Nearly 2,000 Volunteers Just Answered the Ocean's Biggest Question

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For more than 10 years, almost
2,000 people have been walking

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California beaches with a clipboard.

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They're not looking for shells.

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They're not looking for lost dogs.

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They're counting strangers.

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Every surfer, every kid in a
tide pool, every person with a

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fishing rod, every kayak, all of it
tallied one beach walk at a time.

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And here's the strange part.

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The pile of clipboard data, more than
a million little tally marks, just

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answered a question that scientists
have argued about for decades.

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Do marine protected areas actually work?

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Not just on paper, in the
real world with real people.

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Today, we are going to walk one
of those beaches with them, and

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we're going to find out what
all of that counting revealed.

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You're listening to the How to Protect
the Ocean podcast, and I'm Andrew Lewin.

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This is the show where we take
one ocean story a day and turn it

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into something you can actually do
every weekday, Monday to Friday.

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If this is your thing, do me a favor,
hit that follow button right now

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wherever you're listening to this.

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And it is the single easiest
way to help this show keep going.

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Then come back, and let's get into it.

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And of course, if you wanna
support the show, you can go

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to speakupforblue.com/patreon.

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That's speakupforblue.com/patreon.

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So let's start with the question
underneath the whole episode.

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When you hear the words marine
protected area, what do you picture?

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Probably a line on a map, a stretch of
coast where the rules are different.

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Maybe no fishing, maybe
not taking anything at all.

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Okay, but a line on the map does
not protect anything by itself.

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A rule only matters if people
follow it, and that raises a

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question almost nobody asks.

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Who is actually checking?

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Who is standing on that beach day after
day, seeing whether people obey the line?

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And if we did check, what would we find?

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Would we find a quiet compliance, or would
we find that protected is just a word

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we put on a sign and hope for the best?

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For most of the California coast,
for most of history, the honest

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answer was nobody really knows.

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Nobody was counting.

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Until a group of volunteers
decided to change that.

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Here's the scene.

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It was a bright Friday morning
on the California coast.

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A volunteer parks, grabs a data sheet and
a pair of binoculars, and walks down to

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a fixed starting point on the sand, the
same starting point every single time.

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Then they begin to walk a
set path along the shore.

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As they go, they count.

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Not everything at once.

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They count in categories: people
swimming, people surfing, people walking

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dogs, people tide pooling, people
fishing from the rocks, boats offshore.

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They note the weather.

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They note the tide.

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They write down the time of day.

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It sounds pretty simple.

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It sounds almost too simple to matter.

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But now multiply it.

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This is a statewide
program called MPA Watch.

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It runs through a network of about
a dozen local organizations from

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near the Oregon border all the
way down to the Mexican border.

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And when researchers pulled the
archive together for this new

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study, the numbers were staggering.

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Almost two thousand volunteers, more
than thirty thousand separate beach

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surveys, over one hundred sites
up and down the coast, both inside

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protected areas and outside them.

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And more than 1.2 human individual
activities all counted by

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hand between 2012 and 2020.

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Let that sink in.

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1.2 million tally marks made by regular
people on their own time because they

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cared about the water in front of them.

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And it is not always calm work.

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A reporter recently joined one
of these teams on a boat survey

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off La Jolla near San Diego.

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On that single trip, the crew spotted
three vessels that appeared to be

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fishing illegally inside a no-take zone.

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They logged the locations by
radar and sent them straight

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to state wildlife authorities.

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The statewide coordinator put it plainly,
"This program is basically California's

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only way to know what human activity
is actually happening on the beach."

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Those are the eyes on the coast.

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Now, what did all those eyes see?

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Here's where it gets really good.

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The researchers did not
just add up the tally marks.

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Volunteer data is actually pretty messy.

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People survey at different times, in
different weather, with different skills.

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So the team used careful statistical
models to strip out the noise.

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They controlled for the tide, the
season, the day of the week, the

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weather, the type of beach, all of it.

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They wanted the real signal,
not just the busy weekends.

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And when the signal came
through, it told a clear story.

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Three parts.

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First finding.

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The first finding inside the strictest
protected areas, the no-take zones where

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you are not supposed to remove anything,
the amount of fishing and collecting

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was significantly lower than outside.

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Compliance, in other
words, was pretty high.

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Across the whole state, the vast
majority of what people were

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doing broke no rules at all.

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The line of the map was
mostly being respected.

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The second finding, and this one
matters just as much, protection

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did not ruin anyone's fun.

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People were swimming, surfing, diving, and
walking the beach inside protected areas

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at the same rate as everywhere else.

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There was no measurable
drop in recreation.

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So the fear you sometimes hear
that protecting the ocean means

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locking people out of it, the
data simply didn't support that.

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You protect the fish, and people still
get their beach day, both things at once.

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And the third finding, the coast
is overwhelmingly a place people

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go to enjoy, not to extract.

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Take one busy Southern California
beach the study modeled.

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On one nice day, the model
predicted around four hundred

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and fifty people out there.

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And of all those people, only a
small handful, fewer than five,

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were there to take anything at all.

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Everyone else was just living
their life next to the sea.

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So put those three things together.

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People are mostly following the rules.

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Protection is not costing our
recreation, and extraction is

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the exception, not the norm.

