You’re invited to the Farallones Sanctuary retreat Thursday, Oct 11

Interested members of the public are invited to attend a public session at the annual Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council Retreat meeting on Thursday, October 11 at the Stinson Beach Community Center, 32 Belvedere Street, Stinson Beach, California.

Members of the community may attend the first part of the council retreat meeting from 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.

New council member Marc Gorelnik will be sworn in as Maritime Activities/Recreation Alternate;  Gorelnik is with the Coastside Fishing Club and American Sportsfishing Association.

Professor Jonathan Stern of San Francisco State University will be sworn in as Research Alternate.

At 9:15 a.m. there will be a 15 minute public comment session in which community members may raise various topics before the council and sanctuary management. Depending on the number of people requesting comment time, individual comments may be held to between 2 and 3 minutes.

Anyone wishing to hear an overview of the Gulf of the Sanctuary and its resources, issues and management actions is invited to attend for the 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. session, when Jan Roletto, Research Coordinator for the Farallones sanctuary, will present a Draft Sanctuary Condition Report for the Council’s Review. This report will provide a summary of resources in the Gulf of the Farallones sanctuary, pressures on those resources, the current condition and trends, and management responses to the pressures that threaten the integrity of the marine environment.

Specifically, this draft document will include information on the status and trends of:

 

• water quality

 

• habitats

 

• living resources

 

• maritime archaeological resources

 

• the human activities that affect them.

The report will include responses to a set of questions that will rate resource status on a scale from good to poor and assign a trend to those resources based on observed changes in status over the past five years, unless otherwise specified.

The Condition Report presentation will be followed at 10:30 by a break, after which the council retreat is closed to the public.

Regular council meetings are open to the public, and all include public comment periods. 2007- 2008 Upcoming Meetings (details to be announced) include:

 

• December 13, 2007 - Bodega Bay

 

• February 15, 2008 - Joint Meeting with Monterey Bay NMS, Half Moon Bay (date pending confirmation)

 

• April 24, 2008 - Council Retreat

 

• July 10, 2008 - Point Reyes

 

• October 9, 2008 - Pacifica

 

• December 11, 2008 - San Francisco

For details on upcoming meetings, visit http://farallones.noaa.gov/manage/sac.html

Questions: Kelley Higgason, Advisory Council Coordinator, 415/ 561-6622 x202