Channel Islands National Park Marine Protected Areas

Marine sanctuary waters include 1,128 square nautical miles from mean high tide to 6 nautical miles offshore San Miguel, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, Anacapa, and Santa Barbara Islands. Warm and cool currents support a great variety of flora and fauna, including giant kelp, fish and invertebrates, marine birds, pinnipeds, and cetaceans. The key resources (natural infrastructure) in the system are the marine food web. The key shared resource relevant to the commons dilemma faced by the community are the fish stocks and their productivity (common-pool) as well as world recognized heritage and biodiversity. This case does not catalog individual fishers or individual fisheries because this information is beyond the current scope of available documentation. The resource unit in the SES are targeted fish in the MPA areas. Fishers are required to obtain licenses to fish in the National Marine Sanctuary (or anywhere in California) and MPAs restrict the activities in specific areas which have been designated as key breeding grounds for fish stocks or sites of high biodiversity.