Photo credit: David McGuire, SeaStewards.org

Time passes slowly when days are full. It’s been nearly three weeks into the California Academy of Sciences' 2011 Philippines Biodiversity Expedition. With well over 1000 dives, 100 collection sites and as many new species we have barely scratched the surface of this amazing country of islands. With over 700 islands, volcanoes and rainforests, this island nation has many untold stories and species awaiting discovery and description.

Spending most of my time with the aquatic team, and having an aquatic bent, the undersea world is what I’m most familiar with on this expedition. While the botanists and entomologists are searching Mt. Makiling to the south (and scratching at leeches and mosquito bites), we are exploring the coral reefs, soft-coral forests and rubble pits for nudibranchs, sea urchins, bobbit woms, limpets, sea horses and representatives from the score of other phyla that live in the sea. While there are few insects, there are lionfish, blue-ring octopus and the beckoning spines of Dr. Mooi’s creatures of choice to navigate among.

Dr. Gossliner has upped his new nudibranch count is over 30 undescribed species, and the total number for this colorful and complex shell-less marine snail is over 800! Not to be out done, Chrissy Pietrowski is finding new species and possibly even genera of worms on her dives as she scours the rocks and dead coral. The reefs in this region, located on the Verde Island Passage are abundant and diverse. Scores of coral species color the reef system, enchanting octocorals – the eight-tentacled soft coral Dr. Gary Williams studies – flow and float like vespers in the current. One species common here called Xenia appears to be feeding as it closes and opens its eight-fingered flower-like tentacles. In fact, they are shading the Zooanthellae – the photosynthesizing symbiont who live in their tissues. Like us, too much sun is a bad thing, and this is how this organism protects itself from its own form of coral bleaching.

Another favorite are fire urchins: puffed up echinoderms with spines of electric blue which move around the bottom at amazing speed for an animal without muscles, a neurosystem or backbone. Endowed with small spines, a serious sting makes up for the lack of sticking power. Its cousin the Diadema is protected by wicked long spines which are painful when they embed the accidental hand or foot brushing up against them (and they do).

There is too much to describe and it is like being in school again being embedded with so many experts.
The footage I'm collecting along the way is as vivid and compelling as it is daunting to collect and review. Sometimes it's challenging like when a night dive was aborted due to a strong current that left me paralyzed with my big camera housing and weighted tripod. I sucked half my tank trying to keep up with the fish team. Spare parts are non-existent and as fasteners fall out, fittings get broken, my gear is starting to look more Frankensteinian each day.

Like developed countries, the Philippines has a number of challenges from human impacts. Over 100,000,000 people live in the islands, and like California, the preponderance live near the sea. The sea is everything here. Everyone fishes. Fish and rice are staples. Kids play in the warm waters and whole families pile aboard slender bamboo Bankhas to visit one another. The people here love the ocean. It’s in their stories, their daily lives and in their faces. But as elsewhere on the planet, modern technology and population expansion have made their mark on the land and seascape.

Sobering is the amount of plastic littering the reef, scattered along the shoreline and along the reef crest. Plastic bottles, bags and containers drift among the coconuts, broken bamboo mats and driftwood on the weathered coral shoreline. Debris lines of plastic mark the tidal currents and beneath the surface plastic threads itself into the mosaic of coral. This is a solvable problem, one we are struggling with at home. With a trillion single-use plastic bags used each year, we have our work cut out for us.

Also present are the scars from illegal fishing practices. Dynamite fishing has left coral rubble where there was once an undersea garden. A decade ago, Terry describes hearing dynamite percussions every dive. Here in Anilao, at least this destructive fishing practice seems to have been stopped. Intensive subsistence fishing is prevalent and all the top predators are gone. In response, Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are being established by local townships to provide refuge for large fish and other heavily harvested species. In one of these MPAs, we saw more large fish than on all the other dives combined. Here in the field, time passes slowly but the need to explore, explain and protect natural systems like Philippine coral reef systems is urgent.

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I'm currently with a team of Costa Rican biologists from the environmental organization Pretoma on the vessel Sirneuse to film and tag turtles and sharks at Cocos Island. Image courtesy of Matt Potenski and Pretoma.

With the implementation of the Marine Life Protection Act in California, marine protected areas are in the news. Although we have protected over 10% of our land areas through parks, wilderness areas and nature reserves, the ocean is still hovering around 1% of area under some kind of protection. California is attempting to remedy this by setting aside a network of marine protected areas, protecting some 20-25% of the California coastline. The last stages are coming to the San Francisco Bay this year.

California is not alone in attempting to establish marine protected areas also known as MPAs. Countries like New Zealand, Australia and Belize have been active in establishing MPAs.
What is a marine protected area anyway? There are as many definitions as there are ecosystems, but essentially it is an area of ocean with defined boundaries and defined protections that are legally enforceable. Some areas such as marine parks allow mixed use including fishing and recreation. Others such as marine reserves are defined in California to have some public use but no take of marine life.

