Salish Sea Monitoring Program
The Loon Foundation has been participating in the Salish Sea Marine Survival Program in partnership with the Pacific Salmon Foundation since 2005. Together teams throughout the Salish Sea gather oceanographic data in the Malaspina Strait, in an effort to understand fluctuation in returns of various salmonid species within the shared waters of British Columbia and Washington.
We are currently one of 8 community-led teams working synchronously in locations across the Strait of Georgia. Teams use the identical sampling protocols at the same times of year in different locations, resulting in valuable spatial and temporal data that will help model the physical, chemical, and biological changes in the Strait of Georgia.
Citizen science volunteers working with the Lagoon Society focus on measurements of lower food chain organisms such as phytoplankton and zooplankton, as well as abiotic factors known to affect those organisms such as nutrient availability, in order to understand bottom-up effects on salmonid population health. Each year, our volunteers leave Secret Cove aboard the M/V Marina III with retired prawn fisherman, Andre Alaire, to sample at 5 different stations – this year we went out a total of 22 times. This initiative has been an amazing opportunity for local residents to become part of a network, collecting data that has already been utilized and cited by major universities and by DFO.
