Final technical report - North Central Coast baseline surveys of shallow rocky reef ecosystems

Marine protected areas (MPAs) were implemented along California’s North Central coast (NCCSR) in 2010 as a result of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) legislation and in 2011 a collaborative comprehensive baseline monitoring program began to characterize the marine ecosystems of the region and investigate initial responses of these systems to MPA implementation should they occur. Reef Check California (RCCA), a program of the Reef Check Foundation, with the goal to improve marine management in California by providing critically needed data on California’s near-shore rocky reef ecosystems through the use of volunteer citizen scientists, became part of the NCCSR baseline monitoring team. RCCAs objectives for NCCSR baseline monitoring were to use highly trained and certified citizen scientists to conduct baseline characterization of the shallow rocky reef and kelp forest ecosystem in the region, MPAs and reference areas and to build capacity for future long-term MPA monitoring in the region by conducting community trainings, education and providing support for local citizen scientist survey teams. In 2010 and 2011 RCCA surveyed four of its five existing monitoring sites in the region each year and added two additional sites to its monitoring network in 2011. Since then RCCA has continued to monitor these seven sites in 2012 and 2013 and plans to do so in the years to come. RCCA’s involvement in the NCCSR baseline monitoring demonstrates the effectiveness of using citizen scientists for data collection even in logistically challenging environments such as the rocky reefs and kelp forest along the North Central coast.