Who We Are

The Collaborative Network and Partners

The Marine Protected Area (MPA) Collaborative Network was created in 2012 to give stakeholders, Tribal members, and local agencies an active voice in the ongoing stewardship and management of California's network of 124 marine protected areas. The MPA Collaborative Network is a nonprofit with a mission to empower diverse communities to engage in MPA stewardship for a healthy ocean. The MPA Collaborative Network is made up of 14 coastal chapters, or “collaboratives”, that cover all 15 coastal counties and consist of over 1,700 individual members representing hundreds of organizations and agencies. Developed in close partnership with the Department of Fish and Wildlife, Ocean Protection Council, and local partners, California's MPA collaboratives bring together community members from all walks of life: marine scientists and reserve managers join fishermen, Tribal members, conservation organization members, and local, state, and federal agency staff. The goal of each collaborative is to work together on identifying and addressing local issues facing MPAs.

This project was completed with the help of our partners at AGU Thriving Earth Exchange, Wildlife.ai, CitSci, Amazon Web Services, California Academy of Sciences, Multi-Agency Rocky Intertidal Network (MARINe), and The Nature Conservancy.

The People

Aubrie Fowler is the South Coast Specialist at the MPA Collaborative Network and supports several projects in Southern California that enhance community connection to our shared coast.

Dr. Victor Anton is the founder and general manager of Wildlife.ai, advocating and working to combine the power of citizen science and machine learning to better understand complex ecosystems. By training their computer vision algorithms on Zooniverse classifications, we can create powerful tools for subtidal biodiversity monitoring.

Kevin Murphy is a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan studying the intersections of climate, macroinvertebrate behavior, and landscape evolution and a fellow with AGU's Thriving Earth Exchange, a program dedicated to helping communities like California's MPAs define, design, and execute community science projects by connecting them with resources and experts as well as assisting throughout the project's progression.