Steve Lonhart's Dew Drop Inn 2025

Dr. Steve Lonhart provided us with a great Dew Drop Inn in the fall of 2025. In his presentation, he ran through an integrated examination of sanctuary management, coastal disturbance, and subtidal restoration, framed through three thematically distinct but ecologically linked case studies/mini-presentations.

He began by outlining the mission and structure of NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuary Program, introducing the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, its monitoring network (SIMoN), and its efforts to modernize data accessibility in the face of significant federal staffing and budget reductions.

Following that overview, he shifted focus to the Big Sur coastline, detailing how the Dolan Fire (2020) and a subsequent atmospheric-river event (in early 2021) delivering ~15 inches of rain in 36 hours triggered catastrophic debris flows that buried intertidal habitats, causing mass mortality of black abalone—an endangered species—while prompting emergency rescue, translocation, and long-term monitoring efforts.

Finally his Dolan fire impact review, Dr. Lonhart turned to subtidal ecosystem intervention at Tanker Reef, where a three-year fishing-regulation change allowed volunteer divers to cull purple urchins, rapidly reducing densities below the ~2 m⁻² threshold for kelp recovery, leading to significant kelp forest resurgence before recruitment-driven urchin increases began following the cessation of culling. Together, these examples illustrated the challenges and opportunities of adaptive coastal management amid climatic disturbance, ecological collapse, and institutional constraint.