May 7, 2026 · 49 min · 19 segments
There are many claims about what the science says about California's MPA Network. Dr. Kerry Nickols takes us through what we've learned from the first decade of this world-renowned Marine Protected…
Right? That's sort of the thing that we limit so that we can help an ecosystem kind of naturally recover and restore itself, help adapt it-- help it adapt through climate change.
But also understand how climate change is impacting the ocean.
I think all of those things are important, but there's a lot of creatures we forget about, and those are protected within MPAs.
We didn't necessarily look at that either in the MPA monitoring data.
So I would say that the MPA monitoring programs are definitely looking at more than fish, but it wouldn't surprise me if...
Because the monitoring programs produced reports that went to the department, and then the department pulled information.
And by the department, I mean the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
They pulled sections from those monitoring reports, and that's what went in the decadal management review.
So the decadal management review document is not representative of the wealth of monitoring data and information that's out there.
Okay.
There's been some attempts to, like, have that data accessible through the Central California Ocean Observing System, and there's, like, a data platform that you can go to.
But having worked with those data sets, we would pull data, but then we were also in communication with the different folks involved in the monitoring programs to be like, "Is this actually up to date? Is there anything missing?" Um, and, and I think the, you know, the go-to is, like, looking at fish because they're the ones, I guess, that maybe we expect to have the biggest impact.
But I think you make a really important point that that kind of limits our ability to see the full picture and to understand the scope of what protection can do to an ecosystem.
And this is supposed to be an ecosystem-based approach, so, um, we really should be looking at, at it more holistically.
Yeah.
Right? That's sort of the thing that we limit so that we can help an ecosystem kind of naturally recover and restore itself, help adapt it-- help it adapt through climate change.
But also understand how climate change is impacting the ocean.
I think all of those things are important, but there's a lot of creatures we forget about, and those are protected within MPAs.
We didn't necessarily look at that either in the MPA monitoring data.
So I would say that the MPA monitoring programs are definitely looking at more than fish, but it wouldn't surprise me if...
Because the monitoring programs produced reports that went to the department, and then the department pulled information.
And by the department, I mean the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
They pulled sections from those monitoring reports, and that's what went in the decadal management review.
So the decadal management review document is not representative of the wealth of monitoring data and information that's out there.
Okay.
There's been some attempts to, like, have that data accessible through the Central California Ocean Observing System, and there's, like, a data platform that you can go to.
But having worked with those data sets, we would pull data, but then we were also in communication with the different folks involved in the monitoring programs to be like, "Is this actually up to date? Is there anything missing?" Um, and, and I think the, you know, the go-to is, like, looking at fish because they're the ones, I guess, that maybe we expect to have the biggest impact.
But I think you make a really important point that that kind of limits our ability to see the full picture and to understand the scope of what protection can do to an ecosystem.
And this is supposed to be an ecosystem-based approach, so, um, we really should be looking at, at it more holistically.
Yeah.
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