Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members.
I appreciate the opportunity to contribute to this committee's study of marine and coastal protections, and more specifically the application of spatial management approaches to achieving those protections.
My background in the science and policy of marine protected areas is summarized in my nomination biography, so I won't spend time repeating that beyond emphasizing my experience in the planning process and subsequent monitoring and evaluation of California's state-wide MPA network and as a scientific adviser to the Great Bear Sea MPA Network design process and the ongoing development of the monitoring and evaluation program. I am less familiar with the processes elsewhere, such as in Canada.
For further context, I want to emphasize that I hope to help inform your study and not to advocate either for or against marine protected areas. In part, it would jeopardize my continued involvement in conducting the evaluation of California's network if I were to convey a perceived bias on this topic.
To that end, I have put together a document that summarizes responses to the three overarching questions I was asked to address. I don't know when you'll receive that, as I'm still finishing it, but it includes references and summaries of documents and publications relevant to each of those questions.
I will make one or two overarching comments for context to the responses in that document and today.
California has developed a very robust ecological monitoring and evaluation program to assess how well the conservation goals of the network are being achieved. However, as reflected in the state's decadal review of the network, that program has not given sufficient attention to socio-economic consequences, including for both fisheries and first nations, nor has the development of the monitoring program engaged those stakeholders. In contrast, my experience to date in the design of the Great Bear Sea MPA Network evaluation program indicates that that process intends to do a much more inclusive and better job of addressing how it will evaluate those socio-economic consequences. I understand that this is also the case in some provinces, but I'm not as familiar with them. However, because many of the MPAs and the existing monitoring programs in the Great Bear Sea are younger than the California network, there are simply fewer results to be able to point to.
I'm going to stop there so that we have time for your important questions.