Here are a couple of great resources for obtaining live water quality data in the San Francisco Bay area.
http://sfbay.wr.usgs.gov/access/wqdata/
http://sfbay.wr.usgs.gov/access/wqdata/query/index.html
http://www.sfbayjv.org/resources.php
In Santa Cruz / Monterey:
http://oceandatacenter.ucsc.edu/PhytoBlog/
And in the Monterey Bay / Elkhorn Slew:
http://www.mbari.org/lobo/loboviz.htm
http://www.mbari.org/lobo/getLOBOdata.htm
And a an interesting data site monitoring ocean color around the world:
http://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/