MBNMS SAC Meeting Minutes June 3rd, 2005

MONTEREY BAY NATIONAL MARINE SANCTUARY
ADVISORY COUNCIL

FINAL
June 3rd, 2005
Big Sur Lodge
Big Sur, CA

The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary (MBNMS) Advisory Council met on Friday, June 3, 2005, in Big Sur, California. Public categories and government agencies were present as indicated:

The following non-voting members were present as indicated:

• Channel Islands NMS: Chris Mobley - ABSENT
• Gulf of the Farallones NMS: Maria Brown - ABSENT
• Cordell Bank NMS: Dan Howard
• Elkhorn Slough NERR: Becky Christensen
• Monterey Bay NMS: William Douros and Holly Price

Alternates present in audience:

• Harriet Mitteldorf - At-Large
• Robert Frischmuth - At-Large
• Anjanette Adams - Business/Industry
• Kris Reyes - Tourism
• Libby Downey - AMBAG
• Gary Pezzi - Recreation

I. CALL TO ORDER, ROLL CALL, SWEAR IN OF NEW MEMBERS, APPROVAL OF MINUTES

WELCOME FROM BIG SUR SECTOR SUPERINTENDENT, CA STATE PARKS

Dana Jones, Big Sur Sector Superintendent with CA State Parks welcomed the Advisory Council to Big Sur.

RECOGNITION OF PAST MEMBERS

Bill Douros, MBNMS Superintendent, recognized Ted Balestreri, Pat Clark-Gray and Meg Delano, past members of the MBNMS Advisory Council.

NATIONAL MARINE SANCTUARY FOUNDATION (NMSF) VOLUNTEER OF THE YEAR AWARD

Bill Douros announced that John Fischer was nominated by the MBNMS for the NMSF Volunteer of the Year. John has been instrumental with the Citizen Watershed Monitoring Network. He will be flying to Washington D.C. to attend an awards dinner on June 7, 2005 to determine who will be chosen as the NMSF Volunteer of the Year.

Bonnie Van Hise, District Scheduler for Congressman Sam Farr, presented John with a certificate of recognition from Congressman Farr.

APPROVAL OF 4/1/05 DRAFT MEETING NOTES

MOTION: (Passed) The Advisory Council adopted the minutes from the April 1, 2005 Sanctuary Advisory Council meeting with the following changes:

• p. 3, section II, para. 3, line 4: delete first “to”
  para 5, line 2: change “anything” to “that any spill”
• p. 4, section III, para. 2, lines 7-8 should read “both inclusion of the Davidson Seamount and the regulation changes to restrict harmful fishing, or support inclusion of the seamount but not the regulation changes.”
  para 3, lines 6-8 should read “except at or near the surface waters. The concern is that someone may begin to fish on the seamount itself, e.g. to harvest the corals and sponges, in which case it could cause serious, long tem harm to the coral and sponge communities.”
• p. 5 para 4 (MPWC), line 1 should read “Use of MPWCs would be prohibited at the Maverick’s surf spot, but would still be allowed in the “ last line should read “agencies that have well-marked MPWCs.”
  para 6 (Dredge disposal), line 3: change “they are” to “the Harbor District is”
• p. 6 Section V, bullet 2, line 3: delete “Working” bullet 5, line 1: insert “Advisory” between “Science” and “Team” bullet 5, line 5, change “Working” to “Stakeholder”
• p. 8 Section VIII, para 1, include a sentence stating that Russ Jeffries disqualified himself from the presentation and subsequent discussion
  para 2, line 1: Capitalize “has”
  para 3, last sentence: rewrite as “They have an attractive facility with ample wildlife in the area.”
  Section IX, para 3, line 1: Capitalize “does” Line 3, change “come” to “become”
• p. 9, line 1, change to “fisherman gets gear stuck on the cable and loses that gear,”
  Section X, line 2: move “approximately” to next line before “”15,300”
  Section XI, para 1, line 2: add “the” after “attend”
  Para 2, line 1 delete apostrophe in “Council’s”
• p. 10, para 1, line 4 should read “…was one of the vendors at the end of the bluff and”
  para 2, line 1, change “is” to “it”
  para 3, line 2: add comma after “geologist” Section XIII, line 3, change “having” to “that”
• p. 11, para 2, line 3: add “salmon” before “deaths”

Motion introduced by Russ Jeffries, seconded by Chris Harrold (Vote: 17 in favor, 0 opposed, 1 abstention)

II. PUBLIC COMMENT FOR ITEMS NOT ON THE AGENDA

Sean VanSommeran, Pelagic Shark Research Foundation, encouraged everyone to check out the Foundation’s website to view photos.

