Northshore Magazine

follow-up monitoring. "I've been doing this [kind of work] for more than 14 years; it's really fun to see change." Salem State University, Endicott and North Shore Community Colleges, state agencies like Coastal Zone Management and Division of Marine Fisheries, and community-based organizations such as Maritime Gloucester are among SSCW's many partners. With vast support, they design innovative ways to educate, conduct scientific research, and practice environmental stewardship. Part of SSCW's mission is to increase public appreciation for Salem Sound Watershed's natural resources and to share information about the immediate and chronic threats to its ecological health. Their Coastal Habitat Invasives Monitoring Program has staff and volunteer "citizen scientists" visiting tide pools on Winter Island, where they identify and count marine species as part of a bigger, statewide program. Warren, equipped with a master's degree in environmental science, analyzes their findings and sends the data to Coastal Zone Management. Citizen scientists also help set minnow traps and capture, measure, and weigh the caught fish. The program has the dual goal of promoting awareness of the community's connection to the watershed while protecting its health. The collected data enables agencies to see long-term trends that may help determine future action. Warren is interested in "building some citizen science" for tracking climate change, too; signs of it on the docks and in the marshes mean SSCW will be chang- ing some of their monitoring protocols to incorporate those concerns. "People come to me and say, 'Well, it used to be that…' Environment ne 100 nshoremag.com July 2014 North Shore Monitors: Above, Invasive Marine Species program volunteers in Beverly's Lynch Park; below, public seining on Winter Island in Salem do is educational," notes Warren. "You can learn as much as you want." Salem State University students have gotten in on SSCW's action by regulat- ing the marsh located on their campus. In 2010, the school built a new LEED- certified dormitory and included the surrounding environment. The project consultant contacted SSCW for informa- tion, which led to a two-year assessment; they hired Salem State students to help monitor the marsh for two summers. It was the beginning of a nice working re- lationship with university students that continues today. SSCW's longest standing program is Clean Beaches and Streams. Volunteers take samples from storm water outflow pipes and streams, which are analyzed to determine sources of bacteria and contamination—information that is shared with the state and the local com- munity. It has led to finding several illicit connections—residential sewers that are connected to storm drains. Nonpoint source pollution—the most important source of contamination in our nation's waters—is one of SSCW's most pressing but nobody documented what 'used to be.' We want to create that documentation." The organization began its salt marsh monitoring program at the end of the 1990s with their Adopt-a-Tide Pool program. By 2004, they were seeing so many non-native species that they began an "Invasives Watch," which monitors docks and intertidal areas for "bioinvad- ers" in each community along the sound; they look for both the presence and ab- sence of marine species, and then do an abundance estimation. "Everything we photographs courtesy of salem sound coastwatch NB_KJ_NS_July 14 SalemSound.indd 100 5/9/14 10:32 AM

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