In the Grass, On the Reef Science isn't all lab coats and beakers! Trudge through the muck of our local salt marshes and oyster reefs - habitats crucial to our area's coastal flora and fauna - without getting your shoes dirty!
When the video above aired on dimensions, several individuals in our community took note of a statement made by George Weymouth. He was explaining how hydrilla, an invasive plant species overtaking rivers in our state, had led to Limpkins entirely abandoning the Wakulla River (which has its source at Wakulla Springs). He said that herbicides used to control the plant led to a die off of apple snails, the limpkin’s main food source.
The reaction to this statement started me on a quest, with the several aforementioned individuals guiding me closer, and at times seemingly further, from an answer to what happened to the limpkins at Wakulla Springs.
David and I are in Sydney, Australia, on visiting research appointments with the University of Technology Sydney. We arrived the first of the year, and after recovering from jet lag and getting our bearings, we embarked this week on setting up a couple of new experiments. We have great local “guides” – Dr. Peter Macreadie (UTS), Dr. Paul York (UTS), Dr. Paul Gribben (UTS), and Dr. Melanie Bishop (Macquarie University) – to introduce us to the field systems and collaborate with us on these projects.
Our seagrass and razor clam experiment is set up at Point Wolstoncroft in Lake Macquarie (north of Sydney).
The importance of local knowledge was highlighted last week as we snorkeled in the seagrass beds of Lake Macquarie (a large coastal salt lake) with Pete and several members of his lab.
Pete was busy sampling an existing experiment while David and I scouted around. Thankfully his head happened to be above water when I said to David, “Come check out this little octopus I found!”. Lo and behold, it was a blue-ringed octopus (genus Hapalochlaena), arguably the most venomous (yet luckily very docile) marine organism in the world.
A blue ringed octopus.
I quickly stopped prodding at it with the clam shell I’d found for that purpose and decided that next time I better inquire of the particular dangers of a site before getting in the water! (And thus got the image above from borneodream.com, rather than my own camera…)
Dangers aside, the research sites we’re working in are very pretty,
A view of our site at Point Wolstoncroft.
Our second experimental site with Paul Gribben and Melanie Bishop at Point Towra Nature Reserve.
as well as interesting ecologically. We’re going to focus on the “foundation species” in these systems – the ones that create habitat for lots of invertebrates and fishes that wouldn’t otherwise be there. Our foundation species of interest are:
1. Seagrass (Zostera capricorni) and razor clams (aka, razor fish; Pinna bicolor) in Lake Macquarie.
The shell of a "razor fish."
Collaborator Dr. Paul York counting seagrass density. (Photo courtesy of Dr. Peter Macreadie).
2. Oysters (Saccostrea glomerata) and algae (Hormosira banksii) living around the mangrove pneumatophores in Towra Point Nature Reserve, Botany Bay.
An oyster cluster amidst the mangrove pneumatophores and algae.
The algae, Hormosira banksii.
Our field site at Point Towra Nature Reserve.
You may have noticed that some of these plants and animals are familiar to the blog (though different species) – in fact, there are analogues for all but the algae in our field sites in FL. So we are looking forward not only to starting new experiments here, but also to beginning companion experiments when we get back to examine the similarities and differences between the different environments.
Randall and David’s research is funded by the National Science Foundation.
Wednesday, January 18 at 7:30 PM/ ET, watch WFSU’s latest EcoAdventure on dimensions, as Green Guides George Weymouth, Jim Dulock, and Cynthia Paulson guide us down the Wacissa River. Birds, springs, and art- you can read more about that below, and enjoy this video looking at how George- a well known painter and sculptor in our area- creates his hyper-realistic works.
Rob Diaz de VillegasWFSU-TV
In the interest of being intensely accurate, George's painting area is surrounded by field guides and nature magazines.
George Weymouth is telling me how he is going to paint the ripples caused by a black-necked stilt’s (Himantopus mexicanus) wading in a river, and how the the avian subjects of his painting reflect over the disturbed water. When he’s done getting the shape of the bird’s body, and the general coloration, he’ll add various feathers- primaries, secondaries, and tercials; all located at the anatomically appropriate places on its body. Something occurred to me as I edited this footage into the above video: when I had accompanied George down the Wacissa River the week before, he was looking at whole different world than I was. A man who can accurately paint every feather on a bird is likely to have a unique perspective.
