If a fish doesn't like the water, he can usually leave when the tide changes. The remark by Bert H. Bates, chief of the Texas Water Quality Board biological laboratory in Deer Park, indicates the importance of benthos in measuring the progress of pollution clean-up in the Houston Ship Channel. The bottle containing the tiny animals is part of a collection of species that have been found by the TWQB Channel monitoring team during the four years that Bates has been there. He also keeps a photo file of each new phytoplankton organism encountered. His team of four biologists monitors the Channel from the Turning Basin to Morgan's Point, about 25 miles.
Organisms collected include plankton, benthos, and nekton.
Nekton are organisms capable of swimming, such as fish or shrimp. The lab team samples seven stations on the channel once a month and the six side bays once a quarter. The time-consuming activity involves taking both surface and bottom samples. The Channel has three different systems, each a habitat for different organisms' upstream where there is freshwater inflow, midzone, and the lower area which is somewhat marine. Monitoring stations are set up to consider the different systems.