Bonnie Van Hise highlighted several environmental items that Congressman Farr is working on. His cruise ship bill was reintroduced in April, which will eliminate unregulated sources of pollution. He is working on getting more co-sponsors for the bill. The cruise ship industry will introduce their own bill. Congressman Farr feels the Cruise ship industry bill is too weak to be effective and will step on the state’s opportunity to set standards. The sea otter bill was reintroduced with no changes. The Oceans 21 bill will be introduced. Congressman Farr, along with other Democrats and organizations voted to declare the salmon fishery a disaster. Stephanie Harlan, AMBAG, commented that Congressman Farr obtained money for the Sanctuary Scenic Trail. Bonnie will get an update to Nicole Capps, Advisory Council Coordinator, to send out to the Advisory Council on the status of trail funding.

Bill Douros announced that copies of his Italian report are now available by contacting Nicole. The report includes information regarding Italian MPA’s, recommendations to the NMSP and how we can improve our system. There will possibly be a signing of a Memorandum of Agreement in September. Dan Basta, Director, NMSP, would like to share Advisory Council experiences with the Italian Advisory Councils. He is also interested in an exchange with local fishermen. Bill said he hopes to have the report up on web by the end of June.

III. NORTHERN MANAGEMENT AREA (NMA) UPDATE

LIAISON REPORT

Bill Douros provided a report of the recent Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary (GFNMS) Advisory Council.

• The GFNMS Advisory Council voted not to authorize their Chair, Barabara Emley, to sign the joint Chairs letter to the new Secretary of Commerce, Carlos Gutierrez. The Advisory Council felt, politically, now is the wrong time to send a letter requesting the Secretary to support reauthorization of the National Marine Sanctuaries Act.
• The GFNMS Advisory Council discussed their membership and added several seats. Seats added were the CA Environmental Protection Agency, the CA Resources Agency and the US Coast Guard, alternates to each seat on the Advisory Council and an At-Large seat for San Mateo. Regarding the MBNMS Advisory Council’s suggestion to add a recreation seat, the GFNMS Advisory Council decided other than Mavericks, there was no other reason to add a recreation seat. They did decide to try and select a recreation person for the At-Large alternate. It was asked if the addition of the CA Resources Agency was discussed with anyone from that agency? Bill commented that they talked to Brian Baird, Ocean Program Manager, and in the past he had expressed a strong concern in not having a seat on the GFNMS Advisory Council.

NMA CHARTER AMENDMENT

Bill Douros informed the Advisory Council that Maria Brown, Julie Barrow, Nicole Capps and he worked on constructing the proposed language regarding the NMA. He informed the Advisory Council that the GFNMS Advisory Council adopted these amendments at their last meeting.

After some discussion, the Advisory Council decided to add language to clarify that the leadership for some programs besides water quality lies with the MBNMS and fully include the GFNMS; these are agreed upon by the site managers.

MOTION (passed):

Remove “with the exception that” and add the following sentence at the end of the paragraph “other issues (e.g. action plans in the revised Management Plan) that overlap the NMA will be worked on collaboratively between the GFNMS and MBNMS.

Motion introduced by Dan Haifley, seconded by Dave Vincent (Vote: 19 in favor, 0 opposed)

Many Advisory Council members commented that their intent was solely to reflect the current practice for addressing issues between the sites. Bill commented that Maria Brown, Barbara Emley and Deborah Streeter will hold a conference call to discuss incorporating this change into the GFNMS Advisory Council charter and explain the reasons the MBNMS Advisory Council made this change.

IV. SPECIAL MARINE PROTECTED AREAS WORKING GROUP UPDATE

Holly Price, Resource Protection Coordinator, gave an update on the Special Marine Protected Areas working group. She reviewed the membership and strategy and action plans of the working group. Holly reviewed the website that a contractor is currently working on developing. With this website, anyone will have the ability to select an area of interest, choose what they are interested in seeing, set boundaries on parameters, save a model and to tinker with later. The model will be able to display the layers and generate a report.

