Chronicles of Zostera

I've moved!

2011-02-09T22:00:00.001-08:00

This blog has moved to a new site. Come check out Chronicles as part of its new network Southern Fried Science!

www.coz.southernfriedscience.com

A video of feeding cucumbers...

2010-10-30T08:36:00.000-07:00

This is a burrowing tentacular feeding sea cucumber. I believe this is Sclerodactyla briareus although if anyone else has a better idea, let me know.

Also, look for some changes to the Chronicles in the coming week. Happy Halloween!

Disapointment? Yep...

2010-10-17T17:57:00.000-07:00

Maybe I was expecting a battle royal of sorts. I mean, I had seen Dr James Ammerman of NY SeaGrant take the government position on the Gulf oil spill, painting a rather rosey picture of whats happening down there. And I have read Carl Safina's blog posts, seen him on TED talks and watched him on Colbert talking about the devastation of this ecological disaster. So you might imagine how excited I was to learn that both men, affiliated with Stony Brook's School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, would be on a panel discussing the oil spill. I imagined the gloves would be off in a no-holds barred slugfest between a government scientists and a staunch conservationist.

I was telling everyone to go. I predicted a lot of yelling.

I was disappointed. I guess I should say I wasn't disappointed by the news. It was encouraging to hear the consensus agreement that it could have been much, much worse. Despite not knowing the exact impact due to lingering effects for a considerable amount of time, everyone on the panel seemed to agree that the oil dissipated quickly, the scenes of oiled animals occurred in a very small portion of the Gulf, and oil only reached a very very small percentage of the marsh lands. No shouting. No fisticuffs between Ammerman and Safina, or any of the other members on the panel for that matter.

And, while they all stopped short of calling the spill the worst anthropogenic ecological disaster in US history, they did raise some very alarming issues. Basically, the panelists agreed that of greater concern for the Gulf ecosystem is the increasing dead zone and the loss of salt marshes. While the oil spill was an acute occurrence that will likely have some lingering effects, both the dead zone and marsh losses are Gulf impacts that are occurring over a long timescale and will continue to have considerable long term effects. In the question-answer period, Safina pointed out that the Gulf of Mexico has a large amount of natural resilience, as long as the ecological factory is still there - but that factory is the salt marsh, an important habitat which is vital for many species during various portions of their life histories. It is this reason that the dramatic loss of wetlands should be of much greater concern than any one oil spill. Without marshes, many species wouldn't be able to recover.

And yes, while this might seem a little sympathetic toward the oil companies, the truth if that this is a 20-30 billion dollar industry in the Gulf and as long as people continue to drive and use petroleum products, the industry won't go anywhere. We are all contributing to that problem. This event should have strengthened our resolve for clean energy, but as a NATION, we need to encourage a change in policy. That just doesn't seem to be happening. And while I don't like to get political on here, with the expected results of the coming election, we will be farther away from a clean energy nation despite the events in the Gulf, and our ever increasing pumping of CO2 into the atmosphere. This is why its important for everyone to vote, even if you have lost faith in your party or aren't enthusiastic about any candidates, remaining on the sidelines could have very serious repercussions.

Reading through the interwebs...

2010-10-14T17:51:00.000-07:00

Been reading some interesting things out there on the internet. Thought I might share a few things.

Though you had heard it all about the oil spill? On a recent blog post at Discover magazine, one scientist is attributing these fish kills to oil related effects.

Google is helping some off-shore wind energy plans get connected.

A humpback whale traveled a really, really, really, REALLY long way, probably in search of a mate.

A major anomalous warming and bleaching event in the Caribbean.

New species discovered in deep trenches.

Spiny dogfish eating stripers.

As responsible scientists, we should all go out and vote.

And finally, since we are 2 weeks away from scallop season in NY, I'll leave you with this video:

South Shore Estuary Learning Facilitator Program

2010-10-11T18:50:00.000-07:00

Or, sSELF for short. I just recently learned about this program when I attended the New York Marine Science Consortium annual conference. The idea behind this program is that it gives groups, such as schools, the opportunity to be active stewards by monitoring their local environments. The south shore estuary system extends from highly impacted water bodies in the west, to less impacted embayments to the east, and encompasses a watershed with a variety of land uses. The program aims to educate citizens on some of these issues while allowing them to become active in collection of data that helps scientists monitor the estuaries. The program gives interested groups all the equipment and training they need to get started on the monitoring. This started back in 2007 and now has 35 different groups that have contributed to 400 different data sets. In addition to local schools around Long Island, other citizens groups also participate, including the Sierra Club and SPLASH - a group of concerned citizens, started by local fishermen, whose goal is to remove waterfront pollution through both public awareness and individual participation. It is an interesting program, and I hope to become involved with some local schools getting this established on the East End.

Census of Marine Life

2010-10-04T08:26:00.000-07:00

The results of the 10 year long study on all walks of marine life ended recently, and the results have recently been released, reports an article on CNN.com. This "decade of discovery" was started by a Rutgers researcher and ended up using data collected from over 2700 researchers from 80 nations - quite the collaborative effort. These scientists collected data on the smallest bacteria to the largest whales, from the frigid Antarctic to the balmy tropics and everywhere in between. General conclusions: the oceans are much more connected and the species are much more diverse than previously thought. And that most of the species are as yet unidentified. You can read some research highlights here and check out many of the images from the decade long study here.

All in all, a very exciting conclusion to an epic task of trying to understand, survey, and catalog ocean life.

Jaws:Fire Island?

2010-10-03T16:59:00.000-07:00

Well not quite. White sharks have been receiving a considerable amount of press this summer in the northeast (see here, here, here, and here). Apparently, there were so many sightings that the US Coast Guard issued a white shark advisory, warning people of the northeast that (shocker!) there are white sharks in the water. However, these sea creatures hardly pose a threat to Long Island bathers, Dr. Demian Chapman, shark biologist from the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook, assured the general audience at Southampton College last Friday night.

True, the northeast used to be a hot spot for white sharks. There were a great many sightings in the 50s and 60s, sighting of both juveniles, adults and even some pairs that were believed to be mating. While little is known about the white sharks around Long Island at this time period, Dr. Chapman said that some researchers believe this might have been a spawning and nursery ground. That being said, there is little data on white sharks from this time period other than sightings. White shark fishing then became quite common, and some of the largest white sharks ever caught were landing on Long Island, particularly out in Montauk, where Captain Frank Mundus was renowned for being a top shark fisherman.

What happened over the course of the past decades is that white shark populations have dwindled in the northeast. While there might be some debate as to the magnitude of the decline, I think most researchers will agree that it is significant. Dr. Chapman is looking to use genetic tools to get a grip on how small (or big) the white shark population might be. Using samples from around 50 sharks, the data thus far shows that northeast white sharks have a low genetic diversity, indicative of a species that has experiences a considerable decline, also known as a bottleneck. This could be potentially devastating to coastal ecosystems along the US, as these animals are apex predators in the coastal food web.

So maybe the white shark advisory shouldn't have been alerting the public about their presence in the waters of New England, but perhaps, they should have been warning us about their disappearance.

That all being said, I am no shark biologist, and the above information was from my notes at the lecture. To learn more about sharks, you should check out some other websites, like the one about New England Sharks, and other blogs by people in the know, such as this entry at Ya Like Dags

Sea lions devastating threatened fisheries...

2010-09-30T17:45:00.000-07:00

Another article about the devastation sea lions are causing on fish stocks on the west coast. Only this time, the focus isn't on salmon. Sea lions have been congregating at passage points on dammed rivers on the west coast for years, and have been consuming salmon as they enter these passages to return upriver to spawn. This has been in the news for quite some years, since around 2005, and have continued to receive some level of attention in the public eye, where sea lions are being killed to save salmon, even while salmon experts call for other options.It has also received attention in scientific communities, to the point where large dollars have been invested to examine the exact impacts on salmonid populations by the increase in sea lion and seal populations.

However, the new article as it appeared today talked about sea lions now beginning to consume female sturgeon as they reach these dam points. This is a relatively new idea. It appeared in a Northwest Council report about strategies to address the sturgeon population. Not sure if this is a prey switching situation, as my recent online search hasn't turned up many results. But this was a finding in the above report:

"Limiting Factor: Marine mammal predation

Primary Threat: Predation by sea lions on sub-adult, adult, and spawning-size white sturgeon below Bonneville Dam. Oregon and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife staff have directly observed more that 150 white sturgeon being preyed upon between January 2006 and May 2007, more than 60% of which were spawning-size fish. These are actual numbers based on direct observations during other sampling activities, not a targeted sampling effort; the actual number of white sturgeon taken by sea lions is likely much higher. Steller sea lions appear to be especially effective in preying upon large, spawning-size sturgeon, and may selectively capture fish of this size.

Strategy: Conduct non-lethal hazing actions on the Columbia River to deter California and Steller sea lions from feeding on white sturgeon.

Measures: Hazing with acoustic and percussive devices, flares, and rubber bullets has been shown to be relatively effective in deterring predation on white sturgeon by Steller sea lions in the area immediately below Bonneville Dam. Hazing has been an ineffective deterrent for California sea lions. Steller sea lions have been appearing earlier in the year each year since first sited near Bonneville Dam. Hazing to protect sturgeon should begin when Steller sea lions are first sited near the dam in each year. In 2007, hazing began in mid-December from Bonneville Dam downstream approximately six miles to Navigation Marker 85. Hazing will take place four days a week during daylight hours. Separate from the hazing efforts, fishery managers from Washington, Oregon and Idaho are seeking federal approval to use lethal means to remove individual California sea lions from below Bonneville Dam that prey on white sturgeon as well as Chinook salmon and steelhead listed for protection under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA). Efforts to date have focused on the area immediately below Bonneville Dam, but predation by sea lions on white sturgeon is known to occur throughout the lower Columbia River."

Well back to the article, its brief, but basically it talks about observations of the sea lions eating sturgeon on the Columbia River. And while this isn't being observed at the Fraser River yet, given the still increasing sea lion and seal populations, its probably only a matter of time.

The impacts of top predator declines...

2010-09-28T21:26:00.000-07:00

(My best shark photo, sorry!)
So I check out Underwater Times from time to time to see whats new in the underwater news world. So when I happened upon this article from the United Arab Emirates, it reminded me of a Science paper that came out a few years back that is near and dear to my heart. But first, the news article. Essentially, sharks are a major fishery in the Arabian Gulf. From 1985 to 2000, shark landings in the UAE ranged from 1350 to 1900 tons of sharks, and the UAE is a major exporter of shark fins to Asia. However, scientists and fishermen alike have started to notice that the loss of shark predators has impacted the ecology of the Arabian Gulf. This has lead to a study to be undertaken examining these impacts.

In the article, a sentence mentions how the loss of sharks on the Atlantic coasts has lead to a collapse in bay scallops. So you guessed right, this is where the 2007 Science paper which I find so particularly fascinating comes in. This paper, entitled "Cascading Effects of the Loss of Apex Predatory Sharks from a Coastal Ocean," by the late Ransom Myers and others detailed a study whose base conclusion was that the loss of sharks due to overfishing cascaded down the food web and resulted in the loss of bay scallops in North Carolina. They examined fisheries data for trends in individual species of elasmobranchs, the family of fishes to which sharks belong, from 1970-2005 between Cape Cod, MA and Cape Canaveral, FL. They were able to demonstrate strong decreasing trends in the abundance of great sharks, which are the apex predators. Over the same 35 year period, the populations of smaller elasmobranchs, including smaller sharks, skates and rays, were shown to be increasing. Many of these species, and the cownose ray in particular, are known consumers of benthic prey, including a variety of shellfish. In North Carolina, cownose rays move into the estuaries to feed in the summer, and were capable of removing entire bay scallop populations before they could spawn, and decimating populations to a point that densities were so low, that successful fertilization could not take place. By 2004, the North Carolina scallop fishery was gone. These mesopredators are also likely to be impacting the recovery of other shellfish species through consumption. Thus, the loss of sharks, even through by-catch, is likely to have devastating ecosystem impacts, not just in North Carolina, but likely in many coastal areas. (For other reasons why sharks matter, check out this website, this cool blog called Ya Like Dags, and the ongoing series of shark posts over on Southern Fried Science).

Myers RA, Baum JK, Shepherd TD, Powers SP, & Peterson CH (2007). Cascading effects of the loss of apex predatory sharks from a coastal ocean. Science (New York, N.Y.), 315 (5820), 1846-50 PMID: 17395829

Another paper that came out of the Charles Peterson group (he was a co-author on the above Science paper) investigated restoration options for scallops in North Carolina. Obviously, cownose rays still prevent a major problem. One mode of restoration they examined was a way to protect adult scallops in a spawner sanctuary from predation by the rays. They were able to accomplish this via a fairly simple method of using PVC stakes into the sediment that reached out of the water at high tide, evenly spaced narrowly enough so that the rays could not fit inside. This method was capable of successfully maintaining dense populations of adult scallops during the period when the rays were in the estuary. Obviously, allowing populations of adults to survive to spawning is a major step in enhancing scallop populations.

Stephen R. Fegley,* Charles H. Peterson, Nathan R. Geraldi and David W. Gaskill (2009). Enhancing the Potential for Population Recovery: Restoration Options for Bay Scallop Populations, Argopecten irradians concentricus, in North Carolina Journal of Shellfish Research, 28 (3), 477-489 : 10.2983/035.028.0309

Nature Blog Network

2010-09-27T19:33:00.000-07:00

I just joined onto the Nature Blog Network. Its a cool site that compiles all nature-type blogs that are members. It has many categories, including some that I find particularly interesting, including Marine, Mollusks, Invertebrates, and Photography.
Check it out!

Gelatinous zoop!

2010-09-23T20:58:00.001-07:00

There is an interesting blog over on discovermagazine.com about the way sea walnuts (or ctenophores, or Mnemiopsis leidyi) feed (in addition to a cool video, which is posted below). Apparently, these organisms use their cilia to create almost undetectable currents, and they are then capable of catching unsuspecting prey with great efficiency. Due to their incredible ability to feed stealthily and efficiently, they have been particularly devastating invaders in European water bodies. When these comb jellies showed up in the Black Sea, they contributed to a food web collapse by consuming many of the fish larvae that would typically serve as the base of the food chain. In fact, gelatinous zooplankton are often considered productivity dead-ends; they consume productivity in the forms of other plankton, however, they offer little food value to other species. So the productivity is not transferred to other trophic levels, and food webs collapse. This is also becoming a problem in human impacted systems.

This blog made me remember some research some colleagues at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Science conducted. PhD student Marianne McNamara, under the tutelage of Darcy Lonsdale, investigated the impact of high abundances of ctenophores on larval bivalve mortality.
In their article "Shifting abundance of the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi and the implications for larval bivalve mortality," published earlier this year in Marine Biology, McNamara et al investigated how ctenophore abundance has changed, their digestion rates, and finally, their ability to control bivalve larvae. The data from this article is of particular importance for the hard clam restoration and management effort in Great South Bay, NY (their field sites), since the comb jellies may exert a strong predation pressure on hard clam larvae.
They conducted field surveys to investigate the abundance of ctenophores and other zooplankton. They enumerated and took volumetric measurements of the comb jellies, then looked at their gut contents. Finally, they conducted lab feeding experiments, and then used equations to calculate their ability to control bivalve larvae.
McNamara et al found high densities of ctenophores in the early summer, and larger ctenophores in the late summer, and when compared to the literature, densities were considerably higher than in previous decades. This is of particular importance, since bivalve veligers made up approximately 63% of the ctenophores' gut contents, indicating this is a particularly valuable food source for the jellies. In addition, using their equations from densities and feeding rates, they predicted that at peak abundances, the ctenophores could consume over 94% of the bivalve veligers in Great South Bay. This is a particularly alarming figure. In addition, the peak abundances of ctenophores occurs earlier in the year (early summer) now than it did decades ago (in the fall), putting peak abundances of comb jellies in the water column at the same time as the bivalve larvae.
Clearly, this study illustrates the potential ecosystem impacts of increasing gelatinous zooplankton. While they have already been shown to be particularly harmful as invaders, it is now apparent that they can have impacts where they are native as well. It is likely that increasing human impacts leading to pelagic dominated production will lead to more ctenophores in coastal systems, which can prevent benthos from reestablishing in these areas. This might be the case in Great South Bay, where the hard clam populations are struggling to recover despite the Nature Conservancy's efforts at replenishing them. Now I don't know about their high end estimates, as one could imagine if ctenophores were capable of consuming essentially all of the bivalve veligers, then veligers and comb jellies wouldn't be collected together in plankton tows. However, it is clear that ctenophores can possibly have a major impact on a local ecosystem.

