Dr. David Kimbro’s St. Augustine research site oyster reefs were once commercially viable but have been failing, and there is an overabundance of a particular oyster predator- the crown conch. David and his lab look into the causes for this sharp decline. Read more this week on In the Grass, On the Reef.
David and his crew raced around their four North Florida sites last October, in part to start a new experiment. This is what they did: They tore up small chunks of local reefs, located oyster spat on shells, cut the shell segments containing spat into similarly sized bits, and glued those bits onto tiles. Those […]
Watch the Tallahassee Museum’s reclusive red wolf puppies as they grow during their first year, and keep their wild instincts in captivity.
Could marshes in St. Joseph Bay be changing? Dr. Randall Hughes investigates the increasing black mangrove population of the SJB salt marsh.
Marshes are as productive a habitat as oyster reefs, and just as vulnerable to drought. Randall Hughes looks at what makes a salt marsh resistant to loss.
Oystermen and researchers are battling to revive the legendary Apalachicola Oyster. Oystermen know the bay; David Kimbro has researched oysters for years.
Lab technician Ryan Coker (who normally works in salt marshes) was drafted into oyster duty, on which he encountered deep mud and larger animals than you’d find on an oyster reef.
To get a handle on the oyster mortality problem south of St. Augustine, Hanna Garland staged “cage matches” between the oyster-eating crown conch and one of its predators, the thinstripe hermit crab.
Dr. David Kimbro is starting to see a pattern across Florida oyster reefs affected by loss of freshwater input. Is the prevalence of oyster eating snails the cause or merely a symptom of oyster reef decline?
As the David Kimbro lab deploys a spat (young oyster) tile experiment in Apalachicola Bay to monitor the health of its beleaguered reefs, Dr. Randall Hughes explains how these experiments have become a key tool in her and David’s oyster research.