New Arrival!

Things continue to fall into place for our seahorse project as if by design.

While I was on a brief vacation my father called to report that he had found yet another seahorse in his aquaculture gear in the Peconics. It seems that the general lack of grass in the area makes the cages some of the hottest real estate for the few seahorses that pass through.

This time it wasn’t another female but a pregnant male. Just what we were looking for! The photo above isn’t great, but I didn’t want to disturb the expecting father just for a money shot.

As I write this, Kim is busy getting the lab ready for what we hope will be the arrival of a bunch of new “ponies”. These little guys are notoriously difficult to raise, but we are gearing up for rotifer and artemia culture so that we can give them the best chance for survival.

I hope to be able to report that we have been able to get a heard of little ones through the first couple weeks of their life and to the point where they are easy to feed.

-ChrisP

Catch and Release Seahorse

If you remember back to an earlier post I mentioned that we had initiated a Seahorse Project. We chose this species as it relies heavily on eelgrass for its prime habitat and it is clearly more charismatic than any other species we deal with. Although we work with them all the time a “Snail Project” doesn’t sound half as interesting…

Our goal is to link habitat restoration (eelgrass plantings) with species enhancement (seahorse breeding and release). Our first goal was to determine the minimum plot size that would support an individual or pair of seahorses. This way we could target future plantings as dedicated seahorse habitat.

In June, a lucky find, gave us the opportunity to begin this process. My father, who has oyster bags in Peconic Bay called to tell me that he found a healthy seahorse IN one of his bags. I made arrangements to go over to Water Mill and pick the little guy up fully expecting him to be a little worse for the wear given he was dropped to the deck with a couple hundred oysters.

Upon arrival, I was pleasantly surprised to find that he was in perfect health and had an interesting and unusual yellow/orange color. The others that we have observed are typically gray, black or brown. This little guy really stood out in a crowd.

What to do with this guy? At first we kept him in our greenhouse for a few days to observe him and see whether he would eat in captivity. Sure enough, he started to feed on small shrimp (actually amphipods) in the large tank he was held in. However, I was concerned about the extreme temps in this tank and the fact that it could harm him in some way.

It was time to get him back in the bay. We quickly decided to place him in one of our transplant plots at Robins Island. This site seemed ideal in that the grass was thriving and shallow, relatively calm waters.

On June 18th, we delivered the seahorse to his new “home” with the hope that we could return in future weeks to check on his progress.

In the weeks that followed, we observed our little friend in or adjacent to the original plot on a couple occasions. Outside of the plots there is basically nothing on the bottom except for the occasional clump of Codium, but even these are few and far between given the lack of rocks or shells. On our last visit in late July we did not find him in the original plot or on the adjacent Codium.

Fast forward to last week (August 8th) when we went out to do our regular plot counts at a number of our sites in the PE. The summer heat and crabs have wreaked some havoc on our plantings in the bay, as it always does, but the plots were still there.

Unfortunately the shallow plot, where we placed the seahorse, was almost entirely lost, reduced to only a few shoots. This is not surprising as we fully expect to lose the shallow and/or the deep plots for these plantings. Unfortunately, the seahorse was also not visible.

Fortunately, as Kim counted the second plot she found our seahorse. With this we decided to bring him back to the lab to reside in a specially designed tank with temperature control and a good supply of food.

Our firs foray into the world of seahorses proved to be productive. As a result we have learned a few things. First, our 1m2 plots appear sufficient to support at least one individual seahorse. Second, these guys seem to have a certain amount of site fidelity once they get to suitable area. In this case this individual stayed in our plots for 50 days.

Over the next few months our Project Seahorse will become a reality...

-ChrisP

Docks and Eelgrass?

Last week I had the pleasure of heading over to Fishers Island for the annual “Founder's Day” when the Town Board and other “officials” go over to this distant outpost of Southold to discuss the issues. It truly is a beautiful place that everyone should visit at least once. There is one supermarket, one (public) restaurant, one general store/deli…you get the idea.

