Sanctuaries Enjoying a Sea Change

Oregon has none. Neither does Alaska. Or New York. There are only 12 National Marine Sanctuaries in the country--one in Hawaii, one in Florida, another in Texas, one in Massachusetts, one in Washington state and the others scattered afar. Except along the coast of California. Here, four sanctuaries are clustered, including the largest of them all.

Little-known cousins of the national parks and national forests, marine sanctuaries arose during the last quarter-century to mark shorelines and waters dear to America. Of the entire system, almost half of the surface area lies off California’s midsection, a prolific seascape cut by canyons and foothills, swept by great oceanic rivers, home to vast underwater forests, patrolled by great white sharks, visited by whales.

On paper, the 1972 act establishing the sanctuaries is the federal government’s promise of protection and stewardship of these coastal oceans. In practice, they have delivered less.

But a tide of change is tugging at the ankles of the sanctuary system. The Clinton administration has pledged to advance the cause of oceanic conservation. Sanctuaries, remodeled and energized, are supposed to be the cornerstone.

One by one, the sanctuaries are lining up to remake themselves. Some have already begun searching for consensus among the overlapping maze of agencies, communities, industries and individuals that have claims on the coastal ocean. Other sanctuaries are preparing to begin the process. The question driving them: What should sanctuaries be? Or, put differently: What can they be in an age when public suspicion of federal authority runs high and conservation is regarded as a roadblock to prosperity?

On Monday, The Times began a profile of California’s coastal treasures with a visit to the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, off Ventura and Santa Barbara. Today, the journey moves north.

In full glory, nature sometimes inspires comparison with the divine. The redwood forests of the North Coast and sequoias of the Sierra evoke the majesty of cathedrals--where the play of sunlight against stillness amid towering spaces stifles the human ego and lifts its spirit.

Another forest does the same, evermore plentiful in California although never as easy to reach.

One must first wriggle into a double-thick suit of neoprene, pull on rubber boots, gloves, hood, mask, fins, air tank, regulator and belt threaded with lead weights. Thus burdened, the diver clambers on uncertain knees over slick rocks to pitch clumsily into surging water that is nearer to freezing than comfortable in temperature. From shore, it is a swim of perhaps 75 yards to the center of a cove, in this case Whaler’s Cove at Point Lobos, a small state marine park inside the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

Once liberated from land, the diver descends into water that is neither clear nor murky. It is a living broth of plankton, an amalgamation of microscopic plants and animals detectable only by the blue-green haze they spread through the water. At a depth of 35 feet, the bottom looms: a lagoon of sand in a grove of giant kelp.

Weightless, you gaze heavenward. The stalks of these kelp are only a few inches around. But in the compressed space underwater, they soar with all the glory of a redwood. The canopy of their fronds streams and undulates in the surge. Great bars of sunlight stream through the broken-mirror surface of the sea and descend at angles into the quiet, mist-like shadow land of the underwater woods. Immersed in such serenity, divers are known to consume an entire tank of air without moving, although there is plenty to see.

An angel shark lies half-buried on the edge of the kelp grove, waiting to pounce on lunch. Above, rockfish float in silhouette like slow-motion birds through the blades of the forest. A tiny piece of kelp moves and reveals itself as a camouflaged kelp-fish. Shy sand dabs huddle in sand, wishing to be unseen. Tracks along the bottom bespeak of crabs. Pastel anemones bring color, like flowers, to the forest floor.

California law forbids fishing in this cove, or spearfishing, or abalone collecting. Nothing can be removed or disturbed. Those who have explored the underwater shallows along California’s Central Coast regard Point Lobos fondly. In the words of local dive master Ed Cooper, “It shows you things are right in the kingdom.”

But these state park safeguards cover just a few acres of a sanctuary about the size of Connecticut.

The remainder is a source of friction. Farther up the coast, a sign on an overlook adjacent to the famed Monterey Bay Aquarium assures visitors: “The sanctuary protects this ocean environment--and the life within it--to help them stay healthy for years to come.” The sign, however, is true only in part.

Just look past it to the water. Each afternoon fishing boats jockey for position within a few hundred yards of shore. On this day there are an even dozen 30- to 60-footers in the fleet, plus several smaller craft hung with scaffolding. These are the “light” boats. After sundown, their powerful industrial lamps will blaze into the water with as much candlepower as a small city. The light attracts squid, on which the larger boats converge and net.

