Notes from our Mass Seagrass Group conference call May 2, 2012

Last week we had a conference call with participants of the Mass Seagrass Group.  The goal of the call was for each of us to share what we are planning to do this field season and to have a chance to ask questions and get feedback from the group.  In attendance were the following participants:

Holly Bayley (NPS) – updated the group on SeagrassNet in Pleasant Bay and her planned test transplanting of different donor populations in East Harbor this summer as part of the ongoing UNH genetics study funded by TNC and her master’s thesis work.

John Katchmar (TNC) – reported on TNC’s continued role supporting conservation moorings projects, shellfish restoration, and policy work on water quality.

Dr. Phil Colarusso (EPA) - discussed his invasive tunicate and seagrass study on the Vineyard; the changes at the Gloucester Maritime Heritage Center and a possible seagrass or invasives exhibit in their mesocosm tank; work on the invasive monitoring for divers project; collecting pictures and video for the Boston Harbor Habitat Atlas.

Dr. Alyssa Novak (UNH) – mentioned that she is working on a site selection model for Plum Island Sound and will be doing test plots this summer.  The project is funded by MassBays.  She is looking for water quality, sediment and historic eelgrass information for the area.

Tay Evans, Wes Dukes, Jill Webber, Kate Ostrikis (DMF) – reviewed the progress to date for the HUB3 eelgrass restoration project and the DMF team’s plans for field work this summer including planting several small sites around Salem and Beverly.  We will be having two volunteer days to help with planting in June.  We also reported that we finished our SeagrassNet monitoring at the West Beach, Beverly site in record time this April.  It took us 1 day to do all three transects with only two divers thanks to exceptional visibility and easy to find markers.

Some people could not make the call but emailed updates to be read at the meeting:

Charlie Costello (DEP) – wrote that he plans to acquire imagery and map the North Shore, Boston and South Shore this summer.  The web map is up and running to display his results at:

http://maps.massgis.state.ma.us/images/dep/eelgrass/eelgrass_map.htm

Jay Baker (MassBays) – wrote about the conservation mooring evaluation project that he is working on with the Urban Harbors Institute and Cape Cod Harbormasters Association, jointly funded by TNC.  The project is to compile available literature and conduct interviews of stakeholders on the functional, economic, and environmental pros and cons of traditional and conservation mooring systems.  Lisa Engler will take over the eelgrass work for Jay at MassBays at the end of June, and Casey Shetterly is the project manager for TNC.

Our next Conference call will be in November 2012…stay tuned.  If you don’t think that you’re on my email list for the Mass Seagrass Group and you would like to be notified about our meetings and conference calls please contact me (Tay Evans) at 978-282-0308 x. 168 or tay.evans@state.ma.us.

Jellyfish

Just a heads up to all my seagrass research friends.  Seems like we have a swarm of lion's mane jellyfish that had made their way into Mass Bay.  I've observed several large ones in Boston Harbor, at the Beverly pier and a half dozen small ones during a dive at Niles Beach.  Water temperature at 25 feet in Gloucester harbor was 47 and clarity 15-20 feet.  Lots of colorful burrowing anemones.

Eelgrass Restoration Trials on Cape Cod

The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and Barnstable County Cooperative Extension Marine Program recently completed eelgrass restoration trials on Cape Cod.  The project was designed to evaluate sites with potential for full-scale restoration in the region.  The work included identification of potential sites, evaluating the sites for suitability, choosing the top 2 to 3 ranked sites, performing transplant trials at these sites, and monitoring for one year post-planting.

Site selection was done using a modification of the Short et al. (2002) method, with modifications based on available site specific data. In addition, consultation with an advisory team including local natural resource officers, representatives from State and Federal agencies, and the research community were consulted for their ideas on site suitability.  Using the site data and comments from the advisory team, sites were ranked and the top three were chosen for transplant trials: Phinney’s Harbor in Bourne, Nauset/Town Cove in Orleans, and Cape Cod Bay in Truro.

