Wednesday, March 19 at 8 PM on WFSU-TV, catch the broadcast premiere of the new In the Grass, On the Reef documentary: Oyster Doctors.
Although it was a relatively mild winter, one or two harsh cold snaps provided Randall an opportunity to test black mangrove survivorship in north Florida marshes, where it has become a more frequent resident.
Lately I’ve been preoccupied with wrapping up the National Science Foundation grant that funds a lot of what appears on this blog, and thinking about the future of the project. The last major piece of funded content is our latest documentary, Oyster Doctors, chronicling four years of research conducted by Dr. Randall Hughes and Dr. David Kimbro. On the one hand, the show is about learning how coastal ecosystems work. And it’s about how the inner workings of salt marshes, oyster reefs, and seagrass beds provide people with jobs, clean water, and protection from erosion and storm surge. But it’s as much about the ecologists as it is about the ecology.
Randall and David, and their graduate students- Tanya Rogers, Hanna Garland, and Althea Moore– are people who get inspired to pursue a line of research. They get excited by an idea, like predators affecting prey more through fear than through their eating them. They get excited about places. David gets geeked out about predatory snails on Bay Mouth Bar. Hanna falls in love with Apalachicola and wants to figure out its oyster problem. Randall makes observations about things she sees in St. Joseph Bay marshes and it sets her on a path. In one case, that path led her to the video above. Continue reading VIDEO- Mangroves and Cold, & Oyster Doctors Airs on WFSU→
Update March 9, 2014 – We’d like to thank everyone who came out for one or more of our events on Saturday. It was a pleasure to meet all of you (photos will be posted soon). If you missed the premiere, Oyster Doctors will air on WFSU-TV on Wednesday March 19, 8 pm/ 7 ct. Look for it online shortly after.
(L to R) Graduate student Hanna Garland, WFSU videographer Dan Peeri, oysterman Shawn Hartsfield, and WFSU producer Rob Diaz de Villegas look on as Stephanie Buehler dives in to survey oysters in Apalachicola Bay.
Since they’ve deployed their experimental cages in Apalachicola Bay, David Kimbro’s crew has had some go missing, while others have been found in this condition. Missing buoys make potentially unharmed cages nearly impossible to find. Until just yesterday, there have been no leads as to the identities of possible culprits.
Dr. David KimbroNortheastern University/ FSU Coastal & Marine Lab
Shark week? In Apalachicola Bay, oyster drills like this one are the animals that have inflicted the most damage.
I’ll eventually get to how our research on Apalachicola Bay oysters ties into shark week. But first, let me tell you about my history with the annual Shark Week, which is put on by the Discovery Channel. Growing up as a surfer in North Carolina, the best time to surf was in the late summer and early fall. After many warm months of zero waves in the spring and summer, we lived for tropical storms that would make their way into the south east….but not get too close. I hated those suckers that got too close, because fun waves would quickly turn into pigs being on the roof and lots of misfortune for my fellow North Carolinians. Continue reading Apalachicola Oyster Research: SHARK WEEK→
2-Minute Video: Mangroves don’t love the cold, but relatively mild winters have seen them multiply north of their range. Randall takes a closer look at black mangroves in the salt marshes of Saint Joseph Bay.
Dr. Randall Hughes FSU Coastal & Marine Lab/ Northeastern University
A few years ago, I took my colleague Dr. Ed Proffitt to check out the marshes in St. Joseph Bay. He asked to see mangroves, and I thought he was crazy. Mangroves up here? No way! But we had only been in one Buffer Preserve salt marsh together for a few minutes before I realized that the small “shrubs” that I had previously ignored were actually small black mangroves! And the more we looked, the more we found. They aren’t everywhere, but they can be quite abundant in some places.
Shrubby black mangroves (Avicennia germinans) appear to be an increasingly common site in the marshes of the Saint Joseph Bay State Buffer Preserve.
Mangroves typically occur below the “frost line”, or in areas that don’t experience hard freezes. Lore has it that mangroves have become more common in the northern Gulf of Mexico in recent years due to a series of mild winters. I haven’t been monitoring them long enough to say whether or not there are more now than there were, say, 10 or even 20 years ago, but it’s not hard to see that the ones that are here are successfully reproducing, with small seedlings surrounding the adult trees.
There are even red mangroves lingering around – they are less cold-tolerant than the black mangroves and a surprise to find in our marshes!
I definitely have not seen any significant dieback in the last 5 winters, even when we have had hard freezes. And I would not be surprised if they become more common and abundant as the climate continues to change.
