California

Effective management is critical not only for ecosystem health and public safety, but also because the tourism associated with marine parks and reserves are important for national and local economies. In 2016, a California Sea Grant Extension Specialist was one of five people globally to be recognized with a Pew Marine Fellowship. This fellowship supports her ongoing work in East Africa to guide nations in science-based and adaptive management of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) through the program Science for Active Management (SAM).

In 2016, the Sea Grant specialist expanded the SAM program from a single MPA in Tanzania to six MPAs across the country and also launched the program in the Seychelles. She trained hundreds of MPA rangers in understanding ecological systems and management to more effectively manage MPAs in their countries, which support their national economies.

In the early 2000s, coho salmon were on the brink of elimination from the Russian River watershed. To address this issue, the Coho Salmon Conservation Program, a multi-agency conservation hatchery program, began releasing coho salmon into tributaries of the Russian River. Each year, hundreds of thousands of fish are released into the river, and the effectiveness of stocking strategies is assessed to maximize resources and improve the chances of successfully restoring coho to the watershed.

California Sea Grant collected survival and abundance data on hatchery coho salmon released by the Army Corps of Engineers into Russian River tributaries. Using the data that California Sea Grant provided, resource managers developed a hatchery release strategy for 2016/2017 that factored in probabilities of survival in different streams and seasons. This plan maximizes resources and will increase the chance that adult coho will return to the watershed.

With grant support from NOAA Fisheries, California Sea Grant convened a series of workshops where state resource management and regulatory agencies received training on current practices in offshore finfish aquaculture to better prepare them to manage offshore farms. These workshops resulted in the publication of two technical reports and the formation of a working group of federal and California state agencies and a non-profit organization whose intent is to harmonize federal and state agency requirements to permit offshore marine finfish aquaculture.