We had been over to the island to collect seeds the day prior and the weather was nice, but the ride over this day was pretty hairy as the waves really rocked the ferry from side to side. A couple of the less seaworthy on board didn’t fair too well as we passed under Plum Island and hit some real big rollers. I’m glad I didn’t witness anything first hand, but I am told that there were a few green faces in the cabin.

The main reason I was going over, besides the free lunch, was to work with Mark Terry and John Sep of Southold Town to conduct a preliminary dock survey. The Southold Town Board is developing new dock law and wants to establish design standards for Fishers Island based on the unique physical and environmental conditions and needs of the residents.

We knew from our previous work that the Island is one of the last strongholds for eelgrass in the Town, but we have never took the time to observe how the docks and eelgrass interact. We don’t make it a habit of anchoring in and around docks or other structures.

Starting on the east end of the island and working our way west along the north shore, we visited every dock along the way in a small lobster boat provided by a local resident. At each station they measured depths at the end of the dock and took photos for reference. I jumped in the water at most of the docks to look for grass and take pictures so Mark and John could also see what was going on.

Well I can’t say that I was surprised, but it looks like eelgrass can thrive under a dock if the conditions are right. The combination of mostly N/S orientation, clear water and height above the water enabled grass to grow under most of the structures we visited in Fishers Island Sound. There were a couple cases where the dock was wider and lower than a neighbor, or the orientation was such that light was apparently reduced to the point of limiting grass growth. I didn’t snorkel in the harbors as there is very little grass there.

There was also an issue with grass growing under the docks if they extended into a deep water meadow of 10 feet or more. (we need to further investigate this observation to narrow down this depth precicsely). Apparently the combination of water depth, reducing light, as well as the shade of the dock limits growth.

One thing that was a little surprising was the effect of floating docks and boats. All of the floating docks resulted in loss of grass. In all cases the dock resulted in an unvegetated shadow in the grass meadow. In one case the clearing was “L” shaped. However, in cases where there was surrounding grass it seemed to thrive under the walkway leading to the float.

With regard to boats it was fairly clear that the presence or absence of grass was related to depth in the slip. If the water was deep enough the boat did not appear to have an impact. If it was shallow or the boat had excessive draft the impacts included scouring, shading and loss of grass under the vessel.

In some cases the docks also had a boat house or similar structure. In all cases, these structures reduced light to the point that grass could not persist in the shadow.

This was all very exciting and encouraging for our first look. I look forward to getting out there to take a closer look at some of these areas in an effort to refine the design standards. It should also be noted that these observations on Fishers do not indicate how grass and docks will interact on the mainland as there are issues with water clarity and water quality before the impact of these fixed structures is considered...

-ChrisP

Seed collection season is over!

This past week we completed what will likely be one of our most productive seed collection seasons to date. Our seed work varies greatly from year to year depending on our needs for restoration and level of effort. Well, kind of like buying a lottery ticket in the hopes of winning it big, we jumped in head first this year.

As anyone in the field of eelgrass restoration knows, seeds are the way to go, IF you can get them to work for you. That is a big “IF”… Some sites work very well while others fail dismally. It is not that uncommon to get good seedling recruitment and I like to say that anyone can do this. Long-term survival is the hard part. In our area it seems like most seedlings die before they reach maturity unless they are growing near established plants.

For this reason seeds can be used to increase the genetic diversity within transplanted sites. This season many of the seeds will be used for fall broadcasting into ongoing restoration sites where we want to increase shoot density and genetic diversity. For something different a large portion will be held for growout into adult shoots that can be used in spring transplant efforts.

Our seed collection season begins some time in Late June to early July in parts of the South Shore Bays (e.g., Shinnecock Bay) and Bullhead Bay in the Peconic Estuary (if we collect there which we didn’t this year). There is then a little lull until late July as the plants in western Gardiners Bay mature.

Following this there is a large collection window beginning in early August for our Long Island Sound and Fishers Island sites. Given the density and size of the flowers off Fishers, we concentrated much of our work here this year.

