| Last year's Snapshot Day on May 17 was the largest simultaneous water quality monitoring effort ever to occur in California. |
Take 679 volunteers and simultaneously send them to 575 sites along California's coastline to test water quality, and you have a snapshot of the health of the rivers and streams flowing into the state's coastal waters on that day. Do this one-day guerrilla monitoring every year and trends begin to emerge that can help coastal resource managers make decisions to protect and improve coastal waters.
For the fifth year in a row, Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary is helping to lead such a massive monitoring effort. Last year's Snapshot Day on May 17, the first to include the whole state, was the largest simultaneous water quality monitoring effort ever to occur in California.
"It's a lot of work, but it's doable," says Bridget Hoover, coordinator of the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Citizen Monitoring Network. "In the face of state and local budget cuts, these citizen efforts and our support of them are becoming increasingly important."
Snapshot Day data have been used to support grant proposals, target restoration projects, and encourage collaboration among the state's numerous monitoring programs.
Finding Sanctuary
Snapshot Day began in May 2000 as a sanctuary-wide event. Each May since then, the sanctuary has partnered with the Citizen Watershed Monitoring Network, Coastal Watershed Council, California Coastal Commission, and the Ocean Conservancy to do the one-day monitoring event along the 276 miles of coastline within the sanctuary's borders.
Originally designed to raise public awareness about water quality issues in the sanctuary, the collected data also became a valuable management tool, says Rachel Saunders, community and public relations coordinator at the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
During that first year, 120 volunteers took field measurements of temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, and conductivity, and collected water samples for laboratory analysis of nutrients and bacteria levels. The results showed overall water quality in many of the sanctuary's watersheds to be very good. The data, however, did indicate some problem areas.
High levels of (Escherichia) coliform bacteria, indicating waters unsafe for contact, were found at 18 sampling sites, and high levels of nitrates or phosphates, which can have negative impacts on aquatic life, were found at 16 sites.
Snapshot Day is the only time the majority of sites are ever monitored.
"While this was a great outreach tool, people were more interested in the actual data," Saunders says. "Each year since then we have enhanced the quality of data by developing really good protocols and quality assurance."
Quality and Quantity
All volunteers who participate in Snapshot Day go through a training program to familiarize them with monitoring protocols, sampling equipment, data sheets, and safety measures. At the trainings, the equipment that will be used is calibrated so the data can be accurately compared.
The standardized protocols used by the volunteers were defined in the Snapshot Day Quality Assurance Project Plan and Monitoring Plan, which was developed by the coordination team of Hoover, Ross Clark of the California Coastal Commission, and Tamara Doan of the Coastal Watershed Council.
The 2003 event was modeled after the process the team developed for the first three Snapshot Days. This model includes gathering volunteers into "hubs" throughout the sanctuary, where coordinators go over last-minute details and distribute equipment.
Not only does this make logistics easier, Hoover says, but it "makes the volunteers feel more involved and helps them see the big picture when they come together as a group."
The volunteers form teams that fill out the data sheets and enter the data into a centralized database. The data are analyzed and verified before a report is produced. "It's always my goal to have the previous year's report out before the next event," Hoover says. "That's one of the downfalls—how long it takes to get the information out."
Branching Out
Last year the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Foundation received funding from the State Water Resources Control Board and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to expand the program to include the entire California coastline. Coordinators were hired and trained to manage the event in each of eight regions.
While coordinators were responsible for finding, organizing, and training the volunteers for their area, they were supported by numerous state and local agencies, as well as 69 individual watershed and citizen monitoring groups that participated in the event.
As a result, almost 700 volunteers sampled creeks, streams, estuaries, rivers, bays, and the ocean from the Oregon border to Mexico, and 33 areas of concern were identified as priorities for further investigation.
Decisions, Decisions
Even with the success of last year's Snapshot Day, funding for 2004 fell short. The sanctuary-wide Snapshot Day will follow the same protocols, and volunteers who participated across the state last year will be encouraged to participate on May 1. However, coordinators were not hired, and no statewide report will be written. "It's unfortunate," Hoover says.
Saunders points out, though, that about $15,000 received from the EPA last year was used to purchase monitoring equipment, which was distributed to related nonprofit organizations to conduct year-round monitoring.
Last year's event, Hoover says, "kick started monitoring programs throughout the coast, which was really neat to be able to do."
With five years of data to build on, Saunders notes that, in addition to encouraging citizen stewardship of local waters and watersheds, Snapshot Day is providing the sanctuary with information that may help evaluate the success of restoration, cleanup, and pollution prevention measures.
Hoover adds, "You can't make good decisions with information based on one day, but you can when you're looking over the years and are seeing trends. We are now able to target our efforts in those areas to figure out what's going on."
To read the coastwide Snapshot Day report, point your browser to www.coastal.ca.gov/publiced/pendx.html. For more information on Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary's Snapshot Day, go to http://montereybay.noaa.gov. You also may contact Bridget Hoover at (831) 883-9303, or bhoover@monitoringnetwork.org. Rachel Saunders can be contacted at (831) 647-4237, or Rachel.Saunders@noaa.gov.
