Mooring video, Salem Sound Under Water lecture series and more!

Greetings from the MarineFisheries eelgrass team!  Like many of you, much of our winter work involves crunching data from the previous field season and disseminating our findings in reports and public presentations. I recently gave a presentation as part of the “ Salem Sound Underwater” lecture series hosted by Salem Sound Coastwatch (http://www.salemsound.org/) The talk focused on eelgrass, why it is important and what we are doing to map, monitor and restore it to our coast. 

 The next presentation in the series will be "Saltmarshes Under Siege" by Robert Buchsbaum of the Mass Audubon Society,  March 27th, 7pm at the Marblehead Abbot Public Library.

We are always trying to find new ways to engage the public through presentations, pictures and videos.  Recently, we edited some of our field work videos to turn them into educational tools.  One example is our video of a dive on a traditional, block and chain, boat mooring. The footage, captured in July 2011, demonstrates divers monitoring a boat mooring located within a mooring field that overlaps an eelgrass meadow in Manchester-by-the-Sea. The chain from the traditional mooring system drags along the bottom, scouring the seafloor as it sweeps in and out with the waves. This was not a very windy day, but look at that chain bounce!

The Manchester mooring project was part of a collaboration with the Mass Bays Program and was funded by the Association of National Estuary Programs with a NOAA Community Based Restoration Partnership Grant.  The primary objective of the project was to restore eelgrass to denuded areas around traditional block and chain mooring systems.  Sixteen block and chain moorings were replaced with conservation mooring systems in existing eelgrass beds: eight in Manchester and eight in Provincetown.  Following replacement of the moorings, eelgrass was transplanted into a subset of the scars to determine if transplanting would facilitate the recovery of eelgrass.  Monitoring has been performed annually and is still underway.  For more information, refer to the project poster here: http://www.mass.gov/dfwele/dmf/programsandprojects/neers_mooring_poster.pdf

Looking forward to Spring and our upcoming field season!

- Tay Evans, MarineFisheries biologist