In 2007, through a competitive grant program, the California Ocean Protection Council and the California Department of Fish and Game provided funding for our team to collect baseline data in the deep portions of eight of the new MPAs and associated Reference sites. We used the manned submersible Delta to survey all fishes and structure-forming invertebrates (e.g., deepsea coral communities) in 164,000 m2 of seafloor habitats from 24–365 m deep in Monterey Bay and along the Big Sur coast. During 337 quantitative transects, we observed nearly 66,000 fishes from 110 taxa, and 158,000 aggregating and 14,000 structure-forming invertebrates from 70 taxa. This comprehensive baseline will be used in the future to critically evaluate the effectiveness of the new MPAs by assessing changes in the diversity, density, and size composition of species using seafloor habitats in the new MPAs.
Publication Number: T-067
Authors: Richard Starr and Mary Yoklavich, et al.
Product Type: Paperback
Language: English
Copyright Date: 2008
Length: 21pp.
Complimentary