When the squid fleet is finished, other work boats move along the shore, harvesting kelp by the long ton. Its primary use here is to provide feed for the abalone farms that dot the coast. These aquaculture farms were established to try and meet demand for meat and pearls that the California ocean no longer can, its wild abalone having been greedily overfished.

Conservationists worry that too much kelp is being taken now, stripping the bay of nurseries and shelter. Maybe too many squid too. Who knows. California squid harvests have increased sevenfold in the last two decades, but sanctuary biologists report that “squid biomass has not been determined or even estimated.”

The most recent independent study of the nearly 200 species sought by commercial and recreational fishermen in the sanctuary found that 17% were stable, 10% in decline and the health of the other 73% simply unknown. Also unknown, but certainly destructive, are the consequences of trawlers who drag the ocean floor with ever-more sophisticated gear in search of bottom fish.

Researchers concluded, “The highly variable nature of the marine environment as well as historical evidence suggests that the risk of over-harvest is high for numerous species.”

The establishment of a national marine sanctuary here eight years ago has not fundamentally changed the equation.

As part of the original deal, fishermen demanded, and received, assurances that the sanctuary would not muscle in on their business. Regulation of fishing would remain with the state Fish and Game Commission and the National Marine Fisheries Service, agencies chartered to protect the economic interests of fishermen.

For its part, the sanctuary assumed the other half of the responsibility: safeguarding “places” for marine creatures to survive and propagate. Simplified, the sanctuary protects the rocks but not the rockfish.

The wisdom of this idea may soon get another airing.

Monterey Bay Began as Defensive Measure

Like most of National Marine Sanctuaries, Monterey Bay began as a defensive measure. Local residents decided that wherever the fuel for their cars and power plants came from, it should not be from these lovely, windblown shores.

There was little else behind the sanctuary--except nagging local fears that once this new federal agency got a beachhead in Monterey, its appetite for regulatory mischief would expand.

Judged by its founding mission, the sanctuary has been a runaway success. From its southern border below San Simeon to its northernmost reach above San Francisco Bay, zero offshore oil drilling has occurred.

With a boundary like three overlapping half-circles, the sanctuary encompasses a surface area of 5,300 square miles, by far the largest in America. And surely one of the loveliest.

Two features in particular distinguish it from California’s other sanctuaries. From the beach near Moss Landing, a spectacular underwater canyon snakes to a depth of 10,663 feet, a seascape of eternal darkness and mystery. As deep from rim to bottom as the Grand Canyon, Monterey Canyon was created primarily by the erosive power of silt-laden underwater currents. Second, the sanctuary butts up against some of the most scenic coastline in the state, like Big Sur, and some of its priciest real estate, like Pebble Beach. Plus, it adjoins some of the most preciously activist communities in the state, such as Santa Cruz, Half Moon Bay and Monterey itself.

In other words, it is a place where nature and politics prosper--and inevitably collide.

Much of the economic activity in the region touches directly on the sanctuary. According to the latest tally, 26 marine research facilities have established themselves around the bay, one of the foremost centers of oceanic science in the world. Their budgets total $160 million, three times the value of commercial fishing in the region. Tourism, virtually all of it linked to the seashore, is a $635-million business on the Central Coast. Nowhere on the planet are more salad vegetables grown. Runoff from this $4-billion agricultural industry drains into the sanctuary.

Is it enough to call the sanctuary a no-oil zone and leave it there?

Seemingly not.

Just as critics feared, the sanctuary has incrementally made itself felt ashore and in the coastal waters. Shipping has been pushed far offshore. Harbors here are among the cleanest you will ever see, thanks to strict no-dumping regulations. For the sake of marine mammals such as otters, personal watercraft are banned except for small areas. Chumming for sharks, so divers can jump into a cage and watch their feeding, has been outlawed.

Recently, the sanctuary politely suggested to the state that it rein in kelp harvesting--advice that was implicitly backed up with the threat of federal intervention. Farmers along the coast have yielded to independent monitoring of irrigation runoff, voluntary actions they hope will head off new restrictions on pesticides.

The next steps could be bigger, and surely they will be furiously debated.

Perhaps as soon as spring, the sanctuary will begin the process of rewriting its own management plan for these waters. Congress requires that this be done every five years, but like all the sanctuaries, Monterey has fallen behind schedule.

Great regulatory latitude is allowed, if not yet taken, under the broad conservation guidelines of the sanctuaries act. Management plans reflect each site’s priorities under the act and its list of dos and don’ts.