McNamara, M., Lonsdale, D., & Cerrato, R. (2009). Shifting abundance of the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi and the implications for larval bivalve mortality Marine Biology, 157 (2), 401-412 DOI: 10.1007/s00227-009-1327-6

The Great Flood is coming!!!!

2010-09-23T14:26:00.000-07:00

If you live in a certain part of North Dakota, that is. I have only been to North Dakota once (for the NJCL conference), so I have limited experience. But I imagine its a very nice place with very nice people. Well I came across this AP article about a place called Devil's Lake, North Dakota. Apparently, this lake is an endpoint for local water run-off; that is, it has no drainage, no natural rivers or streams allowing the water that accumulates from rain and snowmelt to flow out of the lake. So this lake has been growing over the past few decades, getting deeper and larger in size. Since 1990, 400 houses have been moved or destroyed due to the rising waters. Small towns are in danger of becoming inundated, while others were essentially bought out in entirety, by state and federal governments and are now submerged. The waters have risen so high in recent years that the lake is only 6 feet from overflowing, which would be devastating to many downstream towns and communities. A breach of the flood banks would send water into communities near and far, with estimates of flooding exceeding any previous floods. There is considerable debate about what to do with the problem. But for right now, residents just wait for the slow moving devastation.

If nothing else, check out the article here. It has a really cool animated graphic showing the lake in the 1980s and the lake today.

I am famous!

2010-09-20T19:12:00.000-07:00

Well, not really, but I can dream right?

There as an article in the latest issue of the Suffolk Times ( a local east end newspaper) about hard clams in Hallock Bay.

Now, the basic summary of the article is that a group of local baymen had raised some money to plant seed hard clams in Hallock Bay, NY. If you have followed my blog at all, then the name Hallock Bay should sound familiar to you - its the location of one of my dissertation projects and a place I spend a lot of time in the water (and here, and here). Anyway, back to the article. The baymen released 85,000 8-month old notata clams - about the size of a thumbnail - into a portion of Hallock Bay. They selected a bottom with considerable cobble as their planting area in the hopes that the structure will protect the juveniles from their predators like whelks and crabs.

First, it is exciting to hear about local baymen - commercial fishermen who often get a bad rap when it comes to preserving marine species - trying to do something to help the bay. Some of the original scallop restoration efforts were started by baymen. But the most interesting and exciting part of this article for me was the 8th paragraph:
"The fishermen agreed that Hallocks Bay is a good spot for clamming, but they pointed to a broad swath of coastline, opposite the grounds they were seeding, that has been closed for two years -- not because of poor water quality but because of a study Stony Brook University students are doing to see if they can simulate eelgrass bed habitats with synthetic eelgrass."

That's me! While the project isn't exactly described right, and I am not mentioned by name, it is still quite exciting to see my work in the paper, regardless of how small or anonymous.

Fishes respond poorly to seagrass loss

2010-09-16T21:01:00.000-07:00

Well it has been a few weeks since I've posted on some research articles. But then the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology published a manuscript about cod responses to expanding seagrass meadows. In addition, a paper out of Japan earlier this year talks about the loss of fish species with the loss of an eelgrass meadow. Combined, these point out the obvious, many finfish are dependent on seagrasses for habitat. However, its not just typical seagrass-associated species that are affected by the loss of seagrass.

First, what happens when seagrasses disappear? There is a wealth of literature that suggests disappearing seagrasses has many negative consequences for both resident and transient species. Many species, including numerous commercially important species, utilize seagrass as a habitat for at least some portion of their life cycle. A paper by Yohei Nakumura examining seagrasses next to l reefs demonstrated that seagrass loss has an impact on the abundance and diversity of fishes, including reef associated species. A series of disturbances, particularly typhoons, decimated a seagrass meadow near a reef, to the point where in 2009, the seagrass meadow had totally disappeared. This caused a 80% reduction in the number of species and a 90% reduction in the total number of individual fish along transects at the same site before and after the disappearance. In addition, they monitored a nearby undisturbed site as a reference, and there was no difference in the abundance or diversity of fishes over the same time period. Many of the fishes that disappeared weren't just seagrass residents, but also coral dwellers. In fact, the only species that didn't seem affected were some gobies. The reason for the loss of fish might not be the eelgrass itself, although the habitat does provide shelter from predators, but could also be due to loss of food for many of the fish - tiny crustaceans that live amongst the seagrass.

A more recent paper involves the increase in abundance of juvenile cod in areas where seagrass is recovering and expanding. First, I know what you are all thinking, I love cod and eelgrass associations! And second, it is great news to hear that seagrass is recovering in some areas (I can talk more about this later). Apparently, there are seagrass meadows in Newfoundland, Canada, that are recovering and expanding over the past decade. These habitats are nursery grounds for both Atlantic cod and Greenland cod. So, one might imagine that an increase in seagrass would be beneficial to these species. Using biweekly seines to monitor changes in fish abundance, Warren and others were able to demonstrate dramatic increases in young of the year cod in the seagrass habitats, in particularly in those "recovering" habitats. This increase also occurred rapidly with expanding seagrass meadows. This suggests that these fish are capable of recovering quite quickly if enough suitable habitat exists. However, it also suggests that since juvenile cod might respond so rapidly, that any negative changes in seagrass cover can be detrimental to stocks. Combined with the Japanese study, the literature indicates that fish populations may lack resiliency to seagrass loss, and illustrate the need for water quality monitoring and management, as well as seagrass restoration. Otherwise, the news that cod stocks might recover, might be just internet fodder.

Nakamura, Y. (2010). Patterns in fish response to seagrass bed loss at the southern Ryukyu Islands, Japan Marine Biology DOI: 10.1007/s00227-010-1504-7

Warren, M., Gregory, R., Laurel, B., & Snelgrove, P. (2010). Increasing density of juvenile Atlantic (Gadus morhua) and Greenland cod (G. ogac) in association with spatial expansion and recovery of eelgrass (Zostera marina) in a coastal nursery habitat Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology DOI: 10.1016/j.jembe.2010.08.011

Some videos

2010-09-10T10:55:00.000-07:00

So I've been following some other marine science related blogs recently, and Mike over at Cephalove often posts videos, and I thought I would check to see what kinds of videos of bay scallops are available on the internet. I came across these three, which I will share today, which actually talk specifically about the restoration program on Long Island which I am a part of... enjoy!

This first video goes through the hatchery process:

This is the second part of the video, where the news team goes out on the barge and sees the other side of the scallop project:

The final video of the day is just another look at the longlines:

A brief video on the Scallop long lines in Orient Harbor from Cornell Marine Program on Vimeo.

Shrimp, anyone?

2010-09-06T10:59:00.000-07:00

There is some speculation about the FDA's standards for Gulf seafood. Granted, I know the government wants to do everything it can to restore the economy to this oil-ravaged region. According to some recent posts, the FDA may be allowing higher PAH levels in shrimp, crabs and oysters sold for consumption, because they assume that most people in the US don't eat very much seafood in a month, and that the majority eat significantly more finfish than shellfish. It appears as though the new concentrations for BaPe for shellfish in the Gulf is 3x higher than the levels allowed in other recent oil spills. In addition, some lab testing not done by the FDA suggest that the levels of PAH in the shellfish is much higher than this allowable limit. Of course, this calls to questions differences in methods for testing, but there might be some cause for concern here. We all heard about the sniff test method.

It speaks volumes when even the fisherman are questioning the reopening of the Gulf fisheries. Sure, we all like a shrimp cocktail now and then, but is it possible the FDA, under pressure from state and federal government, lowered safety standards to try to bring some revenue back into this part of the country? I'd like to think things don't work that way, but I don't know. I will look for a more reputable source for this news, but when I saw this, I thought it might be worth mentioning.

Link Dump

2010-09-03T11:02:00.000-07:00

Figured I would try something new today, dump a couple of interesting links:

Today, you can read about aquanauts living on the seafloor studying sponges off the Florida coast

Learn about jellyfish and their increasing abundances

How WWII impacted North Sea fish stocks and the implications for marine protected areas in management of cold water species

An angler who set the world record by catching 1000 different fish species

And check my out on twitter, I'm a newbie though...

Looks like we might be spared...

2010-09-03T10:32:00.000-07:00

Here on the East End of Long Island, I was concerned towards the beginning of the week about the impending Hurricane Earl. At that point, it seemed like it might be headed toward us. Of course, I was most concerned with my field experiments, which I can not stop, and then started to think about the overall impacts of hurricanes on the benthos.

From the literature research, it seems as though estuaries are particularly resilient to the impacts of major storms, and in particular, estuaries which frequently experience these issues. Granted, Long Island is not a site of major tropical weather, we do get out fair share of severe weather in the forms of Nor'easters. As a matter of fact, a major nor'easter hit Long Island, New York and New Jersey in March 2010, which brought sustained 60mph winds and gusts up to 73 mph (hurricane force winds are 75mph).

So I started to become less worried. Now I just hope that my experiments can handle any associated surge with the storm, and that all my cages and blocks are still out there next week!

My name is Earl

2010-08-30T20:04:00.000-07:00

Obviously, a lot can change in the next day or two, but as it is currently, Long Island is still well within the cone of probability of Hurricane Earl. Now, we get lots of predictions every year that this is our year (Long Island is said to be long overdue for a direct hit from a hurricane), and it is inevitable that a hurricane will hit Long Island in the future. I just didn't think immediate future. I was kind of hoping I'd be long gone. After all, Long Island is hardly built for hurricanes. There is really only 3 roads off the Island (and for places out on the East End, only 1 road). This is in addition to being relatively low lying (many places get flooded with just a little rain) and lots of bodies of water which will rise with storm surges. Hurricanes also can potentially disrupt the local environment and ecology, as the last major hurricane (the 1938 Hurricane, and here, here, and images here) opened up the Shinnecock Inlet and changed the South Shore estuary system.

So I am obviously worried about my research as well. I have experiments running out in the field that aren't done running yet, so I need to keep my fingers crossed that my equipment stays in place. Clearly I am selfish in my concern about the hurricane, but who wouldn't be?

In the next day or two I will post an article on the impacts of hurricanes on the benthos, which is a major concern for me and, in my honest opinion, for Long Island, since most of the native benthos don't experience anything like a hurricane.

Susan Shaw on the Oil Spill

2010-08-24T18:44:00.001-07:00

What would a Zostera blog be without a Zostera entry?

2010-08-24T18:01:00.000-07:00

In the most recent issue of Marine Biology, there is a manuscript addressing the issue of 2 introduced species and their interactions with one another. Its an interesting read - one of the species is a commercially important bivalve, the Manila clam, which was introduced in the early 20th century and is now one of the most commercially harvested clams on the west coast of the US. The second is Zostera japonica, dwarf eelgrass, an introduced seagrass species which can establish itself on tidal flats. The idea is that this new seagrass species may be of detriment to the now commercially important manila clam. While there is certainly literature which suggests that seagrasses might enhance bivalve growth - see works involving hard clams and eelgrass by Elizabeth Irlandi and Mike Judge - it certainly stands to reason that eelgrass dampens water currents, and likely decreases the amount of food available to suspension feeders, particularly those distant from the edge of the seagrass (where the food availability might be enhanced). And so the team led by Chaochung Tsai aimed to investigate the impacts the invasive eelgrass had on the clams, and whether the clams might enhance the introduced grass. They chose 3 habitats - seagrass present, seagrass removed, and harrowed habitats. The presence of seagrass, while not necessarily impacting shell extension of the infaunal manila clam, did significantly negatively influence clam condition (tissue weight to shell volume ratio). On the flip side of the coin, while bivalves have been shown to influence eelgrass growth through nutrient additions - see the Peterson Lab publications - this apparently is not the case for the manila clams and dwarf eelgrass. In this experiment, clams did not enhance growth nor impact sediment porewater nutrients. In fact, the only positive effect of the introduced seagrass was on itself. Pretty interesting (and before I read it, unexpected) results.

Tsai, C., Yang, S., Trimble, A., & Ruesink, J. (2010). Interactions between two introduced species: Zostera japonica (dwarf eelgrass) facilitates itself and reduces condition of Ruditapes philippinarum (Manila clam) on intertidal flats Marine Biology, 157 (9), 1929-1936 DOI: 10.1007/s00227-010-1462-0

Irlandi, E., & Peterson, C. (1991). Modification of animal habitat by large plants: mechanisms by which seagrasses influence clam growth Oecologia, 87 (3), 307-318 DOI: 10.1007/BF00634584

Judge M, Coen L, Heck KL (1993). Does Mercenaria mercenaria encounter elevated food levels in seagrass beds? Results from a novel technique to collect suspended food resources Marine Ecology Progress Series, 92, 141-150

Tag!

2010-08-19T19:16:00.000-07:00

So I am not sure how this blog roll tag meme quite got started. Chuck over at Ya Like Dags tagged me, and Mike at Cephalove tagged him. The idea is that science bloggers of substance (I am so excited to have substance) tag each other to answer a few questions. Since I have been tagged, here it goes:

1) Sum up my blogging motivation, philosophy and experience in exactly 10 words

2) Tag 10 other bloggers of substance in the hopes they check this blog regularly and thus continue the meme. (By the way, I didn't know what a meme was, I had to look it up. Thats how internet savvy I am).

OK, so:

1) Like to use pictures to tell my stories about scallops.

2) Not sure that I know 10 bloggers, but I'll give it a try:
Kim over at Ms J's Marine Ecology Class
Mark at Blogfish
Alli at Ocean Treasures
Chris and Kim at Seagrass.LI
Owen at Metro Environmental
Dan at Fish Schooled
Tim and Lindsay at Southern Cross

Well that's all I have, but I feel it a valiant effort.

Crabby and Nabby...

2010-08-19T18:14:00.000-07:00

Those are two characters from a series of books by Suzanne Tate. They are pretty good, and geared toward children. I have read one of her books, Skippy the Scallop, to kindergarten classes the last two years. Its one of those things I try to do from time to time.

But I digress. Crabby and Nabby are blue crabs. And that relates to my research how? Well I decided a logical step in the progression of my research was investigating blue crabs as scallop predators. This isn't new. What is new, however, is that blue crab abundance has exploded on Long Island. Now, NY is certainly within the range, but toward the northern limits of their range. With warming temperatures, the blue crab populations are growing here on Long Island. This can create a problem with the scallop restoration efforts here. Why? Well, blue crabs are voracious bivalve predators, and they recruit to submerged aquatic vegetation, and especially seagrasses like Zostera marina. These are the very same habitats to which scallops recruit. So it is entirely likely that the increase in blue crabs in NY will have a significant impact on bay scallops, based on the available literature. That being said, no one has investigated blue crabs in Long Island. So one step of my research is now investigating where the blue crabs are recruiting in a south shore lagoon estuary, Shinnecock Bay. I have been doing this for the last two weeks, but will continue to monitor 3 times a week through October. At these same sites, I am monitoring bivalve recruitment to see if indeed scallops and blue crabs are recruiting to the same areas. Then I will do some mesocosm predation experiments with varying complexities and investigating the canopy of vegetation as above bottom refuges for scallops from the swimming crabs. All in a days work!

We're not hunting tommy-cod...

