Intern compiled state and local agency marine and nearshore water quality data for Marine Resources Committee.

Scott Harbour, a Pacific Lutheran University student from Coupevillewho served as our intern last summer, compiling existing historical data aboutwater quality in Island County marine waters.Harbour gave members an on-screen tour of the types of data he collected,saying he had pulled together just about everything he felt he could. Among thefiles in his report to the MRC were:

Contact log. Harbour's contact log identifies the approximately 50 sources he consulted, when he talked to them, what he talked to them about, phone numbers and department or agency, color-coded by how useful they were, with the yellow section being the most useful.

Historical data. Harbour said he talked to an individual named Lincoln Lore (sp'), who worked for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration years ago. Lore's information concerned deep-water studies conducted at six locations in Saratoga Passage, Holmes Harbor and the Puget Sound Basin in the 1950s and 1960s. Harbour said the data measured dissolved oxygen and is especially interesting because Holmes Harbor has a sill at its entrance and actually becomes deeper as you enter it.

Maps file. To visually represent the sites for which Harbour found water quality data he developed an interactive map of the county. By clicking on the map, it is possible to see all the sites in a given area for which he found data. In Penn Cove, for example, 18 Department of Health sites are shown.

Data.There was no easy way to put the actual data on the map, so Harbour included data files that itemize all the findings. Among these are files from the Island County Health Department "Swim Program," Washington Department of Health "Beach Program" and Skagit River Systems Cooperative. Harbour said the Department of Health data dates from the present back to the late 1970s. Department of Ecology data goes from the present back to the early 70s.

Inaccessible data. Harbour said he also included a section in his report about data he knows exists, but that he was not able to obtain. In some cases these were sources that collect data only sporadically and may not conduct monitoring consistently enough to add much value to the report. He said in the 1960s there was a proposal to put a nuclear power station on Kicket Island and that there may be water quality studies available on this, also. He said any such data would not be in digital format. Jan Newton, a University of Washington scientist, has this information and plans to undertake a historical data reclamation project in the next year or so to digitize all the available data at the University of Washington.