Check out newsday's photo slide show...

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...

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

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...

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?

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!

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

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.