The National Status and Trends (NS+T) Program for Marine Environmental Quality was initiated by NOAA in 1984. The purpose of this program is to determine the status and detect changes in the environmental quality of our Nation's estuarine and coastal waters. The NS+T Quality Assurance Project is one of the seven components of the Program and applies to the two monitoring projects: the National Benthic Surveillance Project (NBSP) and the Mussel Watch Project (MWP). The NBSP collected and analyzed benthic fish and sediments from sites around the coastal and estuarine United States, including Alaska. The NS+T Mussel Watch Project is designed to represent chemical distributions over national and regional scales; there are 300 sites currently sampled as part of this project.