November 18, 2019 — Researchers for Friends of Casco Bay plan to add two round-the-clock water-quality monitoring stations to better track temperature, acidity and potential marine “stressors” in a busy corner of the fast-changing Gulf of Maine.
After roughly 30 years of manually collecting and testing water samples once a month, Friends of Casco Bay launched the nonprofit’s first “continuous monitoring station” near Cousins Island in Yarmouth in 2016.
The station has collected hourly data on water temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen and other environmental conditions as the organization sought to build upon the “snapshot” of monthly data that was clearly showing changes in Casco Bay.
“It wasn’t enough to go out once a month. We needed to start documenting the changes we’ve been seeing,” said Mike Doan, the research associate at Friends of Casco Bay who has collected much of that data for the past two decades. “We realized we didn’t have the frequency of data to really track change. If you want to get serious about documenting change, you need frequent data.”