Local Ed Program GoesYouTube. Staff & Students Producing Course Videos

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1 A publication of the Apalachicola National Estuarine Research Reserve Spring 2016 Staff & Students Producing Course Videos Local Ed Program GoesYouTube Inside Get Wet & Sandy... 2 Habitat Enhancement... 3 Bay Friendly Living... 4 A Fresh Start... 5 By Gibby Conrad, Education Specialist The ANERR Education Department has been working with Franklin County s schools for many years to offer local students and teachers the opportunity to take advantage of the unique resources available through the Reserve. The types of programming offered have evolved over the years to take advantage of changes both at the Reserve and in the schools. Since moving into the new facility in Eastpoint in 2011, we have implemented a slate of programs designed to build upon one another as the students advance and mature. The programs start in pre-k with a hermit crab activity that includes a reading of House for Hermit Crab and a live demonstration of how hermit crabs change their shells. The pre-k program is done in the classroom, but all of the other grade levels are conducted at our facility or in the field. First graders are introduced to ANERR through a guided tour of the Nature Center and a beach wrack line scavenger hunt. In the third grade the activities See Local Ed, page 7

2 Get Those Feet Wet & Sandy! The Nature Walk at the Reserve. COMING UP Sea Turtle Talks June, July, & August Every Wednesday 2-3 pm Special Guest Lectures June 15 Dr. Mariana Fuentes on her nighttime work on nesting female sea turtles on St George Island June 22 Jamie Price on his MS research on beach brightness and sea turtle nesting spatial relationships Contact Gibby Conrad, By Jenna Harper, Reserve Manager This is an amazing time of the year in Franklin County. The trees are leafing out and flowers are blooming everywhere. We have songbirds migrating through and shorebirds starting to settle down for another summer of rearing their raucous brood. The days are warm, but nights are just cool enough to have the windows open and enjoy the breeze all night long. This is the time of year to get out and enjoy the natural world around us! Most residents of Franklin County (not just the winged and four-legged furry types) are here because of the natural beauty that surrounds us and the resources that the bay and river system provide. Generations ago, this special place was so highly valued that much of the land surrounding Apalachicola Bay and River is now state or federally-owned. Conservation and protection are the foremost goals of land management, but recreation is an important component as well. People need to experience nature before they have an appreciation for all that it provides. They need to appreciate the resources here to in turn become stewards of these protected areas. Here at the Reserve we are developing a Roadmap to Recreation together with other local managing agencies. This guide will highlight recreational opportunities in and around Apalachicola Bay that are low-impact and sustainable. Whether you are interested in hunting, fishing, birding, kayaking or camping, there are many areas to explore throughout the area. Maybe this spring you ll discover something new. 2 OYSTERCATCHER

3 The St. George Island Causeway (shown above during a controlled burn) is due for restoration to improve its shorebird nesting habitat. A fledging oystercatcher (inset at right) awaits feeding on the causeway. The St. George Island Causeway gets a facelift A Habitat Enhancement By Megan Lamb, ECSC Coordinator of Research Services The planned restoration of the St. George Island Causeway will improve the habitat for shorebirds nesting on the island each spring and summer. The causeway is a well-known birding hotspot in Apalachicola Bay, hosting colonies of Brown Pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis; Florida listed species), Least Terns (Sternula antillarum; Florida listed species), Black Skimmers (Rynchops niger; Florida listed species), Royal Terns (Thalasseus maximus), Sandwich Terns (Thalasseus sandvicensis), Gull-billed Terns (Gelochelidon nilotica), Caspian Terns (Hydroprogne caspia), Laughing Gulls (Leucophaeus atricilla), and several pairs of solitary nesting American Oystercatchers (Haematopus palliates; Florida listed species). Together this group lays over 3,000 nests annually and is one of the largest nesting congregations of seabirds and shorebirds in the state. Small numbers of Black Skimmers and Terns began nesting on the sides of the roadway that ran through the original causeway structure in the 1980s. As nest numbers grew, ANERR worked with Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and the Department of Transportation (DOT) to install bird fencing separating the roadway and nesting areas and to reduce speed limits during nesting season. In 1990, the causeway was designated an FWC Critical Wildlife Area (CWA) from April 1-August 31. CWAs are established to protect important wildlife concentrations from disturbance during critical periods of their life cycle, such as nesting or migration. When the new bridge was constructed in 2003 and the old bridge was decommissioned, the state-owned island was turned over from DOT to ANERR to manage as a wildlife area. While ANERR staff have continued to monitor nesting and post CWA signs to prevent disturbance seasonally, we have partnered with Audubon Florida to make some larger scale improvements to the area. Audubon Florida received See Causeway, page 7 3 Spring 2016