Mangroves in the marsh raise a number of interesting questions. Will they take over? What will that mean for the services these areas provide to people? Will the fishes and crabs that we like to eat become more or less abundant if mangroves dominate over marsh grasses?
Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer to these questions. But I can say that the mangroves that occur in St. Joseph Bay aren’t necessarily “better” at surviving in the northern Gulf than mangroves from farther down south. And why should they be? Well, if a group of mangrove propagules arrived in St. Joe Bay, we may expect that only a subset of them would be able to survive the colder temperatures, and when these propagules grew into adult trees and produced propagules of their own, they should pass that “benefit” to their offspring (the process known as natural selection).
Black mangrove propagules.
How do we we test whether St. Joe Bay mangroves are better equipped to live here than mangroves from down south? We have 2 ongoing experiments where we’ve planted “propagules” (young mangroves that look a lot like seeds) from different locations throughout FL in St. Joe Bay and followed them through time to see which ones survive and grow the best. There’s a lot of variation, but the St. Joe Bay propagules (which were largely the “runts” of the bunch to begin with) did not do as well as propagules from some of the areas down south such as Cedar Key and Cape Canaveral. These results suggest that it doesn’t take a particularly special propagule to survive in the northern Gulf; instead, there probably aren’t just many propagules that make it up here to begin with.
Of course, we’ve only been monitoring these propagules for 1-2 years; maybe the St. Joe propagules have an advantage when they get old / big enough to reproduce. We don’t want to speed up the mangrove take-over, so we’ll remove the seedlings in our experiment before that happens. But we’ll definitely continue to monitor the ones that already made it here on their own accord to see what they do next!
The Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) south of Saint Augustine is where Randall and David have done a lot of their oyster research. There, mangroves mingle with marsh cordgrass. Could salt marshes in St. Joseph Bay (or north Florida in general) one day look like something approximating this?
Music in the video by pitx.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number 1161194. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
2-Minute Video: Marsh cordgrass, needlerush, sea lavender, mussels, periwinkle snails, and fiddler crabs: diversity in the salt marsh.
In Randall’s last post, she looked at whether genetic diversity within the salt marsh foundation species– smooth cordgrass- made for a stronger marsh (and by stronger, of course, we mean better able to shelter yummy blue crabs for people and sea turtles). In today’s post and video, Randall examines how the combination of plants and animals around cordgrass- the species diversity of a marsh- might play a role as well.
Dr. Randall Hughes FSU Coastal & Marine Lab/ Northeastern University
Even though salt marshes often look like one big sea of green in the intertidal, there are plants and animals other than marsh cordgrass around. And even though I devote a lot of effort to understanding the effects of diversity just within cordgrass, these other species are also important – no marsh is an island. (Well, actually they are, but you get the analogy.)
So who is important, and why? There are at least two animals that can be classified as “friends” of cordgrass – fiddler crabs and mussels. Fiddler crabs create burrows that allow oxygen to get down in the sediment, and cordgrass roots appreciate that oxygen. The fiddler crabs also aerate the sediment during their feeding, and they can excrete nutrients that the plants use to grow.
As an aside, fiddler crabs are also irresistible for kids (and maybe adults too!).
Mussels aren’t quite as charismatic as fiddler crabs, but they like to nestle around stems of cordgrass, and the byssal threads that they use to attach to one another and to the sediment can help prevent erosion. In addition, they excrete nutrients and other organic material as a byproduct of their filter-feeding, and the plants take advantage of these nutrients.
While investigating the relationship between mussels and marsh cordgrass, Randall’s graduate student, Althea Moore, noticed that mussels also seemed to often accompany sea lavender in the marsh. This led to a separate study for Althea.
So who is MORE important, mussels or fiddler crabs? We did an experiment to test that question, or really, to test whether having mussels and fiddler crabs together is better than having just one or another. The answer? As with much in ecology – it depends. For one, it depends on what you measure. If you look at the number of cordgrass stems, then fiddler crabs are the better friend – cordgrass with fiddler crabs does better than cordgrass without fiddler crabs, regardless of whether you have mussels or not. But if you look at how tall the plants are (another important characteristic in the marsh), then mussels are the better friend, but only when fiddlers aren’t around. And if you look at the amount of organic content, mussels increase organic content at the sediment surface, whereas fiddlers increase it belowground. In the end, the take-home message is that the more things you measure about the marsh, the more important it becomes that you have both mussels and fiddler crabs in order to be the “best”.
