3. Challenges and Issues
Why is this the state of affairs with respect to marine pollution data? Let me suggest a few reasons.
1. Agencies charged with pollution data acquisition are generally different from those that acquire oceanographic data. To illustrate this point, let me use the situation as it exists in the Philippines. The organization that has traditionally been associated with oceanographic data gathering is the Coast and Geodetic Survey which is under the National Mapping and Resources Information Agency (NAMRIA) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). NAMRIA is also the designated National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC). However, the staff of this agency are principally hydrographers and have little exposure to pollution studies. The acquisition of pollution data for NAMRIA has, therefore, been a low priority. On the other hand, the government unit that has been much more actively involved in marine pollution work is the Research Division of the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB), also of the DENR. However, this group generally focuses its work on contaminants in nearshore areas and their programs are often not associated with NAMRIA. There are other institutions that conduct pollution studies in the country. These include the Philippine Coast Guard, the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), universities, and occasionally, the private sector. Yet, there has been very little coordination among these groups.
A similar situation used to exist in the coastal city of Xiamen, People's Republic of China. Many groups have traditionally been engaged in pollution monitoring. Among them are the State Oceanic Administration, the Ministry of Environment, the Ports Authority, the Department of Fisheries, and the local universities. Their efforts were uncoordinated, often duplicated each other, and data were hardly exchanged. It was only in recent years that these groups have come together, largely in response to the initiative of the GEF/UNDP/IMO MPP-EAS, to consider how their pollution monitoring efforts could be improved and complement each other, and how the data acquired might be shared and packaged so that these can be used.
2. Parameters measured to assess marine pollution vary significantly within and among countries. The framework developed for the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) classified a number of analytes according to the relationship between their impact (i.e., their importance to human health, marine resources and amenities) and the difficulty of the measurement (Figure 1). Category 1 analytes are those judged to have high impact and are relatively easy to measure. Category 2 analytes, on the other hand, are considered to have lesser impact, and require more sophisticated instruments, considerable training and specialized standards and reference materials. Finally, Category 3 analytes are those considered to be of high impact but are presently difficult to measure and depends on the capabilities of the laboratories in their measurement.
This framework has been adopted by the MPP-EAS Regional Programme for its Marine Pollution Monitoring and Information Management Network (MPMIMN) members for their site-specific monitoring programs. However, it is not clear if other groups in the region focus on these parameters as well. More likely, the choice of parameters is as varied as the institutions that acquire the data.
Even if there may be agreement in the choice of parameters, the protocols in the determination of parameters vary significantly. For example, in the determination of inorganic components in seawater (e.g., nutrients, trace metals), water samples may or may not be filtered. Thus, reports of concentrations of these analytes could either be as totals (including what may be associated with the particulate material) or that associated with the dissolved fraction (which by convention is what passes through a filter of a certain pore size, often ＜0.45μm).
