Bioassessment Survey Results 2020: Tracking the Health of Local Creeks

One of the goals of the Estuary Program is to monitor the bay and the lands that surround it to better understand conditions and how they are changing over time. As part of this effort, the Estuary Program conducts spring bioassessment surveys. This data allows us to assess the health of our creeks and determine if they support sensitive aquatic life. What is bioassessment? Each spring, staff and volunteers head out to local creeks to collect habitat measurements. These measurements include the depth of the water, the size of the rocks in the stream, and the amount of tree cover …

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 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 …

Field Updates May 2017: Bioassessment Surveys

June 9, 2017 Posted by Morro Bay National Estuary Program bioassessment bugs creeks estuary los osos macroinvertebrates macros MBNEP morro bay national estuary program watershed Blog Posts

Just three of our twenty-one great volunteers.

As you know, 2017 has been a little rainy. Since the start of the 2017 water year, the county rain gauge at Camp SLO received 33.29″ of rain. This exciting water year has so far kept our staff busy collecting sediment samples, doing site checks to see if our equipment was still there and anxiously waiting for flows to subside to levels safe enough to monitor. This has also been enough rain to keep more sites wetted enough to conduct bioassessment surveys on. After a few years of only conducting about 5–7 surveys, for 2017 we had 12 …

Field Updates April 2017

May 19, 2017 Posted by Morro Bay National Estuary Program bioassessment creek estuary field work macroinvertebrate macros morro bay Blog Posts

Fulfilling our mission to protect and restore the Morro Bay estuary for people and animals requires a lot of hard work in the field. Today, we’re bringing you our first set of monthly field updates to show you what our staff and volunteers are doing on the ground. Bioassessment Field Surveys April was a busy month for our field staff. Our bioassessment season kicked off on Saturday, April 8th with our annual training. We had 27 volunteers attend this training to learn how to collect macroinvertebrate samples and conduct creek habitat assessments. Each of these surveys take approximately four hours …

What Are Our Bugs Telling Us? Our Data is Here!

September 9, 2016 Posted by Morro Bay National Estuary Program bioassessment bugs estuary fieldwork macros morro bay volunteer volunteers water quality Blog Posts

The Tricorythodes pictured here was collected from our local creeks. This small mayfly is popular with fish, but they swarm upon hatching, making conditions difficult for fly fishing.

Our Monitoring Program and its dedicated corps of volunteers use various scientific methods to track the health of our waters. One tool in our arsenal is bioassessment monitoring, a detailed effort where we gather habitat data and collect macroinvertebrates or “macros,” bugs visible to the naked eye. Our 2016 Bioassessment Effort In April and May of this year, over 20 volunteers joined our staff in collecting habitat data and macro samples from eight sites on local creeks. Collectively, these volunteers put in over 100 hours of time to collect this data. At each site, they recorded over a thousand …

May Field Updates

June 9, 2016 Posted by Morro Bay National Estuary Program bioassessment estuary field updates field work macroinvertebrates macros morro bay Blog Posts

Fulfilling our mission to protect and restore the Morro Bay estuary for people and animals requires a lot of hard work in the field. Read on to see what our staff and volunteers are doing on the ground. National Aquatic Monitoring Conference Karissa, Estuary Program Monitoring Coordinator, attended the National Aquatic Monitoring Conference in Tampa, Florida. A highlight of this conference was seeing a freshwater spring bubbling into an estuary while on a kayak tour to look at seagrasses in the Gulf of Mexico. Final bioassessment surveys completed We completed four more bioassessment surveys …

April Field Updates: Monitoring

May 5, 2016 Posted by Morro Bay National Estuary Program bugs creek health creeks estuary macroinvertebrates macros morro bay Blog Posts

At bioassessment training, volunteers learn how to collect data on water quality such as temperature, pH and oxygen levels.

Bioassessment Training We kicked off our spring bioassessment season with our annual training. We had 27 volunteers attend. Bioassessment Surveys The field season is underway. Four of our eight surveys for the year have been completed with the assistance of 13 dedicated volunteers. Subscribe to get the Estuary Program’s blog delivered to your inbox each week! Donate to help the Estuary Program protect and restore Morro Bay.

Monitoring the health of local creeks with bioassessment

April 2, 2015 Posted by Morro Bay National Estuary Program bugs creek health estuary macroinvertebrates macros morro bay volunteer in slo Blog Posts

Each spring, Estuary Program staff and volunteers gear up for Bioassessment, an important monitoring tool that allows us to assess the health of local streams to determine their value as fish habitat. We conduct monitoring at creek sites throughout the Morro Bay watershed, which involves collecting macroinvertebrate or “macro” samples (insects that are visible to the naked eye) and taking measurements of the health of creek habitat. Here’s what a day of monitoring involves. Water quality monitoring Upon arriving at the site, we use water quality meters to collect information such as pH, temperature, turbidity, flow, and oxygen levels. Fish …