2010-07-29T07:49:00.000-07:00

Although there are a lot of them associating with eelgrass beds in Shinnecock Bay, NY. Nope, I am hunting for baby scallops. Shinnecock Bay has some of the healthiest eelgrass meadows in Long Island, and in some places within the bay, new meadows are forming. This is great, as many species depend on seagrasses as predation refuges and nursery grounds, including my model organism, bay scallops. Why then are there apparently no scallops in Shinnecock Bay? Well, its not exactly that there aren't any, of course, but that there are so few, they might essentially be ecologically extinct. However, restoration efforts in the Peconics and larval monitoring have turned up some pretty exciting results. And, Shinnecock Bay is connected to the Peconics through a canal, whose gates are left open when there is a high tide in the Peconics, allowing water to flow into Shinnecock Bay. This is a potential source of scallop larvae. While the spawner sanctuaries are quite distant from the canal, there is a growing scallop population around Robin's Island in Great Peconic, not far from the canal. And either way, scallop larvae spend up to 2 weeks in the water column, so it is possible for fairly long distance dispersal. So I thought we might see some scallops in Shinnecock Bay. I certainly saw some juveniles last summer, but didn't see any adults, so their survival is likely very low. One reason is probably predation. The same eelgrass meadows that are valuable for scallops is also a valuable habitat for blue crabs and mud crabs, both of which eat scallops like popcorn (or at least I imagine that's how they eat them). And yet, no one has investigate either scallop or blue crab recruitment in Shinnecock Bay, so that's what I am currently doing. My scallop monitoring has already started, and surprisingly (or maybe not surprisingly), I didn't get the results I was anticipating. Instead of the highest numbers of scallops at the site closest to the canal and diminishing numbers with distance, I had two relatively high spat numbers sites, on either side of the Shinnecock Inlet, opening up to the ocean. Could this mean a possible oceanic transport of scallop larvae into Shinnecock Bay? Is this supply-side ecology? There are clearly not large numbers of larvae, but there is a supply, and it's coming from somewhere, but to be honest, I have no idea where. Soon I plan on sampling for blue crabs, whose larval origin I know is oceanic. If they display a similar settlement pattern, perhaps my question will be answered.

On a side note, we did collect a lot of other organisms. All together, over 20 different species of organisms came up on the collectors. The most abundant were scallops, mud crabs, blue mussels, jingle shells and slipper shells. But we also saw 2 types of sea squirts, bryozoans, rock crabs, 4 different species of snails, sea stars, urchins, other bivalves (arcs, angel wings and cockles), scaled worms and other polychaetes. Oh yeah, and a few of these things that I have as yet been unable to identify, although my guess is some sort of nudibranch. So yeah, exciting stuff indeed.

(scaled worm)

I need fish!!!!!!!!

2010-07-28T13:27:00.000-07:00

Seriously, I need them... I have scallops, I have mesocosms, I have artificial seagrass, I have mud crabs. Check that, I don't have mud crabs. I need fish and mud crabs! Wow, who thought getting these things would be so difficult... Went out trawling today with a group of elementary school children on the RV Peconic out of the Southampton Marine Station... We caught some interesting fish, and we caught crabs, just not the ones I am looking for. Oh science, why must you be so difficult sometimes!

Ok, on a more serious note, I am sort of freaking out here. I just got scallops on Monday. They are already around 10-11 mm, and soon they will be too big (assume ~2mm growth per week at this time of year, maybe less in a flow through system). So I want to use them ASAP. In addition, Cochlodinium is blooming again in Shinnecock Bay. If it gets into our seawater system, my baby scallops are toast. Seriously, its bad. Read about it here, or here, or here if you don't want to take my word for it. So theres two reasons why I need to get started quickly, and yet, it seems unlikely that I will have either mud crabs (probably the most abundant crab out there, you would think I can get those easily) or fish to start my tri-trophic interaction experiments. Ideally, I would like to have tautog, scup and toadfish (which have received varying levels of fishing pressure, and each of which will likely have a differing impact on scallops and mud crabs). Ah well. Here's to keeping fingers crossed!

Recruitment variation and the benthos - connected or not?

2010-07-22T13:10:00.000-07:00

For years, the "supply-side" ecology has been a common theme describing mechanisms for benthic species distributions and densities. In general terms, the amount and extent of a particular organism is driven by the supply of larvae to a given area. This larval supply can thus be seen as driving benthic community structure, especially for marine invertebrates - as their life cycles contain a planktonic larval stage which allows for dispersal over relatively long distances. Thus, many of these populations are considered "open" and their continuation is dependent on some large supply of larvae. This makes sense, and it has been demonstrated many times in the literature. However, this has often been demonstrated on hard bottom communities. Soft bottom benthos don't always display similar patterns. A recent paper by Dr. Megan Dethier from the Friday Harbor Laboratory at the University of Washington, details an experiment conducted investigated very small, post set, infaunal recruits. Sampling these habitats is often difficult due to the 3-D nature of soft sediments. She was able to demonstrate that for a number of taxa she was working with, the strongest recruitment was not in areas where the largest adult populations existed. This suggests that for many of the soft bottom benthos she studied, the supply of larvae is not limiting the adult populations, but rather some post-settlement processes, such as predation, competition or abiotic stressors.

LEWIN, R. (1986). Supply-Side Ecology: Existing models of population structure and dynamics of ecological communities have tended to ignore the effect of the influx of new members into the communities Science, 234 (4772), 25-27 DOI: 10.1126/science.234.4772.25

Dethier, M. (2010). Variation in recruitment does not drive the cline in diversity along an estuarine gradient Marine Ecology Progress Series, 410, 43-54 DOI: 10.3354/meps08636

This is a particularly interesting article, because "supply-side" ecology doesn't always hold true in soft bottom benthos. I have observed this first hand with the scallop restoration work on Long Island. Over 6 years, we have monitored larval supply of scallop spat at a number of different locations, and then each winter and spring, we conduct benthic surveys for juvenile densities. There isn't always a match between sites where we had the highest numbers of post-set and the highest juvenile densities. The main causes for this mismatch is likely to be predation or physical factors.

On another project, I am investigating scallop settlement on artificial seagrass units. I design collectors to mimic seagrass, each collector has 10 artificial seagrass shoots. Half of the collector (5 shoots) is enclosed in a mesh bag (just under 1mm) and the other half exposed to predation. There is an order of magnitude difference between the number of available settlers (those inside the bags) when compared to those actual "recruits" (those scallops outside the bags). This low pattern of surviving recruits holds up regardless of location within the grass mats (either on small or large mats, at the center or the edge). This indicates to me that predation is a major contributing factor structuring the scallop populations, at least in the estuary in which I work, Hallock Bay, Long Island.

Top 5 underwater sex acts

2010-07-18T17:00:00.000-07:00

Sex changes, hermaphrodism, large penises. Who said marine science is no fun?

Carl Safina on the Oil Spill

2010-07-15T21:35:00.000-07:00

Carl is the director of the Blue Ocean Institute and a professor at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University. As a side note, the Blue Ocean Institute just put out an iPhone application called FishPhone that tells you which fish are safe to eat.

David Gallo talk on TED

2010-07-11T21:04:00.000-07:00

Baby scallops

2010-07-11T12:18:00.000-07:00

Its that time of year again. Scallops have started spawning. Tiny larvae have drifted around and metamorphosed. And now, they are settling out of the water column onto various substrates. I have made this point many times before, but I will repeat it: typically, eelgrass is considered the main suitable substrate for bay scallops, and that their larvae settle out of the water column onto this submerged angiosperm. However, scallop spat appear to be pretty opportunistic settlers, settling on a variety of substrates - both natural and artificial. Some of my colleagues have investigated the settlement of post set on various natural substrates - comparing different abundant macroalgae to eelgrass. This past week we did some diving to look for scallop spat attached to macroalgae in the field. First, I will say it is difficult to spot 1-2mm scallops on a natural surface - they blend in very well! That said, I was able to identify ~25 scallops of the 1-2mm range attached to 3 different types of macroalgae - Codium fragile (my personal favorite and a species I am fully confident is acting as an eelgrass surrogate for many species which rely on eelgrass), Spyridea, and something I call "red puff" algae, because right now, I can't remember its genus. Anyway, we found baby scallops on these three types of algae while diving, measuring the height of attachment and collecting both the scallops (to be measure in the lab) and the algae tuft to return to the lab. We then took wet weight biomass of the algae, and sprayed it down into a sieve (800 um mesh) to see if there were any scallops we missed. All in all, it was a rewarding dive for a variety of reasons, most importantly is that if we are finding multiple scallops on relatively small algae tufts, that is an indication that this years spawning and first set have been very good. This is promising for the scallop population as a whole. Second, it further reiterates that species other than eelgrass can potentially serve as alternative habitats for scallops - and this is important for the restoration efforts along the East Coast. It will allow managers to target some potentially non-traditional areas for restoration. Good stuff!

Atlantic Cod and Eelgrass, oh my!

2010-06-24T13:45:00.000-07:00

Well, now I've seen everything. Well maybe not everything, but in all my NY diving, I had never seen this: eelgrass on an exposed, essentially oceanic sandy, rocky bottom, and a school of YOY cod. I have heard about eelgrass in these locations. I have heard that there have been increasing cod landings in NY over the past 2 winters. I have even read that juvenile cod utilize eelgrass. But I had never actually seen it until last week, when we dove along the south-western corner of Fisher's Island.

We were out there for the day looking at some eelgrass for some new projects we are working on in the lab and in addition to collect samples for genetic analysis for a colleague's (Jamie Brisbin's) research. After we were done at our site for the day, we decided to take a quick drop in along the exposed southern shore where the grass was supposed to be extremely tall and growing in a relatively rocky habitat. It was a pretty cool site - I saw typically rocky subtidal macroalgae - kelps, fucoids, coralline - with patchy eelgrass mixed in. It was pretty exciting and cool to see (although my picture below hardly does it justice).

But while I was down there, I was surrounded by what appeared to me to be young of the year (or at the most young juvenile) cod. I am in no means a fish biologist, so I might be off a bit in estimating their age, but they were definitely gadiforms, and I am fairly confident they were Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua. The distinguishing feature for me was the 3 dorsal fins. Either way, I was surprised to be surrounded by this school, although again, these pictures do them no justice. I found it difficult to get good photos - it was late in the day, the water was surgey (I just made up a word I think), and I just couldn't get very close, so I was limited by the capabilities of my Sea and Sea camera. That didn't stop me from trying, mind you. I was swimming, hands extended in front of me and (don't try this at home) holding my breath while diving and snapping away. Everytime I let out a breath, they would swim away. This is poor diving practice, and I wasn't holding my breath for long - just slightly longer than my normal breathing rhythms - it was just my best chance at getting any shots at all.

But then I realized, wow, these are a bunch of young cod and they are staying in this area where there is eelgrass. And I remembered an article I read about YOY cod and survival in eelgrass meadows. And since my experiences with eelgrass have always been in lagoonal-type estuaries where we don't see cod (although we do see their cousins Atlantic tomcod and hake), I was excited to see both eelgrass and cod in the same place (mind you, I had never seen cod while diving either). So I was sitting on the bottom, trying to follow this school of fish and get any good pictures, and thought this is what that paper was talking about. I will detail the paper below.

The basic idea behind the paper by Ann Marie Gorman et al in 2009 was this idea of habitat patch size and edge effects on juvenile cod. I was particularly interested in this paper because the impacts of eelgrass patch morphometrics is something I have spent considerable time working on in regards to bay scallops - my research organism. So any manuscript pertaining to seagrass patch effects I try to read. This paper was pertaining to Atlantic cod, predatory mortality, and edge effects, all things of significance to my research. Since young of the year cod utilize coastal eelgrass habitats as nurseries and predation refuges, varying sizes of patches can have considerable impacts on juvenile survival. The group investigated different size patches, as well as within patch location (along the patch edge, 5 and 10 meters into the patch and into the unvegetated sediment outside the patch), and how those two factors affected the survival of tethered age-0 cod. Obviously, there are all sorts of potential artifacts with tethering mobile individuals in survival studies, however, because they are mobile, there is no other way to look at predatory mortality as specific locations within a given habitat. They observed a relationship which demonstrated lowest survival at intermediate patch sizes and highest survival at the largest patch sizes. And interestingly, they had lowest survival of tethered scallops along the eelgrass patch edge than either within the patch or in the barren habitat - and this survival increased with distance from the edge in both directions. This has been observed in other seagrass habitats, so I bought this. It solidifies the hypothesis that predators in seagrass habitats patrol along the edge of the seagrass, where prey densities are likely to be higher than in unvegetated habitats, and more easily accessible than within the seagrass patch. An interested read for those interested in spatial and landscape ecology, impacts of habitat patchiness on survival, or finifsh predation.

Gorman, A., Gregory, R., & Schneider, D. (2009). Eelgrass patch size and proximity to the patch edge affect predation risk of recently settled age 0 cod (Gadus) Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, 371 (1), 1-9 DOI: 10.1016/j.jembe.2008.12.008

Marine ecology affected by the local weather

2010-06-04T07:23:00.000-07:00

As marine scientists, sometimes we forget or don't even realize how much local baymen and fishermen actually know. Or maybe we don't trust them because they are "lay" persons. But they work the bay, they try to catch many of the species we study (as money is a big driver of research), and they know things. Local baymen who have worked the bay for years suggest that bay scallop recruitment is higher in years after cold/wet winters. Sometimes, we take what they say with a grain of salt. However, they know. They have often been working with these species for as long or longer than we have, and it is often also a generation thing. Generations of baymen can't be wrong in their assessment, can they?

A 2001 study in the Dutch Wadden Sea supports these claims, however, their conclusions are not what you think. Matthius Strasser and Carmen-Pia Gunther observed patterns in larval supply of predators and prey after a series of consecutive winters in which temperatures were severe, moderate or mild. Originally, the prevailing thought was that egg production increased after severe winters of many benthos, and this is why recruitment was higher in the following spring. However, their research indicates that the numbers and peaks in recruitment were actually highest in the mild winter. So why isn't recruitment highest during these years? Their theory, a mismatch in the predator and prey larval supply. After severe winters there is a delay in the peak larval supply of the major predators, green crabs, of almost 6-8 weeks. This delay is not as apparent as their bivalve prey, and with the average larval time of the bivalves also being shorter, they settle much earlier than the green crabs and have a potential head start in growth. According to the researchers, this mismatch is what fuels observations of higher recruitment after severe winters.

An alternative scenario is one which was observed in Chesapeake Bay. Using local climate response variables Kimmel et al were able to demonstrate noticeable and significant differences in phytoplankton, copepod, gelatinous zooplankton and finfish abundances and composition between years with "wet" winters and years with "dry" winters. Essentially, wet winters led to an increase of freshwater flow and nutrients into the system, which resulted in higher phytoplankton, more copepods, more ctenophores and higher numbers of striped bass. In years of dry winters, there was less phytoplankton, more scyphomedusae and more menhaden. The basic premise is that the local climate had a significant impact on the community composition of Chesapeake Bay by controlling the amount of fresh water flux into the system.

Both are interesting reads, and the idea of the interplay between climate and marine ecology is one that is becoming even more important to understand with the current climate change scenarios. It is quite clear that atmospheric conditions and local climate can have a fairly significant impact on subsequent year classes - something baymen have been familiar with for decades, if not centuries, but something marine scientists have only been exploring for the past decade, give or take.

Strasser, M. (2001). Larval supply of predator and prey: temporal mismatch between crabs and bivalves after a severe winter in the Wadden Sea Journal of Sea Research, 46 (1), 57-67 DOI: 10.1016/S1385-1101(01)00063-6

Kimmel, D., Miller, W., Harding, L., Houde, E., & Roman, M. (2009). Estuarine Ecosystem Response Captured Using a Synoptic Climatology Estuaries and Coasts, 32 (3), 403-409 DOI: 10.1007/s12237-009-9147-y

Whacthu talkin 'bout? Ocean warming strengthens scallop recruitment?

