Methods:

A total of four stations were chosen off of San Juan Island for water sampling.  Each station was assigned a number: Strait of Juan de Fuca was station1, north San Juan Channel was station 2, Friday Harbor was station 3, and south San Juan Channel was station4.  The sampling was accomplished by the use of a couple of instruments.  The first instrument used was the secchi, which is a 30 cm round type of disc that has two distinctive colors, usually black and white.  The secchi was used to measure the penetration of the sunlight in the water. 

The second instrument used was the phytoplankton net which is a meter 20 µm mesh net filtered into a cone type of shape that at the end has a bottle that will hold the sample extracted.  The net was used to extract samples from the surface of the stations sampled and a number of different species of Phytoplankton were found.  The next instrument used was the Zooplankton net which is was a ¾ meter long net with a mesh of 153 µm.  The Zooplankton net just like the Zooplankton net was used to sample from the surface of each station. 

The next instrument used was the big Zooplankton closed net.  This net is big in size measuring about two to three meters in length with a mesh of 153 µm.  The Zooplankton net was used to collect Zooplankton from deep down on the bottom of each station.  To lower the big Zooplankton net, the vessel had a crane which was operated by the captain that facilitated the capture of the samples.  The next material used in this part of the sampling plan involved an instrument called rosette which is a metal structure that holds about ten Niskin bottles and the CTD, which was used to identify and measure water characteristics such as salinity, temperature, and density.  The Niskin bottles collected samples from three different depths: the bottom, the surface, and the thermocline.  The samples collected from the Niskin bottles were taken and put into small numbered bottles that were stored into coolers with ice.  Each one of these numbered bottles contained samples that were later analyzed with three specific tests, such as Chlorophyll, Nutrients, and Dissolved Oxygen and later compare with the CTD results.