More fish, more sustainable fisheries, and an ecosystem better protected from threats was the promise of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) and the 124 MPAs now in place in California. Ten years on, what have they accomplished? The recently completed 10-year review by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, as well as numerous scientific papers, suggest that our hopes were misplaced. The review concludes “statewide and regional trends across habitats showed no difference in biodiversity inside compared to outside MPAs.” As to the very real threats to California’s coastal ecosystems, climate change and recent marine heat waves, the review is decidedly not sanguine “analysis across habitats in the central coast revealed that MPAs did not provide strong resilience against the marine heatwave.” Ouch! Finally, there is not even evidence that there are any more fish in California state waters now, except for some of the areas that are closed to fishing. The only study to look at whether there were more fish overall suggests that the answer is no. Where fishing is intense, there are definitely more fish inside the closed area, but the fishing boats simply moved outside the boundary and caught them there.
The structure of the 10-year review alone squashes any expectations that the MPAs might be protecting our ocean from any threats. The review devotes 9 pages to governance and partnerships, 22 pages to research, 15 pages to outreach and education, and 14 pages to enforcement. A paltry 4 pages deal with how marine species have changed, and another 4 pages deal with climate resilience. The blatant absence of “good news” is spun into research, public engagement and enforcement as if those had been the goals the MPAs were meant to achieve.
Unsurprisingly, the only threat the MPAs do address is overfishing, and that is not a problem in state waters. The Marine Life Protection Act was conceived and implemented at a time of serious concerns about declines in many rockfish species in federal waters, but are not the focus of fisheries in state waters and are rarely found there. One should not expect major benefits from no-fishing zones when there is no overfishing to begin with.