VI-54 



This limited approach toward estuarine study has severely limited the 

 value of the information collected in each study and has made a 

 duplication of effort inevitable. If, for instance, a fish habitat 

 study were carried out at a time different from the enforcement study 

 mentioned above, it would be necessary for the investigators to 

 obtain water quality information of the same type required by the 

 previous study, because there would be no other way of knowing if 

 water quality conditions had remained the same. 



The estuarine environments most often studied have been those with 

 specific problems in need of solution. Those estuarine systems undis- 

 turbed by man have generally been studied only by sinqle investigators 

 interested in and able to work on only a few aspects of the 

 environment. Yet, information on these kinds of systems is needed in 

 order to understand the changes that have occurred in other estuarine 

 environments. 



The net result of historical estuarine studies has been a large 

 quantity of partial information collected at different times and dif- 

 ferent places by different people. Only on a very few systems has a 

 broad spectrum of synoptic information been collected. While much of 

 the data collected is indeed still valuable, it is not now possible to 

 use it to establish key interrelationships among the ecosystem 

 components. The development of the information necessary to establish 



