Download marine phytoplankton monitoring in central puget sound

MARINE PHYTOPLANKTON MONITORING IN CENTRAL PUGET SOUND
Kim Stark1 and Gabriela Hannach2
1
King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks, Seattle, WA
2
Environmental Lab, King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks, Seattle, WA
The King County Marine and Sediment Assessment Group manages a long-term marine
monitoring program designed to assess water quality in the Central Puget Sound Basin. Since
1995, data are collected monthly for physical, chemical, and biological (chlorophyll a)
parameters at various locations and depths throughout the Puget Sound Central Basin. The recent
addition of a long-term phytoplankton species component to this program was deemed critical in
order to predict how changes in climate and other regional stressors will impact the Sounds’s
trophic structure.
The goals of the phytoplankton monitoring component are 1) to assess relative abundance of
major phytoplankton taxa during the bloom season, 2) to document the timing of seasonal shifts
in major taxa, 3) to investigate relationships between physical/chemical parameters and species
relative abundance, and 3) to detect long-term changes in community composition.
In its second year, the program is limited to three locations within the Central Basin: Point
Jefferson and East Passage are long-term ambient monitoring stations representing open north
and south areas of the Puget Sound Central Basin. Quartermaster Harbor is a shallow, protected
embayment with poor tidal flushing; a telemetered mooring has been deployed to provide high
frequency water quality data from this site. Our long-term goal is to expand the phytoplankton
monitoring program and build an extensive database that could help evaluate the effects of
environmental and anthropogenic changes on the Puget Sound food web. This dataset will also
be a valuable resource for detecting the occurrence and environmental conditions that lead to
blooms of HAB species in Puget Sound.