SoundToxins Monitoring Manual
Point of Contact
Michelle Lepori-Bui, mdtlb@uw.edu
Description
This guide serves as a manual for those volunteering with SoundToxins, WSG’s phytoplankton monitoring and research program.
SoundToxins is designed as a cost-effective community, tribal and industry-based monitoring program to provide enough warning of HAB events to enable early or selective harvesting of seafood, which ultimately minimizes health risks and reduces economic losses. The program employs twin strategies: 1.) Using phytoplankton data to provide early warning of HAB events. By rapidly determining the abundance of key HAB species, SoundToxins helps WDOH pinpoint shellfish-growing areas requiring regulatory testing and helps shellfish and finfish producers and natural resource managers identify mortality risks; 2.) Monitoring environmental parameters (e.g., water and air temperature, salinity, weather, tide, and wind conditions) to determine the key variables that promote the initiation of harmful events and encourage proliferation of HAB species. Identifying these variables may help provide early warning of events.