Aquatic Monitoring Program


Aquatic
Monitoring
Program
For over 38 years, NEW Water’s Aquatic Monitoring Program has been
monitoring water quality by sampling throughout the lower Fox River,
East River, and the Bay of Green Bay. Water quality parameters of
interest include phosphorus and total suspended solids levels. These
two parameters are in excess in area waters, due to decades of point
and nonpoint source pollution. Phosphorus is a preferred ‘food’ for
cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), which occur naturally, but thrive in the
warm, shallow, nutrient-rich waters of lower Green Bay. Cyanobacteria
are problematic. Their dominance can lead to large surface blooms
during the summer months that are aesthetically unpleasing,
resembling ‘pea soup’ on the surface of the water; blooms can also
smell and be harmful to people and pets that come into contact with it.
Once these blooms die, they will decompose at the bottom of the water
and consume oxygen in the process, further exacerbating areas of low
oxygen or even a dead zone (no oxygen) in the bottom waters.
In the last several years, NEW Water has been able to bring some
data collection parameters to (near) real-time and online for the
public to utilize from two stations at the mouth of the Fox River and
in lower Green Bay. Parameters include, but are not limited to: water
temperature, dissolved oxygen, and chlorophyll as well as weather data
such as wind speed, direction, and air temperature. Before you head out
to enjoy area waters, being armed with knowledge of what’s happening
in that water, can help keep you, and your family, safe. “When in doubt,
stay out.”
Images below: NEW Water’s workboat, the Bay Guardian, deploying the yellow buoy,
which is one of two long-term monitoring stations that provides data.
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