Depth bands are ecological, not evenly spaced — they mark the surf zone, the band bull kelp actually occupies, and the inner shelf the reserve protects. Vertical scale is non-linear: the water column is shown at full scale and the coastal hills are compressed (land ×0.55 power), or 300 m of Cape Foulweather would flatten an 18 m reserve to a sheet. Seafloor provenance: 99% of this frame comes from GMRT's high-resolution multibeam sounding compilation at ~43 m per cell; the rest is interpolated from a coarser background grid. Depths are relative to approximately mean sea level with no tidal reduction — on a shore with a 2–3 m tidal range the waterline on these flats is datum-dependent, and the sea stacks the grid cannot resolve (Gull Rock, Otter Rock) read as shoals here while standing above water in fact.

Heat stress is NOAA Coral Reef Watch's global 5 km product — built for coral but the same marine-heatwave signal that stresses a kelp coast. Current is the ~25 km geostrophic field from altimetry: it does not resolve surf-zone or tidal flow, which is the water this reserve actually feels.