The latter are the most controversial because they exclude fishermen from their recreation or trade. Whatever the controversy, the facts are clear that we are overfishing our ocean and destroying habitat faster than we are protecting it. There is some pretty solid science indicating the benefit of no-take reserves to the protected habitat and areas outside the protected region. Reserves act as sources of fish and invertebrates well beyond the boundaries. In Florida, where a closure near Cape Canaveral resulted in bigger and more abundant grouper and snapper, a phenomenon developed called “fishing the line,” meaning catching fish spilling at the edge of the protected boundary.

The same phenomenon occurs in New Zealand where lobster pots are so numerous along the protected zone’s edge they resemble a defined border like a swim zone. The fish and invertebrates protected inside the reserve are spilling out to the areas outside the protection.
Larval fish spread out in the current, casting seeds for future fish downstream.

The problem in any case is observance and enforcement. There have been success in countries with resources to enforce and convict violators, but many of the areas on the global map are in name only – "paper parks." Boats fish freely in world heritage sites and areas designated protected by governments. I am writing this from one such area outside Cocos Island approximately 400 miles off the coast of Costa Rica. I am currently with a team of Costa Rican biologists from the environmental organization Pretoma on the vessel Sirneuse to film and tag turtles and sharks at Cocos Island.

Cocos is a volcano rising from the deep sea and is an oasis of life from sharks and large fish to manta rays. The government has designated a no-take area 12 miles around Cocos Island over a decade ago, but there has been rampant poaching in the reserve. Recently Costa Rica created the Seamount Management Marine Area that will extend the Cocos Island protected area to 9640 Km2 (nearly 3700 square miles) has been established to protect pinnacles and migratory pathways for fish and sharks. The objective is to protect sharks and other species at risk such as sea turtles from the tuna fishery.
However, these areas are fished for tuna and even sharks with little fear of enforcement.

The Protema biologists tell me that there are several challenges enforcing illegal fishing within the protected zone. The law says that the longlines set for fish must be attached to the boat and inside the reserve to be enforced. Costa Rica does not have a navy, and the Coast Guard primarily enforces against illegal drugs and not fishing. The rangers and the non profit located on Cocos (Marviva) can only report illegal activity to the authorities. If enforcement arrives, they generally find an abandoned longline filled with dead fish and sharks.

Despite public denial by officials, sharks are being finned in Costa Rican waters. Finning is illegal in Costa Rica, yet it is common knowledge that shark fins have been unloaded at private docks behind guarded compounds. Two weeks ago Pretoma forced the courts to uphold the law requiring sharks to be landed at the public docks. Not long after the crew of a Taiwan flagged vessel was apprehended unloading shark fins at the public docks. "The system is working", said Randall Arauz, president of Pretoma. "Clearly, the international fleet needs the privacy of its private docks to hide its shark finning activities, but now it must respect our laws", added Arauz with satisfaction.

In order to protect marine resources we need to have the support of the public and vigilance by watchdogs like Pretoma. However, protecting the ocean from the impacts of fishing are difficult even with enforcement, Protecting the waters from impacts from the land such as run off and ocean acidification cannot be implemented by drawing a line on a map. In San Francisco the last
stage of the MLPA is now underway. With significant influence from
the and, and with potential sea level rise, the best we can do is protect and restore damaged habitat and protect large enough areas such as ecosystems which include fish like our shark nurseries and habitat for sea grass and native oysters to flourish.

Protecting far ranging species like sharks through MPAS is also not easily attained. Sharks cross international borders and roam far past the protection of any single marine protected area. Open ocean MPA’s have been proposed but will take international agreement and the cooperation of the pelagic fishing fleet. At best we can protect nurseries such as the San Francisco Bay and Biodiversity hot spots in the ocean like the waters surrounding Cocos Island. Islands and submarine pinnacles such as Cocos and the new protected area are theoretically large enough to better protect the large migratory species like some species of sharks. However, we need to increase enforcement and alter consumption patterns to support sustainable fisheries. Clearly eating shark fin, or Bluefin tuna sushi is not sustainable. Even with good enforcement, there will be problems, but recognizing the need for marine protected areas is a place to start, even if it’s still only on paper.

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Producer Chris Bauer filming over the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary in NOAA's Twin Sea Otter plane.

Much of the ocean waters off the coast of California, from Bodega Head to Cambria, have been set aside as national marine sanctuaries. The primary objective of the sanctuaries is to protect our delicate ocean resources while allowing people to use the areas in a sustainable way. While most recreation, commercial fishing, and shipping are still allowed within sanctuary waters, some activities are now strictly regulated or prohibited.

But how do you manage such an enormous area? And how do you keep tabs on what is going on out there? QUEST producers Lauren Sommer, Jenny Oh and I hitched a ride to find out.

On the windswept tarmac of the Sonoma County Airport, a team from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration takes to the skies to patrol large portions of the Cordell Bank, Gulf of the Farallones and Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuaries.