In the process of doing the experiment I described above, Althea (my graduate student) noticed that when she was out in the marsh, she often found mussels in and around sea lavender (Limonium) plants more often than she found them around cordgrass. She became interested in finding out whether the mussels benefit the sea lavender, the sea lavender benefits the mussels, or a little bit of both. She’s still working on the answer, but it just goes to show that although we often tend to focus on who eats who (think Shark Week) or who can beat who (Octopus vs. Shark, anyone? Or, for kids, there’s always Shark vs. Train – a favorite at my house!), there are just as many instances of species helping one another (not that they always intend to).
Of course, it’s not just animals helping (aka, facilitating) plants – plants can help other plant species to. We’ve shown through a series of experiments that cordgrass benefits from having its tall neighbor needlerush (Juncus roemarianus) around, but only if the snails that like to graze on cordgrass are also present. Nothing is ever as simple as it looks in the marsh…
Music in the piece by Revolution Void.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number 1161194. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
2 Minute Video: Do Marshes Combat Die-Off Through Biodiversity?
Data on “cold” and “warm” episodes compiled by NOAA and the National Weather Service correlate warm episodes with events Randall and David care about: the ruining of oyster reefs south of Saint Augustine by crown conchs in 2005, the Apalachicola oyster fishery crash last year, and the die-off of salt marsh habitats at the turn of the millennium. These episodes are part of a normal climatological cycle, though recent droughts during warm years have been severe.
Dr. Randall Hughes FSU Coastal & Marine Lab/Northeastern University
Mineral Springs Seafood’s Dusty Murray empties a crab trap by a salt marsh off of Ochlockonee Bay. Blue crabs are one of the many animals that make use of the salt marsh habitat.We’re going to shift our attention a bit to another intriguing intertidal habitat – the salt marsh. We’ve focused a lot recently on oysters, and how David is applying what we’ve learnedfrom our oyster research the last few years to try to understand the crash of the Apalachicola oyster fishery. There is something inherently interesting and fascinating about oysters, despite the fact that they look a lot like not much more than really sharp rocks. And of course, there is urgency to understand the oyster problems in Apalachicola because of the very real and immediate human costs associated with the fishery collapse.But now, my goal is to convince you that the salt marsh is just as fascinating as oyster reefs, even if it is not a highly visible fishery in trouble. Think of me as the parent trying to get you to appreciate your broccoli, after David already gave you your chocolate cake. I’m going to get you to LIKE your broccoli.
The “broccoli” in this scenario is none other than salt marsh cordgrass, Spartina alterniflora, a familiar character on this blog. In addition to oysters, cordgrass has been the focus of most of my research in FL. Why, you may ask? Why study broccoli when you could be studying chocolate cake all the time? The parent in me is tempted to use the catch-all phrase “Because it’s good for you!” But I’ll refrain, and instead give you a few actual reasons:
1. Oyster and cordgrass really aren’t all that different.
What do oysters and cordgrass have in common? At first glance, it may not seem like much. Oysters are animals; cordgrass is a plant. Oysters are tasty (depending on your palette); cordgrass is inedible. Oysters support a community of fishermen, at least in better times; cordgrass doesn’t.
Except this last distinction, which may seem intuitive, is not actually true. Cordgrass, and salt marshes more generally, support a wide range of fishery species including blue crabs (as you can see in the video), mullet, and sea trout. Studies in Florida estimate that marshes provide up to nearly $7000 per acre for recreational fishing alone. And like oysters, salt marshes provide more benefits for us than simply what we can eat, including protection from storms, increased water quality, and erosion control.
2. Plants are cool.
I know I don’t have to convince any of you gardeners out there about the beauty of plants. Give them a little sunshine, some nutrients, and a little water, and they do their thing. And cordgrass can even manage in salt water! There’s something to be said for low maintenance study organisms.
A year ago, that full-bodied marsh in the background looked just like the rows of small cordgrass shoots leading up to it. Both were planted by Laurel Hill School students as part of the Choctawhatchee Basin Alliance’s Grasses in Classes program.
Not only that, but you can plant a single cordgrass stem, leave it alone for a few months, and return to find that it has expanded to 20 stems, all from the same individual! (Or, if you’re lucky enough to be part of Grasses in Classes, you can admire successive years of growth from single transplants.) This “clonal expansion” is impressive, and it makes answering some of the research questions that I’m interested in pretty easy to address – I can test whether some individuals are better at expanding than others, or whether they withstand stresses like grazing better, or whether having a mix of individuals is better than lots of stems of the same individual. I can ask these questions using oysters too, but it is a lot more difficult. Even we ‘eat your vegetables’ advocates like taking the easy way out sometimes.
