Live from the Mar Monte Hotel in Santa Barbara, Dec. 15. The IPA has just passed by a vote of 3-2, Richards and Kellogg voting no.

Richards, Sutton and Kellogg all had their say, with Baylis passing. Sutton likened the MPAs to wildlife refuges. Richards said he's not against protecting fish, and Kellogg said they are the commisioners and they do what they think is right. Nobody tells them what to do.

Rogers went on to say "nice try" to the legal guys, but he's only afraid of judge's orders, not the threat of a lawsuit. "Bring it on," he said. He also said the there's a difference between passing the closures and implementing them, noting the act says the implementation relies on the availability of funding.

Rogers has ridiculed those who say MPAs don't work -- but he misses the point as he intentionally has done for some time now. The question is how big and what level of protection and what you expect to achieve. He calls for a peer reviewed report that shows MPAs don't work. I don't think he realizes that by allowing surf fishing at Swami's he has completely undercut the work of SAT leader Steven Murray. Go back to school yourself Rogers -- and read Murray's intertidal reserve studies that showed the partial reserves in Crystal Cove and Pismo Beach were a failure -- mainly because of surf fishermen taking available bait in the form of clams and mussels in the case of the Newport reserve and because of lack of enforcement and the introduction of sea otters around Pismo.

3 p.m. A motion has just been carried to pass the IPA as amended with the options they just voted on. Now it's time for Rogers to mount his high horse, quoting Schopenhauer.

The same team does away with the old Doheny MPA. In the case of these "boutique" small MPAs, the SAT advice holds out against State Parks and fishermen benefit a bit, although the loss in the La Jolla is not outweighed in many opinions.

Rogers again teams with Richards and Kellogg to do away with the old Refugio MPA.

They just increased the La Jolla reserve at both ends and moved the Scripps boundary south. Damn.

. "It's looking like the last go-round," said Commissioner Kellogg as options that would give fishermen more opportunity are shot down. Right now they are considering opening the Swami's MPA to surf fishing. Rogers wants to do it, Sutton is against, but just now Rogers once again joins Sutton to seeming dis fishermen, but Baylis steps in this time, having already expressed support for state parks, which wants the surf fishing. He votes against and on the next vote Rogers joins everyone but Sutton and surf fishing remains in place.

Rogers has finally jumped the line on the vote and is going against the state parks and wants to allow commercial fishing for lobster in the Crystal Cove MPA. It's a done deal -- a stakeholder's choice holds and commercial fishing will be allowed. By the way Robert Badham, aka B2 Bob, had his name removed from the MPA

The procedural options have all been agreed on, but the commissioners aren't quite up to speed on the options. Now we're at Laguna and the old persistent kelp issue is butting head to head with the poop pipe in South Laguna. A motion to adopt Option 3 is up, but three straight no votes have shot that down, so cutting the reserve to exclude the pipe. Now it's back to the Department recommendation. Why waste our time?

The EIR has just been certified by a 3-2 vote, with Kellogg and Richards voting no. It's all over except for the shouting (in court) and the details of the options.

President Jim Kellogg is making a plea to wait until the economy turns around. He doesn't want one fisherman to not be able to have the kind of Christmas they are used to by his actions. He also rebuked Sutton's implications of over-politicization by saying "We wouldn't be this far along without the administration trying to ramrod this through before they get out of town.

Commissioner Sutton is the first speaker and he's the first to say he's ready to adopt the IPA despite the fact it falls short of the SAT guidance. He blames it on politics, and not the fact some of the guidelines for habitat were impossible to meet.

The final speaker is up. Let's see what happens.

Paul Lebowitz just gave an emotional statement about personal loss -- the loss of places to kayak fishing and, more importantly, the loss of integrity from being used as a tool in a cynical system that really took place behind closed doors and used stakeholders like him as mere window dressing.

1:45. The last few speakers are up.

.1:15 pm The commission has been eating lunch as testimony continues. A kayaker brought up the biggest tragedy of the South Coast project -- the complete loss of Big Kelp Reef to the paddle fleet. Of course all hook and line anglers are out of luck, but the access and safety of the area's quality fishing to kayakers is irreplaceable. The area was literally the birthplace of modern kayak fishing. RIP. Or is it really over. I'm going to have to sign off now, but the rest of the story will be posted as soon as possible.

"If you adopt (the South Coast project) today, all you are doing is giving a holiday gift to the lawyers," said a U.C. Santa Barbara professor speaking for himself and two other researchers from that institution -- but not for the institution. He also said Point Conception is useless to a South Coast network because currents eliminate connectivity.

Professional seafood harvester Mike McCorkle showed off his certificate of award for serving on the South Coast stakeholder group, but said he's going to throw it away if the IPA and not the proposal he worked on is adopted. "We gave up 30 percent of the California halibut trawl grounds," said McCorkle. "I did it so my friends could keep on working. If proposal 2 does not pass they will be put out of work and I don't know about myself." He noted the supply of fresh seafood will be imperiled. Others have stood up and said they have quit eating seafood altogether in order to protect the ocean.

12:45 p.m. Water quality issues have popped up all during this meeting and if the closures created under the MLPA hold up, the flurry of lawsuits to follow from enviro groups will dwarf any effort fishing groups mount to overturn the process.

12:35 p.m. A recent scientific paper that includes Ray Hilborn as an author showed a 10-percent spillover rate of lobster from a marine reserve. This was presented by an enviro who then went on to say Hilborn believes in the spillover effect. Doubt that kind of broad statement was in the paper, which showed there was a small net effect from one reserve, something that is intuitive. Unanswered is the question of size and spacing.