4 Simple steps you can take to be Bay Friendly Bay Friendly Living By Anita Grove, Coastal Training Program Coordinator We are fortunate to live in a magnificent place. Clean air, clean water, plenty of places to explore and seek solitude, no high rises or traffic, plus some of the best seafood in the world. The biggest impacts to the health of the Apalachicola River and Bay are upstream water diversions and the human impacts on the system locally. Water flow issues might be beyond our immediate control, but there are simple steps to take to be bay friendly. Trash - Trash on the bridges, on the roadside and beaches ends up in the water and becomes a hazard for wildlife and pollutes the water. Secure trash in your truck bed or boat, then recycle or dispose of it properly. Remember to use recyclable items to reduce overall waste. Yards - Create a bay friendly yard by planting bushes and trees that provide habitat for wildlife rather than an expansive green lawn that needs mowing, chemicals and fertilizers. If you have a lawn, use organic or slow release fertilizer. Do not apply fertilizers before it rains. This practice does not water in fertilizer; it washes it down the storm drain. Plant drought tolerant, low maintenance plants that do not need lots of water or fertilizer. For more info on creating a bay friendly yard, go to fyn.ifas.ufl.edu/ Storm Drains - Ever notice the storm drains around the community? These remove rainwater from streets and yards and drain to the bay. Whatever ends up in them makes its way to the bay. Retaining rainwater that flows off your roof and driveway in your yard allows it to percolate or filter through the soil. Choose pervious pavers, shell or rock instead of concrete for driveways, paths and patios. This natural filtering prevents rainwater that has collected fertilizers, oil or pesticides from draining directly into the bay. It also reduces the storm water runoff. Create a bay friendly yard by planting bushes and trees that provide habitat for wildlife. Run-off - Make sure your boat and vehicle are not leaking oil, radiator fluid or fuel. Leaking fluids end up on the ground and when it rains these pollutants wash down the street, into the storm drains and out to the bay or river during the next rain. Also, use nontoxic soaps to wash your car and boat and don t dump anything toxic into storm drains. Remember, storms drains empty into the bay! Pets - Clean up after pets. Animal waste also affects the health of the bay and river. Septic Tanks - Service your septic system regularly. Leaking septic systems can pollute the bay and river. Do not plant trees or bushes in the drain field or park on top of your system. These practices can damage your system. RX - Do not dump medicines down the toilet or the sink. Researchers are now finding significant levels of medication in the waters that surround communities. For more information on these topics and more, contact Anita Grove at (850) OYSTERCATCHER

5 Winter/Spring a boost to fish & invertebrate habitats A Fresh Start By Jason Garwood, Fisheries Biologist, Estuarine Community Ecologist, Research Section If we were to stop and take a look at the landscape around northern Florida during the month of December, we would most likely get the impression that things are starting to slow down for Mother Nature. However, if we were to look to the water, more specifically the waters of Apalachicola Bay, we see that this is far from the truth. Just as schools usher in a new class of students to the classroom each fall, in Apalachicola Bay, the fall season initiates a process in which large schools of adult fishes, shrimps, and crabs emigrate out of our estuarine inlets to reside nearshore and even further offshore where they spawn. These spawn, tiny babies called larvae, begin their lives as plankton, with no great ability to move, except to migrate up and down in the water column each day following their prey source. These babies have to rely on Mother Nature to move them out of their natal habitat, and after a few weeks or months, depending on the species, they are pushed by wind and tidal currents through the passes from the Gulf of Mexico into A few terms that will have you sounding like a true ecologist in no time the bay where they can be safer from predation Ecology: Study of organisms, their interaction with each other, and their environment and find abundant food to grow. Habitat: Ecological or environmental area inhabited by a species or group of species With this bit of information in mind, one might ask, So what happens once they get Population: Members of the same species utilizing a defined habitat here? From our long-term fisheries monitoring Community: Different species residing within the same habitat program here at the Reserve, we ve gleaned a wealth of information regarding the fate of Plankton: Aquatic or marine organisms that are unable to swim against a current these animals once they reach Apalachicola Nekton: Aquatic or marine organisms that have the ability to swim against a current Bay (Figure 1). One of the first things that Emigration/Immigration: Moving out of/into a habitat can be noted is that recruitment into the estuary is nearly continuous, meaning it Recruitment: Immigration of an age-class to a new habitat or older age-class occurs throughout most of the year. However, Resource Partitioning: When species divide a resource to avoid competition when we look closer, we find that although recruitment remains fairly steady, it is also sequential, meaning that multiple species have high peaks in abundance that are offset relative to each other throughout the year (Figure 2). During the winter, species such as spot, Atlantic croaker, menhaden, and pinfish tend to be the dominant species we encounter. As we get closer to the spring and summer months recruitment tends to be dominated by bay anchovy, sand seatrout, aviu shrimp, pigfish, white shrimp, and silver perch. We also see that some species, particularly pinfish, sand seatrout (Figure 2 top), and our commercially important gulf whiting (kingfish) have multiple recruitment peaks per year. Thus, some of our species have two or more separate spawning events. So why would this happen? Here s one possible explanation. Food and structural habitat for protection from predators may be substantially greater in systems like Apalachicola Bay when compared to other habitats such as the offshore Gulf of Mexico, but these resources continued next page Figure 1 / Map of Apalachicola Bay showing the Reserve s long-term, system-wide fisheries monitoring locations 5 Spring 2016

