun assessing a range of options available for responding to erosion while minimizing impacts to sanctuary resources.

Enforcement staff received several hundred notifications of potential violations in 2005 and investigated a wide variety of incidents. (See chart, page 3.) Discharges and wildlife disturbance are the most frequently reported violations in the sanctuary. Twenty-two vessel groundings/sinkings -- often involving debris and fuel spills -- were also reported. (See chart, above.) Sewage spills from land also continue to be a frequent source of water quality contamination. Staff completed an extensive investigation and settlement discussions regarding the discharge of 15 large shipping containers into the sanctuary.

Profile of Documented Enforcement Cases Dec. 2004 -- Nov. 2005 These data represent only 51 formally documented cases by the NOAA Office for Law Enforcement and do not reflect all investigative actions or patrol contacts by NOAA enforcement personnel or enforcement actions by partner agencies. The data do not reflect total reported incidents or number of convictions within the sanctuary. They simply provide a relative comparison of the types of violations occurring within the sanctuary. Marine mammal take cases were processed as actions under the Marine Mammal Protection Act instead of the National Marine Sanctuaries Act. Vessel groundings and sinkings are counted as seabed alteration cases, though most also involved discharges.

We also received several reports of large commercial vessels operating inshore of the shipping lanes established by the International Maritime Organization to reduce the risk of oil spills. The sanctuary's enforcement officer, state peace officers and resource protection staff investigated these violations, followed up with responsible parties for corrective action and identified ways to prevent them in the future, in coordination with a variety of state, federal and local agencies.

We reviewed approximately 50 permit requests this year, issuing permits or authorizations for activities such as seabed disturbance, discharges or overflights below 1,000 feet in restricted zones. Various conditions are imposed on these types of activity to reduce or eliminate threats. Staff coordinated with the California State Lands Commission to oversee completion of an Environmental Impact Statement and permit for the Monterey Accelerated Research System Cabled Observatory (MARS), a 51-kilometer cable that will help collect scientific data offshore of Monterey Bay. Numerous conditions related to laying, monitoring, maintaining and retrieving the cable were added to the permit to reduce impacts to sanctuary resources. Staff also reviewed and commented on a variety of projects and plans under development by others, to ensure that they adequately protected sanctuary resources.

As we head into 2006, the resource protection team looks forward to continuing our partnership efforts with federal, state and local agencies; industries such as agriculture and fishing; environmental groups; scientists; and citizens throughout the region to protect sanctuary resources.

The education and outreach team operates under the mission: To promote understanding, support and participation in the protection and conservation of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. This year, following our mission, we initiated new facility planning, programs and products for our sanctuary as well as participating in international efforts.

Students in the MERITO Watershed Academy afterschool program participate in storm drain stenciling in Salinas. (Photo by Cristy Cassel/MBNMS)

We have three interpretive facility efforts underway, with two (Pigeon Point and San Simeon) ready to open this summer. The Pigeon Point facility has been planned in partnership with the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. The San Simeon facility has been developed in close collaboration with California State Parks (San Luis Obispo Coast District). Named the Coastal Discovery Center at San Simeon Bay, it also serves as the new southern region field office, which opened this past spring. The Pigeon Point facility has a distinctly maritime flavor, while the Coastal Discovery Center has a natural history theme.

Planning for a Santa Cruz facility also progressed. In partnership with the City of Santa Cruz, the architectural planning was initiated, with designs for the building and grounds enthusiastically received by Santa Cruz residents. Several budget options have been explored, and the city is working with the sanctuary to identify a variety of fundraising vehicles. Concurrent to the architectural planning, the center's interpretive plan is also taking shape.

Sanctuary programming continues to grow and evolve. Our multicultural education program, MERITO (Multicultural Education for Resource Issues Threatening Oceans) served more than
10,200 teachers, students and community members in the cities of Watsonville, Pajaro and Salinas this past year. MERITO is key to bringing the sanctuary messages of ocean issues and conservation to community members we would not otherwise serve through our traditional programs.

The TeamOCEAN (Ocean Conservation Education Action Network) kayak naturalist program continued to grow this year, recruiting 20 additional volunteers. This program puts knowledgeable naturalists on the water in kayaks to greet and interact with fellow day kayakers. The naturalists serve as docents for the sanctuary, promoting respectful wildlife viewing and protecting marine mammals from disturbance. The program reached 5,957 visitors on Monterey Bay, and volunteers donated 1,716 hours. Its greatest benefit is its interpretive nature, teaching wildlife viewing etiquette rather than using a punitive approach: people remember a positive interaction and learn about sanctuary resources at the same time. This program is the largest outreach program the sanctuary currently offers and will continue to explore expansion to address the many other ways people enjoy the sanctuary.

