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

Too much of a good thing?

On days like today there is no excuse for not getting out in the field. Although we were down two staff, it was still possible for Kim and I to get out and do what we needed to do. It was either that or stay in the office and catch up on paperwork (me) and webpage updates (Kim).

With a skeleton crew there was only so much that we can do efficiently so I decided we would focus on scouting for new planting sites around Plum Island that we have been trying to complete for the last few weeks and monitoring some older test planting sites in the area.

After a quick call to the homeland security folks on Plum Island we were on our way to visit the cool, deep and high velocity waters of eastern LIS. I won't go into any detail here, but suffice it to say that our scouting was a success and we did find at least one promising looking site on the north side of the Plum Island. This matches up with some earlier observations from April or May. I would have to look back and check the date, but it doesn't matter at this point. We may be planting this site as soon as tomorrow, weather and staff permitting.

The other, and frankly more interesting part of our day, was to monitor some test plantings from this summer. If things make it through August, we can usually be assured that water quality and temperature are not limiting. It's too early to determine if disturbance will be limiting, as this kicks in in the fall and winter, but if the plants don't make it through the summer, there is nothing to monitor and no potential for success, so we have to start somewhere.

Our sites today included two sites on the south side of Plum Island and one on the north side of Great Gull Island. The first two are part of our Suffolk County Eelgrass Restoration Initiative and the third is part of our National Fish and Wildlife Foundation Long Island Sound restoration project. As always, we couldn't do any of this work without the generous support of our funding partners!

First, I have to say that the plants looked great at both sites and it looks like we have some very promising large-scale planting candidates for the coming fall, but we did make one interesting observation. There we incredible numbers of Lacuna vincta snails on many of the plants. I'm not talking about normal numbers, but what appeared to be overwhelming numbers. We like these snails and actually will move them to a completely unvegetated site (one that has no algae to act as an alternative host for these grazers) to help clean off the epiphytes and biofilm on transplants (we're just about to do this for some plantings near Duck Pond Point in LIS), but these were almost at an alarming density.

I don't think this is a bad thing at all, but these little guys were definitely causing some grazing damage to the leaves and sheaths of many of the plants. I do remember seeing a fairly high density on some plants early on at our St. Thomas Pt. restoration site where we have had considerable success so maybe this is just the way it always is during this time of year and I just missed it..or maybe the crazy weather this year has spawned a bumper crop of snails...who knows? I will have to look back at the photos to see what time of year this occurred, however. (Editors Note: I did take a look back at shots from a couple other restoration sites over the years and, in fact, August showed the peak density for Lacuna snails. Some plants appeared to have densities rivaling those seen in the pictures here, but it still seems that we're a little higher this year than in previous years. Also, there was very little, if any, indication of heavy herbivory damage in these earlier photos from other LIS planting sites.)

It is also possible that when the eelgrass is at a low density and there are a large number of snails on the nearby macroalgae, the snails may prefer the eelgrass and leave the algae to preferentially feed on the eelgrass epiphytes and, yes, the leaf tissue! Since there are so few eelgrass plants, the snail density reaches what appears to be a saturation point on many of the plants.

If this is the case what is causing it? I just don't know right now. However, I still believe that the presence of snails, even at these very high densities, are better than no snails. At the Duck Pond Point site in LIS, there is no macroalgae and therefore no snails except for a couple that came along for the ride when we transplanted. Here the plants look fairly good, but there is a heavy layer of epiphytes that must be decreasing overall productivity. Once we deliver some snails to these plants, the problem should be solved.

With each season we learn more about the natural cycles underway in the waters around us. Not every year is the same, but trends have emerged. I hope that with this knowledge we can improve our ability to successfully plant eelgrass. So far, so good, but everyday in the field teaches us something new.

-ChrisP

NYC plantings finally in!

After much coordination of our schedules with that of NYCDEP, we were finally able to complete our plantings into Jamaica Bay. It would have been nice to get them in last fall or even this past winter, but it wasn’t to be…

On April 9th Steve, Kim and I planted 2,100 plants gathered from Mulford and Orient Points into 11 separate 1m2 plots. We had hoped to have more donor material, but the fact that the plants were so small this time of year made collection difficult. We planted 6 plots at Breezy Point, 3 at Floyd Bennett Field and 2 at Little Egg Marsh. Plots were set out perpendicular to shore and started just below MLW and went out to ~3ft at MLW. All plots were marked with a labeled stone at the center and we kept the Mulford and Orient shoots separate so that we might be able to tease out donor population effects.

