Drifter deployments near the mouth of the Tijuana 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?

A series of drifter deployments were designed to document the movement and mixing of storm-water from the Tijuana River in the coastal ocean. Drifter triplets were repetitively deployed near the mouth of the Tijuana River during a period of pronounced storm-water runoff. Drifters were deployed in the morning and left to follow the plume for the remainder of each day. Individual drifter tracks show movement of the plume. Changes in the relative position of drifter pairs gives information on horizontal mixing properties.

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