In the course of this project, several sobering discoveries were made about the general state of data management, which probably apply to other estuaries and other types of watercourses, certainly in the state of Texas. Galveston Bay, observations are dearly won. Whether the object is fishery population or salinity structure or sediment quality, a considerable investment is needed to get an observer on station and to perform the necessary measurements. Most universities and state or federal agencies lack the resources to sustain a comprehensive monitoring program for any extended period. We depend upon the few such programs that exist and on the ability to combine data from different agencies and projects.
Data acquisition is therefore a collective enterprise.
Effective data analysis requires a preserved and accessible base of measurements over a range of conditions and period of time. This does not imply, however, that the smaller projects may be ignored. The cumulative information in these smaller studies exceeds that in most larger projects. Further, these smaller projects may fill important gaps in the space-time record. An important property of a data set is its perishability, that is, whether it is reliably and permanently archived, exists elsewhere in duplicate, or could be subject to loss or discard.