Marine Pollution Monitoring: Objectives and Design Criteria

The historical ineffectiveness of marine pollution monitoring programs is attributed to deficiencies at the most fundamental levels of program design: 1) specification of management problems and monitoring objectives; 2) identification of the detailed information needs and assessment of the value of that information; and 3) optimization of the sampling design for the temporal and spatial variability in the measurement parameters selected. In recent years a number of pollution-effects measures have been advocated by disciplinary scientists as components for pollution monitoring programs. These measurement approaches include 1) chemical analysis of suspected toxicants; 2) biochemical and physiological measures of organismic exposure and/or condition; 3) measures of community response, such as biomass and diversity; and 4) toxicity bioassays of water and sediments. Such measurements are discussed in terms of their applicability to a suite of generic monitoring objectives.