Opinion: Why California must seize this opportunity to increase the state’s marine protected areas

By: Mekayli Claros. Originally published on sandiegouniontribune.com.

Claros is a student at UC San Diego majoring in marine biology and a member of CalPIRG Students, a statewide, student-run and student-funded organization at UCSD that works to protect the environment, make college affordable and promote civic engagement, and lives in La Jolla.

Growing up in Southern California for me entailed family trips to the beach. Once there, I would jump between tide pools, marveling at the kaleidoscope of colorful, tiny life they hosted.

As I grew older, I began to notice that some of the colors in the tide pools were actually bottle caps and other trash. The evidence of humanity’s adverse impact on the ocean was unavoidable. This realization, crystallized through high school environmental science classes and trips to aquariums, made me decide to devote my life to ocean preservation.

It’s a scary time for our neighboring Pacific Ocean and oceans in general. As a marine biology student at UC San Diego, I regularly hear lectures about overfishing, ocean acidification and how policies we’ve passed to protect the ocean still haven’t halted the decline of oceanic health. The more I learn in the classroom, the more I worry that the ocean life I have loved my whole life won’t be around for future generations.

But studying at UCSD has given me hope. Where our campus lines the shore, a state marine protected area, Matlahuayl State Marine Reserve, protects ocean life from these terrifying trends. Like state parks on land, this place bars activities, such as fishing, that could harm its unique wildlife. In this case, the beneficiaries include sea lions, leopard sharks and endangered abalone. Science shows that this area is effective at preserving its marine inhabitants.

Matlahuayl is not alone: Protected areas like it across the state and around the globe provide safe havens for dwindling fish populations to rebound, protect endangered species and help ecosystems adapt in the face of rising global temperatures. So I’m glad California chose to create a network of these ocean parks a decade ago, setting aside 12 percent of our state waters in strong marine protected areas.

Compared to a decade ago, we know more about what risks climate change and its accompanying extreme weather events pose to our ocean ecosystems and better understand how marine protected areas can help. This new science will help make our network stronger and more resilient.

Now, we have an opportunity to protect more of California’s coastline. The state Fish and Game Commission met in San Diego last month and discussed petitions to adapt California’s network of marine protected areas for the first time since the network’s implementation over 10 years ago. Some of these petitions, if acted upon, will better conserve ecosystems such as kelp forests and rocky reefs that are critical for our sea otters, fish and seabirds.

Whether it’s enlarging existing marine protected areas to include critical habitats, strengthening legal protections to make them more effective sanctuaries for ocean life or creating new protected areas in places where the state Fish and Game Commission didn’t designate them 10 years ago, the ideas found in many of these proposals would improve the network.

In the coming months, the state will evaluate these proposals. If state Fish and Game commissioners expand the system, it will help California meet Gov. Gavin Newsom’s and state legislators’ commitment to protecting 30 percent of our state waters by 2030. The Golden State would become a beacon of hope for a troubled ocean.

As a student activist with CalPIRG Students, I’ve seen how young people connect with the ocean. Over the past year, approximately 2,000 UCSD students have supported CalPIRG’s campaign to protect our coast. In the letters of support we gathered in the past weeks, students wrote about everything from beach trips to their favorite ocean animal and even just “I love the ocean.”

Now, our state leaders, who have enjoyed the Pacific and its splendor for many more years than college students, need to ensure that future generations get to experience the same wonder and inspiration. Over the coming months, we will have a rare opportunity to expand the protections for amazing places off our coast. The Fish and Game Commission should seize this opportunity to create a wave of hope for California’s offshore waters. We need to do everything we can so that the vibrant ocean life I am learning about in the classroom today will be there for generations to come.