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How Is the Bay?by the Morro Bay National Estuary Program
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Is the bay clean enough to support commercial shellfish farming? Are Morro Bay and its watershed creeks safe for swimming? Does creek and bay water quality support fish and aquatic life? Does Morro Bay support healthy eelgrass beds? |
Are important habitats being protected, enhanced and restored? Is the bay filling in at an unnatural rate? Are the bird populations that depend on bay habitat stable? Does the estuary and watershed support a healthy population of steelhead trout? |
These questions, when examined individually and then taken as a whole, indicate that conditions are mostly stable in Morro Bay. However, the estuary faces continued challenges in several areas. Steelhead, a central coast threatened species, face degraded habitat and other challenges to their survival, bacteria levels in creeks and the bay are not consistently safe for swimming, and there is a very real potential for continued degradation throughout the watershed without continued work. Additionally, new concerns about emerging contaminants and climate change may require some new indicator questions and further study.
Morro Bay is facing fewer ecological challenges than many similar ecosystems, but significant changes have taken place over the last decade. As development continues to occur in both Chorro and Los Osos valleys and human impacts from other land uses accumulate, we run a very real risk of harming this extraordinary place. The Estuary Program continues to monitor these indicators of environmental health and take action on those findings. With help from the community, future reports hope to show greater improvements to the health of the estuary.
Watch for our upcoming publication, Estuary Tidings 2010 (pdf file) and the partner Estuary Tidings Summary in late April. Estuary Tidings 2010 provides detailed answers to those questions. Both publications will be available at the State of the Bay Conference, a free event held May 14 & 15 at the Morro Bay Community Center, as well as at the Estuary Program office and on our website. For more information on the publication or the conference, please visit MBNEP.org or call 805 772-3834.
