2016 Puget Sound Marine Waters Overview
The Puget Sound Ecosystem Monitoring Program has released its sixth annual Marine Waters Overview. The report provides an assessment of marine conditions for the year 2016 and includes updates on water quality as well as status reports for select plankton, seabirds and fish.
Overview
This report provides a collective view, from comprehensive monitoring and observing programs, of marine water quality and conditions and associated biota in Puget Sound in 2016. While the report focuses on the marine waters of greater Puget Sound, additional selected conditions are also included due to their influence on Puget Sound waters. These include large-scale climate indices and conditions along the Washington coast. It is important to document and understand regional drivers of variability and patterns on various timescales so that water quality data may be interpreted with these variations in mind, to better distinguish human effects from natural variations and change. This is the sixth annual report produced for the PSEMP Marine Waters Workgroup. What follows is our message to decisionmakers, policymakers, managers, scientists, and the public who are interested in the health of Puget Sound.