Heal the Ocean’s Bacteria Database
It’s all the dirty water you ever needed to know about: Heal the Ocean released a database this week that reveals all the water quality data on beaches from Guadalupe in the north to Rincon in the south during the years 1997-2012. Using information gathered by Santa Barbara Channelkeeper, the County of Santa Barbara ‘s Environmental Health Services, and the County of Ventura’s Environmental Health Division, Heal the Ocean’s policy analyst James Hawkins was the first to catalogue all the testing results in one place, making it easier to spot trends and evaluate sources of ocean contamination. The hope is that the “Beach Bacteria Database” will be used by policymakers, scientists, and the public, and be copied by other coastal communities in California, where tracking for fecal bacteria in the ocean has been mandatory since 1998. See healtheocean.org.
