Some Aspects of the Hydrography of a
Relatively Unpolluted Estuary in
Southeastern Massachusetts
JAMES G. HOFF, Associate Professor
PAUL BARROW, Research Assistant
Southeastern Massachusetts Technological Institute
North Dartmouth, Massachusetts
DAVID A. McGILL, Professor
U. S. Coast Guard Academy
New London, Connecticut
INTRODUCTION
Our coastal estuaries have recently come into focus as environments that are
vital to most of our Atlantic food and game fishes at some state or stages in their life
cycle. This, of course, is in addition to the long-recognized role of estuaries in shellfish production.
Many estuarine areas are currently undergoing rapid development. This condition is further complicated by the multiple-use aspect of such development, with its
potential environmental changes. Dredging, deposition of spoil, warm-water discharge, indiscriminate spraying and sewage disposal present numerous problems for
estuarine management. It is the intensity of industrialization and the population expansion which now make these problems extremely acute.
An opportunity to observe the conditions of a relatively unpolluted natural
system provides a base line for the study of its future changes. A proposed sewage disposal scheme involving the Slocum River was not authorized by the town meeting. It
is inevitable, however, that the region will yield to population pressure in years to
come, giving further value to the observations of its present conditions.
MORPHOMETRY OF THE SLOCUM RIVER
The subject area of this study is a small coastal estuary on the west side of
Buzzards Bay, in southeastern Massachusetts. The estuary is the first drainage basin
within the area of the Bay, which has its western limit at Barneys Joy Point. The
principal stream is the Slocum River, with its subsidiary coves and salt marshes, as
shown in Figure 1.
The measurement of the topographical features of a lake basin or a river
estuarine bed is the subject of morphometry. Since certain fundamental conditions
of biological productivity arise directly from morphometrical relations of water
bodies, it is established procedure to measure these features of river basins to determine the role which these parameters may play in biological phenomena. Morphometry studies also provide a convenient quantitative means to compare different
bodies of water (1).
Methods and Results
Measurements made on the U.S. Coast and Geodetic survey chart No. 237,
corrected as of January 8, 1966, were the source of much of the data reported in this
morphometric study of the Slocum River. The chart is a mercator projection with a
scale of 1:20,000 at Latitude 41° 32' N. This data has been augmented with depth
soundings from Pelegs Island to the northernmost extremity in the study.
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