Dall's porpoise at-sea density off California

The National Marine Sanctuary Program (NMSP) updates and revises the management plans for each of its 13 sanctuaries. This process, which is open to the public, enables each site to revisit the reasons for sanctuary designation and assess whether they are meeting their goals, as well as to set new goals consistent with the mandates of the National Marine Sanctuaries Act. Issues raised by the public during this process are evaluated and a determination is made as to whether they will be incorporated into the updated plan. Many of these issues focus on topics such as the implementation of marine zoning or sanctuary boundary adjustments, both of which require information on the distribution of resources within and around the sanctuary. Recognizing this, NMSP and NOAA?s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) formalized an agreement to collaborate in the revision process by developing such information through a series of biogeographic assessments conducted in selected sanctuaries. The resulting products are then supplied to sanctuary managers and staff for use in the policy and decision making process. This collaborative effort began along the west coast of the U.S. with the Cordell Bank, Gulf of Farallones, and Monterey Bay national marine sanctuaries, and is herein centered on the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary (CINMS).

This work examines marine mammal density patterns within coastal California waters, in particular within and adjacent to the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. This work will complement and build upon a similar effort currently being conducted by the BP for three sanctuaries in central California (Cordell Bank, Gulf of the Farallones, and Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuaries). The biogeographic assessment for these three sanctuaries was conducted to identify important biological zones, time periods, and ecological linkages within an analysis area that extends from Point Arena in the north to Point Sal in the south. Furthermore, this study will incorporate data and information from a comprehensive west coast assessment completed by NOS in the late 1980s that resulted in the "West Coast of North America, Coastal and Ocean Zones, Strategic Assessment: Data Atlas". This Atlas contains maps of key biological, physical, and economic characteristics of the marine environment of the West Coast. The Atlas complemented the BP's Estuarine Living Marine Resources Program (ELMR) studies to define the biological and physical characteristics of adjacent estuarine systems, and included biogeographic analyses to define estuarine assemblages and inshore-offshore linkages between ecosystems.

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In compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Marine Sanctuary Program will incorporate this assessment with cultural and socio-economic analyses to prepare a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement to fully analyze boundary change concepts.