6 Recruitment Period of the Ten Most Abundant Post-larval and Juvenile Nekton in Apalachicola Bay Bay anchovy Spot Atlantic croaker Menhaden Pinfish Sand seatrout Aviu shrimp Pigfish White shrimp Silver perch Months where peak recruitment occurred. Months where the frequency of peak recruitment was the greatest. JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC Recruitment Period of Ten of the Popular Commercial and Recreationally Import Post-larval and Juvenile Nekton in Apalachicola Bay White shrimp Greater blue crab Pink shrimp Brown shrimp Gulf whiting Lane snapper Gulf flounder Spotted Seatrout Southern flounder Oscillated flounder JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC Figure 2 / Table showing recruitment (time of entry) and peak recruitment (time of greatest abundance) for post-larval fishes, shrimps, and crabs (nekton) in Apalachicola Bay. Seasonal Percentage Similarity of Nekton Communities in Apalachicola Bay by Station 40 WINTER 20 SPRING Percentage of Similarity South Central North South Central North St. Vincent West Two Mile Channel East Pilot s Cove Nick s Hole State Park Two Mile Channel St. Vincent SUMMER East South Central West North St. Vincent Pilot s Cove Two Mile Channel West East Pilot s Cove Nick s Hole State Park Nick s Hole State Park Percentage of Similarity 100 South Central North St. Vincent Two Mile Channel FALL West East Pilot s Cove Nick s Hole State Park Figure 3 / Cluster diagrams showing the percent similarity of the nekton communities in Apalachicola Bay by location and season. Similarity is based on species and proportion of each species relative to each other. See Fresh Start, last page 6 OYSTERCATCHER

7 Local Ed, from page 1 become more scientific with the dissection of oyster clumps to see what other species use the reef for habitat. Third graders also do a beach seining activity to look for and catalog juvenile species in the bay. Fifth graders return to the Center to plant a living shoreline and learn how the Spartina they have planted to reduce erosion is adapted to living in the harsh environment of the bayside beach. In seventh grade the students go back out into the marsh to see the fruits of their labor. They count periwinkle snails that are living on the marsh grasses and discover the food web that the snails represent in the shoreline habitat that they created in fifth grade. Students visit the Reserve for their last program in the tenth grade. This time we return to oysters with the focus on spat settlement on different types of substrate. The students count living oysters on three different types of substrate that were put out in the bay ten months earlier. After discussing oyster anatomy and lifecycle, we use data collected from our data-loggers in the bay to help the students come up with hypotheses on why they found more or less oysters on the substrates than previous years and what their findings might mean for health of the bay as a whole. All of the programs led by the education staff at the Reserve share the common goal of promoting stewardship through increased awareness and understanding of the estuary ecosystem. This year we have implemented a new component to our school programs that we hope will spread the stewardship message throughout the county and beyond. In conjunction with our communication specialist, Kennedy Hanson, we are producing videos of our school based programs that the students will be able to upload and share on social media sites. Each video will include every student in the class and be narrated Students research and discuss oyster anatomy, lifecycle, and habitat. by the students. The expectation is that the videos and their stewardship message will be accessed by the community at large. The videos will also be used as an educational tool to remind the kids of what they did in the past and emphasize the cohesiveness of the programs. Videos can be accessed on our YouTube channel at goo.gl/tjqcnf or through the Watch Video link at the top of our Facebook page. No discussion of our education programs would be complete without a special thank you to Friends of the Reserve. For over fifteen years our Friends group has been helping our local schools bring field trips to the Reserve by providing funding for transportation and substitute teachers. Without their help our school programs would not be possible. Causeway, from page 3 a grant from National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for enhancements in three areas to restore nesting habitat: better and more permanent signage, installation of chick fencing, and stabilization the seawall to prevent further deterioration. New, more visible permanent signs indicating the island s CWA status have been installed at the north and south bulkheads of the island and sturdier signage will continue to be placed around the entire perimeter during the CWA period. Chick fencing will be installed on the south end of the island near the large tern and skimmer colony to prevent flightless chicks from falling into the water. Finally, in the fall we will work to stabilize sections of the seawall that are deteriorating, leaving the island vulnerable to overwash. The project will place rock and rubble revetments along failing sections of seawall, preventing further erosion. Additional partnership with Audubon has provided increased monitoring efforts, giving us a more complete picture about the fate of nests, eggs, and chicks on the island. ANERR is also experimenting with methods to control the vegetation on the causeway. While some species like to nest in grassy areas such as brown pelicans and laughing gulls, tern and skimmer species prefer open sandy, shelly habitat. When the original roadway was cleared off the causeway there was abundant sandy habitat. Over the years vegetation has grown, likely assisted by the abundant amounts of natural fertilizer the birds deposit each year. Making the problem more challenging to manage are the deep root structures of the grasses covering the causeway, embedded rocks left under the surface of the original roadway, and difficulty of bringing equipment to the island. Reserve staff are experimenting with using prescribed fire to help reduce above ground biomass and more frequent mowing and disking during the winter to make the vegetation easier to manage, increasing the amount of area we can clear for the terns in their favorite spot on the southern end of their island. Our goal through these projects and partnerships is to protect and provide better sustained nesting habitat, more clearly marked off-limits areas to protect that birds and their habitat during this critical life stage, and increase our understanding of nesting dynamics on this important environment within ANERR. 7 Spring 2016

