Shellfish in the Eelgrass

Bay Scallop in a natural eelgrass meadow off Shelter Island, NY

 Yesterday we had hoped to get out to several of our Long Island Sound test planting locations to check on their status, but unfortunately the heavy fog prevented us from getting that far.  Lucky for us, the fog wasn't really  hanging around the Peconic Estuary as much so we decided to cut our losses and drop in on a few sites that I had been meaning to dive for a while.  These sites included two recently discovered natural meadows that we located using aerial photos this past winter as well as two potential test planting sites.  While the test planting sites didn't look promising, the natural meadows were beautiful and, as usual, we observed some pretty interesting things. 

Four large hard clams growing within a same natural eelgrass meadow off Shelter Island, NY

One observation had to do with crab damage/bioturbation of isolated shoots, but I won't get into that in this post.  The other observation related to the large number of shellfish found in these meadows.  The first photo shows one of the dozens of scallops observed.  This photo was taken near the deepwater edge of the grass where it was more patchy and the scallops really stood out.  I did see losts of smaller bugs, but these were within the dense grass and much harder to find and phtotograph.  The photo immediately above shows some of the  hard clams also observed in the same meadow.  I don't think I have ever seen so many in one location and I know that I have never seen four clustered together like that.

Two hard clams growing within 8" of the group of four shown above

In addition to those four, I found a group of two only 8" away from the first group. The only other location where we have seen a similar density of hard clams was in the meadow on the east side of the ferry terminal at North Haven.  The grass there has since been lost and the clams are gone now but it was another clam hot spot. It just goes to show that as we lose or eelgrass we also lose the fisheries associated with it.  Let's hope this meadow off Shelter Island persists; at this point it looks great.


ChrisP

Amazing Seedling Recruitment in a Natural Meadow

While it is not uncommon to observe the random eelgrass seedling or two in or adjacent to openings in the meadows during winter and early spring, it is a rare occasion when we find large numbers of these small shoots blanketing the bottom.  While diving near Stonington Pt., CT last week, we observed one of these rare events.  I had wanted to drop into this site to observe the natural meadow and compare the growth there to what we had observed earlier in the day at our Little Narragansett Bay, CT. test plots.  However, what I wasn't prepared to find were the incredible number of seedlings.

As I swam through the meadow I saw several large open areas; we usually call these areas "blowouts", but there was no indication as to how these formed as I don't think this site sees heavy wave energy and waves that could scour bottom.  When I dropped into the first open patch I was amazed when I saw all the seedlings carpeting the bottom.  They were all roughly the same size and seemed to be grouped in waves corresponding, more or less to bands of small gravel amongst the otherwise sandy bottom.

In my nearly 20 years of diving in eelgrass I have never seen so many seedlings in one area except for possibly several years ago when a meadow in at Noyack Creek in the Peconic Estuary recruited from seed after loss all of the adult shoots the previous year (these seedlings all eventually died that summer and the meadow was lost). 

In addition to the open patches there were also a number of seedlings growing in and amongst the adult shoots near the edge of the openings (see above).  I did not spend time looking further in the vegetated areas to see what the extent was, but I think the seedlings were mostly limited to the openings and near the edge of the openings.

It will be interesting to visit the same meadow later this year to see if the seedlings survive.  There are any number of reasons why the seedlings can be lost here not the least of which could be overcrowding and competition for space and light.  Other factors could be bioturbation and other disturbance.  

The main question I have is why the seedlings recruited here so well in the first place?

ChrisP

Testing out the new GoPro Cameras

This year we purchased two GoPro submersible cameras to help us with our monitoring efforts.  We have used video cameras before, but not recently since they have always been cumbersome to handle.  The advantage of these new cameras is they are very small and we can mount them on divers, boats or whatever "platform" we want to film from.  So far we have only tried the head mount system to track our monitoring and planting dives.  We hope to use the same system to map restored meadows and I would also like to  record one of our larger restoration plantings from a fixed vantage point, if the visibility is adequate.  The visibility issue seems to be the limiting factor here as the cameras do not work as well in low light and obviously can't see through cloudy water.  Expect to see more of our videos appearing as we learn how to better use this tool. 

