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November 26, 2001 Meeting Notes

Alliance of Communities for Sustainable Fisheries Marine Reserves Workgroup

*** Reminder — next meeting is Wednesday, December 12, 10 AM to 2 PM, at the Sanctuary office, 299 Foam Street, Monterey. Contact Brock Bernstein, 805-646-8369, brockb@west.net, with any questions. ***

Please see the list of attendees at the end of the notes.

Review of notes of October 22 meeting

There were no revisions requested to the September 10 notes.

Framework for next several meetings

After some discussion, the workgroup agreed on the following framework to organize its work over the next several meetings, with the understanding that these tasks can be modified as needed along the way. The timelines for the MLPA and Sanctuary management plan processes (see below) and the fact that many fishermen will be leaving to go fish in late April or May make the next few months an important period for the workgroup to make progress on its recommendations. The workgroup also reemphasized its earlier agreement that it will interact with other groups working on reserves issues in order to identify as much common ground as possible and to attempt to resolve disagreements. Finally, the workgroup also agreed that it should take a proactive and leadership role in developing recommendations (not just respond to agency proposals) and build support for these in the fishing community.

The framework agreed on for the next few Alliance workgroup meetings includes the following steps:

1. establish timeline for developing workgroup products
2. redefine workgroup products in more detail
1. recommendations for MLPA and Sanctuary processes
2. recommendations for socioeconomic studies
3. redefine evaluation criteria for proposed sites
4. develop list of specific recommendations as raw material
5. make any necessary additions, modifications to this list of recommendations
6. evaluate each recommendation against list of criteria
7. obtain and integrate additional fisheries and scientific information as needed
8. identify which group(s) will be helped or hurt economically in each scenario
9. organize this and other information into specific priorities for the socioeconomic studies to look at
10. interact with other groups as needed to build broader agreement
11. consolidate comments and recommendations into "package(s)" for management processes.

Steps 1 — 4 were discussed during the meeting and are described below. The remaining steps will be acted on in subsequent meetings.

Socioeconomic studies update

The workgroup was unable to complete its telephone connection to NOAA’s economist in DC. However, Holly Price summarized the four relevant socioeconomic studies that are planned for the central California coast:

• the Sanctuary Program is beginning a socioeconomic study of the Monterey Bay, Gulf of the Farallones, and Cordell Banks Sanctuaries to support their management plan processes. This study will not be limited to fishing but will include all major economic activities in the Sanctuaries. This study will be led by a NOAA economist from DC who was also involved in a socioeconomic study for the Channel Islands.
• Rick Starr of California Sea Grant will soon begin a socioeconomic study of the central California coast that is more directly focused on fishing activities.
• the California Department of Fish and Game will conduct a study of the economic impacts of the reserves proposed under the MLPA. This study has not yet been funded.
• Montery County is planning a socioeconomic study of the importance of the local fishing industry. This study will be carried out by Carrie Pomeroy of UC Santa Cruz.

While at least three of these studies (NOAA, Sea Grant, Monterey County) will begin shortly, it is very unlikely that any of them will have final results before fall 2002 at the earliest. The workgroup therefore agreed that it will provide advice and support to these studies by identifying the strengths and weaknesses of available data, assisting in gathering new data, and highlighting priority issues and areas the studies should focus on.

Review of management timelines

There are two major management processes whose timelines directly affect the workgroup’s schedule.

The first is the Sanctuary’s management plan review. Public scoping meetings begin November 28, 2001 and will continue until mid-January 2002. The public comment period on scoping, during which the public can submit comments by a variety of means, extends to the end of January 2002. Once the comments are digested, additional meetings through the spring and summer will be used to sort and prioritize issues. The draft management plan will be produced by the fall of 2002, along with an environmental impact statemnt (EIS) on the proposed alternatives. The new management plan will be finalized in early 2003. The period from now until May is therefore an important window of opportunity for the Alliance’s workgroup to have input into the plan.

