Greetings! My name is Sam Cheplick (He/Him) and I am currently a natural resource policy fellow with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Marine Reserves program. I’m based at the ODFW marine resource programs South Beach office in Newport. A little bit of background on Oregon’s five marine reserves. The reserves range from Redfish Rocks on the southern Oregon coast to Cape Falcon on the northern coast, while the three other marine reserves are situated across Lincoln County on the central coast. They were phased in starting in 2012 until 2016 to conserve a variety of marine habitats while minimizing negative impacts to ocean users and coastal communities. Oregon marine reserves are unique in that they are mandated to monitor both the ecological and human dimensions of protecting nearshore ocean ecosystems, without negatively impacting coastal communities. In my role as a fellow, I’m working with ODFW staff to continue monitoring socioeconomic impacts to communities living in proximity to marine reserves along the Oregon coast.

In 2022, a team of academic scientists conducted a legislatively mandated decadal review of marine reserves that aimed to synthesize existing results and provide recommendations to be considered over the next decade. The primary objective of my work focuses on 1) supporting the development of an updated human dimensions monitoring plan, 2) developing tools that can be integrated into an adaptive management framework for monitoring marine reserves; and 3) assessing the economic impacts of nearshore resource management both within and outside marine reserves. What interests me most about this opportunity is the transdisciplinary nature of marine reserves. Approaches in ecology, economics and social science come together to answer broader questions of the role of protecting marine areas that informs management in the face of increasingly variable ocean conditions.