UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Navigating Fragmented Ocean Law in the California Current: Tools to Identify and Measure Gaps and Overlaps for Ecosystem-Based Management A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Marine Science by Julia Anne Ekstrom Committee in charge: Professor Oran R. Young, Chair Professor Steven Gaines Professor Susan Stonich Research Professor Paul A. Berkman Professor Bonnie J. McCay, Rutgers University June 2008 i 3319864 3319864 2008 The dissertation of Julia Anne Ekstrom is approved. ____________________________________________ Paul A. Berkman University of California, Santa Barbara ____________________________________________ Steven Gaines University of California, Santa Barbara ____________________________________________ Bonnie J. McCay Rutgers University ____________________________________________ Susan Stonich University of California, Santa Barbara ____________________________________________ Oran R. Young, Committee Chair University of California, Santa Barbara May 2008 ii Navigating Fragmented Ocean Law in the California Current: Tools to Identify and Measure Gaps and Overlaps for Ecosystem-Based Management Copyright © 2008 by Julia Anne Ekstrom iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am very grateful for receiving support from so many people and entities to produce this dissertation. First, in 2001 the Interdepartmental Graduate Program in Marine Science was the only such program in the United States that provided a rigorous background in ocean sciences, but allowed students to design cross- disciplinary social science research projects. My experience in an interdisciplinary program taught me the value of communicating with people from all sorts of expertise and backgrounds to produce well-informed science. I appreciate the support of Alice Alldredge and Mark Brzezinski, the graduate program chairs, for their advice, continuous support, and accessibility. I am grateful for the support of my entire committee throughout the project. Though trained within his/her respective disciplines, each member has an incredible ability and willingness of collaborating across disciplines. In addition to the committee’s research expertise, each member’s had a unique contribution to the project. My dissertation committee chair Oran Young has an amazing talent to see and communicate the bigger picture, especially when I am stuck in the details. I thank him for relaying this bigger picture and using it to keep me on track in our regular update meetings but also, more importantly, in my dissertation as a whole. I am grateful to Steve Gaines for meeting me consistently with enthusiasm and positive reinforcement. Our discussions about analyzing and interpreting data and his advice on how to frame papers have been extremely valuable to me. I thank Susan Stonich for helping me build a solid foundation in social sciences at UCSB iv and for her support throughout the project despite the changes. I thank Bonnie McCay for thoroughly editing and providing feedback on drafts, and for her reassurance that my research still indeed relates to the questions of the commons. I would like to thank Paul Berkman for encouraging me to explore laws in the California Current and for hiring me as a Research Assistant, which introduced me to insights about data management. I am indebted to Maria Gordon for her generous support in advising me on how tactfully to overcome the obstacles presented in this project, building my confidence, and assisting in the writing and editing of proposals and dissertation chapters. The National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) was incredibly vital to my project in many ways. I participated in the Ocean Zoning Working Group (guided by Principal Investigators Gail Osherenko, Oran Young, Satie Airame, and Larry Crowder). The Working Group’s in-depth discussions about ecosystem-based management (EBM) provided an invaluable foundation for my dissertation work. Beyond the Working Group, NCEAS generously provided me with server space and access to run analyses on my large dataset. In addition, the EBM program provided technical advice and supported the conceptual development of the project. This dissertation research required that I receive feedback at all stages of the project from ocean management practitioners. I appreciate the feedback during the early stages of this project from the Social Science Branch of Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Although I cannot list them by name v here due to the project’s Human Subjects Protocol at U.C. Santa Barbara, I am grateful to all those working in the California Current who took the time to meet with me. Their feedback at each stage shaped the development of the analysis. Many people assisted me in the technical development aspects of the project. I wish to acknowledge the following individuals who made this study possible: Dan Spiteri for coding and data management support throughout the project, George Morgan for lengthy discussions in the early stages of this project about text mining and information retrieval, Alex Villacorta for an introduction of text analysis and related statistics in Matlab, Jim Regetz at NCEAS for lessons on multivariate analysis, and Tihomir Kostadinov, Wil Black, and Mike Springborn at UCSB for their programming assistance. Jonathon Gurish at the California Coastal Conservancy for answering many law questions and assisting my collection endeavors for California State statutes and regulations. I appreciate the assistance and feedback from the following people on constructing the ocean acidification ecosystem model: Shiva Polefka (Environmental Defense Center), Matt Kay (UCSB), Dan Reed (UCSB), Peter Brewer (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute), Jono Wilson (UCSB), and Carla Guenther (UCSB). The following entities directly financially supported this dissertation project: The California Environmental Quality Initiative Graduate Fellowship through the UC Marine Council, the California Sea Grant and Ocean Protection Council, NCEAS Ecosystem-Based Management Program, and the UCSB Interdepartmental Graduate Program in Marine Science. I wish to acknowledge EvResearch vi Incorporated, which donated server space for the project website and use of the DigIn Pro Version software. In addition, I would like to acknowledge the National Science Digital Library funding for its support through a Research Assistantship. The acknowledgements are not complete without conveying my gratitude to my family and friends for their love and support: My parents for encouraging me to pursue my dreams and patiently supporting me through six more years in school, especially to my mom who listened with an open ear nearly every morning about the trials and tribulations of every part of graduate school; Dan Spiteri for his love, patience, and compassion; Elisa Echeverria for meliorism-enriched conversations and tons of editing; Sarah Henkel for introducing a much-needed hobby into my life, for discussions about how we were going to complete our dissertations (within days of one another!), and for editing at critical times; Sara Hughes for life and governance discussions, bluff walks, and chapter editing; Stephanie Oakes and Mark Zegler for our “finishing lunches,” and Carla Guenther for stress-relieving beach walks and always helping me understand challenges from a different perspective. I dedicate this project to two professors who inspired me to pursue graduate school: Barney Nietschmann and Arnold Schultz. From completely different disciplines (cultural geography and ecology, respectively), their courses taught me about the interconnectedness that exists in every facet of our world. They introduced me to the powerful insights revealed from examining connections among cultures, shifting paradigms, societal values, ecological systems, and different academic vii disciplines. I aspire to follow in their footsteps to train others about the important connections between disciplines, the importance of social and ecosystem thinking, and how to think outside of the box, all the while having fun. viii JULIA ANNE EKSTROM EDUCATION 2008 Ph.D. Marine Science, University of California at Santa Barbara (expected June) 2000 B.S. Conservation and Resource Studies, Minor in Geography, University of California at Berkeley FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS 2008-2009 David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Ecosystem-Based Management Tools Initiative Fund 2008 Society for Conservation Biology Conference Student Paper Award Finalist 2006-2007 UC Marine Council Coastal Environmental Quality Initiative (CEQI) Graduate Fellowship 2006 National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) Ecosystem-Based Management Graduate Support 2006 UC Santa Barbara Marine Science Summer Fellowship 2005-2006 UC Santa Barbara Marine Science Tuition Fellowship 2005 UC Santa Barbara Robert Alldredge Marine Science Travel Fellowship 2004 UC Santa Barbara Department of Anthropology Travel Grant 2003 UC Santa Barbara Marine Science Block Grant 2000 UC Regents President's Undergraduate Fellowship 2000 UC Berkeley California Alumni Leadership Honor and Scholarship 2000 UC Berkeley Horace Albright Scholarship ix RESEARCH PROJECTS 2004-2008 Navigating Ocean Law in the California Current LME Dissertation research project to find priority areas for implementing ecosystem-based management. Compiled all national and state marine- related laws for California Current. 2005-2007 Ocean Zoning Working