Bowdoin’s Schiller Coastal Studies Center Secures Water Monitoring and Eel Grass Restoration Funding

The establishment of the station at the SCSC will extend the network of water quality monitoring in Casco Bay to Harpswell Sound.

"The waters and shorelines of the sound are important to the working waterfront of the region supporting oyster aquaculture, lobster and crab fishing, and clam, worm, bait, and scallop harvesting," said SCSC director Holly Parker.

"All of these fisheries are influenced by and connected through the waters that they share."

Water will be sampled at a minimum of fifteen-minute intervals. Data collected from the monitoring station, which will include parameters such as pH and temperature, will be temporally aggregated and made freely available through the SCSC website, along with quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) metrics.

The SCSC, in collaboration with several local partners, also secured a second award of more than $124,000 in support of eelgrass restoration efforts in Casco Bay.

Funded through the Restore America's Estuaries National Estuary Program Watersheds Grant Program, the collaborating partners are the project's primary investigator at the Casco Bay Estuary Partnership, the Collaborative for Bioregional Action Learning and Transformation (COBALT), Friends of Casco Bay, USFWS Gulf of Maine Coastal Program, Manomet, Maine Department of Environmental Protection, and the SCSC.