I’m not sure if this year was a banner year or if we just hadn’t noticed how productive Fishers Island was. Our collection site is located just south of South Dumpling Island west of Flat Hammock. Here, most flowers are over 7 feet tall and a handful will fill ¼ of one of our bags. We were actually able to fill a bag in less than 10 minutes! If we tried hard it could be done in 5 minutes…

This may not sound too impressive unless you compare it to one of our sites with smaller, widely spaced flowers where it can take 1 hour to fill a bag.

Our collections were so extensive this year we had to borrow some tank space in the Shellfish Hatchery (Thanks Mikey!) as well as set up an outdoor tank next to our greenhouse. In the coming weeks the seeds will be separated from the flowering shoots and we will be left with what we hope is a large amount of seeds.

I look forward to broadcasting these in the hopes of adding to our restoration work.

-ChrisP

Cosmetics from Eelgrass!

While innocently searching the web for an eelgrass (Zostera marina) reference I came across something totally new to me. Apparently, the Ren Ltd of London is selling skin care products using eelgrass extracts.

I'm not sure how they (or rather their suppliers!) gather the grass and do their extracting , but it interesting to see a modern use for a species that had so many historic uses. It is not uncommon to see rafts of grass floating on the waters surface during summer and fall. Possibly these are being gathered and processed...?

I will have to look into this more...

-ChrisP

2 Piles of…?

While diving along the north side of Fishers Island last week I photographed these two piles of what must be worm deposits (poop!) of some kind. Although we come across a lot of interesting things I haven’t seen this before.

I was swimming over the sandy flats checking on small seedlings when these caught my eye. There were a number of these piles, spread around the unvegetated bottom between grass patches, in various stages of settling and blending back into the surrounding sand.

Stay tuned for more on our work at Fishers last week. The weather was crappy, but we still got lots of work done!

-ChrisP

The Starfish Hoard…

I just wanted to pass along a couple cool pics of baby starfish in an eelgrass meadow north of Warner Island in Shinnecock Bay. We were out today to look for a temperature logger that we lost last year. Actually we didn’t lose it, but the story is too long to explain here.

Anyway, we still couldn’t find it even after using two GPS units and divers.

Back to the starfish…this is the same spot where we got some great shots of even smaller starfish a couple years ago. One of those pics was used in our newsletter under the title “A Star is Born”. See that issue here. Then and now it looks as if the starfish are wandering up on the blades of eelgrass to eat of the small blue mussels that have set there.

Definitely not one of my favorites, but yet another species that utilizes eelgrass!

-ChrisP

The Robins Island Plots Continue to do well…

As the water temps increase and vis plummets, regular monitoring visits to our test planting sites begin to show us which are the “good” sites and which are the “bad” sites. If we are lucky we have more good than bad, but during a typical year our “good” sites number less than the bad. If this was as easy as just throwing some plants in the bottom…everyone would be doing it!

Well, fortunately, the Robins Island plots seem to fit nicely, so far, in the “good” category. On July10th Kim and I visited the site to count shoots and take a bunch of pictures. We hadn’t counted during the June visit and I was interested to see how things have faired since May 29th counts.

As we expected, the flowers are mostly spent and many have detached. Kim didn’t count them as they were a mess. However, counts of the vegetative shoots showed an approximately 10% increase since May 29th. This is very good news since in my last post about this site I predicted a loss given that the flowers would soon detach. I should caution that Kim reported that counting was a little difficult, but the increase was consistent across the four plots.

The vis was pretty bad given the bloom in the water and the fact that it was low tide stirring up things a little. We have also had some fairly constant winds for the last few days that seem to have deposited silt and flock on the leaves, especially in the epiphyte fuzz. When kim bent over the tops of the plants as she counted them, the water became clouded with silt and flock.

This is the first time we have observed a fairly heavy coat of epiphytes on the older leaves giving the plants an ugly “fuzzy” look. The base of the plants and the new leaves looked great, however.

