Unmanned Aerial Surveys planned for Deer Harbor

— from the  Northwest Straits Foundation —

On Tuesday, September 8^th, the Northwest Straits Foundation and San Juan County Marine Resources Committee will be conducting an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle survey of the upper Deer Harbor and Cayou Lagoon estuary located on Orcas Island at 8:00 AM.  The survey is being completed with the support and permission of property owners and is a component of efforts to monitor the environmental responses to San Juan County’s Deer Harbor Bridge Replacement Project.

The survey will be conducted by marine geologist Gary Greene, a recent speaker at the Orcas Currents lecture series.  The survey will take images of the current conditions of the harbor and lagoon at low tide. Subsequent annual surveys will reveal tidal channel formations and other responses to the bridge replacement project.

“This kind of aerial imagery can tell us so much about how the sediment moves and how the restored tidal action is affecting Deer Harbor and Cayou Lagoon in response to replacing the bridge,” said Joan Drinkwin, Interim Director with the Northwest Straits Foundation. “We’re so grateful to the Deer Harbor Community for supporting the monitoring and allowing us access to their properties. This is really a community effort.”

The Northwest Straits Foundation and the San Juan County Marine Resources Committee are partnering to monitor the environmental response to San Juan County’s Deer Harbor Bridge Replacement Project. Other monitoring includes temperature, vegetation surveys, nearshore fish use, and intertidal surveys. The work is being done in partnership with the Orcas Island Youth Conservation Corps and is funded by the Vincent J. Coates Foundation.

The Northwest Straits Foundation is the non-profit partner of the Northwest Straits Initiative, a collaborative model for marine conservation with a vision of diverse communities working together to restore a thriving marine ecosystem in the Northwest Straits of the Salish Sea. The Foundation works in partnership with the Northwest Straits Commission and seven local Marine Resources Committees (MRCs) of the Northwest Straits whose members represent the diverse stakeholders of their communities, and who identify and implement local marine conservation and restoration projects in their communities. See www.nwstraitsfoundation.org for more information.