2010-05-31T06:53:00.000-07:00

Apparently, climate change might not be such a bad thing. Especially not if you are an exploited species of bivalve. Now I am not trying to be a climate change apologist, but too often we get caught up in this debate and science is 99% of the time on the side saying "It's bad." However, as I have learned in my own research with invasive species, there are always two sides to every coin. A warming ocean could be a benefit to numerous species, probably as many species as it might be of detriment. Obviously, there are a whole suite of ecosystem processes that are also affected, but in certain cases, it might not be so bad. At least not according to a paper in Marine Biology entitled "Strengthening recruitment of exploited scallops Pecten maximus with ocean warming." Its an interesting read. The essential idea is that over a long(ish) time period, the researchers were able to demonstrate a highly significant correlation between increasing temperature and increasing settlement and recruitment of juvenile scallops to a local scallop population. Shifts in recruitment can be attributed to temperature related shifts in feeding, gonad development and larval survival - and this impacts are more apparent in species who use environmental cues to induce development and spawning. Such is the case for many species of bivalves, including scallops, and so a warming ocean could potentially enhance scallop recruitment. There are some stats involved in their methods, but the basic results are pretty simple, over the past decade, scallop landings around the Isle of Man have been increasing. IN addition, mean springtime temperatures have been increasing (which cues development). I know what you all might be thinking, correlation does not equal causation (you know the one, mean global temperature has increased as the number of global pirates has decreased, meaning that the number of pirates somehow influences the climate), but that goes into their methods of using residuals and proxy values and all sorts of things. Basically, recruitment increase isn't significantly related to other things (spawning stock, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll a), and is strongly related to temperature. They even examined a number of scallops during the three month conditioning period and the GSI - which indicates relative gonad development - was significantly higher in years when temperature was higher. So when temperature goes up, the scallops develop larger gonads and subsequently release more larvae which show up as strong recruitment classes.

So what does this mean for bay scallops? Well, there are plenty of issues with ocean warming and bay scallops - and one of particular concern is predator range expansion and new predators coming into the bay scallops range. In terms of recruitment, we haven't seen any patterns that would suggest this is the case in New York. However, there hasn't been many scallops here to spawn over the past 20 years until recently - due to the restoration efforts - and there needs to be a local spawning population in order to observe any of the patterns described from the paper. That said, bay scallop recruitment is not likely to be effected by ocean warming in terms of larger populations - although timing of first spawn might change, the number of times they spawn might change, etc, but it is my opinion that there are numerous variables that influence the size of recruitment classes in local scallop populations, particularly in the bay, which is already a dynamic environment.

Shephard, S., Beukers-Stewart, B., Hiddink, J., Brand, A., & Kaiser, M. (2009). Strengthening recruitment of exploited scallops Pecten maximus with ocean warming Marine Biology, 157 (1), 91-97 DOI: 10.1007/s00227-009-1298-7

Edith Widder on TED - things that glow in the sea

2010-05-25T20:32:00.000-07:00

http://www.ted.com/

TED is an awesome website with talks by hundreds of people from all disciplines, and you can see them all free. They are pretty good. You should check it out. This one in particular caught my eye. Edith Widder does ocean and deep sea research and uses submersibles - pretty awesome stuff. Enjoy!

Here today, gone tomorrow!

2010-05-18T12:52:00.001-07:00

A complete and utter failure? You decide. Last fall I had the bright idea to track overwinter survival and subsequent spring conditioning for scallops released in different habitats (eelgrass - their preferred habitat, see Thayer and Stuart 1974; Codium fragile - an introduced macroalgae which we think might serve as a suitable alternate substrate in the absence of eelgrass; and unvegetated, as a baseline for comparison). I have examined these habitats for growth in juvenile scallops and have already published some short term survival data (Carroll et al 2010, see earlier posts for a link). So my bright idea was to free release a fairly large number of scallops into these habitats at two field sites, one in Shinnecock Bay and one near Sag Harbor, NY. This is a method we have used in the restoration efforts, and a method that has been successful, so I figured that it would be no problem. I planted ~2500 scallops in each habitat at the 2 sites (~15,000 total scallops planted), not an insignificant number, at least not in my opinion back in November/December of 2009. In other planting sites, we typically don't monitor again after planting until the spring, so staying true to form, I did not actually go check on these scallops until last week. Much to my surprise (well, maybe not totally surprised) I didn't recover a single scallop in Shinnecock Bay. I surveyed all the habitats around my planting zone and didn't find a single live scallop, save for a couple natural 2 year olds. My dreams of having some uncaged growth and condition data failed! There wasn't even evidence of major predation, because I didn't even find empty or crushed shells. They were just all gone! A couple things are likely - either burial or transport - see Powers and Peterson's 2000 manuscript on scallop movement. Both are equally possible scenarios, as these sites in Shinnecock Bay were relatively shallow (~1m deep) and we had quite a crazy winter in terms of storms. Its just a shame. The only positive here is that at least my marker buoys were still firmly anchored at the sites! In fact, this picture is about the most exciting thing from the Shinnecock dives:

(thats right, its my pink lemonade by the throttle while the boat is tied to the dock. Nice, right?)

I was hoping Sag Harbor would be slightly better. I mean, this was a deeper site, so things had to work out, right? Actually, I originally expected there to be scallops at Shinnecock (typically low energy sites) and not in Sag Harbor (strong tidal currents). In Sag Harbor, the scallops already drifted slightly down current from the planting area the date of planting, and despite the scallops looking good at the bottom,

I figured strong currents and potential predation

would essentially eliminate them. Luckily, there was scallops to be found in Sag Harbor, although in much reduced densities. So, not enough scallops to monitor with enough replication to have confidence in the results, but at least all of the 7500 scallops here were not lost. What was lost, you ask? The Codium! It was all gone! My Codium planting area in Sag Harbor was completely devoid of Codium! So despite the semi-success of overwintering some of the scallops in Sag Harbor, my experiment here still failed! Awesome! I guess there's always NEXT year, I just don't know how my committee feels about that!
I guess this season, I will just have to run juvenile growth experiments again, as soon as I get the juveniles.

At least I saw some cool stuff at Sag Harbor:

Spider crab crawling out from a cinder block.

Red beard sponge in eelgrass.

Surviving bay scallop, cryptically hidden on the bottom, save for its blue eyes!

Juvenile lady crab.

Thayer, GW, & Stuart, HH (1974). The bay scallop makes its bed of seagrass Marine Fisheries Review, 36, 27-30

Powers, SP, & Peterson, CH (2000). Conditional density dependence: The flow trigger to expression of density-dependent emigration in bay scallops Limnology and Oceanography, 45, 727-732

Spring Surveys

2010-05-16T20:20:00.000-07:00

We are just about done with our spring benthic surveys in the Peconic Estuary. On Wednesday we surveyed a couple of sites around Orient Harbor, the location of the large suspended spawner sanctuary.

At 2 of the sites we surveys we found scallops at higher densities than anticipated based on the fall survey results, suggesting higher overwinter survival (which can be a problem - Tettelbach et al 1990), and higher densities overall. These are very good signs, indicating that the restoration effort is likely working (and here, last years harvest is also a good indication, but see Tettelbach and Smith 2009)! Below are some photos from the dives....

Eelgrass, Zostera marina, often considered the primary bay scallop habitat, although some of our new research indicates that other species might also facilitate scallop survival - Carroll et al 2010

Some sort of tube worm, unsure what species...

The northern pipefish - pretty cryptic, huh?

A channeled whelk, or as the local baymen call them, "conch," now a top fished species in the Peconic Estuary

A sand collar, an egg casing laid by moonsnails.

Carroll, J., Peterson, B., Bonal, D., Weinstock, A., Smith, C., & Tettelbach, S. (2009). Comparative survival of bay scallops in eelgrass and the introduced alga, Codium fragile, in a New York estuary Marine Biology, 157 (2), 249-259 DOI: 10.1007/s00227-009-1312-0

Tettelbach, S.T., C.F. Smith, J.E. Kalady, T.W. Arroll and M.R. Denson. (1990). Burial of
transplanted bay scallops Argopecten irradians irradians (Lamarck, 1819) in winter. Journal of Shellfish Research, 9, 127-134

Tettelbach, S., & Smith, C. (2009). Bay Scallop Restoration in New York Ecological Restoration, 27 (1), 20-22 DOI: 10.3368/er.27.1.20

What invert you like

2010-05-15T19:15:00.001-07:00

Saw this video at the Benthic Ecology Meetings in Wilmington NC, it talks about benthic invertebrates to the tune of "Whatever you like" (whatever that is)...
It was made by Jeremy Long of San Diego State University.

Check out newsday's photo slide show...

2010-05-15T17:48:00.001-07:00

on the scallop restoration efforts in Long Island...
http://www.newsday.com/long-island/scallops-in-long-island-s-hallock-bay-photos-1.1878136#1

I have worked on both the barge in the photos that is shown hauling the lantern nets full of scallops and on the small boat which is seen in the photos of Dr Steve Tettelbach.

Some pictures from the other day...

2010-05-15T16:50:00.001-07:00

Some of the sea life on the bottom in Hallock Bay, Long Island, NY.

A pipefish!

Small fish, probably a grubby sculpin.

A chiton!

Green brittle star - there are lots of these guys at our Hallock Bay planting site, although I am not sure exactly who they are.

Long claw hermit crab, Pagurus longicarpus

Can you pick out the sand shrimp, Crangon septemspinosa?

This is an angry mud crab, probably of the genus Dyspanopeus, upset that I am bothering him

An agitated spider crab of the Libinia genus in my quadrat!

Hard clam siphon

Juvenile spider crab crawling through the algae

Also, check out my recent manuscript.
Carroll, J., Peterson, B., Bonal, D., Weinstock, A., Smith, C., & Tettelbach, S. (2009). Comparative survival of bay scallops in eelgrass and the introduced alga, Codium fragile, in a New York estuary Marine Biology, 157 (2), 249-259 DOI: 10.1007/s00227-009-1312-0

Wow, that was refreshing

2010-04-28T08:27:00.001-07:00

Well, it was a long winter. Maybe not any longer than usual, but waiting to get back in the water seemed to take longer than it has in years past. It might be because I've been feeling unproductive (as sometimes happens when I'm stir crazy in the lab, waiting for a nice day to get outside). Or maybe its because a couple of labmates of mine, Chuck Wall and Jamie Brisbin have been in the water since January. Whatever the reason, yesterday, April 27th, could not have come early enough. It's pretty incredible diving early in the season - cold, relatively clear water, and although not a lot of activity, those organisms that are active are still pretty slow and easy to observe and photograph (pictures to follow). I got to try out my new semi-dry suit by Bare, and my new fins with spring straps! which I purchased at Treasure Cove Divers in New Jersey. First, the suit works great, but semi-dry is kind of a misnomer. I imagine its supposed to let less water in through tighter seals, however, it still lets water in and you still get wet. But I was still very pleased with the suit and while cold (although at 11C, I suppose not terribly cold), I was fairly comfortable. I also brought my new Sea and Sea DX-1G camera out in the field in New York for the first time, and the results are mixed. I am pleased with my photos when I was in Fiji, but that was relatively clear water. It also doesn't help that I am only an amateur photographer, and not necessarily even a good one at that, but I hope to get yesterdays photos cleaned up and posted here soon.
As for the actual purpose of the expedition, SCALLOPS! Our free planting area in Hallock Bay has once again had great success in overwitnering. Additionally, we have experienced high survival through their 2nd (!) winter of scallops planted in 2008, to the tune of 8-10 mer square meter! That is pretty incredible, since the mantra is that most scallops don't survive their second winter. We will keep monitoring these guys to see if they survive through spawning, but it was pretty unexpected and pretty encouraging. As for those scallops planted last winter, we have again experienced great success in survival and will now continue to monitor this site every 2 weeks until August. Scallops on the long lines also survived at very high rates AND have even showed some remarkable growth this early in the season. All in all, a very nice day for diving and some very good results.

Wow...

2010-03-19T07:51:00.000-07:00

Ok, I really need to start doing a better job. I mean really, how can I be better at posting during my busy field season than my slow season? It probably has to do with not taking any cool pictures while I am cutting open scallops in the lab and punching numbers into the computer. That said, it has been a pretty exciting off-season for me. I started presenting my research on scallops in Codium to pretty good reviews at the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation meeting in Portland, Oregon in November. Portland is a pretty cool city and we were lucky to have nice weather for essentially the whole week there. While there I was able to interact with Dr Bob Orth, a noted seagrass biologist who has recently demonstrated great success in restoring eelgrass meadows via seed dispersal. Because of their success with seagrasses, a group at VIMS wants to try to bring back a commercially important associated epifauna, and one that is dear to my heart, the bay scallop. So we had talked about their restoration efforts compared with those in New York, and I was able to make a very valuable connection. Oh, and I won an award for the 2nd best student presentation!

Then, for New Years, I was able to vacation in beautiful Kadavu, Fiji, for 3 weeks. Just scuba diving. Relaxing. Kayaking. Relaxing. Hiking. Oh, and relaxing. I went with a bunch of Southampton College (now defunct) of LIU alums, and an old professor and friend of mine. We stayed at the Matava Eco-Adventure Resort, dedicated to diving and fishing. I did somewhere in the ball park of 35 dives (although the exact number right now is escaping me), and I would do it again in a heartbeat if I ever have the opportunity. It was an amazing trip, and pictures will follow.

It was hard to adjust back to labwork when I returned from this trip, but I starting catching up, including working on 2 new manuscripts about our restoration work, since the results are very, very promising. And then we left for the Benthic Ecology Meeting hosted at UNCW. It was a great time, I gave another presentation, this time on my work with scallop recruitment. Again, a lot of positive feedback, which is always nice, and many more connections.

Anyway, I promise that I will make a better effort to post more often.

Who are you?

2009-09-30T19:54:00.001-07:00

Seriously, what is this crab?
I saw them diving, and they just seemed to look a bit different to me. Mottled coloration, more roundish shape, odd looking claws. At first I thought it might be an invasive from Asia that has established in the Caribbean and some southeastern states, Charybdis sp., but the numbers of lateral spines or teeth and teeth between the orbits are not right. So maybe its something else from the tropics, a casualty of Gulf Stream transport and meandering eddies?
Any ideas?

You can run but you can't hide!

2009-09-23T20:35:00.000-07:00

I use the term run lightly, however it kind of looks like they are waddling back and forth rather than swimming doesn't it? Scallop swimming is very funny, much funnier on video than it is when your actually underwater. This video was taken from one of our planting sites for the restoration effort in the peconics. While all bay scallops possess the ability to swim, and many do, for some reason, the scallops at this particular site seem to do it all the time. It might be a water quality thing, as the clarity here is typically lower than that at other sites we plant, but whatever the reason is, its always a fun dive.

For some reason I cannot seem to post the long video, its not loading. You can try to view it here. See if you can spot the little seed scallop swimming up off the bottom (its ok if you don't, I had to watch 3 times to see it). Also notice the healthy scallops in a habitat dominated by macroalgae and no eelgrass. Interesting, isn't it?

If at first you don't succeed

2009-09-23T20:09:00.000-07:00

Try, try again?
Well last year I submitted a manuscript to the Journal of Shellfish Research for publication about the field studies I was doing with scallop survival in different habitats. It was rejected outright. I was dejected. But, I took a while to think about it, took all of the reviewers comments and decided that I could make the paper work, somehow, and try again. Even though I won an award for this work when I presented it as a student at the National Shellfish Association's 100th annual meeting, things needed to be worked out. With the co-authors, I set out to re-write the manuscript in a more readable and presentable manner. We cut out the extemporaneous materials, the unquantified text and thought we had something still worthy of publication. We wanted to get out information out there: that the introduced alga, Codium fragile, could serve as a potential predation refuge for the bay scallop, in a similar manner to native eelgrass. The data was the same, the way it was presented was different. I went to the benthic ecology meetings in Texas and presented the work there to get more feedback. I tried submitting it to another journal. This time the results were different. Success!!!!! My manuscript was accepted to Marine Biology. No proofs yet, but still very exciting to know the work was deemed worthy for peer-reviewed publication.
But this whole saga has helped me re-direct a portion of my dissertation work, one in which I focus on multiple aspects of the impacts of Codium on bay scallops - not just short term (1 week long trials) survival. I placed adult scallops in eelgrass, Codium and bare sediment to monitor their gonad indices and growth over a 10 week period. I have placed juvenile scallops at the same locations as well as other locations with codium and eelgrass. These are still out in the field. In addition to monitoring their survival and growth (in predatory exclusion cages), I am also monitoring water quality conditions such as chlorophyll, in addition to sediment conditions such as benthic chlorophyll and porosity. Hopefully soon I will have a better grasp on the way scallops and Codium interact.