"Would you leave a big beautiful house in Montecito to move into a hut on State St.?" asked a representative of the spearfishing community clearly delineating the reserve effect and the reason "spillover" is a faulty notion if the habitat inside the reserve is not available in open waters adjacent to the reserve.

12:10 Will the strong arguments re: the flaws in the process and the accompanying implied promise of multiple lawsuits be enough to stop the commission from taking action today? Probably not. It would seem that the money brokers behind the MLPA would rather put their money into protecting their initial investment in the courts rather than funding yet another round of planning. In any other situation, the commissioners would have already adjourned proceedings on the agenda item to take the issue behind closed doors for discussion. That's legal under requirements for public meetings -- allowing boards to protect their interests and those of the state. But there's no jumping in front of this freight train and while a great effort by our representatives in the PSO, it's going to take an even stronger effort in the courts.

Noon. Gordon Robertson of the ASA and PSO requested that the commission not adopt the South Coast closures today, noting the information provided by PSO attorneys and also the recent North Coast project development that saw the science guidelines finally treated as guidelines, not as the mandates used to strongarm the South Coast process.

11:40."The documents are unequivocal" that decision making took place in secret during the BRTF process, essentially "emasculating the process." "The legal issues Mr. Cook and I have raised are significant and should be addressed by the commission" (before moving forward). This again under the questioning of Commissioner Richards.

Another PSO attorney is up, this time addressing the claim of an open and transparent process, noting in particular the activities of the BRTF.

The first attorney's time ran out, but questioning from Comissioner Richards allowed him to point out that statutes in the Marine Managed Area Improvement Act were ignored and could void any regulations created. He also noted the commission has restrictions on what it can do to limit commercial fishing.

An attorney for the PSO is now talking and says the commission is not acting under the MLPA but other authority and urges the commission not to rush.

11:30 A fisherman finally got up -- I wasted a year on meetings, he said, I'm going to waste 60 seconds more -- and pointed out the DFG says fisheries in California are in good shape despite the doomsday scenarios and why are we rushing into this considering the huge state debt that means there will be no enforcement and monitoring.

11:20 Still all enviros, including Bruce Steele, a purse seiner whose wife is a lobbyist for the wetfish (squid,sardine, etc.) industry. Steele's a fisherman, right? Well it has seemed more and more apparent that he has been making deals all along that would support his group of fishermen at the cost of the rest of us. Example, seiners will be able to fish squid in the Farnsworth closure at Catalina. Marlin, tuna and dorado trolling and spearfishing for seabass will also be allowed. Hey, it's all negotiation, right?Let's just keep in mind how badly the regular hook and line and lobster guys have been hit in this process and give them something back as we move on to carving up the resource outside the lines.

Either there are no fishermen in the audience or its just chance, but so far all of the speakers except one diver have been closure advocates.

11 a.m. and a Park Service representative stated the reserves at the Channel Islands are working, with bigger fish and lobster found inside reserve lines. But those areas had big specimens of each before they were closed and now there has been much more effort in the areas left open. It's called reserve effect and it's not all good.

A Chumash representative of the First Nations asked for the overturn of the MLPA process to date because tribes and their cultural heritage did not receive the necessary consideration.

10:35 and Susan Ashcraft is still outlining the various options on the table. Hard to tell if commissioners are paying attention or not. Also hard to figure out why the commission did not address these options earlier, whether procedural or political. One of the biggest problems that arises from the commission and BRTF processes is the fact the voting members do most of their public interaction AFTER the public comment period. With the comment still to come from the crowd, it might be late in the afternoon before we get to any vote.

Down to business at 10:20 a.m., Becky Oda is outlining the past history of the commission's involvement in the South Coast MLPA Initiative project, noting that only the IPA designed by the BRTF is under consideration. As she is noting just now, this commission actually has many more decisions to make in the project area than those previous, including 5 options in Laguna regarding boundaries and allowing surf fishing with hook and line in the Swami's MPA, for example. In all the commissioners must make 19 decisions. Almost certainly those decisions have been made by DFG and State Parks staff as directed by the commissioners. That is, the decisions are made, but the process must be upheld.

Preliminary rounds>
I'm sitting in the heart of the beast. With no media facility put together, I chose a back section of chairs for my gear and when I came back it was surrounded by folks in blue shirts that state "I Love MPAs."

There are some tense people here as befits a serious moment like this. After all, a decision to take away access to a public resource to the number one user group is definitely serious business. It was a bit surprising, however, that Commissioner Dan Richards snappishly demanded that his photo not be taken during the proceedings. Meanwhile President Jim Kellogg and Richard Rogers were in a heated discussion.

Way back when during the time Bill Beebe was writing about the Marine Life Management Act that preceded this MLPA fiasco, the big buzz was that this process would eliminate politics from fisheries management in California, instead replacing it with the best available science.

It's hard to imagine a process more politically charged than this one has been and the reality of experience has shown that the best available science is the one you can get your favorite politician to endorse. The meeting is about to start.

9:35 Finally got underway
Dan Wohlford of the Coastside Fishing Club is using the general public comment period to ask the commission to place the Central Coast MPAs on a future agenda in order to reconsider them based on the fact there is no funding.

Paul Weakland is up and started out on the right path -- why, indeed, haven't harvestable populations of abalone be reopened to take. Then he wandered off into a conspiracy theory

Something interesting popped up. A Los Osos resident said the prison upstream of the reserve in Morro Bay was successfully prosecuted for dumping chlorine and waste that fed into the reserve.

Mel de la Motte is presenting a petition from Central Coast fishermen asking that the commission revisit that area's closures.

A local wants the commission to propose a ban on plastic fishing line, instead requiring the use of biodegradable line.

SoCal's green ab population is back says the current speaker and that the refuges to be created today would provide the necessary protection.