Sister sanctuaries in the Florida Keys and at the Channel Islands have used the process to propose that some waters within their boundaries be placed off-limits to fishing. Such “reserves” are a popular new idea in marine conservation. They are supposed to serve as replenishment nurseries for fish. And as scientific benchmarks by which to measure the impacts of fishing nearby. They also are acknowledgment of the long-term failures of fisheries management based on regulating season, size and tonnage.

William J. Douros, superintendent of Monterey Bay, says he will wait and watch as the Channel Islands concludes the revision of its management plan before beginning the difficult, two-year process here. With a background as a county planner and a marine ecologist, he keeps to himself what he wants to achieve, saying he will listen to the public and other regulatory agencies first.

What he will hear are irreconcilable demands. Conservationists, divers and some scientists are prepared to seek new no-fishing reserves. Other scientists may oppose reserves unless they are allowed to collect specimens for display and study. Harbor masters are likely to ask that sanctuary boundaries be redrawn to exclude marinas. Fishermen, kelp harvesters and coastal farmers will be wary of anything that looks like more regulatory control. Environmentalists may seek a more conservative approach to ocean harvests to guarantee that animals such as whales get first share of fish and squid.

“I’ve never lived in a commune, but some days I feel like I’m running one now,” the 40-year-old Douros says with a laugh. “Should we plant corn? I don’t know. Talk to Bill. How much corn? Well ask Dave. Is there water for corn? And so on.”

Fear of Federal Authority Runs Deep

This year, the Monterey Bay sanctuary hired its first enforcement officer, one patrolwoman for an area the size of Los Angeles and Ventura counties combined. That is nine officers fewer than the city of Monterey employs to issue parking tickets.

Strolling around town, however, one might believe otherwise. Fear of federal authority runs deep here, out of proportion, perhaps, to the reality. For decades, other communities in the vicinity of national parks have made economic hay from their proximity to nature’s wonders. Not so in Monterey.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium thinks of itself as the sanctuary’s de facto interpretive center. But aquarium visitors must look hard to see any mention whatsoever of the sanctuary outside. Only a single shop on Cannery Row seeks to capitalize on the nearby marine life, selling sea otter paraphernalia. Warning signs on the waterfront tell scuba divers, among the most ardent sanctuary supporters, that they are forbidden from parking to unload gear or from using public restrooms to change clothes.

Only one small terrestrial park in the tourist part of town invites the public to approach the water. Viewpoints are boarded over with murals or crowded out by buildings. A breakwater where the public can watch dozens of sea lions up close is made no more inviting than a garbage dump behind a chain-link fence. Commercial whale-watching is barely tapped, although nowhere on the West Coast do so many whales reliably gather in close proximity to a harbor.

Why?

Surely, it is not out of skepticism about the power of the ocean to bring visitors, because the aquarium has established itself as Monterey’s No. 1 attraction. Many say it is a fishing community’s residual fear of losing control of its destiny to the federal government.

“There is a tremendous amount of potential,” says Ed Brown, a retired executive of the Pebble Beach Co. who represents tourism on the sanctuary’s citizen advisory council. “But you know, there are still some concerns left over.”

All of which is worth digesting, for two reasons. Underwater parks, like those on land, cannot be expected to prosper without a local constituency. And to a degree almost unheard of, the Monterey Bay sanctuary has tried to attract one by modeling itself as a civic institution, not a police agency. Its staff of 17 is only a tiny fraction of the private aquarium’s 450. Sanctuary workers wander the streets in khakis rather than uniforms. They rely on volunteers to root the sanctuary in the region and to reach out to visitors, including a corps of 100 volunteers who call themselves Bay Net. They undergo 40 hours of training, then they take up positions near tourist haunts to try and draw public attention to the wonders of sanctuary.

“We want these sanctuaries to be recognized as the nation’s foremost community-based conservation program,” says Dan Basta, director of the National Marine Sanctuary program.

Perhaps such things need time to take root, and the sanctuary, after all, is less than a decade old. Already, evidence of inroads can be found up the coast in Santa Cruz.

There, the local visitor bureau recently adopted the motto, “Gateway to the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.” Some retail shops are trying to capitalize on their proximity to these protected waters. Volunteer groups of all varieties have linked themselves to the sanctuary and its conservation goals. For the first time, the many scientific agencies of the bay have agreed to pool and collate their knowledge.

