On April 28, MSSEP students Daniel Kowalski and William Eltringham presented their research on eelgrass and water quality in Buzzards Bay at the Big Blue Conference at Falmouth High School.

Daniel and William conducted this research in Professor Kevin Hefferan’s Environmental Monitoring course, a senior capstone MSSEP course, which requires field work, data collection, and data analysis. Each week, these students take our small research vessel into the Bay to evaluate eelgrass coverage, nutrient concentrations, dissolved oxygen concentrations, and light availability, which are all critical water quality variables.

This research is designed to ground truth aerial surveys conducted by Mass DEP for eelgrass coverage from 2019-2023. Several years later, students are finding that areas previously mapped with eelgrass coverage are now barren or outcompeted by invasive seaweeds.

Furthermore, we have teamed up with NOAA and the eMOLT program to capture dissolved oxygen concentrations at two sites using the NOAA supplied sensors. George Maynard (NOAA) is our collaborator.

This research will continue with next year’s seniors, as it is valuable to understand the health of the Bay, particular to eelgrass ecosystems. All of this ties into the Blue Economy initiative of Mass Maritime.