Holly stated that MBNMS staff and members of the working group are trying to make the efforts of this working group more public. They hope to have the website available in a couple of weeks. Both fishing representatives on the Advisory Council will have an opportunity to comment on the website and the MPA action plan fact sheet before they are released. An announcement will be made once the website is available to the public. Once groundtruthing has been completed, there will be a public meeting in the fall to share the working group's progress.

After some discussion, the Advisory Council provided the MBNMS staff with several ideas to help with outreach of the Management Plan, such as: provide Advisory Council members with material to hand out; possibly hold an evening workshop similar to the Wildlife Viewing Workshop; establish an email address for people to provide input; staff should visit chat rooms of various stakeholders; provide the option of staff giving presentations to various groups in member newsletters; have HR directors for restaurants and hotels post information on their bulletin boards; give a presentation at the HR Directors Association that meets monthly; advertise meetings in the SF Chronicle or San Jose Mercury.

V. PRESENTATION ON MBNMS VOLUNTEER PROGRAMS

Dawn Hayes, Education and Outreach Coordinator, explained that the MBNMS is moving in the direction of having a volunteer coordinator to oversee all of the volunteer programs the MBNMS maintains, although presently the site lacks the funding for such a program. This is an effort to make the programs more uniform and develop a more robust program. Dawn commented that a lot of what the MBNMS does could not be done with staff alone.

LiMPETS

Lisa Emanuelson, Resource Issue Education Specialist and staff lead for the Long term Monitoring Program and Experiential Training for Students (LiMPETS), provided a brief background on the LiMPETS program. The LiMPETS program was started with the help of John Pearse at the University of California, Santa Cruz and a Sea Grant. The program consists of students who are mainly of Hispanic background and are low income. The five sanctuaries on the west coast all participate in this program, but GFNMS and MBNMS provide the most input. Lisa highlighted the LiMPETS website. On the website quadrats that have been monitored are available for viewing. The students participating in the monitoring effort can enter their own data on this website. The website was set up by the Farallones Marine Sanctuary Association.

TeamOCEAN

Lisa Emanuelson, staff lead for the Ocean Conservation Education Action Network (TeamOCEAN) program, provided a brief background on the program. Started in 2000, the volunteers of the program have spoken to 17,000 people to date. A five year report on TeamOCEAN is now available on the website here.

Lisa introduced two TeamOCEAN volunteers. Ron Eby, a new volunteer this year, volunteered because he saw an advertisement in the Monterey County Herald. He is a local citizen who feels that the program is beneficial to him as a person and is a way to meet people. He learned much more about what has been going on within the Sanctuary and the Monterey Peninsula than he ever knew before. He was amazed with how much information he could pass on. He is helping to enhance the tourists’ visit, but is alerting them to the wildlife at the same time.

Meade Fischer had been involved with TeamOCEAN since the program’s inception. Then it was only two people trying to cover Monterey and Moss Landing four days a week. The program has grown considerably over the years. He commented that in most cases, TeamOCEAN volunteers are the only contact between the visitor and the Sanctuary. Meade believes the program is a good investment and if the budget will allow, extend the program to Santa Cruz and north San Luis Obispo County.

Comments from Advisory Council members include: an interest in moving this program to the Half Moon Bay area; there has been thought on developing a similar program for the diving community; in the southern region of the MBNMS a program like this for windsurfers would be helpful.

Beach COMBERS

Jean de Marignac, SIMoN Scientist and staff lead for the Coastal Ocean Mammal/Bird Education and Research Surveys (Beach COMBERS) program, provided a brief background on the program. The program consists of approximately 40 volunteers who sample sections of beach for dead marine birds and mammals. Information gathered is disseminated to education institutions and the general public in various forms.

Citizen Watershed Monitoring Network

Bridget Hoover, Citizen Watershed Monitoring Network Coordinator, provided a brief background on the Citizen Watershed Monitoring Network (Network). The Network was formed in 1997 by a Clean Water Act Section 319H grant. The Network is a consortium of 20 monitoring groups that monitor the watersheds flowing into the MBNMS. The Network also coordinates First Flush and Snapshot Day, two regional monitoring events.

Bridget introduced Kurt Merg, who monitors the Big Creek and works for the Big Creek Reserve. He volunteered with the Network to fill a gap with his job. This program helps him connect with what he does at the Big Creek Reserve and the region. He commented that people are interested in what he is doing when he is out monitoring. Individuals approach him and ask him what he is doing and why he is there.

