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

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

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

NYC plantings postponed until January…

Some of you may be aware of our efforts to plant eelgrass in Jamaica Bay NYC. It’s a long story, but we are working with NYCDEP and the Gateway Jamaica Bay Unit among others to establish test plantings at three locations near the mouth of the Bay. There was interest in us planting further inside Jamaica, but water quality, temperature and sediment texture appear to be limiting factors here.

After some discussion, we secured permits from both the NYSDEC, Region 2 and Parks to do the plantings earlier this year and we have been looking to schedule plantings for this fall/winter. This pilot planting will hopefully lead the way for a large-scale effort to be funded by NYCDEP…

Although I had hoped to get our plants in by now uncooperative weather and several scheduling conflicts have pushed this work into late January. This late date does not affect the plants as much as it affects the divers. We are fine to plant right through the winter but the water is not very warm as you might imagine.

I will report here when we complete the plantings…

Just be thankful its not you out there diving!

-ChrisP

LIS Sites Look Great!

After the summer peak in water temperature (typically during the beginning of August) we always like to get out and do one final site assessment at all of our restoration sites before we plan out our upcoming fall/winter planting season. Based on the major environmental differences within and between our estuaries we make detailed site-specific observations and, in some cases, can group sites by estuary. This is definitely the case for our eastern Long Island Sound sites, funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, where planting and growth conditions are optimal.

Last week, Steve and Kim had a chance to check on St. Thomas and Terry Points while I was on vacation. (See my spring posts for these sites here: Terry & St. Thomas) We were especially interested in the status of Terry Pt. as the crew had added plantings here in June. We were hoping that this site would react as it has in past years where we have conducted early summer plantings with great success.

The vis was obviously not as good as in the spring, but as you can see from the first two shots (above and the close up of the sheaths), the plants at Terry Pt. look VERY good. The crew reported that densities in this created meadow appear higher than we have ever observed in either natural or planted grass in the Sound. Follow up shoot counts should confirm this. There is something about the combination of water quality, water depth and bottom type that seem to support incredible plant growth here.

The report from St. Thomas, the site of our largest restoration effort to date, was similarly good with healthy growth observed throughout the area. The deeper water and high currents here often make it difficult for divers to get around and figure out where they are, but a series of large boulders on the shore help us to navigate the 2-acre site.

Given the long standing growth, expansion and stability of these plantings I am confident that they will last well beyond their upcoming 5-year anniversary…

-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

Noyack Creek Restoration Work

On April 30th we checked on the status of our seeding effort in Noyack Creek. This project is part of a Peconic Estuary Program Eelgrass Restoration initiative (North Haven Project). Last December Kim, Ali and I broadcast approximately 60,000 seeds (see photo below) in an area on the NE side of the creek where grass most recently occurred. This dive was MY first check on the seedling recruitment here; Steve and Kim had confirmed there were seedlings and deployed a temperature logger on April 17, but I had to see for myself.

I was happy to see that the seedlings were still there and was able to get a few good pics with my hand in the shot for scale. The seedlings were a little smaller than I expected, but they looked good and didn't have too many mud snail eggs attached. As usual the distribution was VERY patchy and there were areas with large numbers of seedlings and areas with no seedlings between the buoys we had set out to mark the site last year.

We will be closely monitoring the seedlings to see how they progress through the spring and into summer. I have concerns that they may die as the water temperature increases and dissolved oxygen levels decrease at the sediment surface at the VERY muddy site. Noyack Creek is a model for other creeks in the Peconic Estuary and if we can figure out how to get the grass re-established here, we might be able to make headway in other similar creeks. We might have to think about manipulating the sediment texture/organic matter.

Stay tuned for some ideas I have about this...

-ChrisP