Plantings were done in September 2010 using both the clump transplant method and the horizontal rhizome method.  Monitoring was conducted at four different times:

• 2 weeks post-planting in October 2010 to check planting density and evaluate short-term survival,
• 8 months post-planting in May 2011 to evaluate winter survival,
• 10 months post-planting in July 2011 to evaluate survival and growth over the early part of the growing season, and
• 1 year post-planting in September 2011 to evaluate survival over the first full growing season

Donor beds were monitored in August 2010, July 2011, and September 2011 to evaluate any effect of removing plants for transplanting, and to compare donor bed plants with the transplants.

Transplant success at the test sites was variable until the end of the study, when all three

sites had almost no surviving plants. Initially survival was almost 100% at Phinney’s Harbor and Truro, while the Nauset site almost no plants survived.   At 8 months post-transplant the Phinney’s Harbor site was becoming established, with survival at over 100%.  The Truro site lost many plants, and Nauset showed virtually no surviving plants.  At 10 months post-transplant the Phinney’s Harbor site was dramatically reduced, likely due to high turbidity and low light levels.  At the 1-year mark almost no plants were left at any location (Figure 1). 

Figure 1. Eelgrass Transplant % Survival

 

Reasons for the lack of success differed for all three sites.  Nauset appeared to have been overrun by bioturbators; the Truro site was highly dynamic, with evidence of both scour and burial among plants, grid markers and buoy anchors.  Phinney’s Harbor, despite initial success, declined due to a mid-summer water quality decline, characterized by high turbidity and reduced light at the transplant site.

Truro 9-23-2010

Truro 10-13-2010

Truro 5-31-2011

Truro 7-19-2011

Truro 10-7-2011

Lastly, we include a short video clip taken at the Nauset donor bed in early August, 2011, which very nicely illustrates active photosynthesis - showing plants releasing O2 bubbles within the water column.

Dissapearing eelgrass

 http://www.mvgazette.com/article.php?33397
This recent article from Martha's Vineyard Gazette underscores the importance of improving water quality in our coastal embayments before eelgrass can be restored.  Water quality improvements are not glamorous and they are very costly, but without clearer water eelgrass won't grow.  Again and again we are hearing about failed eelgrass restoration due to poor water quality (including mucky sediments and high amounts of smothering macroalgae which can both be a result of poor water quality).

Conservation Moorings Installed in Provincetown Harbor

The Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies took a look at the new conservation moorings that were installed in Provincetown Harbor, a project overseen by the Massachusetts Bays Program. Seven traditional moorings were replaced with conservation moorings in early October. On November 9, videos were taken of six of these moorings as well as one traditional mooring located in the same area. The PCCS Disentanglement Program generously donated the use of their rescue vessel, staff time, and underwater video camera to get this work done. The following video clips show some of the footage captured.

This video clip shows one of the new anchors and Hazelett moorings. A discernible scar, left from the previous mooring, is obvious around the anchor.

One of the moorings was installed in a shallower area. The eelgrass around this mooring was much denser with no obvious scar left from the previous mooring.

This final video clip shows footage taken of a traditional mooring in the same area as the new conservation moorings were installed. The mooring chain can clearly be seen on the bottom within a well-defined mooring scar.

Hubline eelgrass restoration Fall 2011 Status Report

Field work for the second round of hubline eelgrass restoration (HUB3) began this season on May 23.  Our goal this summer/fall was to plant a 0.5 acre site in Salem Sound and test-plot several additional locations in Salem Sound and Boston Harbor .

Planting

Wes, Mark and Tay together with dive help from Vin and Holly, harvested plants from the Logan Airport runway safety area (RSA) improvement project footprint and planted test plots at Long Island and Lovell’s Island, Boston Harbor.  We also investigated Thompson’s Island but were not able to find any suitable sites due to the silty organic sediment.  We continued to harvest through the month of June and transported plants up to Beverly, planting them at the impact site (a.k.a Woodbury Point).  By the end of June we shifted to harvesting plants at a donor bed in Beverly off of Pride’s Beach (SW of the SeagrassNet site) and continued planting our ½ acre site.  At this point we went to a two person dive scenario every day with two of the three of us diving (Wes, Tay or Mark).   We brought on Andrew Weinstock in July.   Andrew received his DMF dive qualifications in mid-August.  Unfortunately, Mark suffered an injury in August that has prevented him from diving since then. 

