California Coast & Ocean

What is your opinion about the new decision regarding marine protected areas off California, setting aside some 18 percent of coastal waters?

Jeremy Jackson: I get uncomfortable when people talk only about marine protected areas, because I think marine protected areas make more sense in some situations than they do in others. [Jackson did say earlier in our conversation, however, that anything less than 30 percent protected area, as Australia has allotted for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park off Queensland, is probably inadequate to bring about real change.] Certainly it's the case that not killing fish is good for fish, so if you have areas that are in effect sanctuaries, that's going to do a lot of good. But for something like the California sardine, it makes a lot more sense to think about water bodies, and about adaptive management where you change the rules based on climatic trends and other variables.

So every fishery is going to have a lot more going on than just how many fish are caught.

JJ: Inevitably, because the world is a very variable place. Maximum sustainable yield, for example--it's a silly idea. If you calculate numbers ignoring the fact that environments go up and down, you're in trouble.

A former student at Scripps, David Field, published this really cool paper in Science this year. He studies planktonic foraminifera, those little calcareous things that float around at the surface of the ocean. We know a lot about them because they're how we tell time in ancient rocks and they also tell us a great deal about the environment. David showed from a 1,300-year record from the Santa Barbara Basin that tropical and subtropical species are now moving into the California Bight, and temperate and north temperate species are becoming much less abundant. And all of this started big-time in the 1960s. The point of that, of course, is that environments are changing in systematic ways that are very different from anything in the previous 1,300 years. So on top of all the other uncertainties, we have this new uncertainty. Which is one of the reasons that a flexible management program that includes in its toolkit protected areas, catch restrictions, seasonal closures, and geographic flexibility to move protected areas over time makes so much sense.

But all of this requires trust. That's why I've been turned off by the situation in California [over the establishment of marine protected areas], where all these people are screaming at each other and not listening. Because if we don't have dialogue and if we don't show respect for each other and trust each other, then we're just going to keep screaming. And that's not a good way to manage anything.

We are more polarized on these environmental issues in this country than any place I've ever been. And we don't have a lot of respect for the winner. We get nasty and vindictive. It's spooky.

The baselines are changing in every way. It's not just natural populations. It's also the economic environment we live in, the social environment we live in, and the climate we live in. Under those circumstances you've got to keep your eyes open and be flexible, and above all pay attention: take things seriously. Hopefully, that's what will emerge finally in California.

In a strange way, just the way it was Nixon who went to China, in California, Schwarzenegger can do a lot of good for the environment. Because he can laugh at himself and his Hummers and then say, "But I support this," and then get a lot of attention. He doesn't make the policies, but he's a smart enough politician to listen. And we need more like that. Especially in this day and age, what the states do is all-important. What I'd like to see people who lobby and work on this stuff say to the governor on a regular basis is, be as much of a leader on this as you're being about climate change, and you'll go down in history as the most environmentally conscious governor in the history of the United States.