The mission of our Twin Otter flight crew, pilots Bradley Fritzler and Jason Mansour from NOAA Corps, along with sanctuary observers Sage Tezak and Michael Carver, is to conduct abundance surveys of users in the sanctuaries, counting boats and recording what they are doing and where.

We start out crossing Bodega Bay, flying multiple transects, back and forth, across the rolling seas of Cordell Bank. The engine noise is deafening in the unpressurized cabin. We scan the whitecaps from a mere 1000 feet, going only about 90 knots. The rugged aircraft bucks in the turbulent wind coming off the water. Flying this low and slow would give some pilots the jitters but for the Twin Otter flight crew it’s just a walk in the park. As we reach the Farallon Islands, I pop the back window to get a better camera angle of the “Devil’s Teeth,” and in the process pray our camera doesn’t get sucked out into the abyss. From the Farallones we bank south and head to Ana Nuevo Island. From there we’ll circle back up the coast, past Half Moon Bay and San Francisco, over Pt Reyes National Seashore and return to Sonoma County. Total flight time: 3 hours. In addition to surveying boat use in the sanctuaries, the observers and flight crew will document any other sightings, such as whales and keep a look out for maritime violations.

California has recently established new marine protected areas along the coast. These MPAs will have strict restrictions and some will essentially be closed off to all major use, including fishing. While the State is in charge of enforcing the new regulations, coordination between government agencies may provide additional help with an eye in the sky.

As much as the folks at NOAA might chafe at this description, it’s easy to think of these Twin Otter Survey Flights over the marine sanctuaries as a kind of “cop on the beat.” They’re not out there actively tracking down bad guys as much as they are a presence, keeping an eye on things and making sure everybody is on the up and up. And in that role, they don’t need to be flying everyday combing the ocean, monitoring everyone and every thing, every minute of every day. They may only survey the sanctuaries once every couple weeks. But knowing that today might be the day they are flying over, may help keep users of the marine sanctuaries in line. “Nothing to see here, move along.”

We’ve crossed these waters many times before for QUEST, but always traveling out into the deep blue on small, sea-sick inducing boats. I can tell you for certain, flying over the rough seas and into the wild blue, is a lot more pleasant and efficient. And seeing the Farallones from the birds eye view was clearly inspiring.

Watch the Marine Sanctuary Patrol Flight television story online.

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From left to right: Associate Producer, Joan Johnson, Sylvia Earle and Producer, Amy Miller

A turning point in her career came in 1970 when she led a team of woman Aquanauts in a two week research expedition in an underwater lab called Tektite. When the women emerged from their decompression chamber after living underwater for two weeks, the world embraced them as heroes. She was thrust into a spotlight as an ocean expert and pioneer of saturation diving and underwater research. Since then, she has continued to travel the globe and speak passionately and persuasively on ocean conservation.

We were thrilled to have a chance to meet Dr. Sylvia Earle and profile her on QUEST. Joan Johnson, the Associate Producer of the segment, was especially excited: Dr. Earle has been one of her idols since her former life as a marine biologist. Although I was also a burgeoning biologist at one point in my life, I had not heard of Dr. Earle until a couple of years ago when we featured her former husband and design partner, Graham Hawkes, in a earlier QUEST episode. We've wanted to feature her since then but she’s incredibly busy, traveling and speaking about ocean issues most of the year. In the two month window in which we wanted to film her, she was going to be on the road (in the air, under the water) no less than 50 days, with trips to Monaco, Rome, Mexico and the South Pacific.

Although I had envisioned a story where we actually get to know her, meet her family, spend time with her at her home in Oakland, cooking, playing with her dog on the beach; you know, find out what makes her "tick," I had to make due with three hours total in our KQED studio. So, Joan and I had to be VERY creative when figuring out the content of our story. Put another way, the only material that we shot of Sylvia Earle ourselves was a 2 hours interview. All the other footage in the story had to be researched, located, acquired and paid for. Thankfully, Sylvia Earle's life has been pretty well-documented in film and photography. But I know that if not for Joan's incredible resourcefulness and passion for the subject, this story would not have been possible. I had the easy part of the job: having a long conversation with an INCREDIBLE woman then writing about it. And I now have a new hero as well.

Watch the Profile: Sylvia Earle television story online.

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But even though it's in our own backyard, this place remains mostly unknown… probably due to its chilly temperatures. Let's face it, most of us are not donning our masks and snorkels and swimming in the hypothermic Pacific Ocean off our coast.

Lucky for us, some intrepid scientists and students are diving into this amazing place. Their job is to monitor how the ecosystems are responding to the new restrictions and protections taking place in the Marine Protected Areas. They gave us an amazing opportunity to see the natural world beneath the surface. And the world they shared with QUEST is truly inspiring. Playful harbor seals tease the divers while they weave through the gently swaying kelp forests. Fish dart through the rays of sunshine that cascades down to where starfish slowly go about their day. Through the eyes of these scientists, we witness the undersea life in bloom. They clearly have one of the best offices to go to work to each day.

Watch the Underwater Wilderness: Creating Marine Protected Areas television story report online.

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