Wow its been a while!!!

2009-08-19T21:07:00.001-07:00

Sorry all. Summer is my busy season, and while I have been snapping lots of photos and working on my research, I have not been very religious in my postings. I will try to do a better job from here on out.

So, some good news, I have my second manuscript accepted for publication in Marine Biology. I still need to make some minor revisions, but that was still very exciting.
My abstract was accepted as an oral presentation at the upcoming CERF meetings in Portland, Oregon.
I am trying to save money for a diving trip to Fiji this January, where while I hope to participate in many fun dives, I also hope to do a research project involving seagrass meadows there.

But onto the current research- we are seeing larger scallop sets this year than all the previous years combined. In 4 spat collection dates, we have already collected over 30,000 seed scallops. That may not seem like many, but its more than the previous 4 years of monitoring combined. This seems to indicate that the multiple spawning sanctuaries we have set up are working, and in past years may have seeded pockets of spawning individuals in other portions of the bay. This is good news for bay scallops and Long Island. However, I must not be to quick to celebrate, as there is a lot that can happen between now and November 2010, when this years scallop set will be old enough to harvest.

This is also good for my actual research, one aspect of which is examining the roles seagrass patch architecture might play in recruitment, growth and survival. While I have been working on the recruitment and growth aspects of this project, but I had not been observing recruitment to my mats. This has changed this year - likely a combination of a slight change to my recruitment collector design and the apparent increase in larvae in the water column - I have collected ~700 scallops on my artificial seagrass units. This was very exciting. In my two collections thus far, there seems to be a natural experiment going on - in three weeks, the collectors went from an average of 124 per square meter to 56 per square meter - a 50% reduction in a 3 week time frame. This is likely due to predation, but I will have a better idea in the next 4 weeks when I have 2 more collections. This was all very exciting to me.

Even more exciting, is that in addition to seeing scallop seeds set on eelgrass, we are also starting to find scallops set on species of macroalgae. This will hopefully start to shift some of the old ideas that only eelgrass is suitable for bay scallops, because we are observing in the Peconics scallops in and on many other potential habitats!

Lots of exciting things. Stay Tuned!

Scallop surveys!

2009-05-19T21:29:00.000-07:00

So I went diving on Monday to do some more of the benthic surveys. During the summer, from June through November, we have our spat collectors in the water to track larval settlement. In November and December, we do benthic surveys at our collector sites so we can see if what comes up in the collectors is translating to the bottom. Then, in the spring, we go back to the same sites to determine the over winter mortality. These dives are exciting, because in the last year we are seeing more scallops here than we have seen in previous years, which indicates the restoration effort is probably working. But aside from the scallops, I often see a lot of other cool things. Every dive I observe spider crabs, mud crabs and whelks, those are fairly common. Some commonly seen fish include gobies and cunner. But occasionally I come across cool things, like this fluke, Paralichthys dentatus:

I also saw this skate, which I believe to be a little skate:

And some sort of mud shrimp:

And finally, these two crabs teaming up to try to eat the whelk:

Some sort of comb jelly (in the bottom of the photo)
And, as always, lots of scallops!!!!

Scallops make comeback

2009-05-19T21:20:00.000-07:00

"RANDEE DADDONA PHOTO These well-fed Peconic Bay scallops were raised in a hatchery on Cedar Beach in Southold. The work of local biologists to boost populations of the delectable shellfish, devastated by brown tide in the mid-1990s, is paying off. "

this article was just highlighted in the Suffolk Times. Yes it is a local paper, but this is pretty big news - the best scallop year in the Peconics since 1995. That's nothing to laugh at. We are keeping our fingers crossed, but so far, the results are looking good!
The highlights:
-The largest bay scallop sanctuary in the world
- 500.000 scallops
- Commercial landings from last November and December in the Peconics were the highest they have been since 1995
- Scallop stocks in some local waters are 13 times higher than they were 5 years ago

CYANEAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-05-17T11:20:00.000-07:00

WATCH OUT, INVASIVE OF THE JELLIES!!!!! Good thing I am immune to stinging cells!

Its the most wonderful time of the year!

2009-05-17T11:06:00.000-07:00

Well, maybe not the most wonderful. But it's close. I've been diving a couple times now, and it is so much better than sitting in the lab. Plus an added benefit is that the water is still pretty clear this time of year. So we have been diving to monitor the spawner sanctuary sites - the 2 bottom planting sites and the long lines. Basically we do quadrat counts of the scallops on the bottom to get an idea of the mortality from time point to time point, and we sample a set of scallops to look at growth, gonad index and condition index. For the long lines we sample scallops from the end lines and the center line to look at growth, GI and CI.

The Nature Conservancy Awarded $500,000 for Seagrass Restoration Research in Long Island and Connecticut Waters

2009-05-06T17:39:00.000-07:00

Research to Assess and Tackle Issues of Seagrass Die-Off in Local Waters

Cold Spring Harbor, NY — May 1, 2009 — Seagrass has received a significant boost thanks to a $500,000 research grant (H.R. 1105, the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009) co-sponsored by Congressman Timothy Bishop (NY-01) and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (CT-03). These overlooked, but essential underwater flowering plants, form dense stands in shallow salt-water bays and harbors, and provide critical habitat for local fish and other marine life.

Read the rest here.

We all know the story here, at least if you have been following my blog, but seagrasses are vital ecosystems that serve important nursery and foraging habitats for many fin and shellfish. Many of the species are also of economic importance, which is garnering eelgrass more attention. This is big news for Long Island, since there are numerous critical gaps in the information necessary to successfully manage and restore eelgrass. And, while there may be other suitable habitats in the Peconics for my study organism, the bay scallop, eelgrass is the preferred habitat.

To learn more about seagrasses, and eelgrass in particular, check out Seagrass.LI. Also, check out this new blog by a marine biologist from Canada.

Of all days to forget my camera...

2009-05-05T20:47:00.001-07:00

So, no, that picture isn't from my first day of diving this year (which was yesterday). Unfortunately, I didn't bring a camera with me, but we dove on one of our free plant spawner sanctuaries and the above photo is a picture from last October when we planted the scallops. Of course on the day I didn't have a camera, I saw a juvenile hake of some sort as I was moving aside some macroalgae to look for scallops. If I had to guess, I would say it was a red hake, Urophycis chuss, but without the camera and a snapshot, I can't say for sure. That may not sound very exciting, but its not something I have seen in the field, only collected in trawls. While counting scallops, I also observed a scallop trying to swim with a oyster drill attached to its shell. It was unable to swim properly, and upon further inspection, the drill had already drilled a clean hole into the shell, which means it was likely attached for a while. There was also a grass shrimp eating some sort of annelid worm. It was funny, because as I dropped my quadrat, I saw this yellowish thing moving around. When I got a closer look, I saw the shrimp holding the worm and the worm was still wriggling around. It reminded me of when I was younger and we kept African clawed frogs in our fishtank and fed them earthworms. The frogs would shove them into their mouths with their front legs and the worms would try to wiggle out. Very entertaining. So, yeah, I wish I had my camera.
But now for the good news. Last fall we planted approximately 170,000 scallops in Hallock Bay, on the North Fork of Long Island, near Orient Point. The year before, we planted similar densities of scallops in Hallock Bay, but they experienced extremely high over winter mortality, likely due to dense macroalgae and associated low dissolved oxygen under the canopy. We weren't sure what to expect this year, since last spring, we only observed about a 2-3% survival. Last fall we chose a new site, slightly deeper, solid bottom, more current, and less algae cover. Well it seems at first glance like the new site has paid off. By my quadrat counts alone, I would guess that we are seeing between 30-50% survival of the scallops we planted last fall. That exceeds our expectations. Overwinter mortality is usually a large source of natural mortality, however, the scallops are still small - between 28-40mm, so they are not yet above the size threshold for predation. In fact, at the site we observed many cluckers and cracked cluckers, broken shells, and predators including mud crabs and spider crabs. Luckily, the water is already warming up (it was 13.5 C yesterday) so they should start growing. In another planting site we checked, with less water exchange and slightly warmer temperatures (15.5 C), we observed approximately 3-5mm growth on the scallops already (we can tell the new shell growth due to the growth ring laid down during the winter). This bodes well for the scallops planted in Hallock, because they should start growing pretty soon!
On a final note, we went over to my grass mat site. All the buoys were gone, probably because Hallock was covered with ice this winter (in fact, it is a popular ice boating site). I was concerned with the ice ruining my mats, but on a quick inspection, the grass mats all seemed to be ok. I'll be getting in the water at my site in 2 weeks for a more in depth inspection, as well as to remark my site with new buoys. But so far, so good!

We've only just begun... soon enough

2009-04-30T17:08:00.000-07:00

That's right. It is getting to be that time of year where we will be getting back into the water. As a matter of fact, I will be diving for the first time this season on Monday. I can't wait. We are going to do quadrat counts at some scallop planting areas, start our spring surveys, and start our gonad index monitoring. I am really looking forward to it. I am also going to check on my grass mats for the first time since November, which I am looking forward to. Keep your fingers crossed that they are all still there. In other news, I am still working on my proposal but hope to defend it within the next 3 weeks. With the help of an undergraduate, I have finished processing all of my scallops from last fall. I am also working with our lab tech on some methods to run the tissues through an elemental analyzer to approximate the carbohydrate, lipid and protein content. Finally, I am getting organized for the upcoming field season.

On a side note, tomorrow night I will be giving a talk as part of the public lecture series hosted by SoMAS at Stony Brook Southampton. It will be part of a student symposium of sorts for the Stony Brook-Southampton Coastal and Estuarine Research Program, SCERP. Things get started at 7 and talks start at 7:30.

Scallops returning to the Outer Banks?

2009-03-09T20:03:00.000-07:00

According to the Virginian-Pilot, bay scalloping has been pretty good this year out of the outer banks, pretty good news, after not having the fishery open at all for a couple years. Read the article here, the picture is from the article.

Back from benthics

2009-03-09T19:39:00.000-07:00

So for the past few days I was in Corpus Christi, TX, for the Benthic Ecology meetings. It was great. It was smaller this year than in years past, and I think the coziness lead to much better interactions between people this year. I think my presentation went well (nobody threw shoes at me or anything like that). I was also able to visit the Texas State Aquarium and I frequented Crawdaddy's (the website doesn't do this place justice) for meals. I mean it doesn't get better than no frills, cheap beer and fried food. Best crawfish and fried okra I ever had (ok, first crawfish and okra I ever had), but they also had really good gumbo, and their service staff was incredibly friendly (although I imagine that just might be the way things are in Texas). The bar scene wasn't too shabby either. But for the business aspect of things, I saw a number of really good talks and interesting posters. There was a large contingent from VIMS, whose talks ranged from bay scallops to blue crabs to oysters to seagrass, whose talks and posters were very good. There is a lot of good work going on down there. DISL was also well represented, with numerous talks and posters, many of which focused on fisheries and trophic interactions. Overall, it was a very good conference. I was able to talk to alot of people about my research and theirs - a few people working with scallops, some about blue crabs (which I hope to work with in the future) and a bunch of people about artificial seagrass units. All in all, I think this meeting was much better in terms of interaction, and I look forward to attending next year in North Carolina!!!

My personal fish tank

2009-02-16T16:56:00.000-08:00

No scallop news to report this time of year. I am in the process of getting my proposal together to defend it this spring, re-writing a manuscript, getting together a presentation for the upcoming Benthic Ecology Meetings, and taking two classes. Crazy right? But somehow, I have found time to renew an old hobby of mine, tropical fishkeeping. When I was growing up, my dad always had fish tanks, and when I was old enough, I started getting tanks of my own. Eventually, between me and my father, we had somewhere between 13-15 fish tanks throughout the house and basement. I tried to continue the hobby in college, but it is hard when you move every 8 months. So I have been out of the hobby for a few years, but was able to obtain a 20 gallon fish tank last September, and I set it up with freshwater (marine ornamentals are difficult and expensive, both in livestock and equipment). Originally, I just had some tetras (lemon tetras mostly) and after the tank cycled, I added some neons as well. After Christmas break, I added some angelfish and catfish. But I always wanted discus. They are some of the most difficult freshwater fish to keep, requiring very specific water quality (low pH, soft water, low nitrogen, high temperature). My father and I tried to keep them a long time ago, but kept having difficulty - which was disheartening, considering we had kept just about every other type of freshwater fish with relatively few problems. Discus are kind of like the holy grail of freshwater fish - breeders kept secrets for decades. But when I went to the pet store the other day, I saw discus at the right size (silver dollar) and the right price (29.99, 4 for 100). My water seemed right (temp ~80, but easily raised, pH ~6, etc) but I still wasn't sure. I probably wouldn't see discus this quality at this price again (especially if the economy gets fixed), but I had two angelfish (body size ~ a quarter) who were now established in the tank for over a month, and the tank was small. Both angelfish and discus are specialized cichlids from the floodwaters of the Amazon river, laterally compressed to swim between the submerged trees. Cichlids, by nature, can be rather territorial and aggressive by nature, and although angelfish and discus are generally regarded as gentle, there was some hesitation on my part. 20 gallon tanks are small - only 24 inches long - and with the angels being established, there isn't room for the discus to escape potential attacks. I thought long and hard. I spent about an hour watching the fish and talking to the store attendant. Finally I decided I won't have another opportunity to get the discus at this price, and I figured I would give it a try. This was yesterday. They seemed to acclimate fine, however, I raised the temperature in my tank anyway, from 80 to 85 (I was hoping only to come up to 82-82, but my heater is not that specific). Then I turned off the light and went to bed. I forgot to consider the potential for the dissolved oxygen to drop when I raise water temperature, and I woke up this morning with all the former residents (tetras and angels) gasping for air, and one of the catfish already dead. I was freaking out. I could not have this. I dropped the temperature back down to just over 80, took an inch of water out so the filter exhaust would stir the water better, and rushed to school to borrow an air pump for the time being. But I had class, so I couldn't stay and watch. I just kept my fingers crossed. When I got home today, I was surprised. All the fish seemed to be breather normally, swimming around, and all were eating (even the discus, after only 1 day!) Catastrophe averted, for now. I will take pictures soon.

Atlantic sharks at risk due to over-fishing - Devastating for scallops?

2009-01-19T19:13:00.000-08:00

The cracked bay scallop shell indicates crab predation.

Over-fishing is a relatively hot topic these days. One group of fishes that are particularly threatened are sharks - because they are large, long lived, and have relatively few offspring. Here an excerpt from a recent article online:

"GENEVA – More than a quarter of sharks in the northeast Atlantic Ocean face extinction with some species already wiped out in certain areas due to over-fishing, a conservation group said on Monday.

Twenty-six percent of sharks, rays and chimaeras are threatened with extinction and another 20 percent are in the 'near threatened' category, the Switzerland-based International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said in a statement."

This has the potential to be devastating to bay scallops. With the loss of sharks, which are large apex predators, their prey is released from a predation pressure. This, in turn, allows populations of shark prey to expand - these include smaller sharks, skates, and rays, which are typically benthic feeders which eat shellfish. One species in particular has increased to such numbers, the cownose ray, that it has devastated the bay scallop fishery in North Carolina. This has been documented by scientists for the past 8 years, and recently made Science magazine in 2007. Luckily, we don't have the large feeding aggregations of cownose rays here in New York, and as far as I can tell, we haven't seen large increases in skates, at least not in areas where we have bay scallop populations.

Although it is possible that we are seeing other trophic cascade-type effects, some of which I plan to investigate in my thesis research. I don't want to get into too many details until I know if I am doing this for sure, but its possible that loss of some local fishes has released crabs from predation pressure, allowing them to forage more freely on their prey, juvenile bay scallops included. By the way, I am working on my proposal right now and it is killing me! Can't wait until it is all over!

