Seafood Shares

Community Seafood now has Sunday pickups at the Santa Monica Farmer's Market.

This community-supported fishery (CSF) out of Santa Barbara is modeled after community-supported agricultural programs (CSAs). The founder is a Bren School alum who launched her business with a group of local fishermen and help from a UCSB Coastal Fund. Their goal is help seafood harvested in the Santa Barbara channel stay in Santa Barbara. Before they got started, most folks in Santa Barbara were buying seafood caught elsewhere and most Santa Barbara-based fishermen had a 90% exportation rate. Now, the fishermen make more money and folks in Santa Barbara (and now Santa Monica) have more direct access to locally harvested fish.

I'm really excited to join the CSF. It's a great way to support the people earning their livelihoods in the waters around California's Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), and I'm eager to see communities benefit from the increased biodiversity and ecosystem health promised by MPAs.

I'm always interested in an empirical approach to understanding where my food comes from. I think tracking your food back to the source is an excellent way to learn about geography,  ecology, and agriculture. The "eat local" movement has been really interesting to watch over the years and it has helped bolster various groups of growers and producers as well as an awareness of agricultural, environmental, and economic issues, which is great.

While people in colder climates may not be able to enjoy a varied diet of fresh foods and eat local, I'm glad to be in Mediterranean climate where I have an abundance of fresh, local options available to me year round. Of course, my coffee always comes from farther afield. This isn't the tropics.

Pictured above: This is not a CSF dinner, but it is a Channel Islands dinner. You're looking at grouper & sand dabs grilled and served on a bed of grilled green tomatoes drizzled with bourbon-basil butter.

MPA Watching

It was another great day aboard the LA Waterkeeper boat, monitoring activity in and around the Point Dume SMCA** and SMR**.  We saw dolphins today, but the video above is actually from a July 25th MPA watch.

It's always nice to see people recreating in Marine Protected Areas and fishing in the waters just outside of them, but today it was especially satisfying given yesterday's NatGeo post about two recent studies suggesting that MPAs not only *quickly* contribute to higher fish yields, but also that the cost of implementing MPAs can be recouped by the fishing communities themselves within five years. These correspond to findings in a study of the impacts of California's MPA policy published earlier this year.

Many people in California's fishing communities were understandably concerned about how MPAs would affect their livelihoods, especially when it became clear no-take zones would be put in place in January 2012. There are always transition costs with new policies (especially bans on commercial activities), and California's fishermen shouldered most of the burden of implementing limited and no-take zones, but based on February's Marine Protected Areas Report -- and anecdotal stories from LA Waterkeeper's outreach guru -- they appear to be doing okay less than two years out. Let's hope California's coastal ecosystems and economies are not just recovering, but flourishing, well in advance of the five-year mark.

**MPA Designations
State Marine Reserve (SMR): fishing/harvest of all marine resources is prohibited
No-Take State Marine Conservation Area (SMCA): fishing/harvest of all marine resources is prohibited.
State Marine Conservation Area (SMCA): fishing/harvest of some marine resources permitted (specific take policy varies from one SMCA to the next)

Can California save the ocean?

The diversity of stakeholders along California's coasts include those invested "in marine recreation, transportation, trade, energy, fishing, tourism and national defense, including America's two largest ports and second-largest naval base."

This makes California's coastal conservation policy unique, "because the state doesn't have any single industry or special interest dominating its marine policies like oil and gas in Louisiana, fishing in New England or real estate developers in Florida."

David Halberg waxes ecstatic about California's marine policy at the San Francisco Chronicle, though he does include a few caveats:

California's ocean policies are not perfect. There was the recent mystery of 1,200 stranded sea lion pups off Southern California, where surfers also are cautioned to wait 72 hours after a rainstorm before entering the water because of polluted runoff. Fierce debates also are under way about plans for desalination plants and relicensing of the state's last nuclear power plant on the coast.

We look forward to reading his book, The Golden Shore - California's Love Affair with the Sea.