07/02/2025
Great news - the International Union for Conservation of Nature has included California's Marine Protected Area Network on its Green List. It's like getting a Michelin star on your marine protected areas.
We've spent many years creating materials like tide books that raise awareness of marine protected areas amongst the fishing community.
Thanks to our friends at Point Blue Conservation Science for writing this up.
🌊🥇 Big news! California’s Marine Protected Area network just made the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Green List–the gold standard for marine conservation!
This prestigious certification recognizes the most successful examples of biodiversity conservation worldwide, and California’s MPA network is the first nature network in the world to earn this classification. Spanning 124 MPAs along 1,100 miles of coastline and covering 16% of state waters, California’s MPAs safeguard a rich diversity of habitats—from sandy beaches and estuaries to kelp forests and deep-sea canyons.
We are proud to contribute to the conservation of California’s MPAs by conducting research and collecting long-term data to support the adaptive management of our state’s sandy beaches and coastal ecosystems. Point Blue’s Kristina Neuman and Dan Robinette are co-contributors to an ongoing long-term monitoring program of sandy beaches led by
UC Santa Barbara and funded by California Department of Fish and Wildlife and California Ocean Protection Council. Monitoring of kelp wrack, beach morphology, and shorebirds is ongoing! 🦀🌱🐦 Collaborative, extended observation efforts like this are crucial to the conservation of the California coast!
Learn more about the project “Evaluating The Performance Of California’s MPA Network Through The Lens Of Sandy Beach And Surf Zone Ecosystems” here: shorturl.at/mG7an
📸: Point Blue’s Esther Haile measuring kelp wrack
