Moro Cojo Slough State Marine Reserve is a small protected marine area on California’s central coast near Monterey Bay, established in September 2007 as part of the first phase of a statewide network under the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative. Covering 0.46 square miles of waters within Moro Cojo Slough, it protects all marine life and prohibits fishing or any take of living marine resources. The reserve preserves rare brackish estuarine habitat, including mudflats, tidal creeks, and channels, and supports threatened species, estuary-dependent plants and animals, migratory shorebirds, and marine mammals and fish within a broader protected wetland and research landscape near Moss Landing.