ELKHORN SLOUGH FOUNDATION PRESENTS $5,000 AWARD

Cal State Monterey Bay graduate student Michael Esgro studies de facto marine protected areas – regions of the ocean that are not formally protected but experience limited human impact nonetheless. Examples include shipping lanes, military training areas and waters adjacent to high security areas such as nuclear power plants.

Esgro, a second-year student in the Applied Marine and Watershed Science master’s program, has undertaken the first study on the West Coast to determine the contribution these areas make to marine conservation.

He is using still photography and video imagery collected by a remotely operated vehicle to compare fish and invertebrate communities inside and outside a military de facto protected area at San Clemente Island in Southern California.

For his work, Esgro is this year’s winner of the James W. Rote Grant for Research in Applied Sciences.

“In the spirit of James Rote’s long career at the interface of science and policy, Michael’s project provides a clear linkage between research and management of the natural world,” said Dr. James Lindholm, the James Rote Distinguished Professor of Marine Science and Policy at CSUMB.

Throughout his career, Dr. Rote held a variety of science advisory positions and helped draft environmental policy at the state and federal levels. He was instrumental in getting Monterey Bay designated as a National Marine Sanctuary.

He joined the CSUMB faculty in 1995, and was a founding member of the university’s innovative interdisciplinary program linking natural science, physical science, technology, economics and policy. Illness forced him to retire in 1997. He died in 2006.

The Elkhorn Slough Foundation, a community-supported conservation organization and accredited land trust, established the scholarship fund to honor the work of Dr. Rote and his colleague, Les Strnad. Both men worked tirelessly to protect and conserve Monterey Bay and the extraordinary natural resources here.

The grant allows students to purchase equipment for their research projects; the equipment remains in the department for use by future students.

Esgro, a Los Angeles native, earned his undergraduate degree at UCLA, where he worked on applying genetic testing to the design of marine protected areas in Indonesia. He decided to attend CSUMB for graduate school to continue his study of MPAs with Dr.Lindholm at the Institute for Applied Marine Ecology.

“I was excited about the opportunities that CSUMB and Dr. Lindholm’s lab provided – especially the prospect of using cutting-edge technology to see what marine protected areas actually look like underwater,” Esgro said.