“When I was here, the harbor seal just went right under the dock and popped up on the other side,” Sarah Kelly excitedly says. Her eyes sparkle. “It was so close.”
On this temperate day in early October, Kelly takes a sample of the water at Jerisich Dock. She is a Blue Water Task Force volunteer, collecting samples for Gig Harbor’s aquatic conservation nonprofit, Harbor WildWatch. (If you haven’t seen Harbor WildWatch, just keep an eye out for the colorful inflatable tentacles, which cheerfully wave to passersby from a window on a building along the waterfront. They’re hard to miss.)
Harbor WildWatch is one of many organizations involved in Blue Water Task Force, a 25-year-old water health initiative spearheaded by the Surfrider Foundation. Surfrider is a nonprofit grassroots organization started in 1984 by a group of Malibu, California, students who were concerned about the environmental conditions of the waters in which they surfed, due to coastal development.
Harbor WildWatch and the Blue Water Task Force
South Sound Surfrider’s Washington Regional Manager Liz Schotman said that the Blue Water Task Force has been around since at least 1990, likely starting in Ventura, California…