Coast Watchers monitoring for 20 years
Coast Watchers have been monitoring Lake Huron shoreline for 20 years
Submitted by Lake Huron Coastal Centre
The Coast Watchers Community Science monitoring program, for Lake Huron, celebrated its 20th year in 2025.
The Lake Huron Coastal Centre (LHCC) runs the program.
Coast Watchers serve as “eyes and ears” of Lake Huron’s coastline, according to LHCC.
Volunteers collect data along the shoreline making it possible to track long-term trends in shoreline conditions and contribute to both short-term sustainability efforts and long-term resiliency goals of the LHCC.
Lake Huron has a vast 6,170-kilometre shoreline, the longest of any Great Lake. Detailed monitoring of lake water quality is a challenge for any single agency. This is where community scientists play a critical role in tracking and documenting changes along the coast, the LHCC says.
Coast Watchers collected data from May to October 2025 on atmospheric conditions, wildlife, algae washups, plastic pollution, human activities, and storm damage.
Volunteers monitoring the southeast shoreline, the Canadian side of Lake Huron, provided more than 800 reports, from Sarnia in the south to Bruce Peninsula in the north.
This data informs conservation programs run by the LHCC. The data will be shared with partners, including researchers, government bodies, private companies, and other non-profit organizations, to dive deeper on issues facing Lake Huron.
Here’s what the Coast Watchers learned:
It’s been a hot year.
In the 2025 Coast Watcher Annual Report, LHCC staff compared Coast Watchers temperature data to Lake Huron Climate Normals, generated by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) and United States National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Climate normals are developed through averaging long-term data (more than 15 years) to describe the average conditions of climate in a specific location.
The LHCC found that average air and water temperatures, collected by Coast Watchers, were warmer than the historical average. Due to the effects of climate change, it is expected there will continue to be summers with higher temperatures like what was observed in 2025.
Lots of critters were spotted on the beach.
As wildlife is an integral part of the Lake Huron ecosystem, Coast Watchers reported on wildlife observed on the beach, both living and deceased. These reports help to record the presence of at-risk species or the occurrence of wildlife die-off events.
This year, the most common animal observed by volunteers was a gull, followed by Canadian geese. Also observed were Swans; Buffleheads; Gizzard Shad Fish; Mergansers; Turkey Vultures; Monarch Butterflies; Cormorants; Egrets; Minnows; and (potentially) a Piping Plover (an endangered species).
Coast Watchers reported 51 deceased or decomposing fish on the shoreline this year, which is more than double what was reported by Coast Watchers last year. Most of these reports were made from May to July, which corresponds to a Gizzard Shad Fish die-off suggested by fisheries scientists to be due to an outbreak of viral hemorrhagic septicemia (VHS).
There was no shortage of beachgoers.
Coast Watchers monitor the shoreline for human activity, tracking the number of people, cars, and pets on the beach or in the lake through the season. The busiest beach this year was Saugeen Beach, and the busiest time was July.
There were 66 per cent of vehicles observed on the beach at Oliphant, which has a unique, gently sloping beach, in which large areas of the lake bed are exposed during low water levels. Driving along the beach to access the Fishing Islands or waterfront is common, although it can damage native wildlife habitats and increase vulnerability to invasive species such as European Common Reed (Phragmites australis).
Almost all of the shoreline is being monitored by these citizen scientists.
Most of the shoreline was monitored by Coast Watchers in 2025, but there’s a large gap in volunteers reporting from Goderich to Camlachie.
The Lake Huron Coastal Centre is actively looking for new volunteers for the Coast Watchers program, especially if you live in Bayfield, Grand Bend, Port Franks, or Chippewas of Kettle and Stony Point First Nation, or frequent these areas of the shoreline.
To become a Coast Watcher, learn more about the program, or read the full report from 2025, visit LakeHuron.ca/CoastWatchers.
If you are interested in becoming a data sharing partner, please contact coastwatchers@lakehuron.ca
This program was made possible due to the generous support of Bruce Power; the McCall MacBain Foundation; and the Government of Ontario.