Jan 16, 2026

Meet Fiona, Monitoring Coordinator

Blog

This is a guest blog written by our Monitoring Coordinator, Fiona. 

I’m so excited to be part of the Estuary Program. I’ll be joining the monitoring team as a Monitoring Coordinator, so I’ll be helping to organize a wide variety of monitoring events in the estuary and creeks around the watershed. 

College and Career Path 

I graduated from UC Santa Barbara in 2024 with a bachelor’s degree in ecology and evolution and a minor in education. I loved my time there due to the tight knit community and easy access to a wide variety of natural landscapes. I think that living there really solidified my passions for environmental conservation and the importance of having a sense of place. 

During my time as a student, I was involved with a local nonprofit that planted trees and taught elementary students about their local ecosystem. I helped organize and update interactive activities for students and helped train volunteers on these activities. I was also part of a marine biology lab where I helped out on a wide variety of projects, though I was primarily helping to identify micro-aquatic organisms. The data was used to improve our understanding of the long-term changes in benthic composition of the ocean off the coast of Santa Barbara. As part of this work, I also got my scientific diver certification. 

While at UC Santa Barbara, Fiona worked in a marine biology lab, helping with a wide variety of projects including tracking long term trends in the recruitment of benthic micro-aquatic organisms. Lab divers collected samples periodically from several sites off of the Santa Barbara coast to look at how the composition of organisms differed between ecosystems. In this photo, Fiona is holding brittle stars that were collected from one of these sites to be counted and catalogued.

After graduating, I took a seasonal job working in salt marsh restoration in the San Francisco Bay Area. My primary duties were to identify and remove invasive plant species. I learned a lot and found the ecosystem to be beautiful and ecologically unique. 

Each morning, Fiona and the rest of the field crew would take a short airboat ride out to Bair Island, a collection of salt marshes in the San Francisco Bay, to map and remove invasive chord grasses and to help track the native chord grass species.

After the season ended, I moved up to Nevada City for an AmeriCorps position with the South Yuba River Citizens League (SYRCL) to help monitor and restore the Yuba River watershed. I monitored high elevation meadows pre and post restoration to see how these efforts impacted the amount and retention of ground and surface water. To track these changes, I would measure the groundwater depth at small wells (approximately 1.5 inch diameter and 10 ft deep) that were installed throughout these restoration areas. I would also take streamflow and water quality measurements in the creeks that flowed into and out of the meadows.   

A meadow that Fiona had the privilege of helping to monitor the hydrology of last summer.

In addition to helping with these restoration monitoring efforts, I coordinated with a team of 23 volunteer pairs to do monthly water quality sampling throughout the Yuba River and in several of its tributaries. I really enjoyed working with these volunteers. Getting to interact with so many passionate community members was one of my favorite things about working there and is one of the things that really drew me to the job with the Estuary Program. Although I’m a little sad to be leaving the mountains, I’m excited to be back on the coast and am looking forward to gaining a more holistic understanding of the interactions between fresh and salt water. 

Fiona in a meadow feeling a little bit lost and confused. She was looking for small groundwater wells that are used to monitor how deep beneath the surface groundwater is. Rest assured, she did eventually find all of the wells and is a substantially better navigator now.

Things I Do Outside of Work 

Outside of work, my primary goal is to spend as much time in the outdoors as possible, so the winter is always a bit of a challenge. I run a lot – recently I ran 23 miles for my 23rd birthday. I also backpack whenever I can – unfortunately I haven’t been able make it out too much this year beyond a night or two, but I did the High Sierra Trail a couple of years ago which was beautiful. I’m also really stoked to get under the water whenever I can. I was really into diving (both scuba and free) when I was living in Santa Barbara and am very happy to be back in an environment where this is possible. 

A six-armed bat star that Fiona was very excited to find while tide pooling in Montaña de Oro during one of the king tides in December. She learned later that day that they can have up to nine arms!

Help us protect and restore the Morro Bay estuary!