Ocean Views: New Tools to Assess Ocean Monitoring Efforts Off of California’s Coast

Southern California Current waters have the reputation of being among the most well monitored stretch of ocean on earth. But just how well do we monitor the Southern California Current Ecosystem? Until recently, no one created a comprehensive inventory of ocean monitoring programs off of California. However, a group of ten talented, recently graduated UCLA Environmental Science seniors worked with CalCOFI to create this inventory with a robust metadata attribute table and produce an extraordinary interactive GIS map of monitoring programs within 13.4 miles from the coast, including state waters (3 nautical miles offshore) plus an additional ten miles.

California’s monitoring programs are comprised of NOAA’s numerous efforts, including CalCOFI observations with Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Also, there are numerous coastal monitoring programs run by coastal wastewater dischargers, power plants, and a desalination facility. In addition, local government agencies run California’s robust beach monitoring program for fecal indicator bacteria. University monitoring programs included Long Term Ecological Research Programs and those focused on MPAs, rocky intertidal habitats, and the Humboldt area.

Only ongoing monitoring programs active from 2000 to the present (at least within the last five years with a commitment to continue) were included in the inventory. An exception to the geographic constraints was made to include the wind energy areas off of Morro and Humboldt Bays because of the state’s interest in floating offshore wind development. Programs from nongovernment organizations (non-affiliated with a government partner) were not included. Also, monitoring efforts in enclosed bays and estuaries were not included. And one time studies, short term monitoring efforts, and remote sensing, wind speed, air quality, currents, and wind speed data weren’t included either.

Monitoring program sampling site locations, monitoring frequency, and attributes measured were all gathered for each program. Most of the metadata was available electronically, but the discharger data had to be scraped from PDFs. Thank you, Claude.

Students performed a preliminary overlap and gaps analysis for the monitoring programs and found that pollutants are not well monitored in areas that don’t have a lot of coastal dischargers. Statewide, there are no microplastics or macroplastics monitoring programs, and very few chemicals of emerging concern, such as PFAS, are monitored. Also, there is a dearth of monitoring at depth below 500 meters. And ocean acidification monitoring for dissolved inorganic carbon (which can provide data on aragonite saturation) is very limited. In addition, monitoring efforts off the north coast are substantially less than what we see off central California, and southern California has the most comprehensive monitoring programs. That’s not a surprise since over half of the state’s population, and all the large coastal wastewater dischargers, are in southern California.

Now that the California ocean monitoring inventory has been completed, the state can start utilizing the information to better analyze monitoring gaps and overlaps and develop a model monitoring program for the state that can provide the data needed to better determine Southern California Current ecosystem health, the health risks of consuming contaminated fish, the state of California’s fisheries, and the efficacy of our ocean resource management programs. And perhaps the overlaps between monitoring programs and monitoring efforts that aren’t providing value can be reduced or eliminated. And those cost savings could go to the Ocean Protection Council, the State Water Resources Control Board, and the State’s Monitoring Council to implement a model, comprehensive monitoring program that builds on current programs.

Please take a look at the attribute table and the interactive GIS map. Let us know what you think and if any program is glaringly missing from the inventory.