Field updates April & May 2019: Monitoring Eelgrass and Creek Health

Two members from the Watershed Stewards Program lay out eelgrass blades on a white board for counting and photographing.

Fieldwork season is in full swing now for us here at the Morro Bay National Estuary Program, and we have been busy hiking around the creeks and estuary to continue monitoring our local watershed. In April and May, we monitored eelgrass and conducted bioassessment monitoring to help us see how healthy our creeks are. Eelgrass monitoring Eelgrass monitoring continues as usual when the tides are low enough to let us collect data. This past month, there was a good window spanning multiple days where we were able to monitor for a couple hours each day to check on …

Field Updates February 2019: Wet weather, eelgrass restoration, and creek monitoring

March 1, 2019 Posted by Morro Bay National Estuary Program creek stage eelgrass eelgrass restoration eelgrass transplant estuary ISCO sampler MBNEP morro bay morro bay national estuary program Morro Bay rain totals sediment SLO rain totals stage height stream gage stream stage Watershed Stewards Program wet weather SLO Blog Posts Field Updates

A picture from the bridge at our monitoring site on Canet Road, overlooking Chorro Creek. What a difference a week and some good rain storms will do!

Fulfilling our mission to protect and restore the Morro Bay estuary for people and wildlife requires a lot of hard work in the field. At the Estuary Program, that often entails doing research, restoration, and monitoring work out on the estuary and along the creeks that feed into it. Read on to see what we’ve been up to during the past month during this wet weather. Eelgrass February eelgrass restoration details This past month, we have been busy taking advantage of some of the year’s lowest tides to replant eelgrass throughout the estuary. The weather didn’t want to …

Field Updates January 2019: Eelgrass, Stormy Monitoring, Wildlife

February 1, 2019 Posted by Morro Bay National Estuary Program ca central coast california central coast eelgrass estuary estuary art field notes field updates MBNEP morro bay national estuary program S.L.O.P.E.storm water storms stormwater weather Field Updates

Once the water levels dropped to safe wading levels, we went out to check on equipment and measure stream flow on Pennington Creek. This is at the site that previously had a fish passage barrier. The barrier was removed over the fall, opening up miles of Pennington Creek for migrating steelhead trout. Partners at other organizations have seen returning adult steelhead in a few other creeks in the county, so we are keeping our eyes open for ones in our watershed as well.

Fulfilling our mission to protect and restore the Morro Bay estuary for people and wildlife requires a lot of hard work in the field. At the Estuary Program, that often entails doing research, restoration, and monitoring work out on the estuary and along the creeks that feed into it. Read on to see what we’ve been up to during the past month. (Don’t miss the pictures of the creeks during our recent stormy weather!) Eelgrass January was a busy month for field staff. We started by completing our eelgrass permanent transect monitoring. We were excited to see a …

Field Updates December 2018: Eelgrass, Wildlife Sightings, Creeks, and Rainfall Totals

January 4, 2019 Posted by Morro Bay National Estuary Program bivalve chorro creek creeks eelgrass los osos creek monitoring rainfall total restoration seagrass transect monitoring wildlife Blog Posts Field Updates

Watershed Stewards Program members Melia and Doug work on counting the number of eelgrass shoots within a 0.5m by 0.5m area.

Fulfilling our mission to protect and restore the Morro Bay estuary for people and wildlife requires a lot of hard work in the field. At the Estuary Program, that often entails doing research, restoration, and monitoring work out on the estuary and along the creeks that feed into it. Read on to see what we’ve been up to during the past month. Eelgrass monitoring Each fall, we monitor eelgrass on our permanent transects. These transects are sample areas across the bay where eelgrass has grown historically. We chose the specific locations of the transects to represent different zones in the …

Field Updates November 2018: Eelgrass Monitoring and Rainfall Totals

December 7, 2018 Posted by Morro Bay National Estuary Program eelgrass eelgrass loss eelgrass restoration estuary field updates field work fieldwork MBNEP monitoring morro bay natural recruitment precipitation rainfall rainfall totals citizen science Field Updates

Fulfilling our mission to protect and restore the Morro Bay estuary for people and wildlife requires a lot of hard work in the field. At the Estuary Program, that often entails doing research, restoration, and monitoring work out on the estuary and along the creeks that feed into it. Read on to see what we’ve been up to during the past month. Eelgrass Monitoring In November, we went out and checked on all of our 2018 eelgrass restoration plots, as well as some planted in 2017. While we were out monitoring, we noticed lots of new patches of …

