Indian River Lagoon Water Sampling - Seaira

Click here to link to a map of Seaira's Field Sampling Stations

Today I wanted to take some water samples in the northern region of the Indian River Lagoon to assess the water quality in the lab tomorrow. My field work experience was not as pleasant as I would have hoped, as the weather was rather difficult to work with. I decided that for my project I would like to take five samples from the Indian River Lagoon and test the TSS, pH, salinity, turbidity, PO4 (dissolved phosphates), nitrates, and chlorophyll a levels. Today I collected two samples from the Indian River Lagoon Persevere Park in New Smyrna Beach, this is a location at a very northern point of the Indian River Lagoon system in an area referred to as Brown's Bay. This park had a dock for fishing where I took the water sample; I used the same procedure as the previous water sampling techniques which involved rinsing the 250mL sample bottles twice, and dumping them away from my sample site. I wore gloves for the sampling, and immediately put my samples in a cooler. The second sample site I visited was in Canaveral National Seashore, I went to the end of the park which has access to the northern most tip of Mosquito Lagoon. I used the same sampling procedure as stated above. The weather conditions today may produce some error in my turbidity and TSS readings, because the water was choppy due to the strong winds. Today the winds were classified as "gale force" and were directional North at 22mph with the occasional 40mph gusts.

Indian River Lagoon Preserve, New Smyrna Beach (Brown's Bay)

Canaveral National Seashore(Mosquito Lagoon)

* Note: I did not cross over restricted areas for sampling, because of oyster and mangrove restoration projects in effect.







While out in the field I saw an abundant amount of vegetation such as Red Mangrove, Saw Palmetto, Marsh Grass(Spartina alterniflora), and Sea Purslane(sesuvium portulacastrum).
I will attach a link to Indian River Lagoon news page because it frequently reports status on algae blooms, and wildlife death. I discovered from the St. John's River Water Management site that as of October 14th biologists have recorded a decline in seagrass beds in Mosquito Lagoon due to poor water clarity, and brown tide (Aureoumbra lagunensis) blooms in the area.
For my next sampling site I want to go to Satellite Beach which has also recently reported excessive algae blooms and fish deaths in the area.
http://floridaswater.com/itsyourlagoon/currentnews.html