Travelers from far and wide come to California’s central coast each year to view the region’s mesmerizing scenery and diverse wildlife. One of the main stopovers for travelers is Moss Landing located in the middle of the Monterey Bay coastline.

As this year’s Sea Otter Awareness Week kicked off at the end of September, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) released its 2014 southern sea otter population report.

The Council will establish a set of hard caps limiting the number of high priority protected species that can be caught in drift gillnets during a single fishing season. These species include fin, humpback and sperm whales; and leatherback, loggerhead, olive ridley and green turtles. If the fishery exceeds these new caps, it will be closed for the remainder of the fishing season – a definite incentive for fisheries to cut back on bycatch.

In October 2010, two endangered sperm whales off the coast of San Diego made national headlines when they became entangled in a large drift gillnet used to catch fish.