Bay RMP Water Monitoring Cruise: August-September 2015

San Francisco Bay is one of the best-monitored estuaries in the world, thanks to the Regional Monitoring Program for Water Quality, which tracks pollutant impacts and trends in the Bay. The RMP, which began in 1993 and is still going strong, is a successful partnership of scientists, government, municipalities, and industry to understand and improve the health of the Bay.

 

On August 26, 2015, the RMP will begin its 23rd year of water quality sampling in the San Francisco Bay. Samples will be collected from across the whole Bay: from Lower South Bay to the Delta to just outside the Golden Gate Bridge. This year the RMP is partnering with the U.S. Geological Survey to collect the samples from their research vessel RV Turning Tide.  

 

The samples will be analyzed for hundreds of chemicals: trace metals, conventional water quality parameters, toxicity, and 76 contaminants regulated under the California Toxics Rule. Additional samples will be collected and contributed to a peer-reviewed study on contaminants of emerging concern (bisphenols) by Southern Illinois University, one of the RMP’s many collaborating institutions. The resulting data will contribute to a better understanding of the long-term trends and distribution of contaminants in the Bay, and inform management actions to improve the health of the Bay.

 

Results from the RMP Water Cruise will be published in the Pulse of the Bay reports and will be available for download through SFEI’s CD3 data visualization tool. Data from this sampling effort will be available by Fall 2016. 

 

We are excited to continue expanding this valuable long-term water quality data set for the Bay!