ChrisP

Little Narragansett Bay (CT) Test Planting Update

Last week we visited our test plots in Little Narragansett Bay (the CT side near sandy Point) to see how our plantings, that were part of our National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Sound Futures Fund project, had overwintered.  Our project partner at UCONN, Dr. Jamie Vaudrey had been out on the site the week prior and reported finding plants at our GPS coordinates while searching with an underwater video camera, but we definitely needed to get in the water to see things first hand.  

The plants that we used to establish these test plots were produced as part of one of our volunteer "Marine Meadows" events that was hosted by Save the Sound and Mystic Seaport last year.  Save the Sound have been great partners in organizing these land-based volunteer events within CT to support our eelgrass restoration efforts in LIS.  As you can see from the picture above and the one below, things are looking very good here so far for our LNB test plots.  

 

One interesting thing we observed while diving the site was the deep brown color of the water.  We had seen this somewhat last year, but nothing like the dark brown color we witnessed on this day.  Apparently the recent rains have flushed all the lignins and tannins into the Bay from Pawcatuck river.  We had a pretty good idea of what we were in for as we motored through the channel as our propwash was a rust brown color.  Note that I had to color correct the pictures a little to take some of the brown out as the original photos were even browner than what I observed while in the water.

As we usually do, I was hoping to do some counts to calculate percent survival for each plot, but it was a little hard to distinguish individual plots since the plants had spread from their original locations and a couple areas were missing, probably from Horse Shoe Crab feeding activity that was obvious in area.  There was even a HSC almost entirely buried next to one of the plots.  I think we were actually lucky that the HSC's hadn't dug up even more of the area...

Despite my inability to get any hard numbers on this dive, overall, the plants looked excellent...a little taller than I was expecting, but great.  I was surprised to see that some of the larger shoots approached a meter in length.  I also noticed a number of laterals growing from the base of the plants  which is a very good sign for the coming months.  Another interesting thing about these plants is that they were entirely free of epiphytes.  We usually don't see this.

In order to see how our plants compared to natural plants in the area, since we don't have much experience in CT waters, we decided to drop in on a meadow to the east side of  Stonington Point, CT, where we had observed grass last year.   Here we found very similar if not identical looking shoots(see below) except for the fact that the density was much higher which is to be expected.  Another difference was the fact that the water was not quite as brown as in LNB.

You can also see that the macroalgae gathering near the base of the shoots appears to be nearly identical to what we observed in LNB as well.  Again a good sign indicating that things are a normal looking as they can be for this time of year.

 

We should be back up to LNB at least a couple more times this summer to track the progress of the plantings and we hope that everything makes it through July and August when established plantings can fail due to heat stress and other factors.  Hopefully, this won't be the case here.  If we do get good summer survival, we will definitely be looking to expand on this site to create a large meadow.

ChrisP

Great Gull Island (LIS) Spring Monitoring

Last week we continued spring monitoring at our large-scale restoration sites in Long Island Sound and the Peconic Estuary.  On one trip across the Sound Steve and I checked on Little Narragansett Bay, CT test plantnigs (to be reported on later) and, on the way back, stopped by Great Gull Island (north), NY.  We had only been to GGI once  or maybe twice last year and things were looking good, but you never know when the site is as exposed as this one is.  This site was planted a couple years ago as part of one of our National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Sound Futures Fund projects.  See photos from two years ago here.

 I was hoping this site had progressed like our plantings on the south side of the island and after seeing everything here, I was not disappointed.  One change this year was a noticeable increase in the number of flowers visible (although not many are seen in the photos I chose to post).  There were a few flowers last year, but the numbers were definitely up this year.  This is a good sign although I don't expect the site to recruit many seedlings any time soon since the energy is so high here that seeds will be either buried too deeply or exported offsite until the patch size increases significantly.

 As far a follow up monitoring, we shouldn't  really have to go back here much this year to check on things, but we may schedule a mid to late summer visit to make sure everything is OK.  I have not decided whether to add more plants here, but it is definitely not on the top of my list at the moment given the other plantings we need to do.  Now it is just a matter of having a little patience and waiting for the grass to expand over time as it spreads vegetatively across the bottom.  The older plantings on the south side of the island clearly show that it is just a matter of creating stable patches to initiate a successful restoration project when the proper site is selected.

