The types and intensities of activities that people engage in along the North Central Coast — be it surfing, dog walking, fishing or boating — will greatly influence the region’s ecological response to the new marine protected areas. The purpose of this project is to characterize human activities, within and outside the protected areas, in terms of their prevalence, spatial distribution and economic impact. This benchmark of human uses will then be integrated into the ecological indicators of the protected areas' performance. Besides the overarching theme of characterizing coastal-use patterns, specific data to be collected include: vessel operation costs, trip expenditures, and demographic characteristics of consumptive and non-consumptive users. The three major sectors of coastal user communities to be studied are: 1) private recreation, consumptive and non-consumptive; 2) commercial fishing, and 3) commercial charter, including consumptive and non-consumptive activities, such as commercial passenger sport fishing and whale watching. The core outcome of this project will be a series of standardized, fully documented, georeferenced, quantitative socioeconomic data sets, which together create a benchmark for the current extent, pattern and importance of consumptive and non-consumptive human activities along the North Central Coast. The approach will be such that it may be easily replicated for future long-term monitoring.