Ferries could be used to give Puget Sound waters a daily checkup

Washington's fleet of island-hopping ferries thrill legions of tourists, haul thousands of commuters and now -- they're being eyed as future guardians of Puget Sound.

The green-and-white vessels would be fitted with testing devices to continuously sample water quality, making the flotilla of ferries an early-warning system for everything from harmful algal blooms to oil and sewage spills.

The plan is gaining traction in Washington, D.C., and Seattle, with informal discussions earlier this week between Washington State Ferries and researchers at the University of Washington.

"It's a fantastic idea," said Carol Maloy, who leads the state Department of Ecology's marine monitoring team.

Maloy now runs the most extensive monitoring program for the Sound. The program relies on a seaplane hopscotching from Olympia to Bellingham, stopping between 40 different rotating locations to test the water.

Seaplane sampling has been done for the past 35 years, but the method has its limitations. The planes can't be used when it's windy, foggy or dark -- creating occasional gaps in the data. And the testing is done only once a month.

"Our data just allows us to look at seasonal trends," said Simone Hoffer, who takes the samples through a hole in tail of the plane. "We can compare drought years to cold years, and El Niņo to La Niņa years."

With ferries taking samples day and night, the picture would become much clearer. Problem spots would be quickly identified, toxic algal blooms could be tracked and scientists would gain an understanding of conditions they form in.

"We would move from seeing Puget Sound as this bluish-green blob to a jigsaw puzzle," said Jeffrey Richey, a UW professor who is heading a project to create the most accurate computer model of the Sound. "We would break that blob down to sharp little pieces so we can make better decisions."

The proposal is being attached to a federal project that also will use high-tech buoys to monitor water conditions in the Sound and send back information on a wireless Internet connection. The buoys are expected to be in operation in three years, with the ferry devices to follow.

While the buoys and seaplane can take deep-water samples, the surface measurings taken by the ferries would help correct and adjust computer models designed to show the health of the Sound.

"We are interested in the idea," said Jonathan Olds, environmental program manager for Washington State Ferries. "But we need to look at the technical issues."

Ferries in North Carolina are already being used to test water quality, operating off a $300,000 state budget, which is relatively inexpensive for marine monitoring. Each buoy, for example, is expected to cost more than $100,000.

As it's done in North Carolina, the Washington proposal calls for attaching instruments to the water intake of the cooling system for the ferry engines.

		Paul Joseph Brown / P-I
	An array of instruments drops into Elliott Bay from a seaplane the state Department of Ecology uses a to sample water throughout Puget Sound.

The constant feed of salt water would run by a barrage of sensors measuring temperature, pH levels, salinity, nutrient levels, oxygen levels, turbidity and algae concentrations. Samples also would be taken and stored in a refrigerator for further testing back at the lab. The data would be fed to land using the ferry's wireless networks.

If there was an algal bloom today, for example, with billions of microorganisms rapidly reproducing to infest the water column, the researchers won't know about it unless they stumble across it or someone reports it, Richey said.

Similar water-sampling projects are being proposed across the country, including San Francisco Bay, as part of a federal mandate to better monitor the health of large estuaries.

Duke University and the University of North Carolina installed monitors in 2000 on ferries crossing Pamlico Sound at the mouth of the Neuse River. With data streaming in every three minutes, researchers have been able to connect pollution coming down the Neuse with fish kills that otherwise would have been left unexplained.

North Carolina scientists use the information to make decisions about fishery openings and closings and address problems such as nutrient pollution and beach erosion.

The health of Puget Sound isn't as understood as it should be, Richey said. With the possibility of $8 billion being invested by the Legislature and federal programs for the cleanup and protection of the Sound, it would be great to know more about what those investments will do, he said.

The ferry monitoring program would be a huge step in advancing that understanding.

"We have dreamed about this for a long time," Richey said.