"Nub" scallops

2009-01-15T20:10:00.000-08:00

Most bay scallops live less than 2 years, and so a concentric growth ring is usually only laid down once. Typically seed scallops reach a size threshold, 35-55mm by the end of their first growing season. However, some scallops are less than 20mm when the growth ring is set. These could be the product of fall spawns, and there is some thought that these scallops don't spawn before they are large enough for their first harvest, that is, they are likely to live into and spawn in a 2nd year. Some populations consist of more than 50% of these "nub" scallops. This has been a particular problem in places like Nantucket, where large portions of scallops have small growth rings. In order to harvest a bay scallop, it must have a clear growth ring, however, "nub" scallops have such small rings, they often appear as ringless adults. This has drastically shrunk the harvest of scallops in this area. That is, until this year, when an emergency regulation was passed to save the harvest. The legislation stated that now scallops could be harvested if they were greater than 2.5 inches in shell height OR if they had a 10mm growth ring - this means that ringless adults (nub scallops) can be harvested if they are greater than 2.5 inches. I don't know if I agree about this legislation, mostly because very little is known about nub scallops and their potential importance for spawning in the 2nd year. I did think it was interesting that bay scallops have been in the news recently.

The photos were taken by Steve Tettelbach and borrowed from a poster presented at last year's 100th annual National Shellfish Association meeting.

It's been such a long time...

2009-01-12T19:23:00.001-08:00

I can't believe it has been so long since I last posted. I had a busier than anticipated end of the season. I was still diving the week before christmas, and luckily the season ended then, because on my last dive day, the neck seal on my drysuit broke. It was weird, usually the seal might crack or tear, but when I was suiting up, a chunk came off the neck, almost like a cookie cutter was used. But anyway, that was the last day, and it should hopefully be fixed before the season starts again in March-April. Otherwise, we planted ~200,000 scallops at a couple sites this year. We tried 2 new sites because we had a macroalgae overgrowth problem last winter, which led to anoxia at the sediment surface and likely decimated our scallop plantings there (>90% loss). This time of year is slow, but I am still very busy. I am working on a new draft of my last manuscript, hoping to address all the issues brought up by the previous reviewers. I am also trying to put together my PhD dissertation committee and write my proposal. Ideally, I will finish writing and defend my proposal before May, this way I can make adjustments for the next field season. So we shall see. Right now all I have is an outline, but at least thats a start. I am also trying to finish processing my samples from the summer, but still have over 100 scallops left to go. That doesn't seem like much, true, but I can only do about 30 scallops at a time - there is limited space in our drying oven - and I have to wait 2 days to finish the processing, so it takes some time. I am also going to make more grass mats for this summer, so that should start to consume my time as well. To top it off, I am registered for 2 classes in the spring, so I can honestly admit I have a full schedule in the spring. But its not too bad, and I am looking forward to taking the next step toward attaining my PhD.

Bubbles, bubbles everywhere, but not a drop to drink...

2008-10-22T15:51:00.000-07:00

Adult bay scallop in a Codium fragile bed
Well, there were certainly a lot of bubbles yesterday. I went diving, but in addition to the normal exhalent bubbles from every breath, my Air2 was leaking, creating more bubbles and increasing my apparent air intake. But that didn't stop me from doing my transect surveys at 5 sites in the Peconics. We stopped all around Northwest Harbor (East Hampton, NY) and Sag Harbor, and then 1 dive in Southold Bay. While we didn't see as many scallops as we would have liked, we did see a few, which was good. In most places, we saw more seed
A seed bay scallop in Codium

A bay scallop "smiling" for the camera... Old Blue eyes

A seed bay scallop, note the darker mantle than the one above
than adults,

An adult bay scallop with its epiphytic and epizooic growth
which is good and bad. It is good in that hopefully there are enough seed to survive over the winter and spawn next year. It is bad for the commercial and recreational guys that there aren't enough adult scallops (potentially) to go around. Who knows how this year ends up. However, I did see a decent number of scallops,
small fish,

hermit crabs,

spider crabs,

mud crabs,

grass shrimp,

whelks,

your usual suspects. A nice day diving, although cold (12.5C). Its about time to break out my drysuit. The visibility and diving this time of the year is the best though, so I won't complain. Going again on Friday. Stay tuned.

Another day, another 100,000 scallops

2008-10-21T21:49:00.000-07:00

Or something like that... Last Thursday, October 16th, I went diving out in Flanders Bay. We were doing a bottom survey of a previous free release spot for scallops, since we were preparing to release ~100,000 seed scallops as part of the restoration efforts going on in Long Island.

Flanders for a very long time sustained a sizeable scallop population even inthe absence of eelgrass (Zostera marina). But land use changes in addition to the brown tides more than likely led to their demise in that area. Luckily, a year after last years plantings, there were still ~ 1 per square meter, much lower than stocking, but still a decent number.

After surveys, we set up an area to plant new scallops, at ~ 100 per square meter. We hope to dive on the site once more before it gets too cold, and then start again in the spring. Hopefully this will help jump-start a population in Flanders.

Additionally, I saw some really cool things... including a porgy trying to eat leftovers from a whelk feeding,

a whelk eating a newly planted scallop,

and a large northern puffer, which are rare nowadays due to overfishing.

Oh and this mean looking guy.

And tons of cool shells.

All in all, it was a pretty cool day of diving. Not only was I a part of the free release, I was able to see some cool things, like direct predation, swimming scallops (which are impossible to get a photo of, in case you were wondering why there isn't one) and that puffer really made my day.

Failure to launch, er, or settle, or recruit...

2008-10-14T15:54:00.001-07:00

Yes, that is right. Failure. I guess it happens to everyone, and I half expected it by the way my recruitment experiment was going all summer. But I did get that glimmer of hope 6 weeks ago, when I did find a handful of scallop spat on my recruitment squares, and both 4 weeks ago and last week when I saw numerous scallops in our local spat collectors. Alas, no recruits on my squares. That old adage of "If you build it, they will come" does not seem to be ringing true for scallop spat in my grass mats.

Now, I don't want to make this all bad, because clearly highly mobile macrofauna have had no problems discovering or inhabiting my artificial grass mats. In fact, with the water relatively clear last week, I saw numerous species, including tomcod (which I had not seen in Hallock in all my dives there), largish sea bass, and the usual suspects (killifish, pipefish, sticklebacks, cunner, blackfish, porgies). So the whole "if you build it, they will come" theory behind creating artificial habitats or restoring habitats may ring true for certain mobile organisms. However, habitat value aside, no habitat can encourage organsisms to come if those organisms can not get there. Simple. If the supply is low, which I have reason to expect that it is (judging by the almost complete absence of adult scallops from the bay, among other things), it cannot be compensated by available habitat. However, it is still quite possible that I am simply missing the spat on my collecters, since collecting approximately 1 square meters worth of recruitment squares (~500 shoots) out of ~119 square meters of areas (~59000 shoots) may just be too small an amount to see anything. Finding scallop spat on natural grass is akin to finding a needle in a haystack, so why would my mats have been any different? And yes, the number of squares I collect seems low relative to the total area, but over the course of the whole summer, I collected ~5 square meters worth of artificial grass mats, with essentially the same result every time, nothing. Given the amount of hours it takes to locate and collect the squares, then process them, it is alot of work, trust me on that. It just seems to me that supply is very low. Even in the collectors we aren't getting that many, 10-20 per collector, and those are on a mesh that has more surface area than my recruitment squares and are enclosed and thus less likely to be preyed upon. My recruitment squares also don't have that luxury, and I did this on purpose. Maybe next year I will do a predicted vs apparent recruitment survey. I know I am missing some, since we did collect one large seed ~30mm on one of my squares, but not attached to my grass. At least this is a good sign that there are probably some seed out there, and I am hoping in November to do some bottom surveys to find out.

One million strong and growing?

2008-10-07T21:16:00.000-07:00

Well, I can't be very sure about that. However, there was a time when Great Souht Bay, a south shore estuary on New York's Long Island, when there were so many hard clams that people could "walk across the bay on the boats of clammers." Well, the times they are (read have been) a changin'. One of the projects my lab has been involved in was a shallow water hard clam survey in GSB. I was able to go out and help with that survey last week, and I can say the results, at least for my day out on the water, the results were less than ideal. Times were, there were upwards of 30-40 hard clams per square meter at certain locations within GSB. I'd say we were lucky to find ~ 1 per square meter. That is devastating. Certainly overfishing helped contribute to this collapse, but additional insults such as harmful algal blooms and habitat alteration has certainly helped lead to this sad clam state. There is hope, though. The Nature Conservancy has a large area of bottom land in GSB and has been free planting adult clams in spawner sanctuaries for many years. Hopefully, things will start to get better.

Scallops?! You wanna talk about scallops?!

2008-10-04T10:01:00.000-07:00

So I went to measure my scallops on Tuesday for my growth experiment, which if I had to say, is going fairly well. I conducted a similar experiment last year and ended up with good results, so I added more mats this year and hoped to see much of the same.

It was a long day (at Southold by 8:30, leave the dock by 9:30, back tot he dock by 5:30, leave Southold by 6:30), and I ended up that night with a killer headache, ended up sleeping for 12 straight hours, which never happens to me, but that is a horse of a different color. The water has cooled down considerably, but it was none-the-less a nice day diving on my grass mats.

As soon as I got to the bottom, I saw a huge winter flounder, we are talking dinner for 4 (well maybe not quite that big, but big), and of course I didn't have my catch bag or my camera, but I still tried to grab it by its tail and it swam away. Aside from the flounder, the usual suspects were all out - tautog, cunner, porgies, sticklebacks, gobies, spider crabs, mud crabs, and even blue crabs. And this knobbed whelk, crawling along the bottom, leaving his mucous trail along the way.

Oh, and adult scallops. I found one in my mat that at first glance looked like a really big seed. As it turned out, it was a scallop with a small growth ring, sometimes called nub scallops. These scallops are usually spawned late in the year (October) and only grow a few millimeters until their growth stops for the winter. The next season, they catch up to the other scallops, and end up around the same size. I also saw this guy, who was posing for pictures.

All in all, nice day on the water, and my scallops are looking good.

You've got to suffer is you want to sing the (Spat collection) blues!

2008-10-03T13:14:00.000-07:00

Wow, first, I did not realize it has been such a long time since my last update. I have been very busy with writing a manuscript and trying frantically to finish up the field season (although I still have another month to go). A few weeks ago, I went out sampling for my recruitment squares. If you remember, my last post about them suggested that I should not abandon hope, as I was finally starting to see some small spat. I was, of course, very excited. Well, I was dealt a crushing blow. Two weeks ago we were seeing a very high number of spat in collectors within Hallock Bay, which lead me to believe that I would most certainly find spat this time around on my mats, at least more than the last time, even if it wouldn't be alot. So, extremely excited, my advisor, Dr Brad Peterson, and I headed out to my field site to collect my recruitment squares from my grass mats. Now, this is no easy feat, and requires a few hours in the water searching for them (I guess I could have planned the relocation aspect a bit better) and a couple more hours going through the samples. As always, I have my own set of spat collectors at my site which I use as a "control;" the idea here is that if there are larvae in the water, I know they will recruit to the collectors, and that will give me a decent idea of what I might expect to see. I always process the collectors before my squares, so I know what to look for (ie, should I see any scallops at all? what sizes should I be looking for?). Well, as it turns out, I had a fairly large number in my collectors, which had me thinking awesome! My recruitment experiment is finally coming together!

2 hours later, I had a decidedly different opinion on my recruitment experiment: FAILURE!!! We found only 1 scallop spat on all the squares collected. ONLY 1!!! This is not nearly what I was hoping for, and certainly doesn't bode well for what I thought would be a fairly big portion of at least 1 chapter of my thesis work. It is pretty disheartening, putting in all that work ( a full day's worth of work for 2 people) to only come away with 1 scallop. Granted, the supply in the system might not be very high, and I might not have received numbers good enough to run any sorts of statistical analysis. However, 1 scallop? On a day I expected to see many more, given what had happened on the last time I sampled my squares and what we saw in our spat collectors. But no, it is a failure. I have one more collection scheduled, next week, and then I can truly decide which is a bigger failure, my recruitment experiment, or the New York Mets season.

Status Update...

2008-09-09T15:12:00.000-07:00

Well, no pictures this time! Last week we went out to measure my scallops again. If you don't remember, the last time I went out to my site to do the 2 week measurement, I lost ~30% of my scallops. My suspicions were they were dead or dying when I put them out - confirmed by the fact that their sizes were more or less exactly the same as they were when I initially measured them. The lack of any mortality this past time also supports the idea that they must have died bc of transport practices, something I will need to reconsider the next time I run this experiment. But I was very happy to see the survival as such, and to see the scallops growing well. This will run until the end of October, when I will also run a predation experiment again to see any differences between summer and fall, when the predator community is likely both different and more inactive. I also might be doing an overwintering experiment with my mats - more on that as I figure it out.

One in Fifty-Million... So you are saying there is a chance!!!

2008-09-02T21:55:00.001-07:00

That's right... The fairly rare "half-cooked" lobster... So I decided to pay a visit to a couple of friends of mine in Rhode Island, fellow alumni of the now defunct Southampton College of Long Island University.

One, Greg, in addition to having graduated from Southampton with a marine science degree and working towards a Master's from URI, still runs his lobster boat almost daily. His family owns and operated their own lobster company, Sakonnet Lobster Company in Little Compton, RI.

Last year, one of his brother's netted the one in 50 million half and half lobster, that was even featured in prominent news. It is rare, but not unheard of, as a year before, one was caught in Maine. Either way, it is still pretty exciting, and I was able to actually see it in person while I was looking around the shop.

It was a fun trip, going out on the lobster boat, being science nerds (talking about our research projects during a barbecue and Greg free-diving to the bottom to pick up "knobby-conchs"), and just relaxing. Rhode Island, and in particular Sakonnet Point, is a very nice, relatively upspoiled place with beautiful rocky coastline that I recommend everyone visit at least once.

Working in the coal mine... (on the barge)

2008-08-30T12:31:00.000-07:00

Well, yesterday I worked on the barge - its a boat built by S.P.A.T. volunteers working with the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County. It is used mainly for the scallop restoration work, and is equipped with a motorized winch and a star wheel for hauling up lines weighed down by hundreds of lantern nets full of scallops.

This time of the year, the majority of scallops in the nets have spawned at least once, so they need to be relocated to make room for the next batch of scallops to grow-out before overwintering. It can be a labor intensive process as the nets are heavily weighed down by fouling organisms, in particular sea squirts. It is essentially pulling up a net full of scallops, as well as hundreds of little water packets (the squirts) so the nets get pretty heavy. Then, most of the squirts need to be knocked off before the bags can be opened and the scallops dumped on deck, so it is also a very messy process, and sometimes, not very easy as an invasive sea squirt, Styela clava,

have very strong attachment points to the nets and to shells within the nets. Once the nets are cleaned and the scallops dumped onto deck, they need to be released to the bottom.

Some of the scallops are pretty fouled (the latter two were collected a day earlier),

but it adds to the camoflage for the scallops on the bottom. The nets also often have lots of little guests in them, including hundreds of grass shrimp and mud crabs, spider crabs, cunner and tautog, and even sculpin.

Sometimes we get pipefish and seahorses from the nets but this is more rare. Additionally, some of this years seed (scallops from earlier spawns this year) have set on the nets and grown very well.

All in all, it was a nice, messy day on the boat with some interesting things to see, including this awesome schooner, the Mary E, on our way home.

More updates - Fun Diving...

2008-08-27T06:59:00.001-07:00

Well, I just talked about Monday's work diving - searching and collecting the recruitment squares, and then replacing them. But we ended up finishing that fairly quickly this time (only a couple of hours) and we had a prospective student for next fall (09) with us - a former Master of Science student from Dauphin Island Sea Lab who currently works for a consulting firm in Florida and deals with habitat restoration and monitoring, and inparticular, seagrass restoration and monitoring. The day ended earlier than usual at my field site, so we stopped at a couple of other spots on the way home to do some fun dives, and so I could show my friend around.
First, we stopped at the long lines in Orient Harbor (which I talk about here in my first ever post.) Now the long lines essentially are just that, rows of lines with anywhere from 100-200 or more lantern nets hanging so that the scallops are suspended mid water column - out of the reach of predators on the bottom and not exposed to air from above. (On a side note, lantern nets make great closet additions - hanging a five tiered net or two in your closet eliminates the need for a dresser, for example, and they are good to store food in as well). Now I mention the long line site, bc I have dove on it quite a few times this summer and it always creeps me out - the water is murky (it is Long Island, afterall) and you just see these large dark objects come into view just hanging there, motionless,fouled with all sorts of algae, squirts, tunicates and sponges.
When I am working with the nets, opening them under water, reaching in to sample scallops

, sometimes I get spun around and another net hits me in the back, or a line from the bottom of the net hits my fin - this always freaks me out just a bit.
Either way, they are cool to see so we went there, looked at the nets, where I tried to get a picture of some of the fouling organisms.
We also went to the bottom near the nets to see any scallops released near the nets
and to just look around and see what we could find - and we had quite the find - a mantis shrimp, just walking around, and at one point looking right at me! Pretty awesome.

