Farallones National Marine Sanctuary’s Beach Watch volunteer program marks fifteenth anniversary

NOAA’s Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary is celebrating 15 years of ocean protection through its Beach Watch volunteer shoreline monitoring program. Developed and launched by the sanctuary in 1993, Beach Watch is the flagship volunteer program of the NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.

The Beach Watch program uses highly trained "citizen scientists" from all walks of life to conduct regular shoreline surveys spanning 150 miles of coastline, from Point Año Nuevo south of San Francisco north to Bodega Head. The volunteers have also conducted special wildlife surveys during several oil spills, most recently the Cosco Busan spill in San Francisco Bay in November. Since 1996, the nonprofit Farallones Marine Sanctuary Association has managed Beach Watch data and volunteers.

Beach Watch surveyors identify wildlife, notify the sanctuary of the condition of streams and lagoons, document visitor use patterns and violations, and retrieve oil samples as evidence of spills to help pinpoint the source of oil on beaches. Information collected by Beach Watch volunteers has helped secure several multimillion-dollar settlements from responsible parties to restore affected wildlife and habitats.

The program has been recognized internationally, and its protocols have been used as a model for oil spill response and damage assessment for spills in the U.S., Japan and South Africa.

NOAA’s Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary comprises more than 1,200 square nautical miles of near shore and offshore waters beyond San Francisco’s Golden Gate. Designated in 1981, the sanctuary extends from Bodega Head in Sonoma County, south to the waters off the San Mateo County coast.

On the Web: Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary: http://farallones.noaa.gov NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries: http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov