Around once a month, we take to the air and travel by boat to obtain high-resolution aerial photo observations and gather water data at our monitoring stations and state ferry transects. This provides us a visual picture of the health of Puget Sound, which we call Eyes Over Puget Sound or EOPS.
Eyes Over Puget Sound empowers you to:
- See what is currently happening in Puget Sound.
- See how weather and climate are shaping Puget Sound water quality.
- Use Eyes Over Puget Sound as free educational material for your own endeavors.
Surface conditions on our latest flight
After a relatively warm summer and fall, and La Niña forming in the tropics, streamflows in the Puget Sound region are now relatively normal.
Summer in Puget Sound produced lots of algal and organic material in the water and on beaches that, by October, have disappeared. Kelp beds look strong in northern Puget Sound and the Straits, and the harvest of the annual chum salmon run is in full swing in Hood Canal.
Jellyfish aggregations are visible in Budd and Sinclair Inlets — and some of the jellyfish might conceal a beast of another kind within. Oil sheens on the water are currently numerous.
Learn more about Eyes over Puget Sound