547 



the shellfish industry. A general environmental study (including in- 

 vestigations of sediment type and distribution, fish habitat value, 

 oceanographic features, and recreational use, among others) would 

 probably have to be foregone because of the lack of people and 

 equipment to carry them out. 



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 single investigators 

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

 ment. 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 different 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 ecosystem 

 relationships is a research problem to be discussed in chapter 3, but 

 much of this information is required for other purposes directly 

 related to management needs. 



Information to support management efforts is lacking in most of 

 those information categories which require extensive field survey or 

 study to secure it. 



PHYSICAL OCEAN'OGRAPHT 



The information needed includes actual measurements of tidal, 

 current, and stratification phenomena on many different estuarine 

 systems. 



While many estimates of these types of data are available, actual 

 measurements are necessary to establish the true characteristics of each 

 estuary. These measurements, together with area, shape, and size in- 

 formation, will provide the detailed morphological description which 

 forms the foundation for studies in which the physical characteristics 

 of individual estuarine management units are described in order that 

 its capacity for use can be understood, and, of more far-reaching con- 

 sequences, the studies in which one estuarine system is compared with 

 another. A recurrent theme throughout this study — and this report — 

 is the concept of learning enough about the nature of the estuarine 

 zone to permit development of study methods applicable to a wide 

 range of estuarine types. 



The great amount of effort now being expended in the development 

 of estuarine mathematical models and the attempts to apply systems 



