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 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

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

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

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

Working in the fog!

We had big plans for field work yesterday including test plantings on the north side of Plum Island, but it wasn't to be...

It was a beautiful day at the lab, warm, sunny and very little breeze...all the makings for the perfect day on the water, or at least I thought that would be the case. Rounding the north side of Shelter Island we could see hints of fog to the east and I didn't think too much of it as we have been out in fog in the past and it always clears. It's usually around in the early morning and disapears by mid morning...no problem.

This day was a little different. On our way past Bug Light and into Gardiners Bay we could see that the fog was thicker to the east and from the activity on the radio, it was clear that there was no visibility in Plum Gut. With this in mind I took us on a heading that would steer well clear of this busy area and we tracked southeast into Gardiners Bay on our way to Fishers Island. Unfortunatley, the fog never abated and it just got thicker and thicker making navigation nearly impossible. I decided we would try and wait it out on the south side of Plum Island where few boats would be in the hope that the fog would eventually clear.

After waiting approximately 30 minutes we decided to give up on plan A and forged ahead with a plan B. Since we were already at Plum Island, I figured we might as well scout for another test planting site to compliment the ones we have off of Fort Terry. I wanted to find an additional site further SW along the Island to try and avoid some issues we were experiencing with our first plots that seemed to gather masses of drifting macroalgae after heavy E-SE winds. This is a long story that relates to similar easterly facing planting site off of Shelter Island. The take home is that we not only have to consider current velocity and wave energy when planning out planting sites, but we also have to consider prevailing current direction and the characteristics of the upstream bottom conditions. (I'll get into this in a future post)

I had already identified a new site using aerial photos so it was just a matter of getting in the water to see if the conditions were suitable. After swimming around I was very pleased to find that the conditions were not only suitable, but were superior to our other planting site to the NE. The area contained plenty of perfectly sized rocks for rock plantings and the rocks had a nice growth of macroalgae indicating the perfect conditions. At least the day wasn't an entire loss!

After this we decided to push our luck and venture around the eastern tip of Plum to see if we could explore the north shore where we had planned addtional plantings. The heavy fog made this very challenging, but we were eventually able to find one of the sites that I had identified previously and we carefully anchored near the rocks where no boater would dare go. In the water here we were able to explore a large area inshore of the boat and among the rocks, but none of this looked suitable for planting.

After this second dive we decided to call it a day and head back to the lab to get some other work done. Hopefully, later this week we can return and complete our scouting.

-ChrisP