Drifter deployments near the mouth of the Santa Clara River were conducted as part of the Bight '03 project organized by the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project (SCCWRP)

Coastal water quality in Southern California is generally poor during the wet winter months when more than 95% of the annual storm-water runoff volume occurs. To investigate the role of potentially contaminated storm-water runoff on coastal water quality, a coordinated cooperative regional monitoring effort conducted primarily by local municipalities was carried out. The monitoring provided data that will help answer many water quality questions including:

• How do runoff plumes evolve in time and space?
• What is the fate and transport of pollutants and pathogens within these plumes?
• How and to what extent do these loadings impact the local coastal marine ecosystem?

Drifter deployments were designed to document the movement and mixing of storm-water from the Santa Clara River in the coastal ocean. Drifters were deployed across the mouth of the Santa Clara River just outside the breaking waves, during a period of pronounced storm-water runoff. Individual drifter tracks show movement of the plume.

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