3. Marshes are in trouble too.
Although not in the headlines of the local papers at the moment, cordgrass has experienced significant declines in the Gulf of Mexico in the past, and salt marsh loss is a historic and ongoing problem in many parts of the world. And in some cases, the same problem can contribute to the loss of marshes and oysters. For instance, drought has been linked to salt marsh die-off in the Gulf, and drought-induced stress can make the plants more sensitive to other stresses such as grazing by snails. (As we’ve discussed before, drought and increased salinities can also make oysters more sensitive to predators and disease.) Because of the many benefits that marshes provide, it is in our best interest to understand the causes of these losses and try to prevent / counteract them.
Marsh Periwinkle (Littoraria irrotata).
For these reasons and more, I’ve been conducting lots of experiments the past few years to (a) understand what factors increase / decrease how sensitive cordgrass is to it’s major grazer, the marsh periwinkle, and (b) figure out if having more cordgrass individuals (or “genotypes”) makes the marsh less sensitive to change. We’ll highlight these experiments in the coming weeks as part of our quest to spark your fascination with the salt marsh!
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number 1161194. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Stephanie Buhler is the newest addition to the Hug-Bro family (the HUGhes and KimBRO labs). She and Hanna Garland have been alternating Scuba diving duties for David Kimbro’s new Apalachicola Bay study. Stephanie was nice enough to let us strap a GoPro camera to her head as she dove, allowing us to capture images of the floor of the bay. The images give an indication as to the severity of the fishery crisis. We will continue following this study. Tomorrow, we begin a series of videos looking at David and Randall Hughes’ NSF funded oyster study. Over the course of that research, they honed many of the techniques they’re using in Apalachicola Bay. The videos will take you into that study, and into the lives of oysters and the animals that make use of the reef.
This post was written on Sunday, January 20, 2013.
Stephanie BuhlerFSU Coastal & Marine Lab
Today marks our sixth day out in the Apalachicola Bay surveying the oyster reefs. It could not have been a more beautiful Sunday with the sun shining bright and a crisp-cool breeze as we drove to our first reef. While Hanna and I definitely have our methods down to a routine at this point, today we had the opportunity to learn a “new” technique for grabbing oysters that did not require a single regulator. This morning our boat captain, Shawn Hartsfield, brought his oyster tongs on the boat for us, and we had a blast trying to get his method down for picking up the oysters. Comically, he did not inform us that the metal tongs alone were about 40 lbs. as he watched our attempts in bringing our bundle of oysters to the bow of the boat. Best back and arm work out I have ever had!
Bringing the tongs onboard could not have happened on a more relaxed day. Typically Hanna and I alternate days being the boat tender/diver, but today all of our reefs were extremely shallow and no dive equipment or assistance was needed. A fantastic hassle-free Sunday of work.
Hanna harvests oysters in shallow water.
The Apalachicola Bay study is funded by Florida Sea Grant. In the Grass, On the Reef is Funded by the National Science Foundation.
This time around, everything is both familiar yet new.
On the new tiles, spat are glued on with a mixture used to repair boat hulls.
I recently went to Saint Augustine to document the second version of Dr. David Kimbro and Dr. Randall Hughes’ tile experiment. The basic concept is this: attach a certain amount of oyster spat (larval oysters- basically little blobs in the process of growing and building shells) to tiles, leave them on or by oyster reefs and see how they grow, or if they are eaten. I’ll let Randall and David explain the intricacies of the experiment when we post those videos in January. Or, you could watch our coverage of that first experiment, conducted in the fall of 2010. Watching that video and then watching our new videos on the experiment, you’ll notice that both the approach to the experiment and to the video coverage have evolved. After the Kimbro lab spent so many long days scrambling to collect spat, The 2010 experiment didn’t succeed like they’d hoped. Likewise, our communication of their research, and the importance of the ecology of intertidal ecosystems, didn’t quite succeed like I had hoped. I like watching the old videos; I just don’t think they did what we wanted them to. But you learn, and hopefully, you improve.
This time around, I was struck by how orderly everything was at the Whitney Lab as the oyster crew prepared their tiles. No more scrambling out at low tide to collect oysters; they had hired someone to breed spat from oysters spanning the Eastern seaboard. The current tile design and construction had been tested, and would withstand the elements. Randall and David had learned lessons, and were efficiently implementing their new plan. But what had I learned?
This attractive gastropod, seen in the video above, is a busycon snail wrapped around an atlantic moon snail that it just happens to be eating. Nature videos have a cast of human, animal, and plant characters.
Early last year, WFSU had a moment equivalent to that of the Hug-Bro labs’ realization that the glue on their initial tiles couldn’t withstand the waves at their sites. The National Science Foundation had rejected our grant application to fund this project. After a few months of following their studies and a couple dozen videos, a panel of reviewers let us know everything they thought we did wrong. That was fun.