Our team continues to prepare for the draft management plan's release. This year, we developed 20 different fact sheets to accompany the draft management plan. We have addressed each of the major issues and created four-page pamphlets to outline the basics for those not ready to tackle the 400+ page document. Please look for these anywhere you find other sanctuary print materials or access them online in the management plan section of our web site: http://montereybay.noaa.gov.

Two education staff were selected for international visits in 2005. Michelle Templeton, manager of our multicultural program, was asked to join a contingent from Washington to visit the Galapagos Islands; and Dawn Hayes, education and outreach coordinator, was invited to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in Australia.

The Galapagos trip's purpose was to identify how NOAA and the sanctuary program could assist the Ecuadorian government in developing local environmental programming. The visit to Australia was to learn from that country's highly successful marine zoning process and to share each agency's approach to education, outreach, communications and constituency building.

We all look forward to 2006, as we debut many of the products and facilities we've spent this past year planning, and we encourage readers to participate in the final stages of our management plan review process.

The purpose of the sanctuary research program is to address resource management needs for scientific information. Our research is now more focused, with a new draft management plan, as we are addressing priority action plans within this document. Our Research Activity Panel of advisors also reorganized this year, enhancing expertise and procedures to address new management needs, rather than providing the more general advice that was needed when the sanctuary was designated in 1992. The research program has grown to a level at which it is impossible to comment on all of our activities over the last year, but more complete information can be found at the sanctuary and Sanctuary Integrated Monitoring Network (SIMoN) web sites (www.montereybay.noaa.gov; www.mbnms-simon.org).

The white-spotted rose anemone (Urticina loftonesis) is found in subtidal monitoring surveys. (Photo by Chad King/MBNMS)

Research staff are agency scientists with many duties, but they enjoy directing their expertise in some field research. To address the issue of invasive species, we have been monitoring and removing the Asian kelp, Undaria, in and around sanctuary harbors. With help from dive groups, school groups and the Young Women in Science program, hundreds of pounds of this invasive kelp have been removed. The project was featured at the California Harbor Masters and Port Captains annual meeting to provide information on invasive species management to a broad audience. In addition, invasive species and tidal erosion are being monitored in collaboration with the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve to support decision making about management structures to modify tidal flow in this critical estuary. Offshore, the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary vessel, R/V Shearwater, was used to deploy temperature-measuring arrays to feed into a national observatory system, characterizing kelp beds and associated sensitive species related to highway maintenance activities along the Big Sur coast and describing seafloor habitats with a towed camera system. The Beach COMBERS surveys of beach-cast organisms detected unusually high mortality of some seabird species from January through May. (See page 18.) As disparate monitoring programs provide updates to the SIMoN program, we are now able to understand events such as these through the integration of information. This year, unusually weak upwelling resulted in warm, nutrient-poor water, which limited food for fishes such as juvenile rockfishes, and so rookeries of fish-eating birds suffered, and we noted increased mortality of adults along sanctuary beaches.

Sanctuary staff head out to Point Pinos in Pacific Grove to conduct a survey of black abalone. (Photo by Andrew DeVogelaere/MBNMS)

The SIMoN program continues to fund and track numerous monitoring programs. The Collaborative Survey of Cetacean Abundance and Pelagic Ecosystem was supported to conduct marine mammal assessments out to a distance of 300 nautical miles along the U.S. West Coast, with fine-scale sampling within three sanctuaries. This will put the abundance of these species in sanctuaries, including some that are highly migratory, in context with their entire habitat. On a much more local scale, SIMoN supported surveys and analyses to attempt detection of the source of chronically high copper concentrations in the storm drain of Steinbeck Plaza in Monterey. Within the state's MPA designation process, we supported staff and funding to develop an environmental assessment and decision support tool. This map-based software integrates geological, biological, oceanographic and socioeconomic data and allows for customized queries to assist in the analysis of alternative locations and networks of MPAs.

The SIMoN web site has added information, now totaling almost 100 monitoring program summaries, and offers additional tools. We have new interactive maps on water quality, habitats and ocean observatories so users can visualize and print this information from the Internet. We also have new online data entry tools for the First Flush and Beach COMBERS citizen monitoring programs as well as a search tool for those interested in finding information on specific water quality parameters from the many central coast monitoring efforts.

