Long overdue...

Well, I haven't posted anything in more than a month now. I do have one excuse...I was on vacation for the first three weeks in January. After that I had to catch up on the pile of office work that had built up since I left!

Now I'm back and I should be able to keep things going again.

The capture above is from a mock up of our latest newsletter that I am working on this week. I hope to have it to the printers by the middle of next week, but since I'm so early in the proces it's not clear when it will be ready to go. It may change a little, but you get the gist of it. For those who have seen previous newsletters, you can see that I have changed the look a little. I'm going for more of a magazine style. You'll have to wait and see if I get it right!

Field work has been minimal with the cold weather and ice that have been around in recent weeks. Kim and I did get in Monday to test our new drysuites and I am happy to report that I was warm and toasty and there was not one leak! Love the new Unisuite! Kim had a little leakage around a wrist, but not enough to worry much about.

Our planned NYC plantings have been rescheduled again as we can't seem to line up weather and reporters... I would just as soon plant, but they do want to have this event covered properly in the local press.

I will be travelling to Portland Maine in a couple weeks to present the status of eelgrass in NY waters. Should be an interesting, if not depressing, meeting as managers and scientists from around the northeast report on the status of Zostera in their waters...

Well, I've got to get back to working on the newsletter.

If you're not a subscriber to the newsletter and want a hard copy drop me a line. Just let me finish it first. Those so inclined can also look for the link to a pdf version on our website.

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

My First Post!

Well, here I go! I figured I would try a new way to reach those interested in our work here in the CCE Eelgrass Restoration Program. I had looked into an online newsletter and even mentioned that this is what I would be developing in our most recent Seagrass.LI newsletter, but didn't like the format and costs involved. The blog format would seem to be a much better vehicle for what I want to do...that is, to share with you daily observations and results from our field work involving the monitoring and restoration of eelgrass around Long Island, NY.

As you probably already know, we are out on the water every day that weather will allow and during those dives we always see something interesting and learn something new. We could put these things on our webpage, but that would be cumbersome and way too much work for Kim, so I decided to take on this responsibility myself. I have always tried to keep project funders and local resource managers up to date with regular emails and pics and now anyone can see the same information. Kim will continue on with her periodic project update pages on the website, but that will be on more of a monthly schedule.

If you will bear with me I am going to add new things to make this blog more useful and interesting as well as post observations from our 2008 field work beginning in January and running up until May. Once I am caught up, I will only cover new work. I hope you enjoy it. If you have any comments please send them to me at cp26@cornell.edu.

Thanks!
ChrisP