Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary

[Robert Schmieder] When we got to the bottom, I turned to my buddy and I went – Which is to say, “Do you believe what you’re seeing?” And that’s the way we felt. We just couldn’t believe it. It was spectacular. [Narrator] Cordell Bank lay beneath the surface, unknown for millennia, while hundreds of mariners unsuspectingly passed over its uppermost pinnacles. The famed George Davidson had an up-and-coming hydrographer by the name of Edward Cordell who in the mid-1800s had assisted Henry Stellwagen in the discovery of a bank outside of Boston Harbor, now designated as Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. After gaining notoriety as an accomplished hydrographer, Davidson enlisted Cordell to search and conduct further surveys of the shoal west of Point Reyes, California, originally discovered by Davidson in 1853. Following birds and marine mammals, he located the shoal in 1869, determining the overall contours of this hidden biological oasis.

01:21 - The location and general contours were all that was known about Cordell Bank until a group of intrepid explorers’ efforts, driven by raw curiosity, gave rise to the unimaginable discovery of what rose from the bottom 20 miles off Point Reyes, waiting to be discovered. [Schmieder] So I unrolled a chart, and I looked at it, to the north and slightly west of the Farallones I saw this place in darker color and it was labeled “Cordell Bank.” Simple curiosity, I started asking, well, what do we know about Cordell Bank? Nobody knew anything. So the reaction in my part was reflexive. We have to go there and find out. [News announcer] In teams of twos and threes the divers splash into the ocean. They want to obtain a representative collection of the species that live there.

02:19 - A chance to dive to this place that is so worthy of federal protection. [Schmieder] I demurred for I think about two years. I said we need to do more work to increase the list of species. The sanctuary programs division of NOAA asked would it be appropriate to nominate Cordell Bank to be a sanctuary and then at the end of the roughly two years, of course my answer was absolutely yes. [News announcer] A bank of data has been gathered here thanks mainly to the efforts of Robert Schmieder, who now awaits federal government action, hoping marine sanctuary designation will be conferred to the Bay Area’s underwater mountain.

03:03 - [Narrator] The understanding generated by Schmieder and his team at Cordell Expeditions over ten years of documentation illuminated the need for protection of Cordell Bank. NOAA announced the designation of Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary in May 1989. The bank sits at the edge of the continental shelf and rises abruptly from the soft sediments of the shelf to within 115 feet of the ocean surface. Years of research, education, resource protection, and community engagement led to the sanctuary expansion in June 2015. This added nearly 900 square miles of critically important deep-water habitats surrounding the bank.

03:51 - The prevailing offshore near-surface California Current flows southward towards the equator and the upwelling of nutrient-rich deep ocean water supports the sanctuary’s dense biological community of fish, invertebrates, marine mammals, and seabirds. July 2019 marked the 30th anniversary of the designation of this biodiversity hotspot as a national marine sanctuary. [Scientist] Wow. This really is something. [Jenny Stock] It really was when we started getting some of the high- resolution imagery, the video footage, that I started realizing what an amazing place it was and it seemed to be untouched by humans. [Tessa Hill] The sanctuary is important to me for a variety of different reasons. One is that is protects this really interesting and important and also pretty unexplored habitat.

04:44 - The ocean is changing very fast and one of the things the sanctuary does is protects areas that we’re still trying to understand. We know they’re important and we want to know more and that’s certainly the case for Cordell Bank. [Schmieder] The public has a chance to see something that they couldn’t see. I had to go to a lot of work to see this and it actually resulted in something that a member of the general public can appreciate through exhibits, through website, and so on. [Hill] In particular when I think about 30 years from now, I think about Cordell Bank as being a place that was protected and carefully managed by stakeholders during a time when the ocean was changing a lot.

05:29 - And so it becomes more and more important as we go forward in the future. [Stock] One of the things that I’ve loved about this place is that just of our coast we have in this incredible slice of biodiversity that is really hard to match in other parts of the world from the abundance of life and the diversity of species, the fact that species travel from all around the Pacific to come eat here, it’s really just this hot spot. And I really hope that as we move forward 30 years from now that it stays as biodiverse and as exciting and abundant as it is right now. [Caryl Hart] I can’t think of anything more important right now in today’s world than to let people know the importance of areas like this in the oceans. [John Largier] It’s really an interesting place to be because we have so many different perspectives on the sanctuary yet gathered around this common purpose of making the sanctuary as good as it can be.

06:29 - [Dan Howard] Cordell Bank is due west of us about six miles completely offshore, and so if you look right out there, this is your national marine sanctuary. [Schmieder] Whenever I get a chance to mention Cordell Bank it’s with a lot of pride and appreciation to the sanctuary programs division of NOAA and the staff of NOAA, and the staff that has shepherded Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary since it was established in just a wonderful exemplary fashion. .