Monitoring

Our one month monitoring on July 20, 2011 of two plots at the Beverly site showed 97% of our planted squares were present, but shoot density had declined about 50% (i.e. average of 12 shoots from 24 planted).  The fact that we could find almost all of the planted squares was encouraging, but the condition of the squares was not – low density, wasting disease on the leaves and encrusting membranipora on the leaves.  From the beginning, we considered the site somewhat risky for restoration since it’s a deep edge.  However, its high rating in the site selection model, the success of Battelle test plots at the site, and the presence of natural grass growing between our plots influenced our decision to plant the site.  Also, the site is the HUBline pipeline impact site where grass was growing in 2002 before pipeline construction. This weighed heavily in the decision to replant there. The initial low density of the plots could be explained by several factors.  Human error in planting may have caused some loss of plants.  We did not re-count a day or so after planting to be sure of how many shoots were actually planted, so 24 may be an overestimate of the initial baseline density planted.  Additionally, the Boston plants were taken from a shallow site off of Logan airport and transplanted to a deeper site in Beverly.  Plants may be better able to adapt to new sites that have similar light, temperature and sediment conditions.  The two sites had different depths and different sediment conditions (sand in Beverly and sand, mud and clay in Logan).  The difference in depth could lead to the conclusion that the donor plants may have been light adapted, having grown up at the shallower site.  However, light data is higher at the Beverly deep site (mean hobo data of 3.14 % light and 332.8 lumens/ft²) compared to the Boston site (1.569% light and 198.3012 lumens/ft² ).

At the end of August the plants were surviving with evidence of some new growth but still at a low shoot density.  It is possible that they could have rebounded.  However on August 28, Hurricane Irene hit Beverly.  After the hurricane, Wes and Andrew monitored all of our Beverly plots.  They reported large sand waves across the site and a loss of approximately 75% of the planted squares.  The site has some rows of grass without sand waves, but most of the squares are now bare sand.  There is no clear trend indicating differential survival of plants transplanted from either Beverly or Boston or to the shallow or deep portions of the site. Plot B1-4 was planted with all Boston plants. Half of the plot now has low density grass and the other half is no longer vegetated.  The plants that are there are rooted and show evidence of new growth.  B3-4 was planted with 4 rows of Boston plants and 8 rows of Beverly plants.  The side with the Boston plants was not hit by the sand waves and still persists, while the Beverly plants are mostly gone.  The deeper A plots are a mix of Boston and Beverly plants and are uniformly patchy and 25% vegetated. 

Test - plots at Lovell’s Island and Long Island, in Boston Harbor, have fared well and were unaffected by the hurricane. 

Fall Test-plots

This fall we shifted our focus from the Beverly restoration site to plant several test-plots at sites throughout Salem Sound and Boston Harbor.  In September test –plots were planted at the SE side of Long Island, the SE side of Peddock’s Island in Boston Harbor and Middle Ground and Juniper Cove in Salem Sound. 

In early October we test-planted a site at the beach near Fort Pickering in Salem (i.e. Winter Island). Chris Pickerell of Cornell Cooperative Extension on Long Island (http://seagrassli.blogspot.com/) visited us to check out our sites and share information.  Chris’s team worked with ours to plant test plots of two treatments to compare the Horizontal Rhizome method developed by Davis and Short, to his new experimental method.

 Our field work will wrap up in the last week of October or first week of November for the winter season. 

UNH Jackson Estuarine Lab eelgrass projects in the news today!

UNH Jackson Estuarine Lab eelgrass projects in the news today!

Click below to read the Boston Globe article about eelgrass and the UNH/ Nature Conservancy genetic study.
Bid to revive eelgrass population slowly makes headway in region - The Boston Globe