New tracking system gives South Sound locals a bird’s eye view

Christopher Krembs is a state Department of Ecology senior oceanographer who’s drummed up a new way to make Puget Sound water quality monitoring more visual and interesting to the public.

He’s added a layer of social media eye candy to the state agency’s marine water quality monitoring program launched in 1989, under the banner of Eyes Over Puget Sound.

In April 2011, Krembs started photographing, high-resolution, wide-angle views of Puget Sound’s inlets, bays and harbors from north of Seattle to Olympia from a Kenmore Air sea plane traveling at 2,500 feet. Ecology rents the Lake Union-based aircraft to visit its nearly 40 marine water quality monitoring stations in north, central and south Puget Sound, and coastal Grays Harbor and Willapa Bay.

Krembs discovered when he joined Ecology’s marine monitoring station four years ago that the plane served no purpose on the morning flights from Seattle to Olympia to pick up Ecology employees and monitoring equipment, or on the empty evening flights back to Seattle.

So Krembs started hitching rides in the morning and at night, taking as many as 400 photos per trip, which he whittles down to 15 to post online within two days of the flight. The photos are accompanied by graphics detailing temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen and other water quality data from five fixed monitoring stations. Also included in the monthly report are a summary of conditions, personal flight observations, satellite images and water quality data from equipment installed on the Victoria Clipper ferry, which runs between Seattle and Victoria, British Columbia.

A link to Eyes Over Puget Sound is goo.gl/ehJa6. All of the photos taken by Krembs each month can be seen at goo.gl/hXALb.

“We’re out there all year collecting data,” Krembs said. “This allows people to be part of our operation.”

The images of real-time conditions in Puget Sound are another reminder that a picture can be worth a thousand words.

Caught on camera are aggregations of moon jelly fish in Budd Inlet, oil slicks around marinas and inner urban harbors, killer whales in transit, plumes of sediment-laden floodwater as they leave a river and enter Puget Sound, tidal eddies, algal blooms, slender, foamy lines of debris and eruptions of noctiluca, the reddish. single-celled dinoflagellate that consumes plankton, fish eggs and bacteria.

Krembs sees Eyes Over Puget Sound as a way to bring breaking news — as portrayed in the photos — together with long-term monitoring data. It can be a tool to maintain and grow interest in the health of Puget Sound among the public, and the scientific community, he said.

“My hope is that we will all learn to work together,” he said.

The Eyes Over Puget Sound page views have climbed to 72,000 per month, suggesting Krembs and his team have hit a home run.

One of their dedicated followers is David Jamison, a Boston Harbor resident and marine biologist active in environmental education programs here in South Sound.

The Jan. 15 Eyes Over Puget Sound posting was of a particular interest to Jamison because it showed several large aggregations of moon jellyfish in Budd Inlet, something more commonplace in the summer and early fall.

“They’re usually not around this time of year,” Jamison said.

Not only that, they are larger — 4 to 5 inches in diameter instead of the size of a dime one would expect in the winter, Krembs said.

Another interesting feature of the aerial photos is the ability to spot oil slicks, which show up well from the air, he said. When they are observed, they are reported to Ecology’s oil spill response team for possible investigation.

Winter is also a time when debris lines in south and central Puget Sound are visible on the flights. What are they?

“Probably a little bit of everything — foam, dust, pollen, wood, bits of plastic,” Krembs said. “They show up more in the winter when the freshwater inputs are greater in Puget Sound.”

Patricia Pyle, an environmental educator and senior program specialist for the City of Olympia is another big fan of Eyes Over Puget Sound.

“I’ve been tracking the site for about a year — it’s so much fun,” Pyle said. “I use it to look at the summer algae blooms in Budd Inlet.”

Pyle invited the Eyes Over Puget Sound scientists to Olympia City Hall 7 p.m., Feb. 6, to describe their work and display their equipment at a free public event. They’ll leave time for questions, too.