ShellBase- Southeast Shellfish Water Quality Database for Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina Coastal Waters, 1979-2020 (NCEI Accession 0248227)

ShellBase is a normal-form database including historical bacteriological monitoring data collected in shellfish waters of North Carolina (NC), South Carolina (SC), Georgia (GA), and Florida (FL), USA, from 1979 to 2020. Data included in ShellBase includes fecal coliform measurements, ancillary environmental data when available (e.g., tidal stage, water quality parameters), laboratory analysis method, sampling strategy, and geospatial information including sampling station, growing area, and growing area classification. ShellBase was created to allow for monitoring data from the diverse state programs to be integrated into a single database. However, although the data from NC, SC, GA, and FL are combined in this integrated database, data cannot necessarily be compared between states given the diversity in the regulatory and monitoring strategies of each state shellfish sanitation program (see the Purpose section for more detail). ShellBase metadata includes descriptions of each state program’s classification, monitoring, and analysis schemes at the time of publishing the database. However, users who are interested in using these data for analysis and modeling are encouraged to contact the respective state shellfish sanitation programs to ensure the data are used responsibly.

These data include tables and related lookup tables of information regarding bacteria density, salinity, water temperature and pH measurements of offshore locations from 1979 to 2020.