Field Updates October 2018: bioassessment scouting, Pismo Preserve, sharing data, and getting ready for rain

November 9, 2018 Posted by Morro Bay National Estuary Program bioassessment Camp SLO chorro creek eelgrass report erosion estuary program macroinvertebrates macros MBNEP morro bay morro bay eelgrass Pismo preserve sediment monitoring winter storms Blog Posts Field Updates

Fulfilling our mission to protect and restore the Morro Bay estuary for people and wildlife requires a lot of hard work in the field. At the Estuary Program, that often entails doing research, restoration, and monitoring work out on the estuary and along the creeks that feed into it. Read on to see what we’ve been up to during the past month. Scouting a new bioassessment site on Camp SLO Monitoring Coordinators Tim and Karissa ventured out to upper Chorro Creek, on Camp SLO property, to scout out new locations for conducting bioassessment surveys. This site would help …

FIELD UPDATES SEPTEMBER 2018: Fish Surveys, Fish Habitat, and Sharing What We’ve Learned

October 12, 2018 Posted by Morro Bay National Estuary Program e-dna electrofishing environmental dna estuary estuary program field notes field updates field work fish barrier fish ladder fish passage MBNEP morro bay pikeminnow santa lucia fly fishers Club steelhead trout stillwater sciences volunteers Blog Posts Field Updates

We observed this juvenile steelhead trout during a fish survey on Chorro Creek.

Fulfilling our mission to protect and restore the Morro Bay estuary for people and wildlife requires a lot of hard work in the field. At the Estuary Program, that often entails doing research, restoration, and monitoring work out on the estuary and along the creeks that feed into it. Read on to see what we’ve been up to during the past month. Fish surveys Our field highlight for September was heading out with Stillwater Sciences and volunteers to complete fish surveys in Chorro Creek. We conducted fish sampling, a process of catching, identifying, measuring, and releasing fish, that …

Field Updates August 2018: Monitoring Eelgrass Restoration Plots in Morro Bay

September 7, 2018 Posted by Morro Bay National Estuary Program california conservation eelgrass estuary field update field work fieldwork MBNEP morro bay restoration seagrass transplant Blog Posts Field Updates

This eelgrass plot, transplanted in March of 2017, is thriving.

Fulfilling our mission to protect and restore the Morro Bay estuary for people and animals requires a lot of hard work in the field. At the Estuary Program, that often means spending time doing research, restoration, and monitoring work out on the water. Read on to see what we’ve been up to during the past month. This past spring, we were busy planting eelgrass. We planted just over 3,000 eelgrass shoots throughout the estuary. We chose transplant sites where naturally occurring eelgrass was found nearby. The five transplant locations in 2018 represented a range of conditions throughout the …

Field Updates July 2018: Reports, Mollusks in Eelgrass, and Fish in the Creeks

August 4, 2018 Posted by Morro Bay National Estuary Program cal poly CalPoly eelgrass estuary fieldwork MBNEP morro bay national estuary program navanax sea hare sea slug SeaGrant Blog Posts Field Updates

We commonly spot this nudibranch, Hermissenda crassicornis, in depressions along the mudflat.

Fulfilling our mission to protect and restore the Morro Bay estuary for people and animals requires a lot of hard work in the field. At the Estuary Program, that often means spending time doing research and monitoring work out on the water. Read on to see what we’ve been up to during the past month. Data and reporting July was a quiet month for fieldwork. This has given the monitoring staff time to get caught up on data entry and report writing. Keep an eye out for a series of reports related to the health of the estuary …

Field Updates April and May 2018: Bioassessment Monitoring and New Team Members

June 1, 2018 Posted by Morro Bay National Estuary Program bioassessment bugs caddisfly estuary program macros mayfly MBNEP Miossi Charitable Trust morro bay stonefly stream survey water quality Blog Posts Field Updates

Monitoring team works in the middle of the creek.

Bioassessment Monitoring Each spring, the Estuary Program conducts bioassessment monitoring throughout the Morro Bay Watershed. Bioassessment monitoring is an important tool that allows us to assess the health of local streams to determine their value as fish habitat. This monitoring involves collecting macroinvertebrates, insects visible to the naked eye, and taking measurements of things like water depth and canopy cover that tell us about the health of the creek. Check out this blog post to learn more about what bioassessment monitoring tells us about the health of our local creeks. Our bioassessment season kicked off on Saturday, April …