9311080 Able, K. The Rutgers University Marine Field Station is located near Tuckerton, New Jersey, at the mouth of the Mullica River - Great Bay Estuary. The entire watershed of this estuary is protected within the New Jersey National Pinelands Reserve. The station provides easy access to extensive salt marsh and estuarine habitats in the cleanest estuary on the northeast coast, and to a site at 15 m depth on the continental shelf where studies on hydrodynamic processes, sediment resuspension and transport, larval and juvenile settlement and recruitment of commercial species of fish and invertebrates, and bottom boundary layer prosses affecting benthic communities are being conducted. A Long-Term Ecosystem Observatory has been established at this site to track episodic and long-term changes in important environmental parameters. This project will 1) enhance the ability to transport and maintain invertebrates and fishes from the estray and continental shelf under controlled temperatures, and 2) improve data collection at the site on environmental factors fundamental to a number of the studies there, e.g., additional components for an existing meteorological station, a salinometer and a fluorometer. ***
