Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary Conservation

Sardines near Santa Cruz Island, ©2007 Jaimi Kercher

Protecting and restoring the extraordinary environment of the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary (CINMS) is a cornerstone of EDC’s Coast and Ocean program, as it has been since the Sanctuary’s Congressional designation in 1980.

CINMS encompasses 1,128 square nautical miles from the shore to approximately six nautical miles (NM) seaward of the five northern Channel Islands—Santa Barbara, Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel Islands, as well as Richardson Rock and Castle Rock (view a high resolution, official NOAA map of CINMS here.  Because this federally-established marine protected area harbors unique ecosystems of world class diversity and productivity, and represents one of the foremost natural treasures of our tri-county region, EDC has been at the forefront of defending the Sanctuary from the array of existing and emerging threats to its conservation since the Sanctuary’s 1980 establishment. 

We advance this objective through two primary approaches.

1.  First, working collaboratively with CINMS staff and other regional Sanctuary stakeholders through the Sanctuary Advisory Council process, EDC advances conservation of the Sanctuary’s resources and ecosystems by serving as the Conservation community’s representative on the Council, by convening the regional Conservation Working Group, and conducting comprehensive science and policy research on emerging threats to the Sanctuary.  These studies are manifested as reports and suites of management recommendations for the Sanctuary Superintendent, which are reviewed and adopted by the Sanctuary Advisory Council.  EDC has completed four such studies to date:

• Anthropogenic Noise and the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary: How underwater noise affects Sanctuary resources, and what we can do about it (September 2004) (PDF link, 900kb)
• A Water Quality Needs Assessment for the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary (September 2005) (PDF link, 1.2 MB)
• Open Ocean Aquaculture in the Santa Barbara Channel: An emerging challenge for the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary (July 2007) (PDF link, 2.9MB)
• Ocean Acidification and the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary: Cause, effect and response (September 2008) (PDF link, 1.6 MB)

2.  Second, EDC applies direct education, advocacy and legal action to reduce and prevent harms to CINMS ecosystems and resources from incompatible development and human activities in and around the Sanctuary.  Examples include offshore oil development, liquefied natural gas importation, and commercial shipping.

Because it harbors an exceptionally rich and diverse assemblage of ocean wildlife, geographic, and oceanographic features, CINMS, as part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, is mandated by Congress to “maintain the natural biological communities” it harbors, and “to protect and, where appropriate, restore and enhance the natural habitats, populations, and ecological processes.”  Based on these mandates, the stated primary purposes of CINMS are “preserving and protecting this unique and fragile ecological community.”

Of course, the physical and biological resources that comprise the Sanctuary’s ecological community are not confined within its boundaries, but flow, drift and move in and out of them. Many species found within the Sanctuary and Santa Barbara Channel, such as blue, humpback and gray whales, fishes like tunas and great white sharks, and myriad sea birds, arrive here after traveling hundreds or even thousands of miles.  At the same time, the area’s ocean waters and weather systems gyrate, ebb and flow in cycles of far greater scale than the Sanctuary’s 1,128 square nautical miles.

Similarly, human activities that occur beyond the Sanctuary’s geographic boundaries— and the reach of its protective regulations— yield consequences that can adversely impact its natural resources and qualities. 

EDC’s focus on CINMS conservation aims to protect and restore Channel Islands ecosystems, habitat and habitat connectivity, ensure sustainable fisheries as well as the intrinsic value of the marine ecosystems on which these fisheries depend, maintain and improve ocean water quality, and build long term ecological resilience to the global scale, human-caused changes underway, such as sea level rise, global climate change, and ocean acidification.