Puget Sound Marine Waters 2024 Overview

Published October 22, 2025

Since 2011, the Puget Sound Ecosystem Monitoring Program has released the annual Puget Sound Marine Waters Overview report. The latest report combines a wealth of data from comprehensive monitoring programs and provides a concise summary of what was happening in Puget Sound’s marine waters during 2024. The report represents the collective effort of contributors from federal, tribal, state, and local agencies, academia, nonprofits, and private and volunteer groups.

A portion of the report cover with the report title and an image of a grassy shoreline.

Introduction

This Marine Waters Overview provides a perspective of 2024 Puget Sound marine water quality and conditions and associated biota from comprehensive monitoring and observing programs. While the report focuses on the marine waters of greater Puget Sound, additional selected conditions are also included due to their influence on Puget Sound waters. These include large-scale climate indices and conditions along the Washington coast. It is important to document and understand regional drivers of variability and patterns on various timescales so that water quality data may be interpreted with these variations in mind, to better attribute human effects versus natural variations and change. This is the fourteenth annual report produced by the PSEMP Marine Waters Workgroup. Our message to decision makers, policy makers, managers, scientists, and the public who are interested in the health of Puget Sound follows.

Citation

PSEMP Marine Waters Workgroup. 2025. Puget Sound marine waters: 2024 overview. J. Apple, R. Wold, K. Stark, and J. Newton (Eds).

About the Author

The Puget Sound Ecosystem Monitoring Program (PSEMP) is a collaborative network of subject matter experts from many monitoring organizations and different parts of the region. Together, they generate, organize, synthesize, and communicate scientific information, across political and organizational boundaries, to track ecosystem conditions that directly address management and science questions critical to Puget Sound recovery.

About this Article

Article Type

Reports

Author

Puget Sound Ecosystem Monitoring Program