What We Do
A crucial role of the Massachusetts Bays Program is to track and document the condition of the estuaries and embayments of Massachusetts and Cape Cod Bays. With the help of many collaborators and contributors, we report on the condition of water quality within the Bays, the health of important estuarine and coastal habitats, and trends in human use and development along the Massachusetts Bays coastline.
Topics include changes in the water chemistry of Boston Harbor due to improved wastewater management (Question 2), causes of Harmful Algal Blooms (Question 3), trends in eelgrass beds throughout Massachusetts Bay (Question 8), and acreage of land protected since our last State of the Bays Report (Question 16), to name just a few.
In 2004, the Program issued its first
State of the Bays Report 
file size 2MB
, summarizing the status of 17 indicators of the health of our planning area. In the December 2010
State of the Bays Report file size 14MB
, we track the current status and recent trends of many of the same indicators and several that have been added since our last report.
Reports and Resources
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State of the Bays 2010 file size 14MB
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State of the Bays 2004 file size 2MB
- Recent Reports
- Fact Sheets
- See All Reports and Resources
Hard Copy Requests
What You Can Do
Learn and practice these and other simple steps to help keep Massachusetts bays and estuaries free from contaminants, and their wildlife free from harm.
