partners included Washington Department of Ecology, Oregon Department of 
Environmental Quality, and the Southern California Water Resources Research Project 
(SCCWRP). Additional field support was provided by scientists from the three State 
partners, EPA Region 10, EPA ORD, the Alaska Department of Environmental 
Conservation, and South Slough Estuarine Research Reserve. 
The intent of the study design was to include continental shelf waters all along 
the West Coast of the U.S., from the Strait of Juan de Fuca in Washington to the 
Mexican border. The coordination of two separate survey efforts was necessary in 
order to cover such a large area. The first was the above-mentioned June 2003 cruise 
conducted from the NOAA Ship McARTHUR II, which covered sampling from the Strait 
of Juan de Fuca south to Pt. Conception, CA. This effort was coordinated with a 
companion assessment conducted by SCCWRP during the same general time-frame, in 
the area between Pt. Conception and the Mexican border, known as the Southern 
California Bight (SCB). The Bight ’03 assessment was conducted using a similar 
probabilistic sampling design and most of the same condition indicators (Allen et al. 
2007, Bay et al. 2005, Ranasinghe et al. 2007, Schiff et al. 2006), and thus the data 
could be integrated with data from the more northern stations to provide an overall 
assessment of condition throughout the western U.S. continental shelf. 
1.2 NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries 
There are currently four NMSs along the coast of California, one off the coast of 
Washington, and none off the coast of Oregon. All of the West Coast NMSs represent 
areas particularly rich in a diverse array of marine life, including marine mammals, 
seabirds, fishes, invertebrates and plants. The Channel Islands NMS off the coast of 
California is the oldest, established in 1980, and covers an area of 4,294 km 2 
surrounding the islands of Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel and Santa 
Barbara out to six nautical miles offshore around each of the five islands. The Gulf of 
the Farallones NMS (3,237 km 2 ) and Cordell Bank NMS (1347 km 2 ) are adjacent to 
each other and located along the central California coast off San Francisco. The Gulf of 
the Farallones NMS was established in 1981 and includes the Farallon Islands National 
Wildlife Refuge. Cordell Bank NMS, established in 1989, includes Cordell Bank 
seamount whose summit lies only 37 meters below the surface. The Monterey Bay 
NMS is the most recently established NMS in California (1992), and is also the largest 
on the West Coast. It extends from Rocky Point in Marin County to Cambria in San Luis 
Obispo County, a shoreline length of 444 km and encompasses 13,784 km 2 of ocean. 
To the north, the Olympic Coast NMS was established in 1994 and protects 
about 8,570 km 2 of the Pacific Ocean between Cape Flattery and the mouth of the 
Copalis River, a distance of about 217 km. Some 105 km of the sanctuary's coastline 
borders the Olympic National Park, while the Flattery Rocks, Quillayute Needles, and 
Copalis Rock National Wildlife Refuges are within the sanctuary boundaries. Maps of 
each of the West Coast NMS may be found at: 
http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/pgallery/atlasmaps/welcome.html. 
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