The Southern California Bight Regional Monitoring Program is an ongoing marine monitoring collaboration that examines how human activities have affected the ecological health of more than 1,500 square miles of Southern California’s coastal waters. The sixth cycle of the program – known as Bight ’18 because field sampling commenced in 2018 – spans five major study elements examining different facets of coastal ecosystem health: Sediment Quality, Ocean Acidification, Harmful Algal Blooms, Trash, and Microbiology. SCCWRP, as facilitator of the Bight program, manages all of the program’s data sets and analysis tools using the ArcGIS Open Data Portal. These resources are publicly accessible via the links below.
Bight ’18 Sediment Quality
The Bight ’18 Sediment Quality element (previously known as the Contaminant Impact Assessment and the Coastal Ecology Synthesis element) examines the ecosystem impacts of Bight sediment contamination across time and space using five main lines of evidence: sediment toxicity, sediment chemistry, benthic infauna condition, megabenthic invertebrate and demersal fish condition, and contaminant bioaccumulation.
Sediment Toxicity
Sediment toxicity is a component of the sediment quality triad that assesses the quality of Bight sediment by measuring survival and development of organisms exposed to sediment in a lab.
Sediment Chemistry
Sediment chemistry is a component of the sediment quality triad that assesses the quality of Bight sediment by quantifying concentrations of specific chemical contaminants.
Benthic Infauna
Benthic infauna is a component of the sediment quality triad that evaluates abundance and diversity of sediment-dwelling organisms at the sampling site. These organisms are a focal point because they are directly associated with the sediment where most toxics accumulate, they have limited mobility to escape stressors, and they display a wide range of physiological responses and tolerances to different types of stressors.
Demersal Fishes and Megabenthic Invertebrates
The condition of demersal fishes and megabenthic invertebrates is a line of evidence that adds to the sediment quality assessment narrative by using community and population attributes, fish size, anomalies, and temporal trends as indicators of ecological impacts from sediment contamination across different habitats on a regional scale.
Contaminant Bioaccumulation – Sport Fish
Sport fish bioaccumulation is a line of evidence that adds to the sediment quality assessment narrative by characterizing the current extent and magnitude of bioaccumulation of contaminants in sport fish in the Southern California Bight. Bioaccumulation is the process by which sediment-associated contaminants pass through marine food webs from prey to predator.
Data set coming soon
Bight ’18 Ocean Acidification
The Ocean Acidification element (known as the Water Quality element in previous Bight cycles) tracks how Bight seawater chemistry is changing as a result of ocean acidification and the related phenomenon of hypoxia. For the first time, the program is documenting the relationship between these chemical changes and effects on vulnerable, shell-forming organisms.
Data set coming soon
Bight ’18 Harmful Algal Blooms
The Harmful Algal Blooms element examines how toxins created by some types of blooms can be transported through waterways and linger in seafloor sediment, where they can potentially impact the health of marine animals for months, including shellfish consumed by humans.
Data set coming soon
Bight ’18 Trash
The Trash element tracks the extent to which trash has spread across aquatic environments on land and at sea, and the types and abundance of trash in these settings. Standardized trash-surveying methodologies also are being developed for watersheds via this study.
Data set coming soon
Bight ’18 Microbiology
The Microbiology element examines the relevance and reliability of using coliphage viruses to track microbial water quality at Southern California beaches, and how coliphage compares to Enterooccocus as an indicator of microbial contamination.
Data set coming soon