The weather was very cooperative and we met John McLaughlin of NYCDEP and Robert Will of the Army Corp of Engineers at the old Coast Guard Station west of the Marine Parkway Bridge at 8:30am for a day on the water. A NYCDEP boat came to pick us up soon thereafter and we were on our way. It was a little breezy, but coming from the SSW meant that we were protected for most of our work.

We had planned to work during the ebbing tide and end up at Breezy Point, at or around low tide. This worked out well as we arrived at this site at 1:15am and we were able to observe the full extent of the flats at low tide. After laying out the six plots here, the three of us began planting and we finished some time around 2:30pm. Steve installed an OnSet temperature logger adjacent to the deepest plot and we were on our way.

One troubling observation as we were heading back to the dock was the fact that we saw a number of brant feeding almost exactly on top of our shallowest plot at Breezy Point. We fully expect to loose this plot to something, maybe exposure or erosion, but I didn’t think it would be to Brant! There is no guarantee that they did rip out the plants, but I will be very surprised if any remain in this plot when we return in May. I just hope they haven’t moved out to the deeper plots…

I’ll provide an update next month after our first monitoring visit.

-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

Other LIS sites to report on...

I didn’t get a chance to finish reporting on the other two sites we visited during our May 14th Long Island Sound dive trip so here you go. Given the high cost of fuel, we always try and hit as many sites as we can on the same day and these are the last two.

Mulford Point is a site that we always check for a number of reasons. This is a large meadow where we often collect naturally uprooted shoots for use as transplants in our restoration work. Luckily, we don’t have to always have to go by boat as there is convenient land access where we can get a truck relatively close to shore and unload our gear.

Since Steve and Kim went in, I didn’t get a look at this site first hand, but I was happy that they reported that there were lots of loose shoots at the inshore edge of both the inner and outer bands of grass. We will be scheduling a collection date to coincide with plantings at one of our restoration sites, most likely Caumsett State Park in Huntington.

Later in the season (August) Steve and Kim will visit 6 permanent monitoring stations established at Mulford to track trends in shoot density and percent cover. This work is essential in helping us understand how LIS meadows function and it also helps us make sure that we are not impacting the donor site through our collection process.

It was also interesting to note that Steve found several plants that were heavily coated with snail eggs. The apparent culprit was the Threeline Mudsnail/New England Dog Whelk (Ilyanassa trivittata) found on the plants, but the eggs sure looked like they came from Eastern Mudsnails. This is the only site where we have observed the Dog Whelks, although they must occur at other sites. We usually see them rooting for food around the base of the shoots. I am always surprised at how fast they move and how aggressive they appear to be. Can the word “aggressive” ever be used to describe a snail?

Our final stop on this trip was a visit to our test plantings at Great Gull Island, just east of Plum Island. We planted shoots gathered from Fishers Island here a couple years ago and are happy to report that the plants are thriving. The water is deep and the wave energy is high, but the plants have really filled in despite the small number of shoots that were originally planted. As is typical for this site, seals were seen swimming at the surface, but we didn’t see any during our dive. Some day I hope to see them face to face…

-ChrisP

Terry’s Point keeps expanding...

Another dive we look forward to each spring is our Terry’s Point restoration site in Long Island Sound. This National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) funded project is about 1.5 miles east of our largest restoration site, St. Thomas Point. Both sites are in Southold.

The Terry’s Point project began as a test planting site in our first NFWF grant and has developed into a large-scale restoration project. Our first work here involved transplanting 500 shoots in June 2005 followed by 500 shoots in August 2005. The August shoots eventually all died for a number of reasons, while the June shoots survived and grew from 500 to 4,500 shoots by September of 2006. Not too bad! This growth even exceeds what we have seen at St. Thomas Point where it is deeper, the exposure is a little different and we tend to get more erosion.

Today’s dive at Terry’s proved that the site is still doing well and densities are extremely high. We haven’t measured shoot density here in almost two years, but I am sure that it is higher than St. Thomas just by their appearance. We will have to bring out a couple quadrats and count shoots soon.

One major difference observed today between the two sites was the snail (Lacuna vincta) community. I described the snails at St. Thomas in my last post. The snails at Terry’s were much larger and easier to see; some were even laying eggs. The very small snails were also there like St. Thomas, but the adults were much easier to find. There was also a difference in the number of egg masses with the Terry’s egg masses reaching densities I have never witnessed (above left).

I look forward to getting back to this site soon to add some more plantings, measure shoot density and check on the snails. I am very interested to know if it really is higher than St. Thomas as it appears to be…

-ChrisP

The first dive at the St. Thomas Point

It is always nice to dive on our most successful restoration site, St. Thomas Point in Southold, and we finally got to do that today. This National Fish and Wildlife Foundation funded project is one of our favorites for obvious reasons.

