| "We want them to feel comfortable with their job of kayaking up to complete strangers and talking to them about the resources around them." | |
| Jen Jolly, Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary |
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The promise of a close encounter with a sea otter or harbor seal is luring more and more people into sea kayaks to skim the waters of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. The growing numbers of these often-inexperienced boaters spurred the sanctuary to man its own kayaks in order to teach appropriate wildlife-watching etiquette and to alert kayakers to the sensitivity of the area's marine resources.
The popularity of "ocean kayaking has ballooned in the past few years," says Jen Jolly, the California sanctuary's public outreach specialist. "We were seeing more and more disturbances where kayakers would approach sensitive wildlife too closely, either because they didn't see them or because they didn't know they weren't supposed to. We saw that we could reduce the disturbances to sensitive resources by better educating the user group."
The education effort they came up with is TeamOCEAN, a program where two part-time sanctuary staff take to the water five to six hours, four days a week to talk with kayakers in the kelp beds off Cannery Row and the placid waters of Elkhorn Slough. These are the two main areas in the sanctuary where sea otters and harbor seals concentrate, and where hundreds of kayakers on weekend days may come to see them.
The program was piloted for two months in 2000 and was undertaken again last summer, Jolly says. The contract staff hired for the program undergo extensive training on the sanctuary's programs, as well as the area's habitatand natural history, wildlife watching protocol, and how to explain protective regulations to the public.
"We want them to feel comfortable with their job of kayaking up to complete strangers and talking to them about the resources around them," Jolly says. "Their having this background information is essential."
The program's kayaks and wet suits were donated by national outdoor retailers, and are clearly marked with the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration logos. She says this enables the team to approach recreational kayakers without "people thinking they're crazy men."
The team is provided with marine radios so they can communicate with one another, as well as with the Coast Guard and harbormaster. A cell phone is provided in case rescue or enforcement calls to land are necessary. Jolly quickly points out, however, that the TeamOCEAN staff are not "aqua-cops" and have no enforcement authority.
The team records each substantial interaction with kayakers, noting the types of contacts and disturbances they encounter in the water. Jolly says that in 30 days, the team talked to 1,800 people. "That averages to 5.6 people per hour that they talked to, and this wasn't just 'Hi. How ya doing.'" The team's records show that they helped prevent disturbances to sensitive species every day they were on the water.
"We've gotten fabulous feedback from the people we've contacted," Jolly says. "The [kayak] rental shops are fully behind the program and think it's a good idea. Other agencies have all been really encouraging, and have provided a lot of good feedback. It's been a great outreach program."
For more information on the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary's TeamOCEAN program, contact Jen Jolly at (831) 420-1630 or Jen.Jolly@noaa.gov.
