September 8, 2015 — Diver Dan Abbott unloads his scuba gear on a beach in Monterey, Calif. — his tank, flippers and a waterproof clipboard covered in tally marks. He spent the morning counting fish: pile perch, black perch, blue rockfish and kelp rockfish are among the 150 fish he spotted.
Abbott is diving with a team from Reef Check California, a group of volunteers doing underwater surveys by counting everything in the kelp forest in Monterey Bay.
He’s part of an effort to determine whether there are more fish in the waters now than there were eight years ago. That’s when this kelp forest was set aside as a marine protected area, where there’s little or no fishing allowed, part of a huge experiment to restore marine life.
There are more than a hundred protected areas off California, covering 16 percent of state waters, and the only way to know if they’re working is for Abbott and others to keep checking the marine population year after year.