Conservation Through Collaboration: The CMSF Story

How Our Current Projects Show the Power of Working Together

After 30 years of marine conservation work, we've learned that our best projects happen when diverse expertise comes together around shared goals. From watersheds to whales, our current initiatives demonstrate how collaboration across sectors creates conservation impact that none of us could achieve alone.

Take our Protecting Blue Whales and Blue Skies (BWBS) program. NOAA had established voluntary vessel speed reduction (VSR) zones to protect whales, but compliance was low. BWBS brought together California Air Quality Districts, researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory, port authorities, and ship operators to increase participation. The shipping companies understood their operational constraints better than we ever could. NOAA provided the VSR framework and scientific guidance. Researchers gave us the whale behavior data that made the program credible. Together, we created something that protects whales while reducing fuel costs and improving air quality—a solution that emerged from the collaboration, not from any single organization's expertise. What started as a compliance challenge has grown into a partnership with 743 international shipping vessels.

A Humpback whale breaches near a cargo ship. Photo by Adam Ernster Wildlife

Our Climate Resilient Monterey Bay initiative shows collaboration at the largest scale: leading a $71 million effort with 29 partners across the region. This isn't about CMSF managing a massive budget, but about coordinating diverse organizations that each bring specialized expertise to address sea level rise, storm surge, and threats from floods and fires. Universities and community colleges provide the next generation of a climate-focused workforce, local governments contribute regulatory authority and community connections, engineering firms and scientists offer technical solutions, and community organizations ensure that climate adaptation serves everyone equitably. The scale of this collaboration reflects the scale of the climate challenge—no single organization has the resources or expertise to build regional resilience alone.

Our agricultural partnerships tell a similar story. When we started working to reduce 8 million pounds of agricultural plastic waste in Monterey County, we had limited answers. But farmers knew their operational challenges, equipment manufacturers understood technical constraints, processors brought their grower connections, and academic partners provided research methodologies. By combining everyone's knowledge, we are developing practical solutions that we're testing on working farms.

Helping to lead a coalition of 50+ NGOs working on Marine Protected Areas in California has taught us that policy change happens through collective expertise, not individual advocacy. Each organization brings different community connections, scientific specialties, and advocacy strengths. Our role is to help facilitate the science components of those conversations and synthesize diverse perspectives into actionable recommendations for state agencies.

Our Snapshot Day event involves hundreds of community scientists collecting water quality data across 120 waterways because local collaboration combined with scientific protocols produces better monitoring than either approach alone. Municipal partners understand their watershed challenges, volunteers provide data collection capacity, and researchers ensure scientific rigor. The result is comprehensive water quality information that informs targeted conservation action.

What makes these collaborations work isn't what any single organization brings to the table, but how different types of knowledge and experience combine to create new possibilities. Researchers provide scientific rigor, agencies offer regulatory insight, industry partners understand operational realities, NGOs bring community connections, and foundations provide resources and strategic perspective.

Our role has evolved over time. Often we're implementers, taking proven approaches and adapting them to new contexts. Sometimes we're coordinators, bringing diverse groups together around shared challenges. Other times we're connectors, creating space for conversations between groups that don't usually work together. Always, we're learning from our partners about more effective approaches to conservation.

After three decades, we've learned that conservation isn't something we do to, or for, communities and ecosystems—it's something we do with them. The most innovative solutions emerge from these collaborations, not from individual organizational expertise.

If you're working on conservation challenges along coasts or watersheds, we'd love to explore how our work might connect and how we can learn from each other.

CMSF staff gather for a memorable group photo during their 30th anniversary celebration in Big Sur, surrounded by nature and camaraderie.

Robert Mazurek, Executive Director | Robert@californiamsf.org | www.californiamsf.org