That's all for this site for now as I need to report on the other sites we've visited so far this year.


ChrisP

Time to catch up on old posts...

Unfortunately, I've been a little too busy with field work to take the time and post to the blog this summer. Time flies when you are busy. Over the coming weeks, when weather keeps us in the office and as time allows, I want to provide updates on various projects we have underway. We have had some exciting results this year and we look forward to the fall planting season.

Restoration is underway at several sites in Long Island sound, Peconic Estuary and in the South Shore Estuary Reserve. Plantings range in size from small-scale test plots to large scale multiple acre sites.

Monitoring is underway in all estuaries especially in the PE with increased attention focusing on light and temperature measurements in existing eelgrass, historic eelgrass and potential restoration sites. Another large project is underway in cooperation with Fred Short at UNH involving collection of plant samples for genetic analysis. Expect more specific updates soon...

-ChrisP

Spring Fauna

Now that summer is here, I thought it would make an opportune time to mention our more interesting animal encounters from this spring. It seems like every year, we start our spring dive season earlier and earlier, and this year the weather was exceptionally warm and beautiful for the most part. We began monitoring last year’s plantings by mid-March, but I have to say didn’t see too many fish while diving…the water was still too cold at this point I am guessing. By the first week of April, pipefish, gobies, and even a yellowtail flounder were seen in Little Peconic Bay when looking for seahorses near Chris’ father’s oyster cages.

When attempting to visit our planting site on the south side of Great Gull Island in mid-April, over 30 seals surrounded our boat. One even breached right next to the boat; we took that as a warning to stay out of the water. We have been told that these seals, including harbor and gray, can get aggressive this time of year because it’s mating season. It was the same scenario on the south side of Plum Island on the same day and then again at both sites one week later. Once again, we couldn’t get in at Gull Island as the seals were way too numerous and getting a little too close for comfort, but Chris decided to get in at Plum Island because the seals kept their distance here. They just hung out in deeper water until we left so they could go back to their favorite rocks and “haul out”.

By mid-May, we started to see our usual fluke and flounder at our restoration and donor sites as well as juvenile cunner and blackfish. Other noteworthy sightings were a school of squid hovering over an eelgrass bed in Gardener’s Bay in late-May and a massive school of young cod hanging out in our restored eelgrass South of Great Gull on June 15 (the seals finally left). Also, Barry took a few funny shots of an oyster toadfish trying to fit into a scallop shell in Hallock Bay which I find hysterical. We have yet to see seahorses in the wild this year, but will keep you updated. I can’t wait to see what summer brings!

For more photos, please visit us on Facebook!

Kimberly Petersen Manzo

New York's "Fragile Waterways" Premieres

The PBS Channel 13 documentary entitled "Fragile Waterways" premiered today. At 45minutes the segment begins featuring my father (the oyster farmer) and I. Part of this includes a brief discussion about our eelgrass restoration efforts in Long Island Sound. Not much on detail but there is only so much you can get into on one of these shows.

In one scene through the cabin windshield you can see Steve and in another you can briefly see Kim in the cabin next to me. They also show up in the water in their dive gear, but with all that gear everyone looks the same!

You can view the show online here.

-ChrisP

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Spring Monitoring Continues...

Yesterday, three of us were able to get in the water and check out the status of our eelgrass restoration sites around Plum Island and Great Gull Islands.

First stop was Great Gull Island (north side) where we had planted as part of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) grant for eelgrass work in eastern Long Island Sound. I am happy to report that the plants looked great, small, but great (photos above). It is always a little shocking to see the plants for the first time in the spring when they still have the diminutive winter growth habit. The last time we observed these plants was in the fall when they were still quite long and waving in the current. Also, during this time of year there is so much macroalgae that it tends to hide the shoots. The prognosis is VERY good for this site and we plan to begin additional plantings soon.

Second stop was the south side of Great Gull where we wanted to check on a restoration site first planted 4 years ago. This site is amazing and the patches have really spread over the last couple years. Despite the great vis and perfect conditions, we were not able to get in the water here. Once on station, we were greeted by approximately 30 seals. Most were pups, but there were enough agitated adults around to keep us on the boat. We are all too familiar with their breaching and nostril snorting to know that we were not welcome here. We’ll have to wait a little longer to dive here, but I am sure that this site is thriving given it’s performance in the past.