The second management process is the MLPA’s ongoing effort to establish a network of marine reserves in state waters along the California coast. There is a "somewhat loose" deadline of December 5, 2001 to submit comments to be considered in the next version of the proposed reserve network, which will be available sometime in January 2002. The Department of Fish and Game will organize a series of regional meetings, beginning in February 2002 and extending over several months, designed to gather additional input and feedback from a wide range of stakeholder groups. The schedule for these meetings will be posted on the Fish and Game website as soon as they are finalized. Several members of the workgroup stressed the value of having an organized set of comments and recommendations available to put forward in these meetings. A final recommendation is due to the Fish and Game Commission by late 2002.

The MLMA process is moving forward in order to transfer management authority for nearshore species to the state (see notes of the October 22 workgroup meeting). However, the MLMA process is deferring to the MLPA regarding the establishment of specific reserve sites.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council has expressed its intention to address the reserves issue in federal waters, but they do not now have the funding to do so and are currently doing no actual planning. However, members of the Council’s SSC met recently with members of the Science Panel from the Channel Islands marine reserves planning process. The notes of this meeting were distributed at the workgroup meeting and will soon be available on the workgroup’s website. SSC members questioned the Science Panel members about the basis for their recommendation that 30 — 50% of area be set aside in reserves and stated that more effort should be directed toward examining the tradeoffs between the two types of effort control — marine reserves vs. existing fishery management tools.

Review of workgroup products

The workgroup reviewed its earlier agreement that its main purpose is to produce recommendations for the management processes described above. After some discussion, the group agreed that these recommendations would be of three kinds:

• principles and values that should be represented in any system of reserves and in the process used to designate them
• comments in response to specific proposals put forward by Fish and Game in the MLPA process and the Sanctuary in its management plan review process
• independent recommendations produced by the workgroup as a result of its own studies and discussions.

The workgroup put together a draft version of a set of core values and principles, will review these over the next couple of weeks, and finalize them at the next meeting.

Review of evaluation criteria

The workgroup agreed that a set of specific evaluation criteria would be useful to organize their responses to MLPA and Sanctuary proposals and to develop their own recommendations. The group made numerous comments on the draft set of criteria included below and will finalize the criteria at the next meeting.

Review of recommendations available for consideration

The workgroup briefly reviewed the comments and recommendations it currently has available for consideration. These include:

• discussions of basic principles at previous workgroup meetings
• comments on the MLPA proposals from the July 9 workgroup meeting with Dr. Ralph Larson
• material from the Alliance’s recent regioanal focus group meetings
• the Sanctuary’s letter to Fish and Game regarding the proposed MLPA network of reserves
• material from the comments to Fish and Game prepared by a committee of scientists for NRDC and WWF
• the statement of principles to guide reserve design prepared by the Half Moon Bay Fishermen’s Association.

It was agreed that the facilitator would put these into a single matrix organized by type of recommendation and the site it relates to. This will then be raw material for the next workgroup meeting.

Next steps and next meeting

Before the next meeting, the facilitator will prepare and send out to the workgroup the following items:

• a summary of the agreements the workgroup has reached to date
• a draft statement of core values and principles that should guide the process of marine reserve planning
• the revised set of criteria to be used in evaluating proposed reserve sites and recommendations about these
• the matrix of comments and recommendations available from the sources described above.

The next meeting will be on Wednesday, December 12, from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM, at the Sanctuary office at 299 Foam Street, Monterey.

Attendees

The following attended the meeting. Alliance workgroup members identified with an asterisk (*).

PO Box 1309, Carmel Valley CA 93924 (831) 659-2838

Reserves Study Group

November 26, 2001 — 10:00 am to 2:00 pm

The meeting will be at the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary’s office at 299 Foam Street in Monterey. Please call Brock Bernstein (805) 646-8369 or Holly Price (831) 647-4247 with any questions.

There will be pizza and we will keep going through lunch.