VI. JOINT MANAGEMENT PLAN REVIEW (JMPR) UPDATE

PACIFIC FISHERY MANAGEMENT COUNCIL CONSULTATION

Sean Morton, Management Plan Review Coordinator, provided an update on the Joint Management Plan Review. Sean also provided an update on the April 7th Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) meeting. The PFMC is in favor of the inclusion of the Davidson Seamount to the MBNMS and the goals and objectives of adding it. The PFMC also supports regulating fishing to protect resources on or immediately above the seamount, but would like to see it done under Magnuson-Stevens Act. The lack of decision on which regulatory pathway to pursue between the National Marine Fisheries Service and the National Marine Sanctuary Program has been holding up the Draft Management Plan for clearance.

The Advisory Council expressed their concerns with the delays in releasing the Draft Management Plan. The Advisory Council discussed what could be done to facilitate the release. After some discussion, the Advisory Council agreed by consensus to allow Deborah Streeter to send a letter on behalf of the Advisory Council to Dan Basta, Director of the National Marine Sanctuary Program. The letter will address the Advisory Councils’ frustrations in the delays of the release of the Draft Management Plan and how public interest in the Sanctuary is becoming severely damaged. (response letter from Dan Basta)

VII. 2006 ANNUAL SAC CHAIRS/COORDINATORS MEETING

Deborah informed the Advisory Council that the 2006 Annual Chairs/Coordinators meeting will be held in April in Silver Spring, MD. She also announced, if the budget allows, that another representative from the Advisory Council may accompany her to represent the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council. It was suggested that as a possible agenda item the Chairs could discuss the timeline for Management Plans.

Margaret Webb, At-Large primary, asked about the status on the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) borehole project. Holly explained that Texas A&M University had requested a permit for two borehole sites that would consist of five science boreholes per site, for a total of ten boreholes. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is funding the project. She explained that the MBNMS has sent a letter to the NSF regarding the adequacy of the environmental assessment. She commented that it is likely to come back to the MBNMS in the form of another permit application.

Chris Harrold, Research primary, stated that a scientist from the National Undersea Research Program came to the Research Activities Panel (RAP) meeting to explain what this project is about. He suggested they come and give a presentation to the Advisory Council and explain what they are doing and why the science is important.

VIII. MARINE PROTECTED AREAS IN THE GALAPAGOS

Rachel Saunders, Community and Public Relations Coordinator, gave an informative pictorial presentation of her recent trip to the Galapagos Islands. She outlined their system of Marine Protected Area’s. She explained that the NMSP has a lot to learn from their struggles and they have a lot to learn from us.

IX. ADVISORY COUNCIL MEMBER ANNOUNCEMENTS

Stephanie Harlan, AMBAG primary, gave an update on the Capitola Sanitation District. She also announced that the Sanctuary Scenic Trail received $400,000 of congressional appropriations through a previous bill; these funds were split between Santa Cruz and Monterey counties. The Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments (AMBAG) will distribute the funds and has hired John Akeman to work on the project.

Chris Harrold announced that the RAP met on May 13th. They received five presentations on the Ocean Observatory Systems. They are being built with federal money to measure long-term aspects of oceanography. The common feature is to gather and analyze data. Even though they were designed to be long-term, funding is short term. It might be worthwhile having a presentation at a future Advisory Council meeting. Also, the new exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Ocean’s Edge, is now open. There is an electronic restaurant that everyone needs to experience.

Tracey Weiss, Education primary, announced that the Sanctuary Education Panel (SEP) has worked with the MBNMS Education team to talk about MPA’s and MERITO. They are trying to take an issue from the Management Plan and give feedback and advice to the Education team. As this was her first meeting, she announced that she is associated with Camp SEA Lab and put out an invitation to for everyone to come out and see what Camp SEA Lab is doing.

Brian Foss, Harbors primary, announced that the Santa Cruz Harbor designated a portion of the interpretive trail and congratulated the sanctuary on its volunteers and volunteer programs.

Kaitilin Gaffney, Conservation primary, announced that the Conservation Working Group will be having their June meeting in Cambria. The purpose of this meeting is to reach out to their environmental colleagues in the southern area to collaborate and find out potential meeting topics.

Margaret Webb announced that Michele Roest has been doing awesome job with the Visitor Center and doing a great job with boat groundings in the southern region.

NEXT MEETING: August 5, 2005, Cambria

The meeting adjourned at 4:10 p.m.