Santa Cruz and Capitola are partners in building a multimillion-dollar sanctuary interpretive trail along the urban coastline, and one day it may connect to a similar trail along part of the Gulf of the Farallones Marine Sanctuary to the north. A majority of public schools in the Santa Cruz area have incorporated the sanctuary into their curricula.

“People here see the sanctuary not as some kind of government thing, but as their sanctuary,” says Donna Meyers, director of the Coastal Watershed Council, a volunteer organization that monitors agricultural runoff.

An Uncomplicated Sense of Humor

Edward Ueber is a roughhewn salt who shears his own hair, now silver-gray, and wears blue jeans and clip-on suspenders to work in the city. A submariner in the Navy, a merchant marine officer, shipwright, fisherman and then fisheries researcher, he has an uncomplicated sense of humor. Like the time he ordered a pizza.

“The ad said 20-minute delivery anywhere in San Francisco,” Ueber explains with a shrug. “So I called. I told the guy to deliver it to me at the Farallon Islands. . . . He looked but couldn’t find it on the street map.”

The most forbidding piece of metropolitan real estate in America, if not the world, the Farallon Islands lie 27 miles west of the Golden Gate. Just a clump of oversize rocks, really, these outcroppings are pounded by surf and surge, shrouded in fog, frequently whipped by storms. They are designated as a National Wildlife Refuge and fall technically within San Francisco’s city limits. But they are less the domain of Mayor Willie Brown than of the 58-year-old Ueber, manager of the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary.

And if pressed, Ueber would defer his authority to the indigenous residents here: the densest concentration of great white sharks known in the world; 33 species of marine mammals, including a holdout population of threatened steller’s sea lions; sprawling families of blubbery elephant seals; 14 species of visiting whales; and the largest colony of nesting seabirds in the Lower 48, to name just some.

The Gulf of the Farallones sanctuary is a bewitching mix of the tranquil and the savage. Its boundary reaches north into the estuaries of Bodega and Tomales bays, and then swings out to the open North Pacific and encompasses 70% of the continental shelf off San Francisco Bay--a total of 1,255 square miles, an area slightly bigger than the state of Rhode Island.

Established in 1981 for the purpose of preventing offshore drilling, the sanctuary still is but a vest-pocket agency. It might be quite invisible, in fact, if not for Ueber’s ability to leverage public support and augment his three-person staff with the resources of a nonprofit Farallones Marine Sanctuary Assn. This organization, in turn, fields a corps of 100 Beach Watch volunteers, trained to monitor a 200-mile seashore. Sixty beaches and tidal reefs are surveyed at least once a month, providing an early warning system for troubles and the most comprehensive account of seashore biology in the United States. Volunteers also fan out through Marin County on weekends to teach visitors how to tread lightly around skittish harbor seals.

Ueber wears a second hat as manager of the most obscure and mysterious sanctuary in the state, an adjacent tract of 526 square miles of open ocean north of the Farallones and 52 miles from the Golden Gate. Known as Cordell Bank, it is home to a submerged island 9.5 miles long and 4.5 miles wide, topped with pinnacles. This granite mound rises from mile-deep water to within 115 feet of the surface and provides a prolific habitat for fish. So abundant is food that pairs of Laysan albatrosses with their 7-foot wingspans take turns flying the 5,000-mile round trip from their nests in Hawaii to gorge on the bank and return with food for their chicks.

Independent scientists and Ueber agree that the Farallones and Cordell Bank are overfished for some species, such as rockfish. At Cordell, another worry is the use of chains and nets that drag over the sea bottom, an exceptionally destructive and wasteful fishery. But because of its distance from shore, its depth and millrace of currents, Cordell Bank is seldom dived by researchers, so the extent of damage is mostly a matter of surmise.

Unlike other California sanctuaries, Cordell Bank was established not so much to block offshore oil drilling, but because of a campaign undertaken by a group of intrepid and pioneering underwater explorers who brought public attention to its unique wealth of fish. Ironically, Cordell’s designation in 1989 specifically withheld authority to regulate either fishing or the impact of trawling the bottom.

At Cordell Bank and the Farallones, fishery management remains in the hands of agencies where fishermen traditionally hold sway: the state Fish and Game Commission and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Thus, to whatever extent the two sanctuaries off San Francisco provide any counterbalance to the status quo of fishing, it is through the activism of independent conservation organizations with links to Ueber and the nonprofit Farallones association.

