STUDY TITLE: BOEM-MARINe (Multi-Agency Rocky Intertidal Network)

REPORT TITLE: Multi-Agency Rocky Intertidal Network Highlights

OCS STUDY NUMBER: BOEM 2020-053

NUMBER OF PAGES: 8 pages

CONTRACT NUMBER: M15AC00007

SPONSORING OCS REGION: Pacific

APPLICABLE PLANNING AREAS: Southern California, Central California, Northern California, 

Washington-Oregon

FISCAL YEARS OF PROJECT FUNDING: FY 2015: $399,683; FY 2016: $444,319; FY 2017: 

$423,998; FY 2018: $884,000; FY 2019: $0; FY 2020; $0; FY 2021: $0

Note: FY 2016 funding includes $412,319 from BOEM Environmental Studies Program (ESP), 

$7,000 from BOEM Pacific Region, and $25,000 from Navy (Navy funds transferred to BOEM). 

All FY 2015, FY 2017, and FY 2018 funding from BOEM ESP.

CUMULATIVE PROJECT COST: $2,152,000

Note: Cumulative project cost includes $2,120,000 from BOEM ESP, $7,000 from BOEM Pacific 

Region, and $25,000 from Navy.

COMPLETION DATE OF REPORT: October 2020

PROJECT MANAGER: Peter Raimondi

AFFILIATION OF PROJECT MANAGER: Long Marine Laboratory, University of California, 

Santa Cruz

ADDRESS: 115 McAllister Way, Santa Cruz, CA 95060

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS*: Peter Raimondi, Richard Ambrose, Jennifer Burnaford,

Jayson Smith, Jennifer Caselle

KEYWORDS: intertidal, rocky shores, monitoring, California, Oregon, West Coast, marine 

algae, marine invertebrates, seasonal trend, temporal trend, baseline data, community 

resilience, Marine Protected Areas, withering syndrome, sea star wasting, marine disease, 

citizen science, abalone, surfgrass, mussel, barnacle, limpet, sea star, anemone, rockweed

BRIEF ABSTRACT: The main deliverable for this project, the “MARINe Highlights” booklet, 

provides an overview of the program and summarizes how data were used to inform BOEM and 

other resource managers at the local, state, and federal levels about the impacts of both natural 

and human-induced disturbances on rocky intertidal communities along the Pacific Coast of 

North America. The booklet describes how MARINe data were used to: 1) inform injury

assessment resulting from coastal oil spills, 2) assess impacts of marine disease on black 

abalone and sea star populations, 3) detect impacts related to climate change, and identify 

areas that might be more or less resilient to change, and 4) inform establishment and assess 

effectiveness of California Marine Protected Areas. The booklet also identifies key components 
of MARINe’s long-term sustainability and growth, such as the partnerships with citizen science 

programs that were formed to better capture impacts of sea star wasting syndrome.

BACKGROUND: In 1997, the Minerals Management Service (predecessor to the Bureau of 

Ocean Energy Management or BOEM) initiated the formation of a long-term monitoring 

program, the Multi-Agency Rocky Intertidal Network (MARINe). MARINe currently includes over 

40 partners consisting of federal, state, and local government agencies, universities, tribes, and 

private organizations. The MARINe consortium monitors nearly 200 rocky shore sites (124 of 

these include Long-Term Monitoring; 179 include Biodiversity) and is the largest and longestrunning program of its kind; sites in some regions have been sampled for over 35 years. 

Through this program, BOEM and its predecessor agencies funded annual monitoring at 24 

established rocky intertidal sites along the southern and central California mainland coast 

adjacent to Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) operations, and biodiversity surveys on a rotating 

schedule at these sites, as well as at 8 sites along the Oregon coast.

OBJECTIVES: MARINe was formed to collect information about rocky intertidal communities 

close to nearshore ocean energy facilities ranging from the long-existing oil platforms in 

southern California to the not-yet-developed wave energy conversion devices proposed offshore 

Oregon. Monitoring of coastal biota in California and Oregon provides baseline information 

needed to assess injury or changes to these resources that could result from the presence of 

nearshore energy facilities (e.g., oil spill, wave dampening). Secondary objectives include 

assessing change in rocky intertidal communities resulting from other types of disturbance (both 

natural and human-induced), such as marine diseases and climate change.

