Summary of seawater chemistry taken from the beach pump intakes

The NOAA Galveston Laboratory operates an offshore sewater line which extends into the Gulf of Mexico. The seawater intake lines are composed of perforated well screen material which is buried in the sandbars offshore. Natural seawater is drawn through the sandbars, then through the well screen material and deposited on land and held in large fiberglass reinforced plastic storage tanks until it is needed. The process of drawing the seawater through the sandbars results in varying quality of seawater depending on from which sediments the seawater is drawn through. Short [300-400'] shallow seawater lines tend to be located in active surf areas where the sand bars are dynamic, and result in good seawater from aerobic sediments. However, the longer [900'] deeper seawater intake lines are outside the surf zone and are drawing seawater through stagnant, oxygen depleted anoxic sediments. In order to develop methods for treating and eventually utilizing the seawater from the deeper longer lines, a long-term water quality monitoring program was initiated to compare the seawater in the short shallow seawater line and the deeper, longer, sea water lines."

The database contains recorded parameters of seawater quality from samples taken in sea turtle rearing tanks and also a daily sample of the incoming seawater from the Gulf of Mexico.