These environmentalists now are rallying opposition to an expansion of fishing in these waters, already the most heavily harvested on the West Coast. In particular, they oppose a proposal to resurrect an old-fashioned “reduction” fishery, in which anchovies are netted and boiled down for fertilizer and pet food. A similar industry helped lead the California sardine to near oblivion 50 years ago. Opponents say that such a low-value use of fish is indefensible when recovering populations of whales, sea lions, salmon and seabirds depend on anchovies.

“I don’t think we should manage the ocean just for fisheries,” says Ueber, who will undertake the process of revising his sanctuary management plans beginning next year.

A Window of Calm Opens

For several days, the sea has been surging to 14 feet and lashing the Northern California coast. Now, a window of calm opens and Ueber heads straight for Bodega Bay, where the sanctuary’s 27-foot runabout is berthed. As the morning fog peels away from the surface, Ueber noses the craft outbound to tour his domain.

Even on what passes here for a smooth day, one needs to hold on with the grip of a stevedore as the boat batters it way into the North Pacific. A leisurely kayak or even a rowboat will suffice in the sanctuary’s quieter bays, but venturing into the open sea is the only way to fathom the scale and bounty of the Farallones and Cordell Bank.

And at that, one must be content with the surface view. Ueber does not scuba dive in these waters or allow his staff to. He points to coves on the coast and explains: An urchin diver was attacked here. Over there, three known attacks have occurred. Great white sharks--perhaps 150 of them in the 15- to 20-foot range--prowl these waters.

Ueber tells of the chance videotape that a boat passenger took just south of the Farallones two years ago. A white shark found itself too close to a baby orca, or killer whale, and was thrust out of the water and bitten in two by the orca’s mother.

“I haven’t seen the movie ‘Jaws,’ but I’ve seen plenty of white sharks,” Ueber remarks, offhand.

Even without going underwater, Ueber identifies in succession six threatened or endangered species: humpback whales, fur seals, sea otters, steller’s sea lions, brown pelicans and snowy plovers. They are among dozens of at-risk creatures who live in the sanctuary.

Other animals fill in the rocks, cliffs and beaches, and spread out in multitudes in the water. More than 300,000 seabirds nest on the rugged Farallones. Droopy-nosed elephant seals, once thought to be extinct, now extend their reach along the beaches of Point Reyes. Gray whales and reclusive harbor porpoises break the surface near Bodega Bay.

In this crowded world, surely it is a marvel to know that a teeming metropolis with its opera house and jails is only an hour away from oak forests where mountain lions roam wild and coastal headlands where one can witness the geyser blows of whales and hear the thunderous roar of elephant seals.

Yet the most astonishing thing about the Gulf of the Farallones is what you cannot see, what cannot be forgotten, what lingers and shocks the sensibilities.

From 1946 to 1970, the federal government disposed of 50,000 drums with radioactive waste at three large dump sites inside what is now the Farallones sanctuary. Most of these flimsy 55-gallon barrels contained low-level materials from laboratories, but the sketchy records of the era indicate that some were “special,” perhaps loaded with plutonium. The Navy also scuttled the aircraft carrier Independence in this handy garbage pit.

The drums now are decaying at depths of 600 to 6,000 feet with half-lives that could keep them radioactive for 24 centuries. Periodically, they generate news reports and scientific speculation. Once, the Navy provided a submersible to send Ueber and others down to take a peek at the rubble. But inexplicably, the barrels have not rated Superfund status by the Environmental Protection Agency or been studied in detail for cleanup.

Instead they persist, wild-spinning neutrons in heaps of rust, unbearable reminders of America’s changing regard for its coast.

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Times researcher Anna M. Virtue contributed to this story.

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Shelf Life

The waters of Northern California are home to three of the nations marine sanctuaries. Although their boundaries adjoin, their underwater landscapes are very different. The nations largest, Monterey Bay Sanctuary, includes beaches, wetlands and an underwater canyon, while smaller Cordell Bank sanctuary covers an entirely submerged island. All harbor diverse populations, from the familiar whales and dolphins to specialized species clinging tenuously to the edge in a harsh environment. The resident key species of each sanctuary are part of a complex dance of predator and prey studied by marine researchers. Note: Sizes are not to scale.

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Note: Sizes are not to scale.

Sources: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Bradey Phillips, Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary; Dan Howard, Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary; National Audubon Society; U.S. Geological Survey; Ecology of an Underwater Island, Robert W. Schmieder