The Seawater Parameters Survey 2024

In November 2023, the Alderney Wildlife Trust won funding from Sea-Changers, a UK based marine charity, to initiate a new citizen science project, The AWT Seawater Parameters Survey. The aim of this new project is to collect long-term seawater parameter evidence regularly across Alderney with the island’s community. The fund has enabled the AWT to purchase equipment to regularly sample seawater parameters such as sea surface temperature, pH and salinity, with citizen scientists.

Seawater chemistry plays an important role in influencing marine habitat and species presence, abundance, distribution and health/condition. The long-term monitoring of seawater can help identify wide-scale natural trends and climate change influences (such as sea temperature increases). Limited seawater parameter information exists for Alderney and in turn, identifying issues facing its marine environment in terms of seawater chemistry is unknown.

We aim to run public surveys once a month across key bays such as Corblets, Arch and Saye. Please contact  marine@alderneywildlife.org if you would like to join in or for general queries related to this project. Results are freely available to the public, interested stakeholders and researchers.

Below you can find the most recent monthly seawater parameters recorded by our citizen scientists and members of the public. We sample each bay twice (with the average value shown) during a high neap tide, once a month.