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Swim Guide’s eighth season officially starts Friday, as results of water-quality testing from more than 50 sites across the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico come in, thanks to an army of Swim Guide volunteers.

“Our volunteers are the heart (and lungs, brain, arms, and legs) of our Swim Guide program,” said Sound Rivers Volunteer Coordinator Emily Fritz. “This program couldn’t be done at this scale without them. With sampling at over 50 sites, spanning hundreds of miles, our volunteers are the reason eastern North Carolinians have accurate, weekly data to know if their favorite spot on the water is safe.”

Being a Swim Guide volunteer means collecting water samples every Thursday morning at selected sites from Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day. Some are boat ramps, some require scaling banks to reach the river, but all samples from all of them are transported to one of the three Sound Rivers’ offices in Washington, New Bern and Raleigh.

“If we didn’t have volunteers helping with this program, we would probably end up with five samples on a given week and some very exhausted staff,” Emily laughed.

Helping Emily coordinate the program this season are two new Sound Rivers interns — East Carolina University student Jonah Dickerson and Avalon Rosenberger from University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill — who got a crash course on Swim Guide earlier this week.

“On Monday, our newest interns joined us in the Washington office to learn about all things Swim Guide,” said Water Quality Specialist Taylor Register. “For Emily and I, this is our third year of training interns for the program, and we’ve found that tag-teaming these trainings is definitely the way to go!”

While Emily handles the logistics of the summer and coordinating volunteers, such as how to appropriately communicate to volunteers and weekly expectations for the internship, Taylor focuses on the science: how bacteria samples are processed in the lab and the quality control that ensures the data is consistently reliable and accurate.

“We are always incredibly lucky to have such amazing interns join us for the Swim Guide season, and this year is definitely no exception,” Taylor said. “Avalon and Jonah are both extremely qualified and are perfect fits for Sound Rivers, and we’re so excited to have them on board for the summer!”

A bonus of the Sound Rivers internship is that Swim Guide only takes up two days of the week, so it opens up opportunities for interns to pursue their interests in all the other parts of Sound Rivers. Prior to their arrival, Sound Rivers staff brainstormed different shadowing opportunities and areas where the interns can assist with other work.

“At the moment, our interns have been really excited about helping out with our Water Watch program, specifically with creating a mapping system and submission portal to help us streamline our reports,” Taylor said.

Get Swim Guide results here! Y aqui en espanol.

Sound Rivers’ Swim Guide program is sponsored by the Water-Quality Fund in memory of Gene Pate, Grady-White Boats, Public Radio East, Cummins, UNC Pavel Molchanov Scholars, ECU SECU Public Fellows Internship Foundation, City of Greenville, Lake Royale Property Owners Association and Melinda Vann and David Silberstein. For more information, visit soundrivers.org.

Swim Guide results are released to the public on Friday afternoons throughout the summer at soundrivers.org/swimguide, through local media and via text. To sign up for text alerts, text “SWIM” to 833-686-5322 to have results delivered weekly. For results in Spanish, text “NADAR” to 833-686-5322.

Like Swim Guide? Donate today to support water-quality testing all summer long!