More than $31M is spent each year on monitoring in the southern California Bight (SCB), but most of this effort is focused on site-specific assessments. Time and again, however, resource managers have recognized the need to develop management strategies for the entire SCB in order for their site-specific management to be successful. Unfortunately, attempts to collate data from individual programs to make large-scale assessments have proven difficult. Besides the spatial limitation associated with site-specific monitoring, many of the programs do not measure the same constituents, sample at different frequencies, or use different methods and quality assurance procedures.

The Southern California Coastal Water Research Project (SCCWRP) is helping to address this need by coordinating cooperative regional monitoring efforts. These efforts are conducted primarily by local municipalities that have agreed to work cooperatively toward a regional assessment of coastal condition. In lieu of their ongoing routine monitoring, participants are asked to disperse their sites and use standardized methods throughout the region once every five years and, in this way, help make Bight-wide assessments for little to no increase in cost over their existing program.

The most recent of these efforts is taking place right now and is referred to as Bight’03. The program has three components: Coastal Ecology, Water Quality, and Shoreline Microbiology. The Coastal Ecology component is focused on answering two questions: 1) What is the extent and magnitude of contamination and associated biological effects in the SCB? and 2) What is the mass of pollutants accumulated in the SCB? The first question is being addressed through sampling of more than 400 randomized locations for sediment chemistry, sediment toxicity, infaunal biological communities and bioaccumulation in fish tissues. Sampling is stratified to include five depths in the near coastal zone (including continental shelf, slope, and basins to a depth of 1000m), four embayment habitats (including marinas, ports, bays, and estuaries), and habitats near anthropogenic discharges (such as publicly owned treatment works). The second question addresses the fate of pollutants entering the coastal environment by comparing the amount of material discharged to the SCB with the pool of contaminants residing in three different environmental compartments; the water column, sediments, and tissue of biota. Additional sampling to address this question involves coring and radiodating of sediments (to assess pollutant accumulation rates), measurement of water column pollutants using recently-developed solid phase microextraction technology (that enables measurement of low concentrations), and measurements of pollutants in tissues of midwater fish that comprise the bulk of the biomass in the SCB (and are rarely sampled for tissue analysis).

The second Bight’03 component is Water Quality, which is addressing the question: What is the spatial extent and duration of stormwater plumes in the coastal ocean? Stormwater runoff is known to contain bacteria, viruses, toxic chemicals and nutrients that can affect ocean waters, but little is known about how far offshore these contaminant plumes extend following rain events and how long they last after the rain ends. Two approaches will be used to answer this question. The first is traditional shipboard measures of nutrients, chlorophyll, bacteria, and aquatic toxicity using a grid-based sampling design. These samples are being collected 1, 3, and 5 days following two separate storm events offshore the Tijuana River, Santa Ana/San Gabriel Rivers, Ballona Creek and the Ventura River. The second approach involves the use of remote sensing technologies, such as satellite imaging, high frequency radar, current meter moorings, and radiotelemetered drifters. These new tools provide more frequent and synoptic descriptions of plume extent and will be ground-truthed using the shipboard measurements.

The third Bight’03 component is Shoreline Microbiology. The primary question for this component is: What is the relationship between bacteria concentration in ankle deep water, where most monitoring samples are collected, and the surfzone, where much of the water contact recreation occurs? To answer this question, the study is focused along beaches near storm drains throughout the SCB. Samples are being collected at a gradient of sites extending both upcoast and downcoast of flowing storm drains for distances up to 400 yards during both dry and wet weather.

One of the most unique features of the SCB regional monitoring effort is the collaborative nature in which they are conducted. Sixty-five organizations are participating in at least one of the Bight’03 components, including state and federal regulatory agencies, the discharging agencies they regulate, universities, and environmental advocacy groups. All of these organizations are working together to answer the basic questions resource managers need for developing and assessing bight-wide management strategies. To accomplish this integration, planning documents are developed to guide the study and serve as a foundation for ongoing site-specific monitoring. These documents include field sampling protocols, laboratory quality assurance, and information management. Copies of these planning documents for Bight’03, as well as the assessment reports from the previous regional monitoring efforts in 1994 and 1998, can be found online at www.sccwrp.org.