Submerged cultural resources and maritime heritage are also part of the research program. (See http://montereybay.noaa.gov/resourcepro/resmanissues/culturalres.html.) This aspect of the sanctuary program, while often overlooked, is fascinating. We now provide information on the Montebello oil tanker, which was sunk by a Japanese submarine during Word War II (and see p. 25). The rigid airship USS Macon, large enough to hold 100 men and serve as an aircraft carrier for four planes, is resting on the seafloor off the Big Sur coast. The wreck was originally identified when a fisherman gave pieces of the wreck for decoration in a local restaurant; this year, we completed detailed mapping of the debris field using the NOAA Ship McArthur II, which will guide a complete photo mosaic of the site next year.

Finally, we produced publications on topics including deep-sea corals of the Davidson Seamount, regional ocean observing systems, impacts of coastal armoring, ecological assessments, our SIMoN Says report and more. For more complete information on research and monitoring, ecosystem updates and new web offerings, check out the SIMoN web site periodically.

An update of the sanctuary management plan continued in coordination with the Cordell Bank and Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuaries as part of the Joint Management Plan Review (JMPR). With significant public input, this review of the three management plans examines and updates the priorities, programs, regulations and boundaries of each sanctuary. Staff have worked with the public and the Sanctuary Advisory Council (SAC) since 2001 to determine which programs and priority issues to address and implement over the next five to ten years. Although the release of a draft management plan with proposed regulations and draft environmental impact statement has been delayed until 2006, staff began implementing many of the programs and action plans that were recommended by the SAC in 2003.

Much of the work on the management plan review over the past year focused on producing proposed rule or draft regulations associated with the update. These proposed regulations stem from recommendations made by the public and the SAC during the scoping and action plan development phases of the JMPR. Staff moved forward with a significant recommendation to provide potential protection of the Davidson Seamount by incorporating the area into the sanctuary and adopting specific regulations to address fragile coral and sponge communities that could be harmed by scientific collection, fishing or other disturbances. For much of 2005, we worked with the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) and NOAA Fisheries to draft regulations under multiple authorities that, if adopted, will provide protection to the Davidson Seamount from various threats. The PFMC unanimously supported the sanctuary's goals and objectives to protect the seamount and designated it both an Essential Fish Habitat and Habitat Area of Particular Concern, while recommending fishing restrictions for the seafloor and water column around the seamount. These draft regulations should be available for public comment in early 2006.

The program operations team continued to provide day-to-day administrative support to the education and outreach, research and monitoring, and resource protection teams while also working on a number of special projects. At the top of the list has been the construction of the 65-foot research vessel, Fulmar, due for completion in May 2006. The design of the state-of-the-art vessel is based on the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary's R/V Shearwater, with the addition of some new equipment features and additional deck space. The new vessel will service the West Coast region by providing a much-needed field research platform for the Gulf of the Farallones, Cordell Bank and Monterey Bay Sanctuaries as well as partner research institutions. A floating dock is also being built to berth the Fulmar in conjunction with the U.S. Coast Guard. A NOAA Corps officer has joined the sanctuary staff (January 2006) to manage operations for both the R/V Fulmar and the 29-foot Shark Cat.

In 2005, an agreement was completed with NOAA Fisheries at its Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Santa Cruz to build offices to house sanctuary staff. The goals are to enhance collaborations with NOAA Fisheries and increase sanctuary presence in the Santa Cruz region. Once completed in April 2006, the space will provide work stations for six to eight staff.

After returning from his six-month detail in Italy, Superintendent William Douros produced a report titled, The Italian System of Marine Protected Areas. This report provides information on the differences and similarities between U.S. and Italian MPAs and suggestions on how we can learn from each other.

In September 2005, Douros returned to Italy with the director of the National Marine Sanctuary Program and the chief of the Conservation Policy and Planning Branch to review joint science accomplishments and future activities between Italy and the United States. The meeting culminated in the signing of a cooperative agreement between NOAA and Italy's Ministry of Environments to collaborate on science, outreach and exchanges to improve each agency's responsibility for MPA management. NOAA and the Ministry of Environment agreed to several exchanges of staff and expertise to further expand the partnership.

In 2005, the SAC swore in the following new members: Kris Reyes (Tourism alternate), LTJG Jacob Gustafson (USCG alternate), Randy Herz (Diving alternate), Libby Downey (AMBAG alternate), Steve Moore (Research alternate), Tracey Weiss (Education primary) and Cindy Walter (At-large alternate). David Crabbe was also selected as the Commercial Fishing seat alternate. Kaitilin Gaffney, Conservation primary, was elected as the new secretary. For more information on the SAC, please visit http://montereybay.noaa.gov/intro/advisory/advisory.html.