Coordinating Volunteer Vessels of Opportunity to Collect Oceanographic Data in Kachemak Bay and Lower Cook Inlet.

摘要

Cook Inlet Keeper and the Kachemak Bay Research Reserve will organize a network database of local community volunteers for the purpose of collecting oceanographic data from regional ships of opportunity. An extensive outreach program will be undertaken to identify and construct a database of private and commercial vessels making frequent trips in the Kachemak Bay, lower Cook Inlet and the Gulf of Alaska regions. Future work will be designed to utilize this extensive database to identify volunteer boats for collecting time-series of water quality parameters from transects along Kachemak Bay and extending into lower Cook Inlet. A thermo-salinograph, installed onto a vessel at the Kachemak Bay Research Reserve, will be used to clarify regions for future data collection. These data will also be correlated with existing stationary sensors and volunteer-monitoring projects to expand spatial and temporal knowledge of water quality and mixing patterns and their relationship to the dispersal of larvae and pollutants in the region.