La Quinta Channel Environmental Monitoring Project : benthic diversity : research technical final report

Analysis of benthic invertebrate communities have been widely used in pollution detection and monitoring studies. The environment of concern is the La Quinta Channel, which is located in Corpus Christi Bay. La Quinta Channel serves several industrial plants and a naval station. Three stations were chosen in La Quinta Channel and three reference stations were chosen in Corpus Christi Bay. Benthic animals were collected, identified, enumerated, weighed to assess if La Quinta Channel was different from Corpus Christi Bay. The indicators were similar among all study sites, thus indicating a healthy environment in La Quinta Channel.