8 Fresh Start, continued from page 6 are still limited. Apalachicola Bay supports such a vast quantity of organisms that the demand they create for these limited resources could be unsustainable if they all were present in the same place at the same time. For the nekton communities in Apalachicola Bay, there is potential that what ecologists call resource partitioning may be an effective ecological strategy that is, there may be enough room for everyone to get by if everyone didn t 1) show up at the same time, and 2) end up in the same place i.e., habitat. We ve already talked about the time factor: different populations of nekton arrive in the bay at different times and some populations split their time of arrival each year into multiple events. How can we investigate space? One way that ecologists can look at community-wide data is by generating statistics that group communities by how similar they are. One of the best ways to visualize the results is to place them into a cluster which essentially is like a family tree. Communities that are most similar, in other words, have similar species in similar proportions, will be on the same branch, whereas those that differ will be on separate branches. So now we can visually make an assessment of who is where, and when, by simply looking at clusters for all of our sampling locations (Figure 1) at different times of year (Figure 3). Before reading further, put on your ecologist s hat and assess the data from Figures 1 and 3. Once you think you ve got it, come back and see if your answer matches the one below. One of first things we can see when looking at Figure 3 is the commonality of the southern bay sites: Pilot s Cove, Nick s Hole, and the east end of the State Park. Regardless of the time of year, these sites tend to have their own main branch. They tend to have similar species in similar proportions year-round. What about the remaining seven locations? For winter and spring, the remaining stations tend to group together with the exception of the Mid-Bay East and Mid-Bay West stations. However, by summer it becomes evident that the stations have their own branch, and by fall, there are three relatively distinct communities in Apalachicola Bay: the nekton community of East Bay, the nekton community residing behind the barrier islands, and then the community in-between. So just from a few rather simple visual aids we can learn quite a bit about the activities of our young-of-the-year fishes, shrimps, and crabs. Newly born species enter the bay during the winter, spring, and most of the summer months, and are somewhat spread out all over (with the exception of the barrier island habitat), but as time goes on, each species tends to settle out into its preferred habitat to form three distinct ecological communities in Apalachicola Bay. By late fall and early winter, it s time for those individuals from an older yearclass to move out of the bay as adults to start the cycle all over again. So as you can now see, even though things start to slow down on land, things are already in motion under water, and in reality, it never really slows down, it just switches gears. Apalachicola National Estuarine Research Reserve 108 Island Drive Eastpoint, FL FAX The Reserve was established in September 1979 as a cooperative effort between Franklin County, the State of Florida and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and is administered by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The Reserve s purpose is to support research relating to the Apalachicola River & Bay estuarine system, disseminate research information, educate the public about estuarine processes, and encourage resource protection. Visit the Reserve online at apalachicolareserve.com, nerrs.noaa.gov/apalachicola/ welcome.html, or dep.state.fl.us/coastal/sites/apalachicola/ Follow the Reserve at Facebook.com/ ApalachicolaNationalEstuarineResearchReserve Join the Friends of the Reserve, a non-profit organization providing support to the Apalachicola National Estuarine Research Reserve. Be a part of a group of people directly involved with the Reserve s research, stewardship and education programs. To join, complete and mail this form, along with your check to: Friends of the Reserve, P. O. Box 931, Apalachicola, FL Student@$5/yr Family@$15/yr Corporate@$250/yr Individual@$10/yr Commercial@$25/yr Lifetime@$250 Other Donation@$ Name Address City State Zip Address