During the first few years of my Ph.D. program, I led SIO’s California Collaborative Fisheries Research Program (CCFRP) under the direction of PIs Brice Semmens and Lyall Bellquist (TNC). The CCFRP is a standardized catch-and-release hook-and-line survey of nearshore groundfishes that is implemented statewide by six academic institutions and funded by California’s Ocean Protection Council. Beginning as an idea of Drs. Rick Starr (Moss Landing Marine Laboratories) and Dean Wendt (Cal Poly San Luis Obispo), the program was launched in 2006 off the Central Coast and was later established throughout the state beginning in 2017.

CCFRP provides scientific data for fisheries management and evaluations of Marine Protected Area (MPA) performance. Since it began, the program has trained numerous undergraduate and graduate students in collecting valuable fisheries science data at sea, interacting with the public and fisheries constituents, and how to manage and work with large data sets. I am so grateful for the opportunity to work with a great time of scientists, the angling public, and top-notch captains and crew of the southern California commercial sportfishing fleet aboard the F/Vs Sea Star, Sea Watch, Sum Fun, and Outer Limits. I’m also grateful for the many mentees with whom I have had the privilege of knowing and working. Whether you are a student, an avid angler, or just plain curious, I highly recommend volunteering on a CCFRP trip.

My involvement with CCFRP quickly inspired research (beyond the scope of my dissertation) resulting in a publication largely based on Allyson Kellum’s Master of Advanced Studies Capstone, of which I served as a thesis committee member. We were interested in whether volunteer angler participation in CCFRP changed their opinions and perceptions of MPAs. We discovered that the answer to that question is a resounding yes! However, opinion change doesn’t happen overnight. CCFRP volunteers had a positive view of the fisheries data they help collect for resource management and the MPAs they help to monitor, which we were able to attribute, in part, to long-term participation in the program. In this study, the length of time necessary to achieve a greater than fifty percent (50%) probability of having a positive change in opinion on MPAs was about seven years since joining CCFRP. In this way, we were able to capture the realized benefits of CCFRP as a collaborative research program, beyond the fisheries data it yields.

See below for a link to our publication and for more info on CCFRP, including how you can volunteer:

Short video CCFRP Video

Our publication Longterm Participation

CCFRP website…make sure to click on the Get Involved link in the right panel Website