METHODS: The MARINe program uses 2 primary sampling approaches. 1) Long-Term

Monitoring Surveys use fixed plots to document changes in percent cover or abundance of 

targeted species or species assemblages. This fixed-plot approach allows the dynamics of 

rocky intertidal species to be monitored with reasonable sampling effort and provides sufficient 

statistical power to detect changes over space or time. 2) Biodiversity Surveys provide detailed 

information about community structure. These surveys were designed to measure diversity, 

abundance, and distribution of algae and invertebrates across the entire rocky intertidal 

community. Detailed descriptions of methods can be found here: 

https://marine.ucsc.edu/methods/index.html

RESULTS: MARINe surveys have been instrumental for assessing injuries to intertidal 

communities that have resulted from 4 oil spills along the California coast. These surveys have 

also documented massive declines in both ochre stars (due to sea star wasting syndrome) and 

black abalone (due to withering syndrome) throughout their ranges. The black abalone was

placed on the Endangered Species List based on trends documented by MARINe surveys.

MARINe data have been used to evaluate the design and effectiveness of California Marine 

Protected Areas (MPAs), as well as to assess long-term resilience of intertidal communities to 

impacts of climate change.

CONCLUSIONS: The MARINe ecological data set is unparalleled in terms of longevity, 

continuity, and consistency at a geographically broad scale. These data are invaluable for 

informing management decisions, assessing impacts from nearshore energy production 

facilities, and alerting scientists to changing conditions within rocky shore habitats along the 

Pacific coast of North America.
STUDY PRODUCTS:

1. MARINe Highlights Booklet, available in paper and pdf formats (also editable InDesign indd 

file):

Miner CM, Swearingen AK. 2020. Multi-Agency Rocky Intertidal Highlights. University of 

California Santa Cruz and US Department of the Interior, Bureau of Ocean Energy 

Management, Pacific OCS Region. OCS Study BOEM 2020-053, 8 p.

2. pacificrockyintertidal.org, a comprehensive web-based data portal and general information 

source for all BOEM-funded rocky intertidal monitoring sites as well as comparative data 

within the MARINe network (including sites in California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, 

Canada, and Mexico). This web-based product includes detailed information about the 

MARINe project, including methods, descriptive information about regions, sites, and 

species targeted, as well as extensive summaries of trends and patterns observed within 

sites and among regions. Long-Term and Biodiversity survey data can be viewed either in 

static summary graph form or by using interactive graphing tools, which display user-defined 

species summary data and other community metrics. A new feature of the website is a data 

request form, which documents basic user information (e.g., affiliation, how data will be 

used) and then directs users to a data download page that includes all BOEM-funded sites. 

Making MARINe data available for distance learning has been a recent focus of the website.

3. seastarwasting.org, a website linked to pacificrockyintertidal.org, but focused specifically on 

the sea star wasting epidemic that has impacted sea stars at all MARINe sites coast-wide. 

This site includes an interactive “tracking” map that allows users to see where Sea Star 

Wasting Syndrome is present, and which species have been affected.

4. Online availability of MARINe data through pacificrockyintertidal.org, and on the PISCO data 

catalog (www.piscoweb.org) and DATAOne (www.dataone.org).

5. 40 presentations, and 9 publications and reports resulted directly from this BOEM-funded 

study; an additional 54 presentations and 69 publications and reports resulted from work 

done within the larger MARINe network. A complete list can be found on 

pacificrockyintertidal.org.

6. MARINe MySQL database. This centralized database has been expanded to include new data 

types, including sea star and other data collected by citizen science and education-based 

groups.

7. Morphological and DNA voucher specimens of invertebrates and seaweeds collected from 

10 sites along the California Coast (9 BOEM-funded mainland sites spanning the 

documented ‘faunal break’ at Point Conception, and 1 NPS-funded site on the Channel 

Islands) were archived at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC (invertebrates) or 

the University of California Berkeley Herbarium (algae), both publicly accessible 

repositories. Descriptions of methods, target species, accession numbers, and instructions 

for accessing databases can be found here: https://marine.ucsc.edu/methods/voucheringeffort.html

* The affiliation of the Principal Investigator(s) may be different than that listed for Project Manager(s).
MAP SHOWING AREA OF STUDY