Practical Policy Recommendations to Enhance Climate Resilience in California’s Marine Waters

Seeking refuge in California's Changing Oceans

Between 2014 and 2016, an unprecedented marine heat wave known as “The Blob” spread across the Pacific coast and pushed ocean temperatures off the coast of Northern California several degrees above normal. Along the rocky coastline of the Sonoma Coast, vast underwater forests of bull kelp that support fish, invertebrates, and marine mammals began to disappear. Within just a few years, more than 90% of the region’s bull kelp canopy had collapsed. Scientists now consider this one of the most dramatic marine ecosystem collapses ever recorded along the California coast (Rogers-Bennett and Catton, 2019). 

However, the collapse was not uniform. Some cooler, more protected stretches of coastline retained patches of surviving kelp, offering insight into the importance of marine climate refugia - places where ocean conditions may buffer ecosystems against the harshest effects of climate change. One way that we can help species survive in the face of changes that do occur is to protect the environmental conditions that allow ecosystems to recover and persist (NOAA 2026). 

As marine heatwaves and other ocean changes become more frequent and intense, understanding and protecting climate refugia along California’s coast may be essential for the survival of both fisheries and marine biodiversity as a whole. In order to protect these areas, California may want to create new environmental management policies or adapt existing ones based on the scientific research on refugia and marine climate resilience. 

Responding to a Changing Climate

Our project examined how California’s marine climate policies can better prepare coastal ecosystems for a rapidly changing climate. We combined policy analysis, a synthesis of scientific literature, and actionable recommendations to answer a central question: how can public policy integrate scientific understanding of marine climate resilience to strengthen climate adaptation in California’s marine waters? 

To address this question, we first evaluated the existing state and federal policies that currently shape marine conservation, including Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), fisheries management, species protections, and water quality regulations. We then reviewed current scientific literature to propose a policy-relevant conceptual framework of marine climate resilience and marine climate refugia and to better understand what management approaches would be useful. Finally, we used what we learned about policy and science to create actionable recommendations for policymakers to help increase marine climate resilience.

Marine Climate Resilience: the ability of a marine ecosystem to withstand and recover from climate-related stressors over time. 

Marine Climate Refugia: areas where species and ecosystems are most able to persist as ocean conditions change.

Examining the Current Policy Landscape

Our policy review found that many existing state and federal marine conservation laws already contain tools that could be leveraged to enhance marine climate resilience, even when climate change is not explicitly included in the statutory language. One of the strongest examples is California’s Marine Protected Area (MPA) network established by the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA). Although the MLPA was not designed specifically for climate adaptation, its focus on protecting ecosystem integrity combined with adaptive management and long-term ecological monitoring creates opportunities to incorporate climate resilience and refugia into future management decisions. 

Similarly, California’s Marine Life Management Act (MLMA) provides a flexible, science-based framework for fisheries management that can help managers respond to shifting species distributions and changing ocean conditions. At the federal level, laws like the National Marine Sanctuaries Act have increasingly been interpreted to address climate-related threats through habitat protection, adaptive management, and climate monitoring initiatives. Together, these findings suggest that California may be able to take important steps on climate resilience without having to pass any new laws.

Synthesizing Today’s Science

Our scientific literature review demonstrated that marine climate resilience is shaped by environmental conditions, species traits, and human management actions, with important implications for future policy development. Climate stressors like marine heat waves, ocean acidification, hypoxia, and harmful algal blooms rarely occur in isolation; instead, they interact in ways that can amplify ecosystem vulnerability and accelerate ecological collapse. 

These stressors are also unevenly distributed across California’s coast, creating both hotspots of vulnerability and pockets of resilience. Processes like coastal upwelling, where colder water from deeper areas rises, can buffer some regions from warming temperatures and create marine climate refugia where ecosystems are better able to persist despite climate change. 

However, these same areas may also experience increased ocean acidification, demonstrating that resilience depends on balancing multiple interacting stressors rather than addressing a single threat. The review also highlighted the importance of long-term, ecosystem-based monitoring of variables like temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, and habitat connectivity to identify resilient regions and inform adaptive management decisions. 

Moving Towards a More Resilient California Coast

Based on the findings of both the policy and scientific literature reviews, we developed several recommendations aimed at making California’s marine management system more adaptive, science-driven, and responsive to climate change. A handful of examples are listed below: 

• Incorporate marine climate refugia directly into fisheries management by using existing authorities under the Magnuson–Stevens Act and California’s Marine Life Management Act. This enables managers to establish temporary or long-term fishery closures in areas identified as resilient during marine heat waves or other extreme events. 
• Increase the use of State Water Quality Protection Areas to add formal water quality standards to existing MPAs.
• Expand long-term  monitoring by coordinating oceanographic data collection across state and federal agencies, including temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, and upwelling conditions, to better identify vulnerable ecosystems and emerging refugia.

Taken together, our recommendations reflect flexible, ecosystem-based management strategies that protect marine climate refugia and enhance overall marine climate resilience. In May, our team presented our recommendations to an audience of marine scientists and policymakers at the 2026 CalCOFI conference in San Diego. Our forthcoming final report will go into more detail about the findings of our scientific literature review, policy analysis, and dive deeper into our recommendations for utilizing policy to increase marine climate resilience and protect refugia. 

This article is the fourth in a series of seven that highlight Policy Clinic projects completed by EPM masters students in collaboration with our partners. On behalf of the Graduate Program of Environmental Policy and Management, we'd like to give special thanks to Erin Satterwaite and Mark Gold with California Sea Grant for their partnership on this project.

The views, opinions and recommendations expressed in this article and report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Graduate Program of Environmental Policy and Management at UC Davis.