Until the blowout at Union Oil’s offshore Platform A dumped massive amounts of fresh black crude onto Santa Barbara’s white beaches 30 years ago, conservation efforts had by and large focused on land. The January 28, 1969 disaster, however, became a catalyst for a popular campaign to protect nearshore waters from pollution and other damage.

Enraged citizens in Santa Barbara County organized Get Oil Out! (GOO). They stopped attempts to install more oil rigs off their coast and joined in a statewide campaign for a larger goal: to protect the entire California coast. It was a propitious time, for the environmental movement was about to sweep the country.

The year 1972 brought results. In California, voters passed Proposition 20, the “Save Our Coast” initiative, which established the state’s coastal management program. In Washington, D.C., landmark legislation was passed, including the Clean Water Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act, which enabled the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to designate offshore regions as National Marine Sanctuaries. These sanctuaries were “to maintain the natural biological communities . . . and to protect, and, where appropriate, restore and enhance natural habitats, populations, and ecological processes.”

NOAA designated 13 marine sanctuaries in the 1980s and 1990s, four of them in California: Channel Islands (1980), Gulf of the Farallones (1981), Cordell Bank (1989) and Monterey Bay (1992). Together, these four embrace over 6,000 square nautical miles of ocean. The Channel Islands sanctuary includes all waters within six miles of five islands. The others extend along about 300 miles of contiguous coastline, from Cambria in San Luis Obispo County north to Bodega Head in Sonoma County.

For sanctuary advocates in California, a paramount goal was preventing further oil drilling. Fishing was not considered to be a major problem at the time. In fact, the sanctuaries were expected to protect the fishing industry from the threat of oil development. Local and federal officials often assured local fishermen that they would not be subjected to further regulation. Sanctuary regulations generally exempt commercial fishermen from bans on dumping (fishing) waste and altering the seabed (by bottom trawling). Marine managers tended to assume that issues of overfishing and bycatch had been taken care of by the 1976 Magnuson Fisheries Conservation Act, which regulates commercial fishing. In hindsight, that was overoptimistic.

Oil spills had plagued the coast throughout the 20th century, killing tens of thousands of birds and marine mammals. Oil flowed from shipwrecks, leaked from passing ships, and was dumped offshore in ballast water.

President Jimmy Carter’s designation of the Channel Islands and the Gulf of the Farallones sanctuaries forbade oil exploration or development within their boundaries. Dumping of sewage and other wastes was also prohibited, as was any alteration of the seabed by mining or other activities. When the Cordell Bank Sanctuary was established, the banning of oil exploration was again a top priority, even though the granite formations there contain little oil. With the creation of the Monterey Bay Sanctuary, most of California’s central coast was protected from oil development.

Ocean Abuse

Oil was not the only troublesome pollutant, of course. After World War II, the Department of Defense scuttled off the California coast at least eight warships and submarines that had been contaminated by nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll. These included the aircraft carrier USS Independence, which was sunk off San Francisco in 1,000 fathoms of water. Between 1946 and 1970, the federal government also dumped nearly 50,000 barrels of low-level nuclear waste about 30 miles from San Francisco, southwest of the Farallon Islands, at a depth of about 600 feet. This waste had been generated by atomic laboratories and industry. Before the Clean Water Act, many coastal cities dumped untreated wastewater into the ocean for years. Now the toughest land-based source of marine pollution is the kind termed “non–point source,” mostly runoff from cities and agricultural operations. Pesticides, herbicides, and bacterial pollution continue to pour into coastal ecosystems, as well as excess nutrients that can contribute to toxic algal blooms.

The sanctuaries have helped to protect coastal waters from the threat of oil exploration and development, and from some other harmful practices, including alteration of the ocean floor, collection of minerals, discharges from vessels, and wastewater discharges from land-based treatment plants. The use of personal watercraft (jet skis) has been curtailed in Monterey Bay and banned from the Gulf of the Farallones. Aircraft may not be flown at less than 1,000 feet in certain zones where nesting seabirds would be disturbed.

The sanctuaries have, however, failed to protect marine life against the most direct current threat: commercial and recreational fishing. Both overfishing and bycatch problems persist. Gill netting continues to entangle pelicans and other birds that dive for fish. The first significant step toward addressing that problem was taken in October 2002, when the first no-take reserves (Marine Protected Areas) were established around the Channel Islands. The reserves consist of 12 areas (ten of which are no-take and ban fishing altogether) and encompass 19 percent of the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, an area of 175 square miles (seeTruly Safe Havens in this issue).

Over the course of the last decade concern has risen among a range of scientists and policymakers that, by and large, current fisheries regulations are not adequate to protect ocean resources. More than 1,200 vessels catch fish and shellfish in the Monterey Bay Sanctuary alone. Bottom trawling devastates underwater ecosystems, and the sanctuaries are powerless to prevent it.

Dozens of fish species have decreased in abundance, forcing fishermen to work harder and longer to catch the same amount of fish. The catch per unit of effort (CPUE), a measure of the relative abundance of a species in a fishery, has declined significantly for various species of groundfish.

In 2002 the situation became so dire for several species of rockfish that the Pacific Fishery Management Council closed a wide swath of Pacific coastal waters to taking of most groundfish. This drastic action came after decades of overfishing and regulatory inaction. Scientists have estimated that some rockfish species may take decades to recover to their historical levels—a recovery that is unlikely to happen if strong, permanent measures are not instituted immediately.

Not Yet Safe Havens

Have the sanctuaries fulfilled their mandate to “maintain the natural biological communities . . . and to protect, and, where appropriate, restore and enhance natural habitats, populations, and ecological processes”?

The record is mixed. The legislation that made the creation of National Marine Sanctuaries possible requires that they fulfill their mission by “comprehensive and coordinated conservation and management of these marine areas, and activities affecting them, in a manner which complements existing regulatory authority.” The prohibition of oil and gas activities within sanctuary waters was a critical first step, but no more than that. If “existing regulatory authority” does not stop destructive practices, sanctuary regulations need to do so. Sanctuary managers do consult with other agencies and engage the public. Some have led the way in efforts to resolve resource conflicts, but their powers are largely advisory. The creation of no-take reserves was another important step. Scientists hope that the Channel Islands no-take reserves will help marine species recover and even boost commercial fisheries; ongoing research will show whether this will happen. The California Marine Life Protection Act of 1999 promised a network of such reserves up and down the California coast.

For the past two years, NOAA has been conducting a joint review of the management plans of the three sanctuaries in central California in order to update them to meet current environmental threats. The review process is considering current sanctuary borders, the possibility of more no-take reserves, better protection of tidepool areas, and improvement of research and monitoring programs. Also being considered is the emerging problem of climate change, which is expected to bring more weather extremes and climatic events such as El Niño. After an extensive process of public input, NOAA is expected to release draft management plans early in 2004. Information on how to get involved in the process can be found at www.sanctuaries.nos.noaa. gov/jointplan.

Not until the sanctuaries gain the authority and the will to fully regulate destructive activities within their boundaries will they accomplish their mission of comprehensive management. Because present management plans specifically exempt the fishing industry from regulation, destructive bottom trawling and the dumping of bycatch do not stop at the sanctuary boundaries. The national marine sanctuaries have played a large role in protecting the coast from oil and gas development, but there is a long way to go before they live up to their names as true sanctuaries.

Michael Bhargava is a freelance writer on environmental and marine issues. He earned his PhD in environmental history from Duke University and has served as a visiting professor of environmental studies at Oberlin College.