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Oyster Reef Ecology | On the Reef

Day 3: October Oyster Push “No Nap Time”

by Rob Diaz de Villegas October 25, 2010
by Rob Diaz de Villegas October 25, 2010 0 comment
Rob Diaz de Villegas WFSU-TV
David Kimbro’s crew has been split into two teams, the Net/Trap team (N/T) and the Tile team (TI). For a closer look at how David’s team nets and traps larger fish and crabs, click here. To learn more about what the Tile team will be doing, click here. And if you click On the Reef under categories in the sidebar, you can track David’s progress over the course of this study.

Sunday, October 24- Net / Trap team in Cedar Key

Randall places traps on a Cedar Key reef

Randall places traps on a Cedar Key reef.

IGOR chip- biogeographic 150After months of walking around In the Grass, Dr. Randall Hughes stepped out On the Reef Sunday, pitching in for some fieldwork with David’s tech, Hanna Garland. They were the Net / Trap team working Cedar Key, while Tanya Rogers is heading up the Tile team in Saint Augustine. Randall, in addition to heading the salt marsh biodiversity study we also follow on this blog, is the co-PI (Primary Investigator) on this biogeographic oyster study. With her other study taking so much of her time and David having things well in hand with this one, she hadn’t made it out into the field until Sunday.  We tagged along with her today.

This was our first time documenting this study outside of Alligator Harbor (which is located a short hour from WFSU-TV) and, actually, it was my first time on any oyster reef other than those. I noticed that the water was a little clearer- I could actually see some of the oyster clumps for a foot or so under water as opposed to not at all. Few of the oyster reefs were as large as in AH, tending more often than not to stay a collection of clumps than an expansive reef. There were also stretches where reefs had been, and all that remained were broken shells. Randall told me that these had either been harvested or that the reefs had just plain failed (Tanya recounted finding two of the Cedar Key reefs obliterated in her last post).

P1010735

Scientific equipment being used in an entirely lawful way. This machine filters the sediment floating in the water- including the phytoplankton that oysters eat.

If you take a look at the schedule below, you can see that the events are spread out based on the tide schedule; and there are a couple of days during this push where they start around sunrise and work well into the night. So there are breaks from fieldwork built into the day. I had assumed that this would be “nap time.” To my surprise, this is actually “lab time.” The water samples they had taken on our boat ride had to be filtered, and the filters frozen as fast as possible to prevent bacteria from contaminating them. They set up their “lab” in the kitchen of a condo they were renting. The apparatus they use is a collection of PVC pipes, tubing, and a motor into which they pour the liquid from clear test tubes. Randall had seen a news story this last week where some college kids were arrested for turning their dorm room into a crystal meth lab. She wondered aloud whether someone looking in their window might suspect the same of her and Hanna.

8:00 AM– Travel to Cedar Key

P1010489

Boating from reef to reef, we would see places like this where a reef had been decimated. Two of the original Cedar Key sites for this study were destroyed. These are the kinds of things that happen outside of the controlled environment of a laboratory.

12:23 PM– Deploy traps, collect spat sticks, water samples. They once again made use of the new boat, though the public boat ramp is on the other side of the island from where their sites are located. They were going to look for a boat ramp closer to their sites to save a little more time.

The spat sticks so far have only collected barnacles at all of their sites, meaning that they may have started using them past the season in which oysters spawn.

6:00 PM– Retrieve traps, High tide activities: reference water level, replace spat sticks (if possible).

9:00 PM– Deploy nets. Randall and Hanna will retrieve these in the morning before Hanna heads to Saint Augustine to meet up with David Kimbro and the rest of the crew.

Tide Times and height (ft.) for Cedar Key, October 24, 2010
Low- 9:23 AM (-0.3)
High- 3:48 PM (3.3)
Low- 9:13 PM (1.4)

Sunday, October 24- Tile team in Saint Augustine

1:00 PM– Tanya Rogers and new crew member Cristina drive to Saint Augustine.

7:00 PM– Retrieve tiles/oysters.

Tide Times and height (ft.) for Saint Augustine, October 24, 2010
Low- 7:21 PM (0.5)
We’d love to hear from you! Leave your comments and questions below:
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biogeographicCedar Keycoastal ecologyFlorida State UniversityFSU Coastal and Marine Labgulf of mexicomarine biologymarine ecologyNational Science FoundationNSFoysteroyster reefoyster spatroctoberpushscience
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Rob Diaz de Villegas

Rob Diaz de Villegas is a senior producer for WFSU-TV, covering outdoors and ecology. After years of producing the music program OutLoud, Rob found himself in a salt marsh with a camera, and found a new professional calling as well. That project, the National Science Foundation funded "In the Grass, On the Reef," spawned the award winning WFSU Ecology Blog. Now in its tenth year, the Ecology Blog recently wrapped its most ambitious endeavor, the EcoCitizen Project. Rob is married with two young sons, who make a pretty fantastic adventure squad.

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Florida milkvetch

Florida milkvetch (Astragalus obcordatus) in the Munson Sandhills

When I test out a new camera, I usually head to a random spot in the Munson Sandhills and take a series of videos and photos. This small flower caught my eye, as almost nothing was in bloom. I identified it as Florida milkvetch (Astragalus obcordatus) in iNaturalist, and it was confirmed.
I then saw a photo of this plant in a Facebook group for native plant enthusiasts. It turns out this is kind of a rare plant, and one botanist went so far as to classify it as imperiled. It pays to keep your eyes down by your feet when walking in the sandhills.

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Cedar waxwings eating glossy privet berries.

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iNaturalist

iNaturalist became a part of the WFSU Ecology Blog during the EcoCitizen Project in 2019.  Since then, we’ve used it to help identify the many plants and animals we see on our shoots.  And on the Backyard Blog, we show how it can be used to identify weeds and garden insects, to help figure out what’s beneficial or a possible pest.  Below is the iNaturalist profile belonging to WFSU Ecology producer Rob Diaz de Villegas.

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