When Randall, David, Kim Kelling-Engstrom (WFSU’s Educational Services Director) and I decided to reapply for the grant, we needed a new narrative for what it was that we wanted to communicate. What was our story? If you watch our old videos, we’re very narrowly focused on experiments and field work. There’s a lack of perspective on the impact of the ecosystems on our area, a lack of local color from the excellent locations we visit, and I kind of feel like we could have better captured what a day on a salt marsh or oyster reef was like. The new application reflected more of the world around the reefs and marshes, and the people who need them. If you’ve watched the video above, you may have figured that this time, our application was successful.
The red snapper being held by Ike Thomas, owner of My Way Seafood, was caught in 150 feet of water. Before reaching market size, younger snapper are one of many fish species that forage on oyster reefs.
I’m finding the new videos are more fun to put together. We’re exploring the area more, talking to more people, and it’s easier to spot the animals we care about and get footage of them. And with funding we have some extra staff helping on the blog and on shoots (like new associate producer Rebecca Wilkerson). The upcoming videos are like the new tiles sitting in their cages off of Saint Augustine oyster reefs: they are the product of some hard won knowledge. That experiment ends soon and they’ll see if they get the data they needed to meet their larger goals. We, on the other hand, are just getting started, and we hope that you’ll keep joining us as we explore that area where the land meets the sea.
Over the next couple of weeks, we see the WFSU SciGirls visit the FSU Coastal & Marine Lab to learn about what Randall does: in the marsh, at the lab, and in front of the camera. It gets a little messy. In September, we go in the field with Randall and David onto oyster reefs and into seagrass beds and salt marshes.
In the Grass, On the Reef is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
Have you ever found oyster shells in the dirt of your backyard? If you have and you live in Tallahassee’s Myers Park neighborhood, then you might be looking at the remains of a powerful native village that rose to prominence over 500 years ago. Continue reading Shells, Buried History, and the Apalachee Coastal Connection→
Andy Wraithmell at the Great Florida Birding and Wildlife Trail kiosk at the St. Marks Refuge.
I want to thank my co-adventurers for joining me on what turned out to be a remarkably wildlife filled day. Andy Wraithmell from Florida Fish & Wildlife set our itinerary for the day and picked the best spots for the best time. I elaborated on those locations and timing considerations in last week’s post (with a map), which you can read here. It was great to meet Lou and Betsy Kellenberger, who have a real love for the place, and Alicia Wellman,who live-tweeted our day for Florida Fish & Wildlife. Thanks also to my production assistant, Alex Saunders, for the great photos, and lastly to Refuge Manager Terry Peacock for talking to us.
In the video I alluded to there being too many places, activities, and programs in the Saint Marks National Wildlife Refuge for what ended up being an almost seven-minute piece. Over the years, we’ve covered some of those and I’ll point you to a couple of videos we’ve done along with some additional online resources.
The Whooping Crane Migration Program
The most famous birds associated with the Refuge are the ones you’re least likely to see on a visit. I did a segment the first year they flew in. You can watch that video here. Their struggles this year were well documented, and while the Operation Migration folks ended up having to winter this year’s class in Alabama, one member of that original 2009 class paired off with one of the Chassahowitzka cranes from that year (half go to St. Marks, the other to Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge) and flew to a cow pasture in Tallahassee’s Southwood neighborhood. That means that they are learning their traditional migration paths, which is hopeful for their future.
Hiking in the Cathedral of Palms.
The Florida National Scenic Trail
We just recently did a video on the Trail’s Aucilla Sinks segment. Previously, Florida Trail Association’s Kent Wimmer had taken us to two very special spots in the Refuge: Shepherd Spring and the Cathedral of Pines. You can see shots of those at the end of the video above. You can see that full video here.
The St. Marks Lighthouse
We don’t have a video uploaded on the lighthouse, but there is some news regarding it. The Refuge is in the process of taking ownership of the lighthouse from the Coast Guard. The plan is to open a bookstore on the ground floor, though the general public will still not be allowed to climb to the top and utilize what should be a sweet vantage point for photographers and (ahem) videographers.
Educational Programs
We see the new educational building and Terry Peacock talks about the number of students that participate in the Refuge’s education programs, but we don’t go into specifics. They offer 18 different programs and will work with teachers to meet their needs. Read more here.
The St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge Association
This group, led by their president, Betsy Kellenberger, coordinates volunteer efforts, classes, and field trips in the Refuge. Lou and Betsy, for instance, helped to build the Whooping Crane pens, which seems to me to be a neat way to be a part of that program. Visit the Association page here.
Music in the piece by unreal_dm and Andrea Pireddu.