Next we stopped over at a healthy Zostera bed at Hay Beach on the northeast side of Shelter Island, especially since our visitor is particularly interested in seagrass. We saw some pretty cool stuff there as well, including juvenile flounder

just swimming around. There were also cunner, tautog, and pipefish.

We also found a few whelks and a scallop spat!

And of course, lots of silversides following us around, as we were stirring things up. Now silversides are nearly impossible to catch with the camera, at least for me, since they are almost transparent and blend in with the water, plus they swim around so fast, but I was able to capture a few of them here (oh and that out of focus blog at the center in the upper half of the photo is a comb jelly, or ctenophore).

All in all a fairly good day!

Do Not Abandon Hope, Ye of Little Faith

2008-08-26T20:21:00.000-07:00

So, a few posts back I was disappointed in the lack of scallop spat on my mats and in Hallock Bay in general. We had not really seen any in our collectors which we use to monitor spat in any of the collections, and so I was not so upset that I wasn't finding them on my mats, just figuring they weren't around. I was a little worried though, since scallop recruitment is a part of my research, and I was already thinking about possibilities of new locations for next year. I was ready to give up on the recruitment thing all together, since it is a lot of work to make the recruitment squares, to search for the squares within the mats, and to put new squares back on, not to mention I didn't want to keep wasting fuel for fruitless boat trips to my site. However, after much deliberation, I decided to make a new set of squares over the weekend to put one more set out there, just to be sure I wouldn't miss it.
Well we went to the site on Monday to collect my 3rd set of recruitment squares and to replace them with the 5th (and final) set. I also keep a set of spat collectors at the center of my array to make sure scallops are recruiting to the area using a known method for sampling them. I always process the spat collectors first, just so I have an idea of what to expect on my squares. Guess what?

Scallop spat in my collectors!! This was exciting. It wasn't a lot, only 16 total out of 3 bags, but I honestly didn't think I would see any. I still wasn't sure what to expect on my mats, but at least I was happy there were spat in the area. After processing all the recruitment squares, I did have spat on the mats! Success!! Well, kind of - we only found 4 total spat on the squares, not quite numbers that I can use for any kind of stats. However, now I know that if there are spat in the area, they will potentially settle on my mats, which was very refreshing to find.

Oh, and there is better news, the spat that we found was mostly small - 2-4mm. This is good, because it means the spawn happened relatively recently, and will probably show up on my next set of collectors. Second, and more exciting, is what we found today - in our spat monitoring we have 5 sites within Hallock Bay where we have sets of collectors, and we found spat at all of them, and in decent numbers (some bags over 20 scallops) and again, many were small. So I am keeping my fingers crossed that I will see much better numbers on my mats during my next collection!

A slide show as I promised...

2008-08-24T19:22:00.000-07:00

Pretty cool pictures...

Long scallop week

2008-08-22T12:16:00.000-07:00

Well, this week was a big week of sampling for me...
Not only was my first field sampling for the scallop growth experiment in the grass mats, I also planned to use this week as a scallop predation experiment week... The scallops for growth were measured two weeks ago, transported to the site, placed into white spat bags, and set at locations in my artificial seagrass array...
I was pretty excited going forward with the growth experiment because it worked out so well last year, and I almost doubled the number of scallops this year that I used last year... So you could expect why I was looking forward to this week, T-2 weeks, to see how my scallops were doing...
DISAPPOINTMENT!!! I would have to say using back of the envelop calculations, approximately 30% of my scallops did not survive to this sampling period! This was particularly shocking to me, since I only lost about 10% of the scallops I used last summer during the entire 12 week growth experiment... Of course, I was bummed... We measured the dead ones anyway, hoping that after I come up with a growth rate at the end of the experiment, I could approximate when they might have died... However, quickly looking at the numbers indicated to me that most of them probably died the day they were put out in the field... I suspect this is more likely the case, and I blame myself for this... There were probably some issues in transporting the juveniles from the hatchery facility to the field site, and then the time it took to get all of them into bags and situated onto their respective sites, they were probably out of water too long... This wasn't such a problem last year, but again, with almost twice as many scallops to place out in the field, almost twice the amount of time is needed to actually put them all out... So, suffice it to say I will be putting out some more scallops the next sampling to make up for the loss...

The second experiment worked out much better this time... Last year I tried this same predation experiment with no success - problems recovering tethers, loss of scallops during transport, tether tangling, screwy and missing data points... So I tinkered with and refined my methods for this year, and WOW!!!
Things worked out so much better this time around... Predation was as expected and I actually pseudo-observed a scallop being preyed upon...

After putting out all my tethers on Tuesday, 8/19, I went back with my camera to get some pictures, and when I went to the unvegetated tethers, I noticed a fishing line going into a half clam shell... I thought it was weird that the scallop would swim into there and byss, so I tried to pull the line, but it wouldn't budge... Upon further inspection, I saw a mud crab under the shell with the scallop shell, now in two halves... I tried to get a picture...
Anyway, this was exciting that it happened so quickly (if I had to guess, I would say within an hour and a half after release)... And I am very pleased with my results this time around... There are still some bugs to work out, namely preventing scallop tethers from tangling with each other during transport, but I look forward to running this experiment again in the fall...

Additionally exciting is that I observed adult scallops in or near my mats again this time!!!
And, a fellow diver, Andrew, observed some small scallop spat (probably in the 7-10mm range) on my mats, and if you remember from previous posts, I have been very disappointed for the lack of scallop recruits to my mats, so this was very good and welcoming news, and so this means that my recruitment experiment is starting to look up!!!
I also saw many fish again this time - including weakfish (probably about the size of the one in the photo from the web) for the first time, juveniles of course, and the usual suspects of pipefish, sticklebacks, tautog and cunner, and possibly a black sea bass, but visibility wasn't great and whatever it was swam away very quickly... Oh, and I saw this big spider crab who tried to get me!!!

By the by, check out Chris Pickerell of Seagrass.LI's blog here... He's got some pretty exciting stories going on, including pregnant seahorses, and horny (read:territorial) male sea robins...

Oh and stay tuned for slide shows from this week...

No photos, only disappointment

2008-08-05T20:13:00.000-07:00

Well, I went to remove the second set of my recruitment squares on Monday with hopes for better results than last time. Well, unfortunately, there was no scallop spat again on my mats. NONE!!! This is becoming a little disappointing. I understand that finding spat on grass is like finding a needle in a hay stack. But I should see something, anything. out of 72 squares, 360 shoots, and only 1 Crepidula fornicata and 1 mud crab. WHAT? In my "control" spat collectors, similar to the ones we use for the monitoring efforts, I didn't get any scallop spat either, and didn't get anything else other than mud crabs!!! This is not good. Whats worse, we had another round of the spat collectors and not a single scallop spat in any of the collectors placed in Hallock Bay, and when we monitored our free planting site from last winter, we only found 5 scallops in 24 square meters. I am worried that I won't get any spat on my mats at all, and this means I might have to find a new location to look at recruitment. On a better note, I did place out 680 scallops for monitoring growth on bare sand, at the patch edge and in the patch center. That should go better, at least I hope.

Marking scallops

2008-07-30T14:35:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally got my bee tags from the Bee Works. It took a while to get, bc they were out of stock when I ordered them and were accidentally shipped to the wrong place (Southampton instead of Cutchogue, but I got it figured out). Anyway, I got them, and so I glued them onto my scallops yesterday. I will measure the scallops on Sunday and they will get deployed to my mats on Monday. At the same time, I will also be removing set 2 of my recruitment squares and putting out set 4. I will keep you posted about that, but I wanted to throw these pictures of the marking process up here. Enjoy!

Diving in Flanders

2008-07-24T20:42:00.000-07:00

As part of our free plant scallop monitoring, I went diving in Flanders Bay, the westernmost of the Peconic Estuary system, to do quadrat counts and collect scallops for gonad index analysis - we can use this to see if and when the scallops have spawned. The counts revealed ~2 scallops per square meter - much lower than the original planting densities, but still fairly decent numbers considering the un-ideal bottom. That said, I saw a northern puffer (YAY!) in my first quadrat. This is exciting because their numbers have been severely reduced in recent years. However, puffers are potential scallop predators, so I don't know how excited I should be. However, they may also inhibit mud crab predation on scallops. Either way, it was exciting. I saw sea nettles, tons of comb jellies (ctenophores), that puffer, tons of silversides, blackfish and cunners, whelks, mud crabs, and of course scallops - oh and some red beard sponges. It was actually a pretty decent dive. Take a look at the pictures.

Back in action today

2008-07-17T19:02:00.001-07:00

photo by Steve Tettelbach

Well, I checked on my mats last week... everything looked good. I had to go back today to pick up my first set of recruitment squares. But more on that later. This week was the first "spat week" of the summer, well the first official spat week anyway. 6 weeks ago we placed out the first set of spat collectors at 24 different sites throughout the Peconics. Three weeks after that, we deployed the second set. Tuesday and Wednesday, we retrieved the first set we deployed (having soaked for 6 weeks) and dropped in set #3. The idea behind the collectors is that we place mesh bags in the water with a plastic mesh insert that larval scallops and other organisms will settle on when they are ready to come out of the water column. Of course, we are most interested in scallops, but we also monitor other things that we catch in these nets, including jingle shells, blue mussels, mortons egg cockles, and arc shells among the bivalves, and slipper shells, lacuna snails, and lunar dove snails among the gastropods. We also often get numerous mud crabs, although sometimes they get in through holes in the collector. Anyway, on Tuesday we collected over 1,000 scallop spat, which is the most we have ever collected this early in the season (this is now the 4th year of the monitoring). That means that we had an earlier spawn than normal this year, at least an earlier first spawn for scallops. Additionally, we observed a large mussel set, which is unusual, since we hadn't seen one this large either, especially considering there are no substantial mussel populations near our collectors. Either way, it was very exciting! On Wednesday, we didn't collect nearly as many, but it was still encouraging, because the collectors we checked were not near any known scallop populations or spawning sanctuaries, so the fact that we found as many as we did was very good!

So taking this good news, I went to my site today to retrieve my recruitment squares. I was not sure what to expect. My grass mats are in Hallock Bay, were we did free plant scallops last winter, but also where our spat collectors recovered very few scallop spat throughout the whole little bay (<10). sticklebacks , killifish, silversides, cunner, tautog, and sea bass, and lots of mud crabs, climbing my seagrass!!!! Very exciting day indeed, even though I didn't get any spat and lost all my pictures!

Oh, and as an aside, during a lunch break on the boat on Tuesday, we hauled up on a beach in Little Bay in Orient Beack State Park. There is a tidal pond there and I observed sheepshead minnows mating! Pretty awesome week...

I tried again

2008-06-25T14:20:00.000-07:00

This time the slideshow worked out a little bit better...

New Photos and update!!!

2008-06-24T16:17:00.000-07:00

Well, it has been a while... I have been busy finishing up the mats, finishing up writing an EPA report, moving, among other things, but I have also been in the water quite a few times since the last update... As is already says, I did win the best student poster award at the National Shellfish Association meeting... I also recently found out my first manuscript was accepted by the Marine Ecology Progress Series, which is exciting... I also finished my grass mats, and put them in the water 2 weeks ago and revisited the site today... Saw some cool things - tons of blue crabs (see the slideshow), also baby flounder, hundreds of silversides and grass shrimp (all of which were gone once i got the camera, of course)... Then we went over to the longlines hanging in Orient Harbor, NY, where they keep scallops in nets to spawn, where I tried to take some pictures, but of course they didn't come out at all... I did get some pictures of scallops out of the nets, which we sample for gonads, which is how we tell when they spawn... Anyway, things are going well right now, and I have a lot of different projects going on, so anticipate more photos for the summer... Oh, and check out my picasa web album for today here if the slideshow doesn't work out...

POSTER AWARD!!!

2008-05-19T19:24:00.001-07:00

So, as it turns out, I recieved an award for the poster I made presenting my scallop survival poster at the National Shellfish Association's 100th Annual Meeting last month in Providence, RI entitled "A Bay Scallop's Brave New World: Can the introduced Codium fragile act as an eelgrass surrogate?"

This is very exciting. Here is the email:

"Congratulations!

Your poster presentation entitled “A bay scallop's brave new world: Can the introduced Codium fragile act as an eelgrass surrogate?” at the 100th National Shellfisheries Association meeting in Providence, Rhode Island, has been recognized with our Association's Gordon Gunter Award for Best Student Poster. As a recipient of the Gunter Award you will receive one year of free membership to the National Shellfisheries Association, which includes a subscription to the Journal of Shellfish Research. On behalf of the society we applaud your efforts.

Sincerely,
Ryan B. Carnegie
Ami E. Wilbur
Co-Chairs, Student Endowment Awards"

This really made my day, and makes me excited to finish writing the report for the EPA and turning it into another manuscript.

The abstract for the poster is:

Bay scallops, Argopecten irradians, once supported a vibrant fishery on Long Island, but were pushed to the brink of local extinction after a series of brown tide blooms in the 1980’s. Restoration efforts, which commenced at the time of the fishery collapse, were somewhat successful but since 1995 scallop populations have remained well below historic levels. Despite many reasons for this lack of recovery, loss and alteration of habitat is often considered the major player. The potential role of the existing eelgrass (Zostera marina), the preferred bay scallop habitat, and macroalgae as suitable bay scallop habitat was investigated at 4 time points over 2 years. Tagged juvenile bay scallops were free planted to the bottom and tethered in 6 different habitats for a period of one week and percent recovery was calculated. Recovery numbers were highest in eelgrass, however, dense stands of Codium fragile exhibited statistically identical recovery to eelgrass. Eelgrass and codium both performed significantly better than replicate releases on bare sediment and dense drift macroalgae. These results can help managers to plan more efficient restoration efforts by locating potential habitats where scallop survival would be highest, even in the absence of eelgrass.

Went diving this week

2008-04-24T21:15:00.000-07:00

So, I got back in the water this week for the first time since December... And to be quite honest, it wasn't that bad... I mean I did have my new Diving Concepts drysuit, which works so well, I felt almost too hot... But it was pretty cool...

Tuesday we were in the water in Hallock Bay, a shallow body of water with a narrow inlet into Orient Harbor. This bay is the site of my grass mat deployments, but it is also the site of a free plant spawner sanctuary. Free plant means that scallops are just released to the bottom - no nets or cages here. Last November we planted about 70,000 seed scallops to the bottom in a bouyed off area, and dove on the site on Tuesday to look at overwinter mortality. The first site we looked at was almost heartbreaking - while we were still getting around 5 live scallops per square meter, we had extremely high mortality. We think this is partly attributed to the 100% macroalgae cover and the anoxic layer underneath the algae that results from such a dense assemblage. Many of the scallops were "trapped" in this layer, probably due to the late planting date, with the water too cold for the scallops to be very active and try to move up onto the canopy. However, not far away, where the cover was not as dense and had more Codium, we were finding upwards of 20 per square meter still surviving, which was very good to see. In other portions of this bay we didn't find too many seed scallops, although we found a few large, possibly year 2 adults. Hopefully we see better numbers in Hallock Bay this year with the decent overwinter survival of the free planted scallops.

Wednesday we dove mostly in Orient Harbor, first near the long lines where we have probably near 500,000 scallops hanging in lantern nets. We had decent seed recruitment there in the fall, and at various places within Orient, so we wanted to look at overwinter mortality. Some places we dove had fewer scallops than in the fall, and some places had far more scallops. All in all, we are seeing some decent returns from last fall. We have about 14 more sites to visit next week, so we will see whats going on then, but right now, things look like they are going to be ok.

