Photographic surveys of beach profiles and animals taken as part of the Beach Watch program from 1993-10-19 to 2008-03-01

This collection contains images from surveys of beaches between Bodega Head and Año Nuevo, California.

NOAA's Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary (GFNMS) Beach Watch Program, administered by the Farallones Marine Sanctuary Association (FMSA), is a long-term monitoring program operating within GFNMS and NOAA's Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary along the California coast. An objective of the program is to develop baseline information on the organisms inhabiting the sanctuaries and on the physical characteristics of the sanctuaries. To achieve this objective, Beach Watch volunteers have taken photographic slides of animals (both alive and dead) and beach profiles during surveys of over fifty sanctuary beaches every two to four weeks since 1993.

As part of a data rescue effort, GFNMS, FMSA, and NOAA's National Oceanographic Data Center and Climate Database Modernization Program sponsored a project to scan Beach Watch's photographic slides and create high-resolution TIFF and Web-accessible JPEG images for the public.