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That is a genuinely hopeful picture, and
we only know it because somebody counted.

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This is why a quick pause here.

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If you are finding this useful,
the best thing you can do right

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now is share this episode with
one person who loves the ocean.

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Just one.

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That is how this show grows,
and it costs you nothing.

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Okay, because there's one more
layer here, and it is the layer

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that ties everything together.

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You might be thinking, fine, but
counting people is not counting fish.

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How do we know the protection
actually is helping the

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ocean, not just the beachgoers?

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That's a fair question, and this is where
the human data meets the underwater data.

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For years, separate teams of scientists
have been diving California's

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protected reefs, measuring the fish.

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In twenty twenty-two, the
state pulled ten years of that

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work together in a big review.

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The result across the network,
fish inside the protected areas

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were more abundant, larger, and
greater in total mass than fish in

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comparable areas open to fishing.

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The effect was strongest exactly where
you would expect, in places under heavy

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fishing pressure and in the larger, older
reserves that had no time to recover.

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Now, why does that recovery happen?

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Because people leave fish alone, which
brings us right back to the clipboards.

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Think of it this way.

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The dive surveys tell you
what is happening underwater.

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The beach counts tell you why.

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And if the fish are coming back,
the human data can show you that

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it is because people are actually
honoring the no-take zones.

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One data set without the
other is only half the story.

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Together, they close the loop.

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And when protection is real and
enforced, the payoff can be spectacular.

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There's a famous example just
south of California in Mexico

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a place called Cabo Pulmo.

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Local families fought to turn
their overfished reef into a

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strictly protected no-take park
and then actually defended it.

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Within about a decade, the total mass
of fish on the reef grew more than

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four times over a jump of roughly
four hundred and sixty percent.

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Big predators, the sharks and
groupers, came roaring back.

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It became one of the most dramatic
ocean recoveries ever measured.

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The difference is not magic.

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It's enforcement and a
community that showed up.

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That is the thread running
through this entire episode.

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Protection on paper does nothing.

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Protection that people believe
in and follow and watch

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over brings the ocean back.

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And the only reason we can prove
people are following it at the scale

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of an entire coastline is that a
couple of thousand volunteers kept

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walking the beach and counting.

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So here is the big idea I
want you to walk away with.

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We tend to think ocean recovery is
something that happens far away, done by

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experts in wetsuits and research boats.

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And that work is real, and it does matter.

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But this study is a reminder that
a huge piece of it is because of

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just ordinary people, people with a
clipboard and a free morning doing

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something small over and over for years.

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That patience became one point two
million data points, and those

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data points became proof, proof that
California's ocean protections are

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working and that people are largely
respecting them, and that we did not

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have to give up the coast to protect it.

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The ocean is not only saved by heroes,
it is saved by people who just show

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up, which means you can be one of them.

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Let me give you a few real options here.

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Nothing here is going to
single-handedly save the ocean, and

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I am not gonna pretend otherwise.

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Each one is a genuine,
honest contribution.

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One, if you are anywhere near the
California coast, you can literally

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do what this episode is all about.

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MPA watch trains everyday
volunteers to walk these surveys.

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You do not need a science degree.

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Go to mpawatch.org and
find a program nearest you.

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A few surveys a month at your
own pace around the tides.

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That's the whole commitment.

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Two, wherever you live, learn
the local rules before you go.

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Find out where the nearest protected
area is and what it actually allows.

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Some zones let you fish,
some let you take nothing.

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Knowing the line and respecting it is one
of the most direct things that you can do.

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And third, the beach walk classic.

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Grab three pieces of trash
every time you leave the coast.

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Volunteers in this very program
call it the three of the sea.

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It is small, but it adds up Four,
if you see something that looks

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like poaching inside a protected
zone, you do not confront anyone.

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You report it.

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In California, that goes to the
Department of Fish and Wildlife tip line.

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Like those volunteers off La Jolla,
your job is just to be a witness.

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Collecting the observation is enough.

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And five, share what you learned today.

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The finding that protection works and
that it works without shutting people

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out is exactly the kind of thing
people need to hear about right now.

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So pass it on.

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That's it for today's episode.

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If you got something out of it, hit
that follow button so you don't miss

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tomorrow's story, and your feed
automatically downloads it and updates

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you on what's happening in the ocean.

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And to be honest, like, I really just
appreciate you listening each and

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every day, each and every weekday
that I publish, Monday to Friday.

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It's something that I really enjoy.

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It's kept me connected to the ocean.

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I'm a science communicator who works
for a company called Pisces Oceans, and

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I just love doing this kind of stuff.

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This is something that I will always
do, and this is episode 1978.

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1,978. It was actually the
year I was born, in 1978.

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Yeah, I'm old.

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It's okay.

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But I love this stuff.

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I really love the fact
that you're listening.

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If you have any suggestions on
this type of format that I'm

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doing, 'cause it's a little bit
different than I've done before, I

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would love to hear your thoughts.

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Please let me know.

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You can DM me on TikTok, on Facebook,
on Instagram, whichever one you prefer.

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Or you can go to
speakupforblue.com/patreon,

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and you can support the show if
you really love it that much.

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I appreciate you listening.

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This has been another exciting episode
of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.

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I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.

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Have a great day.

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We'll talk to you next
time, and happy conservation.