Final technical report - Socioeconomic baseline data collection, resource use mapping, and rapid social appraisal

This is the final technical report for the Central Coast MPA Socioeconomic Baseline Data Collection Project. The project has been undertaken for California Sea Grant as one element of a multi-disciplinary research and monitoring program designed to advance the prospective benefits of California’s Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA). The MLPA Initiative is being administered collaboratively by the California Coastal Conservancy, the Ocean Protection Council, California Department of Fish and Game, and the California Sea Grant Program. Information resulting from this and related biophysical research projects will be used to assess and monitor a wide range of human, marine biological, and physical oceanographic effects and outcomes associated with the recent establishment of a network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) along the Central Coast of California. The project reviewed in this report is focused especially on pertinent human dimensions of this new network of MPAs. Emphasis is applied to description and analysis of human activities that are most likely to: (1) affect the marine environment in and around the new MPAs, and (2) be affected by MPA-specific regulations. Commercial fishing, various forms of marine-based recreation, and the people who engage in these activities along the Central Coast are, therefore, the natural subjects of focus throughout this report. This report draws from the large socioeconomic database that has been compiled during the course of the project to provide:a) Detailed description of long-term trends and current conditions in commercial and non-consumptive marine industries and activities along the Central Coast;b) In-depth discussion of the range of physical-environmental, economic, and regulatory challenges encountered by the participants over time, and the strategies typically undertaken to meet them;c) Spatial and narrative analysis of the implications of these processes for marine resources and resource user groups across the region, with special attention to MPA-induced changes that have thus far been observed or reported among those groups; andd) A methodological template and set of indicators useful for monitoring the long-term biological and socioeconomic effects of MPAs established through the MLPA throughout the Central Coast and elsewhere in California.As summarized in this report, primary source data collection, compilation of archival data, data analysis, narrative description and explanation, and initial development of a practical monitoring framework have been completed for purposes of this project by Impact Assessment, Inc. (IAI). IAI is a research firm specializing in human dimensions research and analysis of marine fisheries and related social and economic factors and processes around the coastal zone of the United States and abroad.