The third stop was Plum Island South (Fort Terry) to look for remains of a test planting we had conducted last fall to see if this site could support grass. Unfortunately, after much searching (storms had removed our buoys) we only found a couple shoots. The wave energy and sand movement are apparently too much for our small patches of plants as those that remained were buried under several inches of sand. This very frustrating given that water quality and light are more than adequate at this site. I am optimistic that we can do some additional work here this summer to measure light levels to see how deep grass might survive here. I’m not holding my breath, but I would like to think that this site could work for us.

On a more positive note, our last dive was on the Plum Island North (Radiator Beach) which was another planting associated with the NFWF project. The crew had visited this site a couple weeks ago so I already knew it was doing well, but I wanted to see it for myself. Plants looked great here in 18-22’ of water (above). The area where we planted a large number of patches 1m OC looked great and we are on schedule to begin spring plantings soon to greatly enlarge this area. One interesting observation was the fact that the deepest plots (20-22’) were showing signs of erosion from high currents (below). This area is too deep to be affected by waves, but it appears that this far off shore the plants are outside of the shadow of the nearby point and rock piles that otherwise slow the currents. I don’t believe the currents are limiting; this is just something we need to take into consideration when planning out the planting.

Next field day is planned for Friday…

-ChrisP

It’s been a long winter!

It’s been a very long winter and we are all ready to begin field work. We have spent the winter renovating offices, constructing a new seagrass lab and re-organizing and cleaning out the greenhouse. Now it’s time to get back in the water.

Last Friday marks the first dive of the season for the crew as Kim and Barry went out to check on one of our test planting sites at 67 Steps in Southold, Long Island Sound. The day was unseasonably warm; a perfect day for the first dive of the season. Fortunately, the plants looked great there. Some early season camera issues didn’t allow for pictures of all of the patches, but Kim reported that everything she saw looked really good.

I hope these observations are a sign of things to come as we launch our spring monitoring visits to all of our sites. After a winter like the one we just had, I have concerns over whether or not everything survived; only time will tell whether we had any losses.

For the next week we have to limit our observations to shore dives until the boats are back in the water in early April. Once our boats are back in, we can check on our sites out at Plum and Great Gull Island as well as scout out new spring test planting sites.

Finally, we also need to get into Shinnecock Bay and check on the status of a large-scale seeding effort and experiment that we began last summer. The results of this project could be very exciting…

Check back for more observations in the coming weeks.

-ChrisP

Rock Planting 101…

Rock planting is a simple and effective way of establishing eelgrass in high energy rocky environments. It all starts with selecting the perfect site…Once you have that, you’re half way there! Obviously, it is not always easy to find these sites and that is the real challenge. I couldn’t possibly cover all that goes into the site selection process in a blog post, so I won’t even try. We’ll just assume for now that you have such a site.

The following photos are from our field work yesterday off of Great Gull Island where we have initiated a large-scale planting effort based on the success of our test plantings. These are the steps we take following collection of the donor plants from a suitable location. Again, this will not be covered in this post.

Step1. Chose your weapon! I prefer that old fashioned crow bar (above) while others on the crew use l

arge screwdrivers or short sections of rebar.

Step 2. Flip the rocks in preparation for planting.

Step 3. Place the plants in groups of 6 to 12.

Step 3a. Plant in groups…to speed coalescence. 1 meter OC spacing is ideal if there are enough rocks.

Step 4. Monitor. The plantings should look like this after a couple months. Notice how the shoots are growing away from the rock they were planted under. (same site, but from a previous planting).

Step 4a. Monitor more!…Eventually the rocks disappear as they get buried under sand and gravel that accumulates as the eelgrass shoot density increases. The plantings should like this after about three years! (different site same method).

-ChrisP

Two out of three ain’t bad!

The weather this week has allowed us to get back out in the field once again as the season races towards winter…we need a few more good weeks to finish out or field work!

On Monday Kim, Ali and I were able to get out to Plum Island and check on the status of plantings there. The story was mostly good with a little bit of not so great news.

