FogNet was a collaborative effort between UC Santa Cruz, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, CSU Monterey Bay, Humboldt State Marine Labs, Bodega Bay Marine Labs, San Francisco State University, Pepperwood Preserve and US Geological Survey, between the years 2013-2017. It was funded by the National Science Foundation Chemical Oceanography Program.

The goal was collect fog water during summer advective fog events for the chemical characterization using an active fog collector, and to quantify fog deposition volume using a standard passive fog collector.  The main chemical constituent we were interested in fog water was mercury, in its most toxic form monomethyl mercury (MMHg).  The hypothesis we tested is whether a volatile form of mercury (dimethyl mercury) produced in the coastal ocean can evade the sea water and be incorporated into cloud droplets, whereby it can deposit to terrestrial ecosystems and become an important, or even dominant contributor to MMHg to these environments.

Fog water samples were collected at 7 sites during the summers of 2014-2016: (south to north) Marina Airport, Long Marine Lab, UC Santa Cruz, Montara Lighthouse, Bodega Bay, Pepperwood Preserve, and Humboldt Marine Labs.

Results of this study were published: Weiss-Penzias et al., 2016; Weiss-Penzias et al., 2017; Weiss-Penzias et al., 2018; Weiss-Penzias et al., 2019;  Coale et al., 2018; Fernandez et al., 2018