This "condition report" provides a summary of resources in the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary (sanctuary)1, pressures on those resources, current conditions and trends, and management responses to the pressures that threaten the integrity of sanctuary resources. Specifically, the document includes information on the status and trends of water quality, habitat, living resources and maritime archaeological resources, and the human activities that affect them. It presents responses to a set of questions posed to all sanctuaries (Appendix A). Resource status of Thunder Bay is rated on a scale from good to poor, and the timelines used for comparison vary from topic to topic. Trends in the status of resources are also reported, and are generally based on observed changes in status over the past five years, unless otherwise specified.

This report documents the data and methods of estimation used in estimating the economic impact of commercial fishing catch from all four National Marine Sanctuaries in California on local county economies in terms of harvest revenue received by fishermen and the associated economic impacts, including multiplier impacts, on total output, value added, income and the number of full- and part-time jobs.

The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary is the largest marine protected area in the United States, spanning nearly 400 miles of the California coastline and encompassing over 5,300 square miles.

A number of studies have shown that mobile, bottom-contact fishing gear (such as otter trawls) can alter seafloor habitats and associated biota. Considerably less is known about the recovery of these resources following such disturbances, though this information is critical for successful management. In part, this paucity of information can be attributed to the lack of access to adequate control sites - areas of the seafloor that are closed to fishing activity. Recent closures along the coast of central California provide an excellent opportunity to track the recovery of historically trawled areas and to compare recovery rates to adjacent areas that continue to be trawled.

The Monitor National Marine Sanctuary (MNMS) was the nation's first sanctuary, originally established in 1975 to protect the famous civil war ironclad shipwreck, the USS Monitor. Since 2008, sanctuary sponsored archeological research has branched out to include historically significant U-boats and World War II shipwrecks within the larger Graveyard of the Atlantic off the coast of North Carolina. These shipwrecks are not only important for their cultural value, but also as habitat for a wide diversity of fishes, invertebrates and algal species. Additionally, due to their unique location within an important area for biological productivity, the sanctuary and other culturally valuable shipwrecks within the Graveyard of the Atlantic are potential sites for examining community change.

Ambient noise in the ocean is a topic that has been widely studied since the 1940s. Over the last 25 years the effects of noise on marine organisms has become a concern. The primary issue has been the potential of noise to adversely affect marine mammals. The Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary (SBNMS) and upper estuary of the St. Lawrence River are sites where the degradation of habitat due to increasing noise levels is a concern because they are feeding grounds and summer havens for numerous species of marine mammals. In an effort to provide information for better sanctuary management this report describes the current understanding of ambient noise and existing levels of ambient noise and its relationship to marine mammals in the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary and the designated marine park area of the Upper St. Lawrence River Estuary.

This report outlines the potential impacts of coastal protection structures on the resources of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. At least 15 miles of the Sanctuary's 300-mile shoreline are currently armored with seawalls and riprap revetments. Most of these coastal protection structures are placed above the mean high tide line, the official boundary of the Sanctuary, yet some influences of armoring impinge on the marine realm and on recreational use. In addition, continued sea level rise and accompanying coastal retreat will force many of these structures below the high tide line over time. The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary staff has recognized the significance of coastal armoring, identifying it as a critical issue in the Coastal Armoring Action Plan of the draft Joint Management Plan.

This is a new release of the original 1961 edition.

The vital sign selection process of the NPS Inventory and Monitoring Program (I&M) identified fish, macroinvertebrates, and physical habitat characteristics as a critical need for the parks of the National Capital Region Network (NCRN). In 2005, the National Capital Region Inventory and Monitoring Network (NCRN) initiated a long-term water quality and quantity monitoring program, funded in part by the National Park Service Water Resources Division. The Biological monitoring portion of the program is carried out every 6 years at 37 sites within 10 of the NCRN parks. The data collected using this protocol will provide much needed baseline information on the stream biological resources in the NCRN, particularly in terms of community structure and composition. The information will also be used to determine long term trends in community composition, as well as trends in the abundance and distribution of individual species.