On a lighter note, there was alot more activity going on in the bays then I expected. Spider crabs were out in the dozens, and it appeared to me as if many of them were mating, although I am not 100% about the mating rituals of spider crabs. Lots of whelks moving around the bottom too, as well as some drills. I also saw a very large (at least it looked large underwater) winter flounder, which was very docile. I was petting it and it barely moved. It finally swam away when I grabbed its tail. If only I had one of the larger dive bags I am confident I would have had dinner! I also saw a couple of skates, although which species I am not sure. They don't like to be touched at all, and when I tried to rub their backs they darted off. Anyway, some pretty exciting stuff, diving with my new drysuit, seeing some scallops, and seeing pretty interesting things as well. I can't wait until next week.

after meeting update

2008-04-16T18:51:00.000-07:00

well, a few things... first, both meetings went great... the scallop session on the first day was very informative - learned that new jersey is sort of at the crossroads for the two Argopecten irradians varieties on the east coast - the southern subspecies that spawns in the fall and the northern subspecies that spawns in the summer... for years the jersey scallops exhibited similar traits to the southern scallop, but after a die-off, there were relatively few scallops... after a good set in the south shore of long island, the next summer, there was a good set in new jersey with scallops exhibiting traits to the northern variety... very interesting...

also, it seems that scallop fisheries have collapsed along the coast in the mid 1980s, although not all due to the brown tide, such as the case for new york... it is curious that the crashes have happened at similar times due to different reasons, but as of right now it is unexplained for all locations... the general consensus for lack of recovery is the low recruitment success due to low spawner densities, although i still believe it has something to do with a lack of suitable habitat and changing habitat...

but thanks to a plug during the day long scallop session, my poster was mobbed during the poster session... i literally did not get a break from the start of the poster session to the end, which is good... i even had some people approach me afterwards bc they wanted to see my poster but never got a chance to come over and talk to me about it... so it was very exciting...

as for benthics, that went well too... i saw a lot of interesting talks, including one about Codium fragile and epifauna associated with eelgrass, although it was in Canada, so not scallops... but it was interesting to see that they demonstrated higher species richness in codium versus eelgrass 0 driven in particular by more gastropods, which is interesting... they use an interesting method to sample, something i would like to learn more about... i also saw another talk about blue crabs using macroalgae as an alternate habitat in the absence of eelgrass, which was also interesting and something i think warrants some investigation up here...

oh and my talk went extremely well... i ran through it about 3-4 times during the meetings, and then once in my head right before my talk... i opened with a joke, which i think lightened my mood a bit and made me less nervous, although i could feel my right hand shaking a little bit at the beginning, they audience said they couldnt tell... as a matter of fact, many of the people i talked to said they would never have guessed that was my first talk... and it seemed like a lot of people came for my talk because a lot of people left right afterwards...

all in all it was a nice week... i got to see roger mann and richard lutz give talks... partied it up in providence, and even unexpectedly got to see toots and the maytals... it was a very good time...

NSA and BEM 2008

2008-04-03T21:28:00.000-07:00

Photo by Stephen T Tettelbach

So, this weekend, I am preparing for the National Shellfish Association's 100th Annual Meeting, which starts Sunday night and runs thru Thursday morning. Immediately following that meeting is the Benthic Ecology Meeting, which starts Thursday and runs thru Sunday. So, the good news is I will be spending a week in Providence. The bad news is I will be spending a week in Providence. However, it is still very exciting. This will be my first NSA meeting, and I am presenting a poster on some of the bay scallop research I have been working on the past two summers. I am very excited to get feedback from scallop experts. My poster is entitled "A Bay Scallop's Brave New World: Can the introduced Codium fragile act as an eelgrass surrogate?" Now that I have been analyzing the data for a few months, and working up the rest of the samples, we are starting to see some pretty interesting results about Codium's potential as a bay scallop habitat. Also exciting is posters presented by two of my bay scallop partner's in crime, self proclaimed spat master Andrew and hose-getter Dennis, both graduate students of Stephen Tettelbach (Long Island's resident bay scallop expert) of LIU. Andrew was lucky enough to actually observe bay scallop mass spawning in the field while diving and will be presenting that work, entitled "Direct observation of bay scallop, Argopecten irradians irradians, spawning in New York waters." Not only was he able to observe this spawning event, it was part of a monitoring project looking at scallops in spawner sanctuaries and tracking gonadal indices. They were able to demonstrate that spawning occured after spikes in temperature AND periods of moderate disturbance, which was very interesting. This work has been published, and you can read it by looking up this citation:
Tettelbach, S.T. and A. Weinstock. 2008. Direct observation of bay scallop spawning in New York waters. Bull. Mar. Sci. 82(2): 213-219.

Finally, Dennis was working on 19 years worth of collected scallop shells looking at the prevalence of "small seed" scallops within scallop populations of the Peconic estuary. His poster is entitled " The Importance of Fall Recruitment in New York Bay Scallop Populations: Variability in Size of Annual Growth Rings and Total Shell Size over a 19 year period," and he has some very interesting results as well. All in all we are very excited to be presenting our scallop research at the NSA.

As for the BEM, my lab group will be well represented - 3 oral presentations and 2 posters. I will be presenting my work with hard clams and eelgrass, which I had an earlier post about. This is very exciting but also nerve-racking as it will be my first oral presentation in front of an audience of peers and experts in the field. And despite getting a pretty poor time slot (8:45 AM on Saturday morning) I am fairly confident it will be moderately well attended, especially since Paul Bologna, from Montclair State University, a seagrass expert colleague of my advisor, is giving a presentation immediately before mine.

I will check back in after its all been said and done and report anything exciting that we find!

Seagrass.LI

2008-03-23T13:32:00.000-07:00

At the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County's Marine Environmental Learning Center works a team of eelgrass restoration experts. They have been actively working to restore eelgrass meadows to their past glory throughout the Peconic Estuary, and more recently have been working in Long Island Sound and in the South Shore estuaries. About twice a year they release a newsletter that highlights some of the work they are involved in. The current newsletter also highlights the scallop restoration project being undertaken in Suffolk County, a project which I am involved, and a project that allows me to conduct much of my bay scallop research.

Click here to read the current newsletter.

Also, if you would like to visit their website, click here.

I have worked with this group in the past, and all members are very knowledgable in habitat restoration. They have experienced success in many of their transplant and restoration sites, and even developed their own methods for restoration. Now that the importance of eelgrass for many species has been ackowledged by the state of New York, which recently held a meeting of national and international seagrass experts to create an "eelgrass task force" to identify areas of research that are important to understand the dynamics of eelgrass survivng on Long Island and how best to protect it, the job of both the Cornell seagrass restoration team and Dr Brad Peterson's (of Stony Brook University) Seagrass Rangers, a team of graduate students to which I belong, has never been more important.

To see the seagrass ecology lab website, click here.

Jan/Feb Update

2008-01-31T21:17:00.000-08:00

Well, again, this time of the year moves real slow. I occupy a lot of my time entering data, writing reports and proposals, doing prep for the upcoming field season, and longing for the days when I can get back on the water. But, right now, there isn't too much going on. I submitted a paper for publication back in November and got the reviews back recently. They weren't great but they weren't terrible. I am hoping that with the proper revisions, as recommended by the reviewers, that it will eventually make it into publication. Also, with help from my adviser, I have begun to analyze the data from planting scallops in various habitats, and there is a very interesting story developing, especially when we look at natural recruits. Its very exciting. I am going to present the scallop work at the National Shellfish Association 100th Anniversary Meeting in Providence this coming April. As I start to make the charts and presentation, I will post more information about that project here. Otherwise, things are going well with my research. I have a few projects I will be working on this summer, of course the spat collectors again, my eelgrass mats with scallop growth (and I might do some RNA/DNA work if I decide the results will be worth the hassle) and survival (hopefully it works this time, but I have found some new tether methods I hope will work out better). I am also going to be investigating the impacts of water quality on the growth and survival of the big three bivalves (clams, oysters and scallops). There are plenty of other side projects I hope to conduct and be involved with, but as it stands right now, I will be plenty busy. If you have any ideas, let me know!

Long time!

2008-01-02T11:47:00.001-08:00

Well it has been quite some time since I last updated my blog... The field season was winding down, and I have just been busy with other things... Helping release scallops for overwintering, doing some dive surveys, and helping with the eelgrass restoration guys at SCMELC... So, I have been pretty busy... I have also been working up some data from this summer, which I intend to present some of the research at the National Shellfish Association meeting and the Benthic Ecology Meeting, both in Providence in April, so I am working up the rest of the data now that the field season is over... Once I make some sense with the data I will put some nice figures up here so you can see what I am working on...

Scallop spat

2007-11-17T11:40:00.000-08:00

Well, yesterday was the last spat collector day of the season... Spat collectors, essentially mesh bags suspended in the water column, collect larval mollusks, crustaceans, squirts, and sometimes even fish... We use them to track scallop settlement throughout the Peconic Bays, in order to see approximate numbers and areas where they are being transported... Towards the end of the season, we do visual benthic surveys along transects at the spat collector locations to see if what we are catching in the nets is translating to the bottom... In other words, if we have a location where we get alot of spat in the bags, but no seed on the bottom when we do our visual surveys, we can assume that there is some source of high post settlement mortality, which in many cases is predation... I digress from the subject... The collectors are collected every 6 weeks and there are 2 sets which are off-set 3 weeks apart to ensure scallop spat that may be too small one one set should show up on the second set of bags...
Again, yesterday was the last day of the season for our spat bags, and surprisingly, we were still finding scallop spat, at 2-3 mm. On Wednesday we saw similar numbers of scallops... What does this mean? well it would seem that these scallops were spawned sometime in October... Scallop larvae usually spend around 2 weeks in the water column before settlement, and since these bags went out in October, it can be assumed that these scallops were spawned late September/early October, further evidence for fall spawning in bay scallops in NY waters... Is this related to warmer water temperatures later in the season? Perhaps, but I haven't investigated that avenue... It is just very exciting news for the scallop population, a seemingly steady spawn throughout the entire season, and even continued spawning through the fall... Yes, the number of spat on these last few collectors have not been as high as those during the summer, according to my professor, these are the highest numbers he's seen collected this late in the season over the course of the past few years... Further, in visual surveys, we are finding higher numbers of seed than ever before, although still much lower scallop densities than historic numbers.... Either way, its seems to be good news for the scallops, and good news for the countless people that have been working hard to restore bay scallop populations...

A different project:

2007-11-05T15:10:00.000-08:00

While the focus of this blog will be concentrating the various aspects of my current graduate research, I wanted to make a small diversion to some research I did a few years ago with hard clams and eelgrass. I did benthic surveys for eelgrass abundance and hard clam densities in Shinnecock and Quantuck Bays on Long Island. While I only found 14% of the sites to have eelgrass, 67% of eelgrass sites had hard clams present, and only 33% of all other sites had hard clams present. Further, the densities of hard clams in eelgrass sites were double the densities outside of eelgrass. The reasons for this have been greatly explored in the literature, most often that below ground biomass of eelgrass offers a refuge from predation by crabs and whelks. However, little work ha been done to determine the impacts hard clams have on eelgrass. I was able to show that the addition of one hard clam to a quadrat of eelgrass (the equivalent of 16 hard clams per square meter) increased the eelgrass productivity (growth) about as much as a commercial fertilizer via nutrient additions. How? Hard clams filter the water column of phytoplankton and small zooplankton, and then repackage those as nutrients released to the sediments, which the eelgrass then uses for growth. It seems that there is an interactive relationship between the hard clams and eelgrass. I just submitted this work for publication in the Marine Ecology Progress Series, and if it gets accepted, it will be my first publication.

So a teacher I worked with put this article in the school district newspaper...

2007-11-05T15:09:00.000-08:00

Gardiner Manor Students Participate in University Research Project

Gardiner Manor students assisted Marine Biologist John carroll in his quest to solve the mystery of the vanishing Long Island scallop. Inspired by Mrs. Forman's students, who first became involved, Kids for Saving The Earth Club and the Gardiner Manor Service Club members put in tireless hours last year threading green ribbon onto plastic mats. These artificial eelgrass mats were submerged in Hallock Bay (on the notrth shore of Long Island near Orient Point) in hopes that they would attract various aquatic animals and provide a safe habitat for the scallops.

Threading the mats was a tedious job and it took a lot of patience! Mr. Carroll has since reported that small fish such as silverslides and killifish quickly colonized the "eelgrass", along with pipefish, small flounder, sea bass, grass shrimp and numerous species of crabs. Best of all, the scallop population is thriving! Visit John Carroll's website at http://zostera.blogspotcom/ for more of the scientific details.

UPDATE!!!

2007-10-24T16:53:00.000-07:00

So we went through my suction samples yesterday, and I found 3 juvenile scallops in total... Nothing spectacular, but it does mean that there was some natural recruitment, which is exciting... Another interesting thing, which was expected, was that the star shaped patches (the patches with the most perimeter) had higher amounts of drift algae and larger numbers of predators, although I haven't run any tests for significance yet... This is good news though, supports the edge effect theory...

Project Break Down

2007-10-22T16:43:00.000-07:00

Well, I took my grass mats out of the water last week. Not only did I remove my scallops, I suction dredged the mats and took them out as well. I haven't finished measuring the scallops or measured the dry weights, but soon I hope to have those results worked out. Tomorrow I am going to finally go through the suction samples and next week I am going to visually inspect the mats to see if I missed any juvenile scallops, predators, etc and then stow them for next year. One exciting thing I did notice though, while shucking my scallops I noticed that many of them still had gonads. Usually the gonads are spent this time of year, but for many of my scallops, they were not. This might be due to water temperatures still being so warm, or may be mere coincidence. Whatever the case, this supports the idea that there is a late fall spawn for bay scallops in Long Island. I will update once I have the data!

To start things off

2007-10-10T12:02:00.000-07:00

Well, I realize that I started this blog and never put any updates into it... Oops... It has been a busy summer filled with long days on and in the water, but with some excitement as well... I finally put my artificial seagrass mats out in the field in July, which was a very exciting day... The idea behind the artificial mats is that the local estuarine habitats are changing from once dense meadows of eelgrass to small isolated patches... Nobody is really sure the impacts of this changing habitat, and rather than disturb the already stressed existing eelgrass, we chose to make our own artificial mats... This also allows us to make them all the same, in terms of number of shoots, blades, etc :

Once they were in the water, they looked great... The ribbons stood upright... They were quickly colonized by small fish like silversides and killifish... Soon the mats were colonized by other fish, like pipefifh, tautogs, cunner, and even some small flounder and sea bass, and many invertebrates, including grass shrimp, mud crabs, spider crabs, blue crabs and whelks... The mats also experienced epiphytic algal and bacterial growth and also received a fair amount of drift algae... All in all, it was very impressive and far exceeding my expectations:

I placed scallops out in these mats, 10 to a bag, to prevent predation, in order to measure scallop growth... They have been growing well, around 25 millimeters (around one inch) in 8 weeks time... These are about triple the size of when I put them in (averaging around 11-12 mm, and now between 35-40mm)... These are very exciting results, although I don't have pictures right now to show... I attempted a predation experiment with tethers, however, this wasn't very successful, as I had extremely high mortality that I could not attribute to predation...

I have also worked on spat collectors located in various locations throughout the Peconic Estuary, with some fairly exciting results... This is part of a large bay scallop restoration effort undertaken by Suffolk County and the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County... This effort includes researches from various parts of Long Island, as well as dozens of local volunteers, to spawn scallops in captivity, grow them out in field settings and hang millions of them in lantern nets in close proximity in the hopes that having that many close together will enable them to spawn in the wild and allow larvae to recruit throughout the bays... This is the first full year with the high density of scallops in these lantern nets, although various other spawner sanctuaries have been set up for the past few years... All the data is still coming in, so nothing concrete yet, but there are some real positive signs that this type of method might be working...

Finally, I am also investigating the effectiveness of alternative habitats... I have looked at free planted and tethered scallops in alternative habitats for the past 2 summer seasons... Stay tuned for the results...