Here's the sampling crew looking remarkably fresh after an all-night water sampling event. Every hour from 10pm on July 1st until 10 am the following morning, we took samples from near the beach, in the ankle-deep water using John's innovative sampling device (see photo right) and a sample from mid-channel using John's shiny new kayak. The idea was to see what variations in microbial populations existed across an entire tidal cycle and we chose these dates & times because the tide was very high on the first evening. Bodega Marin Lab was very helpful in guiding our efforts and we're especially grateful to Dr John Largier.Dr Cindy Wu (red jacket, center) operated the filtration equipment and Dr Todd deSantis (second from right) designed the new Phylochip, which will enable us to detect thousands more taxa of bacteria in the water samples.
Just a few hundred feet from the beach is the curious "Hole in The Head," a local freshwater hole that looks like an abandoned quarry, but was actually the proposed site for the state's first nuclear reactor in 1961. Of course the reactor and power station were never built, partly due to the proximity of the site to the San Andreas fault and vigorous local opposition. Fresh water from the Hole in the Head forms a plume as it trickles over the beach, sometimes attracting birds in considerable numbers. One of the research questions we're investigating with Sonoma County Environmental Health is whether the birds have any effect on the beach water quality at this location. A sample taken by Sonoma County EH at the same time as our testing indicated that the beach water did not meet state standards for recreational bathing, so we're excited to see what the Phylochip testing reveals. As of August 1st, these results were not yet available.
