Center for the Future of the Oceans: Priorities

Marine Protected Areas	In April 2007, the state established a network of marine protected areas along the Central Coast and is continuing to create more protection along the northern coast of California.

Ocean Policy Reform	We're working with partner organizations and the state of California to promote national ocean policy reform.

Sustainable Seafood	Through our Seafood Watch program, we're raising conservation awareness among seafood consumers and purveyors (like restaurants, retailers and food service providers) to transform the seafood market in ways that favor sustainable fisheries and fish farming.

Protecting Wildlife and Marine Ecosystems	We're advocating for policies to protect and rebuild threatened marine wildlife populations on the California coast and in the northern Pacific. We're building on aquarium programs that focus on recovery efforts for the southern sea otter and pelagic (open ocean) species such as sharks, tunas and sea turtles.

Create a Statewide Network of Marine Protected Areas

In April 2007, California created a network of Marine Protected Areas off the Central Coast, designed to protect fish and wildlife in their natural habitats. The network will protect kelp forests, rocky reefs and other places that are home to sea otters, rockfishes, octopuses and myriad other creatures. Without this protection, they remain threatened by everything from coastal development to unsustainable fishing practices.

We've made lasting protection for marine life off California's Central Coast our top priority this year. We're mobilizing public support to create an underwater legacy as impressive as our state park system on land. You are the key to success.

Decision-makers like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Fish and Game Commission must hear that protecting marine wildlife and habitats is important to you and your family. If they know the issue is a priority for you, they're more likely to protect our oceans for the future.

Support Marine Protected Areas in California.

Learn about Marine Protected Areas

Ocean Policy Reform

Two national commissions have addressed comprehensively the failures of federal ocean management and governance. The privately funded Pew Oceans Commission and the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, appointed by President Bush, both reached the same conclusion: U.S. ocean policy is woefully outdated and fails to protect ocean resources.

Three aquarium trustees—Executive Director Julie Packard, marine biologist Dr. Jane Lubchenco and former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta—served on the Pew Commission. Together, the reports and recommendations of the two commissions have created a once-in-40-years opportunity to overhaul ocean policy and governance in the United States. The commissions' recommendations include steps to better manage U.S. ocean waters to protect ocean resources for future generations. Bipartisan legislation has been introduced in both houses of Congress to implement many of their recommendations. The challenge now is to build enough political support to turn the ocean protection bills into law.

Through the Center, we're backing key reforms suggested by the commissions. We're also working to raise public awareness about the urgent threats facing the oceans. California has made great strides to put the commission recommendations into practice through its Marine Life Protection Act and California Ocean Protection Act. We're actively encouraging Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other state political leaders to step forward so that California will lead the way as a model for national reform.

We're also working with our colleagues in the American Zoo and Aquarium Association, who have made "Wonders of Water" the focus of their 2005-2006 National Awareness Campaign. We have an unprecedented opportunity to bring all of these relationships to bear in support of a future with healthy oceans.

Related Links
Pew Oceans Commission Report
U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy
American Zoo and Aquarium Association

Sustainable Seafood

Today, market forces encourage exploitation of global marine life by fishing fleets. If we want a future with healthy populations of ocean wildlife, the seafood market must be transformed to give an economic incentive to conservation. Since 1999, our Seafood Watch program has been a leader in the national movement to promote seafood from sustainable sources.

We're pursuing two separate but related strategies. First, we're helping raise awareness among individual consumers about the impact of our seafood choices on the health of ocean wildlife and marine ecosystems. Seafood Watch pocket guides have reached millions of people across the United States.

Second, we're giving high-volume seafood buyers, including restaurants, retailers and food service providers, the information they need to shift their purchases to support sustainable fishing and fish-farming practices. We've created training materials for their staffs, and resources to help them find alternatives to unsustainable seafood items they're now serving.

As we raise awareness and concern among consumers, purveyors, distributors and producers, we'll help shift the U.S. seafood market in ways that build incentives for industry to support ocean conservation. Over the past five years, the Seafood Choices movement (of which Seafood Watch is a part) has made remarkable progress in raising awareness. Support is now growing rapidly in the seafood industry, where there had been significant opposition in the past.

Related Links
Seafood Watch Program
Seafood Choices Alliance

Protecting Ocean Wildlife and Marine Ecosystems

Southern sea otters are an endangered species that need our help.

California's marine wildlife and ocean ecosystems show increasing signs of stress from human impacts such as pollution, coastal development and overfishing. We need new and effective marine conservation policies to reverse declines and to restore wildlife populations, species and ecosystems. In addition to our many field research projects involving key species such as sea otters, tunas and sharks, we advocate for sound marine conservation policies that affect these species.

The Center draws on the findings of our conservation research programs and those of our research partners. We advocate for new management policies and funding for additional research to better understand the nature of the threats. For open ocean species, such as tunas, sea turtles and sharks, we're active in the international arena as well as the United States.

A few examples: For more than two decades, we've made significant contributions to the study of California's threatened sea otter population, and we've been involved since 1994 in documenting the oceanic migrations of Atlantic bluefin tuna. Based on the results of 10 years of field study in the Atlantic by the Tuna Research and Conservation Center—a collaboration between the aquarium and Stanford University—we joined with colleagues to support a seasonal ban on longline fishing in the Gulf of Mexico in order to protect dwindling Atlantic bluefin tuna populations. We're also building a base of knowledge about open ocean animals in the Pacific through our research collaboration in the Tagging of Pacific Pelagics (TOPP) program.

Our goal is to raise awareness about key threats facing marine wildlife and ocean ecosystems in California and beyond, and to identify ways that concerned citizens can support conservation efforts. We're giving special attention to species and ecosystems in our live exhibit program: sea otters, tunas, sea turtles, sharks and other pelagic animals. We're working with nonprofit organizations and other partners to alert state and federal officials to key threats and pressing for timely action to safeguard these species.

Related Links
Sea Otter Research and Conservation Program
Tuna Research and Conservation Center
Tagging of Pacific Pelagics (TOPP) Program
White Shark Research Program

Celebrating 25 Years of Ocean Conservation