It was also interesting to note that there were decent numbers of small to medium sized mud snails in the plots, but most appeared to be concentrated on the bottom apparently eating the remains of dead lady crabs. It was definitely too warm for Lacuna snails and they will not be any help here until the fall, if and when they recruit as larvae. Seeing the fouling makes me want to import a large number of adult mud snails as they usually do a good job of cleaning things up. We still may try that this week.

We are not out of the woods yet with regard to this site or any other test plot site for that matter. It’s not until late August that we will know for sure whether the plots will persist. However, we have learned to many times that there no guarantees.....except in Long Island Sound!

Check back to see how this and other sites fair.

-ChrisP

Why I should really wear a hood!

The jellyfish are really, really, really bad this year! Last week I thought I could get away with not wearing a hood since it is getting so nice and warm, but as you can see, it was NOT a good idea.

We gathered a group of divers to collect flowers in Gardiners Bay as part of our restoration program. We did manage to find a site that wasn’t “Paved” with jellies, but it only takes one big one to do the damage.

We all had to deal with the stings around our mouths as the seemingly endless cloud of detached "tentacles" drifted by and gently wrapped around our regs. This I can handle and we all did that day.

It’s when I felt the hit on my neck and reached down for a handful of jellfish meat that I knew this was more than a gentle brush. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it was uncomfortable…

Everyone had tingly lips for the rest of the day while I had the pleasure of a “red neck” with welts for three days…

Suffice to say that I learned my lesson...Ouch!

-ChrisP

Meadow found in Southold!

This past Friday (July 11th) while scouting for new eelgrass planting sites we found a natural meadow east of Cleaves Point in the north race between Shelter Island and Southold. We were on our way out to recon ongoing restoration sites, east of Shelter Island when I thought it might be interesting to see if there was any grass remaining near the Cleaves Point Condominiums.

Some years ago (maybe 8) Lorne Brousseau and I had swam through the meadow here and observed recreational clammers digging up large patches of grass. We even documented the damage using our video and still camera.

Unfortunately, there was/is no law against this and the damage continued unchecked for years until the meadow was decimated. The last time we were in at this site there was a very sparse patch of grass that was being slowly uprooted by knobbed whelks searching for chowders growing under the grass. This was the last nail in the coffin for this site.

This day the relatively clear water in combination with the bright sun allowed us to see the bottom pretty well and confirm that yes, the meadow was gone.

As we headed east along the bulkhead and past the filled in inlet to the boat basin at the abandoned oyster factory a group of large boulders caught my eye.

If there was any chance to plant grass in the area these would surely provide the protection it needs from man and the forces of nature alike. We approached the area slowly to avoid striking one of the large number of rocks that could be seen as dark patches under the surface. Eventually, we anchored south and east of the rocks and the combination of the SE wind and incoming tide pushed the boat within the rocks.

Kim was the first in the water snorkeling to get a feel for the area before I got on my SCUBA to get some shots of what looked like a great planting site from the surface. Within a minute of being in the water Kim said: “your not gonna believe it….there’s grass here!”

Although I was surprised I was also happy to see that my mental site selection model of where the grass SHOULD be and where it actually WAS matched! Obviously, there was no need to plant grass so we just spent the next half hour exploring the site and documenting it with photos.
This meadow runs east and west between the rock jetties that effectively define the boulder field. Depths range from about ~1m where the grass is almost right up on shore to about 2m seaward of the largest boulder near the edge of the channel.

Lacuna vincta were plentiful and apparently doing a good job of keeping the leaves clean. This is in stark contrast to the grass a short distance across the race at Hay Beach Point, Shelter Island, where there is a considerable epiphyte load.

The largest and healthiest looking parts of this “new” meadow were in the deeper water and in some areas it looked like meadows we see in the Sound except for the Codium growing here.

A look at the nautical chart hints at why this site may be thriving in addition to the fact that it is protected by the boulders. Given the very close proximity to the channel waters just off the deep edge drop down to nearly 60ft. There is no way of getting cooler or clearer water…

-ChrisP