Buzzards Bay Coalition publishes nearly 30 years of water quality data

Anastasia E. Lennon Standard Times 

Published Mar 8, 2021 

Nearly 30 years after beginning its water monitoring program, Buzzards Bay Coalition published the first 27 years of its monitoring data in an international scientific journal.

Coalition staff say the paper, published Friday in Scientific Data, will improve access to information for researchers around the world who may use the data to find new insights into protecting Buzzards Bay or other coastal waterways. 

“It’s gratifying to see the Baywatchers data published, and it’s exciting to think about how it may inspire new studies,” said Rachel Jakuba, science director of the coalition and the lead author of the journal article.

Jakuba said that while their data has already been publicly available, publishing information about the data and its collection methods in an international journal will make it more accessible to scientists.

"Making our entire dataset available through peer-reviewed publication is an important step and I’m indebted to the many scientists, citizens, and funders who got us to this milestone," said Mark Rasmussen, president of the coalition, in a statement.

With nearly 90,000 rows of data in the spreadsheet spanning 27 years, researchers can tell many stories and gain new understandings of bay health. 

Each row represents a single sample, which serves as a snapshot in time of the temperature, water clarity and salinity for that day and specific location.

The big picture 

The thousands of snapshots taken together, though, tell bigger stories about the health of the bay and how it has changed over time, sometimes in response to infrastructure changes or as a result of climate change. 

For example, when New Bedford upgraded its sewer system to keep millions of gallons of wastewater from flowing into the harbor, the nitrogen levels in the water improved — a change reflected in the water data, Jakuba said. 

Similarly, when Wareham upgraded its wastewater treatment facility in the early 2000s, the nitrogen levels in the Agawam River also improved, she said. 

Though the data and information about the program were published in a scientific journal, the work under the Baywatchers Monitoring Program, which started in 1992, has not been exclusive to scientists. More than 1,500 trained residents have collected samples along the coast from Westport to Woods Hole and sent them to the Marine Biological Laboratory and the Woodwell Climate Research Center.

Coalition staff and the citizen scientists collect samples at more than 200 stations each summer from May through September. According to the journal article, samples average 712 to more than 2,500 per year, depending on the sampling category. 

More:Researchers from WHOI, Buzzards Bay Coalition track water changes

The information volunteers capture has been used by local, state and federal officials to inform and establish regulations to protect water quality, and track pollution reduction as a result of those rules. 

Baywatchers' data influence policy

"Baywatchers data directly influence policy by documenting impaired waters, making the public aware of long-term water quality trends, and importantly, documenting how water quality improves when communities upgrade water infrastructure, like fixing antiquated wastewater treatment plants," said Christopher Neill, a Woodwell Center senior scientist and long-time collaborator on the project, in a statement.

"They also show the Bay's waters are warming rapidly," he said.

Jakuba confirmed the data show a "significant" increase in water temperatures across Buzzards Bay, which she thinks is related to a concurrent increase in algae.

According to the coalition, the greatest threat to the health of the bay is nitrogen pollution, the most common sources of which are private septic systems and "underperforming" wastewater treatment plants. Nitrogen pollution promotes algae growth, eliminates the eelgrass that provides fish and shellfish habitat, and can kill fish and shellfish directly by reducing dissolved oxygen levels.

In the 1980s, declining water quality in Buzzard's Bay prompted the program. This May, the coalition will celebrate 30 years of collecting data from the bay and parts of Vineyard Sound. 

According to the coalition, Baywatchers is one of the largest and longest running water quality monitoring programs in the country. As it continues, coalition staff will update the datasets annually. 

"We are very fortunate that a bunch of people who have worked on this data set have been with it for a very long time," Jakuba said, with special mention of Tony Williams, director of the monitoring program. "Having that longevity is really valuable for being able to maintain a program and maintain the high quality of data."