After years of discussions about establishing marine reserves in Oregon, many North Coast residents still question the need for them.

At a marine reserves “Listening and Learning” forum in Warrenton Friday, about 30 people heard details on what scientists know and don’t know about Oregon’s territorial sea and the potential benefits of marine reserves.

They also got the state’s working definition of marine reserves: Areas within the state’s 950 square miles of territorial sea that would be set aside for scientific study and “protected from all extractive activities, including the removal or disturbance of living and non-living marine resources.”

The idea is to use the reserves as a tool to help protect and study biodiversity in the nearshore marine ecosystem.

Friday’s meeting was part of a two-week tour of the coast by Oregon State University’s Oregon Sea Grant program, the official public outreach provider on marine reserves for the Oregon Ocean Policy Advisory Council (OPAC).

OPAC asked Sea Grant to distribute objective information and collect input on Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s proposal to establish a network of marine reserves off Oregon’s coast.

“We’re not here to talk you into or out of marine reserves,” said Ginny Goblirsch, coordinator of the Sea Grant Outreach Project.

Many North Coast fishermen and community leaders worry about the impact of additional ocean closures on the local economy. Existing fishing restrictions have already cut into the size and success of local fishing fleets and fish processing facilities.

Dick Hellberg, a commercial fisherman and Warrenton city commissioner, said the government has broken promises to the fishing fleets as it continues to ratchet up fishing restrictions.

“Every agreement that has been made with people on the coast has been broken,” he said. He said the marine reserves together with wave energy parks will leave fishermen without enough grounds to stay in business.

Gary Wintersteen, a Warrenton commercial fisherman, said he’s more than “concerned” about the impacts.

“I’m gonna lose a job,” he said. “We’ve got hundreds of square miles shut down already.”

But Cannon Beach City Councilor Jerome Arnold said he sees a need for “adaptive management” to protect against a growing population and growing impacts on the ocean.

“We’ve got to think of not just our great-great grandchildren, but our great great great-grandchildren,” he said.

Also in the audience were OPAC members Scott McMullin and Jim Bergeron of Astoria and state Rep. Debbie Boone, D-Cannon Beach.

Boone said she’s listening to all the details on marine reserves to decide if they are needed and will do more good than harm.

“I don’t want to do anything that would put people out of work or harm our culture on the coast, which has been struggling for so many years,” she said.

Sea Grant leaders conceded there is a lot scientists don’t know about Oregon’s oceans. And, they said, many details of the planned marine reserves haven’t been decided, including their size, number, location and the method and money the state will use to monitor and enforce them.

Kulongoski has asked OPAC to make recommendations on less than 10 marine reserves by November so he can ask the state Legislature for money to fund them during the next session. He also said they should be large enough to provide an ecological benefit but small enough to avoid economic and social impacts such as loss of fishing opportunity.

“Because of the governor’s instructions, they’re going to have to be small,” said Selina Heppell, an associate professor from OSU’s fisheries and wildlife department.

The reserves could act as “insurance” against species declines in the ocean, said Heppell. In other parts of the world, they have offered refuge for bigger, older female fish that produce exponentially more larvae than younger, smaller fish. But to find the unique attributes of Oregon’s reserves, they would need to be monitored over time.

“We’ve got to acknowledge that we probably can’t predict what’s going to happen in the reserves off this coast,” she said.

Patty Burke, ODFW’s marine resources program manager, urged people gathered in Warrenton to think of marine reserves as “ecosystem management” and “research” rather than fisheries management.

Scientists debate whether marine reserves are effective for fishery enhancement.

“It’s not a panacea for all species,” Burke said. “For most rockfish species it’s not going to help them,” because they move around so much. The reserves can’t overlap with wave energy parks, she said, and they aren’t going to solve global warming problems.

Marine reserve site nominations are scheduled to begin in April. While OPAC will take nominations from the public and make recommendations to Kulongoski on how to implement the reserves, Burke said it will be state agencies that will ultimately designate the sites.

A lack of funding for research has left 95 percent of the state’s ocean habitats unmapped, she said. State scientists have done stock assessments on just eight out of 43 fish species and found six of them to be healthy (canary and yelloweye rockfish populations have been labeled “overfished”).

“Ocean users know more about ocean habitat than we do,” she said. “We’re operating in a significant information deficit.”

Setting fishery restrictions is “really not exciting when you don’t have the information you need,” she said.

A marine reserve would show scientists “what an undisturbed area looks like,” said Burke. And they would be a new “precautionary measure” for ocean protections, which already include conservative fishing area closures and catch limits.

The state has set ocean areas from 700 fathoms to 200 miles off-limits to bottom trawlers, but there aren’t any areas where all fishing is banned for habitat protection, she said, with the exception of Whale Cove Habitat Refuge in Depoe Bay.