In Search of Seepage…

Yesterday found us out on the Peconic Bay looking for groundwater seepage sites. This work is part of a NYS funded project where we are looking to determine the impact (good, bad or nothing) of subsurface groundwater seepage on the growth of eelgrass.

The research team includes my crew who will be responsible for all plantings, Chris Smith (CCE) and Ron Paulsen (Suffolk County) working on the seepage and Brad Peterson (SUNY Southampton) who will be conducting field and laboratory work to determine the effects of the seepage on the plants.

I am coming at this from the point of view that cold groundwater upwelling out of the sediments could be a good thing if it keeps the base of the plant and the meristem cool in August. Brad is approaching it more from the point of view that all the contaminants that Ron and his crew have been finding including several herbicides and their derivatives may be toxic to eelgrass preventing it from thriving if not outright killing it…

In order to test both theories we have chosen three sites running the range of clean to highly contaminated groundwater. The “clean” site is located off the east side of Jessup’s Neck and the “contaminated” site is in Laurel just east of the Riverhead/Southold town line. A site with unknown water quality (Cold Spring Pond in Southampton) was also chosen based on our observations that there is lots of upwelling happening there. There had to be some reason for the name!

Yesterday proved to be a productive if not a little frustrating day. We were able to find plenty of seepage areas, but the non-seepage "control" sites still elude us at the locations chosen. We may have to come up with another way to artificially control the seepage so we can plant in the same general areas and run a valid experiment.

Another bummer was me cutting my thumb somewhere on the boat (ouch!). I don’t know where it happened, but there sure was blood all over. Good thing we always carry a first aid kit!

I’m looking forward to hearing back form Ron about the data we collected to find out if we found the right spots. If we got it right the plantings will take place soon…

-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

Sag Harbor Test Plots

On April 25th we were able to check out our Sag Harbor test plantings on the east side of North Haven, Southampton. This work is part of our site selection work for the Suffolk County Eelgrass Restoration Initiative. Steve got in and took pictures starting with plot 1 (shallow) and working out to plot 4 (deep). All plants looked excellent once he removed the heavy covering of drifting macroalgae. This covering is typical for this time of year, especially at a site like this where the current runs strong (see photo below) and transports all kinds of floating material to our plots.

We were missing many shoots, probably the result of erosion or, more than likely, from crab burrowing. Shoot densities ranged from 20 in the deepest plot to 120 at the second shallowest plot (we planted 200 shoots per plot last fall). Although plot 1 looked the best in the photo (see above) plot 2 actually had the highest density with 120 shoots remaining.

If these plots are not dug out by burrowing crabs or whelks I am fairly confident that we should have long-term survival here given the presence of grass nearby, but there is no guarantee of this. Over the coming months we will track to progress of these plantings. I doubt plot 3 and 4 will make it through June given our experience with this area in the past...

-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

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

The New York State Seagrass Taskforce

During this spring the NY State Seagrass Taskforce has been meeting to discus issues relating to the mapping, management, restoration and protection of eelgrass in NY waters. For a list of taskforce members, meeting agendas and to view the enabling NYS legislation see the NYS Seagrass Taskforce web page. Laura Stephenson (lbstephe@gw.dec.state.ny.us) from the NYSDEC is responsible for providing all content for this site.

Much of the work of the taskforce is being guided by information gathered at a New York State Seagrass Experts Meeting held on May 22, 2008. See the meeting report here. Recent agenda items for the taskforce have included mapping protocols, research topics, boat mooring alternatives and funding for various projects. See the web page for a link to all agendas, to date.

ChrisP

Robins Island and Hog Neck Bay test plots

On April 17th Steve and Kim headed out to check on the status of several test plots off Great Hog Neck and Robins Island in Southold. These plots were planted out in fall of 2007 and are part of the site selection work underway for the "Suffolk County Eelgrass Restoration Initiative" funded by Suffolk County. Site selection involves conducting test plantings in fall/winter and following the progress of these transplants over the following year. Plots that make it through August are deemed worthy of further planting scale-up, if not full scale (acre size) plantings. We typically plant out a series of 1m diameter (200 shoots each) circular plots perpendicular to shore running from just below MLLW to a depth of about 2m at low tide. In this way we can determine the most appropriate planting depth at each site. Initial site selection is based on historic presence of grass, water quality, fetch and bottom characteristics.

The Hog Neck site (left) had suffered some losses during early winter that we were already aware of so we knew that the shallowest plots would not be intact. The deeper plots (3&4) were found however and the the plants looked excellent. In addition to the circles, Steve had also added some clumped plantings (see below) in early winter to see how these would fair compared to the circular plots. These also looked good. There was lots of brown drift algae attached to the shoots, but this is to be expected during this time of year when the water is still cold.

The Robins Island plots probably looked better than we have EVER seen for overwinter survival and health in eelgrass in the Peconic Estuary. All plots were intact and the density was very good, especially for the two shallower plots (see "RI2" in top photo). Shoot densities ranged from a low of 181 to a high of 217 with the two shallower plots coming in over 200, actually adding shoots overwinter. It is interesting to note that you can see that plot #2 had lost about 2-4cm of sand just recently (within the week?). If you look close you can see the white sheaths and roots at the base of the plants. These would not normally visible.

As the season progresses we will follow these plots closely to see how they fair in response to lower water clarity and higher water temperatures.

ChrisP