Notes From the Field

The Panamanian coast, where oysters grow on trees: Tanya put her Kimbro Lab skills to use during her summer studies in the tropics.

Since starting Apalachicola Bay oyster research, the Kimbro crew keeps finding their gear trashed. They now have evidence as to the identity of a culprit.

For their Apalachicola Bay experiment, Hanna Garland and company have had to learn to work underwater, brave the wind and waves, and even learn to weld.

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.

Using ordinary paving tiles from Home Depot, the Hughes and Kimbro labs have created their most important tool in measuring the health of oyster reefs. At one site, lab technician Meagan Murdock discovers unexpected competition for young spat trying to get established on the reef.

We went out with two divers working on the Kimbro lab’s new Apalachicola Bay study and put a camera on one of them. The images of the oyster reefs at the bottom of the bay give an indication of the severity of the fishery crisis there.

A clam on a leash? Tanya Rogers talks about an experiment she painstakingly prepared on Bay Mouth Bar.

On a recent trip to Bay Mouth Bar, we witnessed a little romance in the air (or saltwater) as one of the Forgotten Coast’s most unique looking predators heads somewhere warm for the winter.

Althea Moore is Dr. Randall Hughes’ graduate student. In today’s Notes From the Field, she describes her newest study and how she’s funding it: the increasingly popular and effective method of crowdfunding.