'Citizen Scientists' in Delaware Sea Grant Program Work for Water Quality

Derek Parks
OAR Headquarters

April 24, 2009 — As the early morning clouds drifted over southern Delaware, retiree Ron Stoner was already out on his dock.

Instead of kicking back in a lawn chair with a cup of coffee and the morning paper, Stoner was busy running a plankton net through the waters of the Delaware Bay in search of unusually high nutrient concentrations.

Stoner is not your typical retiree. He is one of a growing cadre of citizen scientists on the Delaware Bay who are part of a NOAA-funded state initiative — the Inland Bays Citizen Monitoring Program — to collect important water quality data.  

On summer mornings, Stoner assesses the clarity of the water using a Secchi disk (a circular disk used to measure water transparency) and takes various water samples for analysis. Through the monitoring program, he and other citizen scientists were trained to measure the levels of oxygen and salt in the waters and detect for any bacterial contamination. The data they collect are sent to the University of Delaware to be incorporated into a larger Delaware Bay database bearing information on fish kills, harmful algal blooms, and possible seafood contamination. Delaware state policymakers use the scientific data to inform their decisions on how to best preserve and protect bay watersheds and estuaries.

More About Citizen Monitors

Citizen monitors, often retirees, live by the water and have personal interests in the health of local bay ecosystems. Most volunteers have had no formal science education and complete several days of training through NOAA’s Delaware Sea Grant. The Citizen Monitoring Program is a fine example of how ordinary citizens, scientists and resource managers can work together to solve complex environmental problems.

To learn how you can volunteer for the Delaware Citizen Monitoring Program, visit the program’s Web page at http://citizen-monitoring.udel.edu.