Final technical report - Baseline characterization of environmental conditions leading up to marine protected area establishment in the North Central Coast study region

California’s nearshore marine life is responsive to year-to-year and longer-term changes in ocean conditions. In particular, growth/size, production, and abundance of fish and other taxa are known to change with variation in water temperature, upwelling-favorable winds, and currents. Therefore, baseline information on variability in ocean conditions is required to understand and evaluate changes in populations in this region. This context is critical to monitoring population change and adaptive management of Marine Protected Areas (MPA) in California. Without a simultaneous assessment of the effects of ocean conditions, it will be difficult to formally attribute changes in populations to the protection afforded by MPA designations.In this report, we develop and explore comprehensive indicators of temporal variability in ocean conditions over a 21-year period preceding the establishment of MPAs along California’s north-central coast (NCC). To test the relevance of these indicators to populations, we relate them to a few key biological data sets that are representative of marine life within and outside NCC MPA.