Unfortunately, boat issues have plagued us early this spring and we are a little behind in our normal Long Island Sound rounds. Today we played a little “catch up” and hit a few sites including St. Thomas. Usually, we would have visited this site some time in late April, but this year, May 14th will have to suffice.

As usual, the site looked great. Even though we’ve been working here for nearly 5 years it is still hard to believe that this is a restoration site and all the plants were either planted by us or spread as a result of our work. Every year the meadow looks more like the natural reference meadow located 4 miles to the east at Mulford Point. Today this was most obvious at the eroded inshore edge which looked very similar to what we see at Mulford. Apparently, the noreaster that was hanging around for the last couple of days moved around a lot of sand. It didn’t seem to harm the plants, but the evidence was there in the form of exposed roots, rhizomes and cobble that is normally covered by a few cm of sand.

I have no doubt that some of the shallowest patches could have been lost, but I'm not worried about it when the meadow covers such a large area and is thriving. This is simply the price you pay for working in a high energy environment. Clearly, the benefits far outweigh the risks.

As usual, Lacuna vincta snails were present, along with their donut-shaped egg masses attached to the leaves, but not to the level that I expected. It was actually a little difficult to see the snails at first as most were VERY tiny and apparently had recently recruited onto the blades. Many of these sand-grain-sized snails were hiding near the base of the plants, just above the sheath, or in the branches of the reproductive shoots (flowers). As the season progresses these animals will grow into the 1-1.5mm animals we commonly find here in summer.

Well, we won’t need to come back to St. Thomas any time soon now that we have 120 new pictures for the files. Our next dive here will likely be in mid summer when the plants are much larger, the kelp starts to disappear and the snails are more obvious. It is nice to have at least one restoration site we don't have to worry about!

-ChrisP

Bullhead Bay: The canary lives!

One of the first sites we like to visit in the Peconic Estuary (PE) every year is Bullhead Bay in Southampton. This meadow is near and dear to our hearts in that it is really an anomaly…a statistical outlier. According to what we “know” about eelgrass in the region, the Bullhead Bay meadow should not exist. This warm water, muddy bottom, stagnant site is surrounded by a golf course on two sides. It is literally a dinosaur that could go extinct right before our eyes. I hate to use the ticking time bomb analogy, but that is what comes to mind…

In fact, a couple years back we did lose most of it. Over one winter it nearly disappeared only to return in a smaller form the following year through seedling recruitment. This pattern of natural recovery has repeated itself in successive years for the last several years and we are seeing the grass expand back slowly to what it was, but it has a LONG way to go. At least Bullhead has faired better than Noyack Creek which eventually just vanished under the pressure. Bullhead is a shadow if its former self, but at least it is still there!

Bullhead Bay has the distinction of being the furthest west natural meadow in the PE. The next natural eelgrass meadow is 12miles to the east near Shelter Island! We have established a small meadow at Red Cedar Bluff, 4 miles west of Bullhead (see post), at the western edge of Great Peconic Bay, but we have yet to achieve the size and density and complexity of a natural meadow. We hope to get there soon.

As is typical our first dive in Bullhead (5-1-08) revealed some new and interesting details. As this is the furthest west and warmest meadow in the PE we expect that the flowers will be well developed and ahead of anything else in the PE. This was definitely the case as we observed both pollen release (above right) and stigma elongation. This is always a good sign and means that the meadow will likely set seed again to survive another season.

Another interesting aspect of this dive was the grazing community observed. We expect to see mud snails (Ilyanassa obsoleta) and we did see them on the bottom, laying eggs at the base of the leaves and even up on some of the flowers, but it was the other species that caught our attention. What struck me most was the almost total lack of Lacuna vincta and the presence of two other species which we do not see. The most interesting to me is what APPEARS to be the very large and orange Rough Periwinkle (Littorina saxatilis) (see top photo). Although this species is known to frequent grass in areas north of here, we have never seen this species in eelgrass on Long Island. Another interesting occurrence was a small unidentified species that looked very much like Bittium (above left), but we don’t know what this is either. This could also be a species in the Rissoidae family. Kim had seen a similar, if not the same species, in Great South Bay last year in the grass…

Other interesting sightings included isopods, grass shrimp, sea cucumbers (right) and stickle back nests. These are all kind of typical for a protected muddy bottom site like this and Coecles. This just goes to show how productive and diverse this type of meadow can be. All the more reason why we need to protect grass in these areas.

I could go on, but that’s enough about Bullhead. We’ll be sure and check back later in the season to observe seed production and also for our regular PE SAV monitoring in August. Another site where swimmers itch is almost guaranteed in summer…joy!

