Duckboats, Secchi disks and PB&J

I’m so looking forward to tomorrow!  Neal Chism, the kind gentleman who has been making secchi disks for our project and single handedly cleaning up the Duwamish waterway,  has invited me out for a lunch time trash tour and to get a look at one of the bigger CSO outflows.  This is the outflow that gets its runoff from literally ALL over Seattle.  West Seattle (obviously) but less obvious is south as far as Boeing Field N.  and as far East as Lake Washington (Leschi area).  I’ll be taking both video and still, so stay tuned for a possible video of the adventure.  I promise to keep it short and sweet.

In addition to that, I’ll be picking up a couple more disks for the stationary secchi stations.  I hope to get out with the help of some sciency types on Friday a.m. and figure out if the pilings selected will be logical installation sites.

This will give us  2 stationary Disks for easy ‘one team’ readings and 4 or 5 disks set up for horizontal readings (diver to diver)  and one vertical system.    If your dive club or group has an interested in participating, let me know and we can get together and chat about the details!  The more the merrier!

First try… Project Secchi disk!

 

Trying out equipment for a data logging project… Our long term goals will to be measure visibility in puget sound over a three year period at a handful of secchi disk stations. We have been getting our ducks in a row for the past year and a half to make this happen and it is very exciting to see it start coming to fruition!

As always, we know that secchi disk readings are subjective, but we hope to at least get a more realistic idea of the trends not only seasonal, but how storm drain outflow affects water turbidity (quality?) at nearby dive sites in puget sound. Data that will be collected, depth, time, ambient light, temperature, secchi disk distance, general conditions topside.

We hope to have a mobile friendly data entry site in place for all divers interested in participating in place soon.