On the Line: Pt. Sal

Um, so you mentioned the Northern Chumash Tribal Council, and [clears throat] I just wanna put it out there 'cause folks might be familiar that the Northern Chumash Tribal Council was, uh, the group that initially proposed the sanctuary, the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, off the similar stretch of coast, but much bigger.

And I just wanna make it clear and kind of distinguish the difference here.

Um, the sanctuary is part of a federal level designation.

It goes through NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Some office up in DC somewhere eventually approves it.

But there are-- the way that the law is written, there are lots of limitations to what a sanctuary can and can't do.

Um, I actually sit on the advisory council as a recreational fishing representative there, uh, for that sanctuary.

So I love sanctuaries.

I think they're great, but there are certain environmental threats that they just legally don't have the authority to address, and impacts from fishing, commercial fishing are one of them.

At the state level, which is what the proposal to create this new protected area off Point Sal specifically, it would limit fishing.

So I'm jumping ahead a little bit, um, and I think there's, like, a lot of ecological opportunity here, but I think there was also this gap that we noticed too, right, and a real opportunity in creating this marine protected area that we'll dig into a little bit more now.

So with that, could you help paint a picture of what thisPart of the coastline looks like.

I mean, it's pretty wild, and I don't wanna say untouched, but kind of if you think about our impact everywhere along our coastline and the planet.

But it's a really beautiful, special stretch of coast.

So can you help paint a picture for us?