I’ll begin with the not so good news…

Our plantings off of Fort Terry on Plum Island (south side of the island) were looking quite battered and beaten from the heavy winds and storms we had over the last week or so (above). It still amazes me that there can be so much erosion and scouring to the bottom in 12 feet of water! I can’t imagine what the waves must have been like! We do still have plenty of plants here, but we lost many and those that remain appear pretty battered. There was also some burial as sand waves passed through the planting area. On another note, we still haven’t been able to find the temperature logger that was attached to a half cement block that was washed away during one of the last storms…maybe this site is too energetic. We are not planning any more plantings this year and instead we will just watch and wait to see how the plants fair through the winter. I REALLY want this site to work as it has so much potential for large-scale planting. For now, I will cross my fingers!

Now onto the good news…

After Fort Terry, we headed east to the north side of Great Gull Island and although the waves were very heavy and the vis was poor, we were could see that the plants looked great here (above). Everywhere I looked, there seemed to be groups of emerald green plants. This year we have really focused on planting in tighter groupings to speed coalescence and I think this is will pay off in the end. At past rock planting sites it has taken approximately three years for coalescence to occur, but I’m hoping that with this spacing this will begin to happen within the second growing season. Then again, we will get less bang for our buck per planting unit, but we’ll see how this works…we can always go back to the original method.

At Great Gull, there was no indication of damage or loss and we even had a few Lacuna egg masses visible on the blades…a good sign. I fully expect this site to fair as well as our plantings on the south side of the island that are doing incredibly well at this point after three years…

Once back in the boat we headed west to the north side of Plum Island to visit the Radiator Beach site, the deepest of our plantings this season (top photo). Here again we were happy to find the plantings doing very well with no signs of loss or damage even at our deepest stations below 20ft! Some of the plants here were shorter than the last time we visited, but this is just the winter growth habit taking over as the temperature drops and the water clarity increases.

Today, we’ll be splitting into two teams: My team, including Neal and Ali will be planting more plants at Great Gull while Steve and Kim will be monitoring the recovery of the natural meadow at Orient Point. We also hope to get in tomorrow and we have a big day planned for Friday with visits to points west in LIS.

-ChrisP

Waiting for the wind to die

The wind has the team office-bound today, but we expect to get out to plant our site off the north shore of Plum Island, LIS on Friday. Today’s forecast called for sustained winds of 20-25knots with gusts in the 40’s! Based on the shuddering sound the greenhouse is making, the weatherman got this one right.

Yesterday we did a little recon monitoring and sediment sample collection at three restoration sites including the north and south sides of Great Gull Island as well as at the Plum Island site (north side or Radiator Beach).

All three sites looked great with the south side of Gull Island still looking amazing (top). The plants here are filling in nicely on their own. We may want to add more plants further down the shore to enlarge the meadow, but we can also just sit back and let nature take its course. I think we will probably speed up the process by adding more plants to the east.



The north side of Gull Island (above), the newest of our plantings, is still looking very good. It is too early to know whether or not these plants will fair as well as their south-side neighbors, but I think they will do fine. The fact that this site is exposed to NW winds means that it will take more pounding, however. Because of this, I do expect to experience greater losses here, but once the plants are firmly established, they should do fine.



As a follow up to our September 22nd visit, the Plum Island test plants (above) still look very good. I don’t think we have lost any shoots recently; everything looked as it did on the 22nd. Based on this success, we are expanding our work here out into deeper water. Yesterday’s observations indicated that the 17’ plantings still look the best so we will definitely plant out to 20 or 22 feet when we get back on the water this Friday.

-ChrisP

Planting Deep!

Yesterday was our second follow-up visit to our site off the north shore of Plum Island. These plantings are part of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation Eastern Long Island Sound Eelgrass Restoration project.

This project involves plantings on the north side of Great Gull Island, Plum Island and several test plantings along the north shore of the north fork. At this point all initial test plantings have been completed and we are just making our final observations before making plans for the fall planting season when we will begin full-scale restoration plantings.

Great Gull Island already received pilot plantings this summer and we have decided, based on the success of this work, that this will be the focus of full-scale restoration beginning this month. Plum Island also received pilot plantings, but later than the Gull Island site and we had not been able to effectively determine how successful the site was until yesterday.

