In May’s Clean Ocean Advocate we announced that COA received an Equipment Loan Grant from the EPA Region II Citizen Science Program. The purpose of the equipment loan grant is to evaluate EPA’s recommended IDEXX testing method for ambient pathogen monitoring and compare it simultaneously with the ongoing COA-NJDEP1600 method for ambient pathogen monitoring. The goal is to validate the IDEXX method for NJ monitoring.
COA Staff Scientist Dr. Swarna Muthukrishnan and Coastal Watershed Protection Coordinator Alison McCarthy attended an IDEXX methodology training session provided by EPA in May. On July 11, 2018 COA conducted the first round of citizen-sampling using the IDEXX equipment which was successful (see photo).
Samples were analyzed for enterococcus by Dr. Muthukrishnan in the lab-space provided by NJ SeaGrant. The waste will be appropriately autoclaved and disposed, thanks to support of the Biology Department at Brookdale Community College. In our effort to be sustainable, gloves and bags will be recycled through the zero waste recycling program of Terracycle. This collaborative research/monitoring is made possible through the in-kind support from NJDEP, NJSeaGrant, Brookdale Community College, Terracycle, and NOAA.
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