New Jersey flights check for pollution at shore

[unhappycamper]

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/science/article/New-Jersey-flights-check-for-pollution-at-shore-5665363.php

New Jersey flights check for pollution at shore
By WAYNE PARRY, Associated Press : August 3, 2014 : Updated: August 3, 2014 7:50am

OVER THE JERSEY SHORE (AP) — The image on a satellite photo snapped by NASA showed a big green arrow off the New Jersey coastline, starting in New York Harbor and spanning almost to Atlantic City.

Some blogs were already starting to write about it, calling it a large bloom of an algae species known as phytoplankton. Some just called it a giant blob.

Bruce Friedman, who heads the Bureau of Marine Water Monitoring and Standards for the state Department of Environmental Protection, wanted to see for himself. Two days after NASA published the image, Friedman and Dave Dorworth, a veteran pilot with the State Forest Fire Service, took to the air to look for it.

This year, in the second summer after Superstorm Sandy, when tourism at the shore needs to bounce back strongly, the DEP flights are more important than ever: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency stopped its flights this year to save money, leaving the DEP planes and choppers as the only game in town.