-ChrisP

Coecles Harbor Natural Meadow Redux

Following up on our first dive of the year in January at Coecles I decided it was just about time to check the status of this interesting meadow we had observed 3 months ago. We are very interested in this site for a couple reasons. First, the Town of Shelter Island may be interested in funding restoration work in town waters and this may be the only candidate site (actually an unvegetated area across the Harbor would be the focus if we were to undertake any work). As part of this, we need to find out the relative contribution of seeds vs. lateral shoot recruitment in meadow maintenance. If seeds are the primary means of meadow maintenance then it would not be a good idea to collect seeds from this site.

Second, and more importantly, we are VERY interested in learning more about the ecology of muddy bottom protected sites like this. Based on recent historic losses, these sites are becoming very rare and if we are to preserve what is left and possibly return grass to other similar areas, we must first understand how these systems function. The more we can learn about how these meadows survive under multiple stressors such as high temps, fine sediments, low light and high bioturbation, the closer we can come to re-establishing grass in other similar areas in the region.

On April 30th we anchored at the same site where we had first observed all of the seedlings in January, luckily this time it was much warmer! Once in the water I was surprised to see the number and size of the reproductive shoots floating above the canopy. On closer inspection the flowers proved to be very large and even the vegetative shoots were taller and had wider blades than I had expected. Even more interesting was the fact that there were many more seedlings than there were adult shoots; even more than I had observed previously. Apparently this meadow really does rely on seedling recruitment for maintenance. It almost appeared to be a case of forced annual expression although it is difficult to say this for sure. We have seen similar things in Noyack Creek and Bullhead Bay.

In some areas there were no adult shoots to be found, only seedlings. In these areas it was a little difficult to distinguish adult shoots form seedlings, but excavating (and replanting!) a few individuals and comparing leaf width with nearby adult shoots made this possible. Seedlings were so dense is some areas it appeared that they were almost chocking each other out. This close proximity appears to also have assisted the spread of wasting disease from neighbor to neighbor as evidenced by the large numbers of infected leaves in these dense patches.

Other interesting observations included the huge number of stickleback nests observed (photo at right), mostly on the taller reproductive shoots. In the past I have seen these nests on natural grass in Noyack Creek and on our plantings in Sag Harbor Cove, but never in the numbers we found in Coecles. It really was amazing. Since it was so long since I had seen a nest I wasn't sure what they were at first and actually poked a little inside one just to see if it had eggs...oops it did! (see above and left) Usually, we see the males (?) guarding the nest, but I didn't. Steve said he did.

Some other points of interest included a couple false angel wing siphons coming up out of the bottom and numerous mantis shrimp burrows (see top photo) that looked like miniature volcanoes. As far as snails, there wasn't an overabundance of mud snails or mud snail eggs, but they did seem to be concentrated in certain areas resulting in lots of eggs on some plants.

I look forward to getting back to Coecles as the season progresses, but I don't look forward to what will likely be a bad case of swimmers itch next time...

-ChrisP

The Red Cedar Bluff Restoration Site

On April 23, 2008 Kim and I did a first recon dive of the Red Cedar Bluff restoration site located in western Great Peconic Bay near Squire Pond, Southampton. This one acre transplant site, funded by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, involved planting adult shoots gathered from various Peconic Estuary site in groups of 8-12 on 1m centers throughout the entire site.

The first transplant work at this site was initiated in 2006 when we established multiple 1m circular plots (perpendicular to shore) across the depth contours to target the most appropriate planting depth. Within the first growing season we lost the two shallowest and one of the deeper plots leaving behind two mid-depth stations. Eventually, the shallower of these also succumbed to disturbance from crabs and was lost.

I have to say that it is not unusual to lose most of these plots, or at least the shallow and deep stations as our intention is to push the limits of water depth and light penetration in the deep stations and physical disturbance and exposure in the shallow stations. If we don't lose at least the shallowest and deepest stations than we haven't successfully tested the limits of this site!

Once we got in the water it was nice to see that one of the original plots (see top photo) was still intact and looked very good indicating that water quality is still sufficient here to support grass. Based on the "long-term" (2 yrs.) survival of this initial planting we are fairly confident that the large-scale effort will succeed.

During our dive, we were happy to see that most of the clumped plantings had survived this past winter and appeared to be thriving (above right). A few clumps were missing among the hundreds, but this is not a concern. Mud snails could be seen laying bending over the shoots and laying eggs, but this is typical for this time of year. In another couple weeks the eggs should hatch and there should be few egg cases to be found. As always, we like to see the snails at our sites as they are key to grazing epiphytes off the leaves and maximizing light to the plants.

ChrisP