California’s New Chumash Marine Sanctuary Protects Key Species

Damp chilly seeped into my bones because the solar disappeared over Estero Bluffs State Park, close to the city of Cayucos, California. I picked my method throughout tide swimming pools, holding a watch out for octopuses hiding between rocks. I used to be on a foraging tour with the group Kelpful, studying to gather and put together seaweed, simply because the Chumash and Salinean Individuals who first inhabited these lands did for 1000’s of years.

For the previous decade, a number of Indigenous teams throughout the state have been working to create a protected zone alongside this a part of California’s Central Coast. The thought was first proposed in 2015 by Chief Fred Collins of the Northern Chumash Tribal Council and saved alive by his daughter, Violet Sage Walker—now the council’s chairperson—after he died in 2021. “My father believed we should do higher for Mom Earth, the animals, and one another,” Walker instructed me. “It’s an honor to hold his legacy ahead.”

Final September, the Biden administration designated some 4,500 sq. miles of coastal waters, stretching from San Luis Obispo to the Gaviota Coast of Santa Barbara county, because the nation’s first marine sanctuary that’s comanaged by Indigenous peoples. The Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary protects seashores and shorelines, and in addition extends 60 miles into the Pacific Ocean, safeguarding a wide range of flora, like dense kelp forests, and fauna, together with leopard and horn sharks, blue whales, and black abalone. Simply as necessary, it acknowledges “tribal burial grounds, ceremonial websites, and spiritually important locations,” Walker mentioned.

Indigenous-led excursions of the sanctuary are coming quickly. Within the meantime, vacationers can go whale-watching with Best Day Ever Boat Adventures or lease a kayak, like I did, from Avila Beach Paddlesports.

To find out about Chumash life, a great first cease is the Santa Ynez Chumash Museum & Cultural Center, which opened final 12 months. Guests enter by way of a big ‘Ap, a conventional dome-shaped home, which has iron doorways engraved with pictographs and handles constructed from clapper sticks (a musical instrument utilized in songs and ceremonies). Guests also can wander by way of a 3.5-acre backyard that has native vegetation like dogbane and yerba mansa in addition to displays about Chumash basketry, redwood canoes, and different traditions. 

The museum’s location can also be important: it faces Level Conception, a rugged headland to the west that the Chumash name Humqaq, the place their ancestors left the bodily world to enter the spirit realm. “For my father, our ancestors, and elders who’ve handed,” Walker mentioned, “they might be most excited understanding that space can be endlessly protected.”

A model of this story first appeared within the February 2025 situation of Journey + Leisure underneath the headline “Sacred Waters.”