As the California Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) initiative continues to design and establish new marine protected areas in California, and with a view to MLPA work soon to begin in southern California, we have embarked on a research effort to better understand the potential impacts of marine protection to private coastal users. Accurate measures of the value of private use of coastal resources have been diffi cult to estimate. As a result, the Marine Life Protection Act has never incorporated spatially resolved, quantitative data on non-consumptive private coastal uses and non-commercial recreational fishing into its MPA design process. Because of the large number of southern Californians that live within an hour of the coast and make frequent use of its resources, we believe that it will be critical to rigorously quantify private coastal and marine uses, and thus the potential impacts of marine protection on these uses. The results of our workshop will also help guide current research that includes the use of agency level data on beach and park attendance, parking data, commercial passenger fishing vessel data, etc.