It is interesting to note that the Plum Island plantings are different from most of our other Long Island Sound sites in that there are no rocks to plant under despite the exposed conditions. As a result, we had to come up with another method of planting here. I am not prepared to discuss this method yet as it has not been fully tested, but it appears that this method is as effective, if not more effective than the rocks and can be used on any type of bottom. As an aside we expect to describe this method at some point in the future.

Another interesting aspect of the Plum Island site is that we had to plant so deep given the northern exposure. At other sites in the Sound, we have planted in 8 to 12ft of water while here we planted from 10 to 17ft. As usual we look to spread our test plantings along a gradient from shallow to deep expecting to lose the shallow plots to scouring and the deep plots to light limitation.

Soon after our planting we got our wish when the shallow plots were completely wiped out by a hurricane. The waves were so heavy here that they exposed up to a foot of new profile on several nearby boulders! Our plants didn't stand a chance... The good news was, however, that our deeper stations survived with no impact.

Yesterday, we returned for a final visit of the monitornig season to find the 12, 15 and 17ft depth plots still growing very well. So, we will now put this site on the long list of scale-up sites for this fall and winter. What is most interesting about this site is the fact that we might be able to plant even deeper since the deepest plots are showing no signs of light limitation. In fact, the plants in 17ft look even better than those at the 12ft depth since they have a lower epiphyte load.

When we come back to add more plants we will likely extend several plots deeper than the 17ft. It in interesting to note that there are natural eelgrass meadows off the north side of Fishers Island that go down to almost 25ft so we may be able to go to at least 20ft at Plum Island. Imagine that!

I'm very excited about this site and I look forward to continued work here. Hopefully, we can make history as the deepest restoration site on record in the region.

As usual, stay tuned for additional news on this site and thanks again to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for funding this project!

-ChrisP

Thanks Hurricane Billy!

Yes...I am being facetious!

Although we're already a couple named storms past Billy (Danny most recently), we hadn't had a chance to check on a number of our test plots that were in his path. Today was our day to catch up. We wanted to determine what if any impact the hurricane had and decide on which of our plantings we will scale-up this fall.

So the good news is...most everything was in pretty good shape. The bad news was that it took us much longer than it should have to check on the plots since the heavy surf had moved all of our marker buoys off Plum Island more than 100 feet from their original location making it hard to find our plantings. Also, once they were found, we had to drag the buoys and cement blocks back to their original locations. We also lost a temperature logger that was attached to a cement block at one site. I think we may eventually be able to find this if we follow the trajectory the buoys and blocks took. It is amazing to think that the storm was able to move full sized cement blocks in 10-12ft of water! Fortunately, most of the plants remained in the bottom.

Although we didn't visit the site today, we did have one fatality from Billy that we noted last week. Test plots along the east side of Cartwright Shoal (not shown here) off the south shore of Gardiners Island were totally obliterated in the storm. I had high hopes for this site, but the storm changed all of that and I don't see us going back. We planting on the SE side of the shoal hoping to avoid the prevailing NW in the winter, but I hadn't planned on a storm from the NE that destroyed everything. Oh well, that's why to do test plantings before investing the time and money into large-scale plantings.

The best news today was that both Plum Island planting sites (top and left) weathered the storm. We did have some loss and damage, but all and all, the plantings made it through and we are on our way to large-scale plantings this fall. Not surprisingly, the deeper ~12ft plants looked the best, but we even had survival at the 8ft depth of the shallow station. We had assumed that the shallow plants would have been smothered or eroded. It turned out they were buried in sand, but not enough to completely cover them.

In the Sound we did see some damage at our Duck Pond Point site in Peconic, but the Horton's Point, 67 steps and Rocky Point sites all showed no sign of storm damage and look like good candidates for full-scale plantings. We will not be planting any more this fall at Duck Pond Point, but the other sites will definitely get more attention. Horton's Point (above right) and 67 steps, in particular, look to be very good candidates for full scale plantings. If Duck Pond Point makes it through the winter, it too may become a large-scale planting site.

Let the plantings begin...

-ChrisP