I visited George’s home studio intending to make his art a major part of the EcoAdventure that will air on dimensions tomorrow. I touch upon it briefly, but with only five minutes to work with, you have to pick and choose what makes the best and most coherent story. Did I want to leave out the underwater footage of the springs that feed the Wacissa River? Would I cut the scene where ibis frolic in the water lettuce and wild rice? Could I cut back on shots showing the camaraderie between George and his fellow Green Guides, Jim Dulock and Cynthia Paulson? In the end I couldn’t, and so we have this web exclusive video.
(L to R) WFSU-TV Producer Rob Diaz de Villegas with Green Guides Jim Dulock and Cynthia Paulson.
The Wacissa offers a lot to a bird man like George. When I was editing the dimensions segment, there was rarely a shot in which I didn’t hear bird calls layered over each other. Birds were everywhere, even though it was winter and so many had already migrated south. George picked out different calls, and imitated them, and told us more or less in what month certain birds would come back and when others had left. On this trip, he had the wildlife aspect covered. But he usually paddles around the Wakulla River, and so Jim Dulock (who runs the Wacissa Springs Livery) made sure we got to the good places. He took us to a couple of those springs that provide the river’s clear water, including the fifty-foot deep Big Blue Spring. He also deftly paddled me through the water lettuce to those ibis I mentioned before, so that I could get a good close shot. And he provided the canoes and Cynthia’s kayak.
First, George sketches a layout to use as a reference for the painting. He created this sketch from memory, but when he gets to the final phases of painting individual feathers and leg scales, he'll refer to photos in field guides.
But back to George’s studio, where I’m thinking about the finished works of his that I saw. You’ll see more detail than you’re likely to see with the naked eye in nature. The birds on the side of the river, or wading at the edge of a marsh island, they have all the feathers and leg scales that you see George painstakingly add to his paintings. You’re just not likely to be able to see them individually from your kayak. It’s fascinating to watch his process; I especially enjoy the attention to how the birds interact with the water, the ripples and reflections, and how their legs look as they fade from visibility beneath the surface. It’s one of things I love most about filming marine animals, especially since we’ve gotten HD cameras. Of course, nature and the sun’s light do a lot of the work for me. Not having to envision and actualize the highlights of each little wave, I’m a little more removed from it than he is. I’m realizing that I may never have the kind of connection George has nature, because I’ll never see it the way he can.
When researching the Green Guide videos I was producing for EcoAdventures North Florida, I became intrigued by something I saw on the Palmetto Expeditions web site. Cynthia Paulson’s Green Guide brokering business offered tours based on history and archeology. I have an interest in local history and archeology, but I was surprised that it qualified as ecotourism. It turns out that historical excursions are a common form of ecotourism, as it focuses on local culture. And our local culture is often intertwined with the ecology of the area.
The Green Guide program presents an appealing model: cultivating entrepreneurs as business people and as stewards of the environment. This allows a county like Wakulla to exploit their protected lands without having to develop them. Keeping habitats intact also helps our robust local fishing industry. On our tour with Captain James Hodges, we passed Lynn Brothers Seafood, which has been in business for decades, as well as a couple of men fishing out of a small boat, reeling in a pinfish. Commercial and recreational fishing generates over $12 billion for our state annually, and benefits from other industries that share an interest in maintaining healthy ecosystems.
A map showing land plots in Magnolia, Florida.
Captain Hodges is a rarity amongst the Green Guides: a charter boat captain. It’s honestly not what I thought one of these EcoAdventures would look like. That morning, Cynthia had connected us with a couple of other Green Guides for a trip down the Wacissa in canoes. That’s what EcoAdventures had looked like in my head. That afternoon’s excursion with St. Marks Charters expanded what I considered to be ecotourism. There’s a lot of history along the St. Marks. We traveled back to World War II, passing the Higgins Landing Craft factory. We also went back into the 1800′s, to a place that embodied the spirit of the time, where people struck out and staked their own piece of land and started new towns. Unlike nearby St. Marks, however, the Hamlin brothers’ town of Magnolia only lasted a few decades before fizzling out, unable to compete with St. Marks and the railroad connecting them to larger Tallahassee. The photos I found in the state archive make it look like a little slice of paradise, featuring scenes of people playing croquet under a canopy of moss covered trees.
This pelican greeted us with wings wide open as we returned to Shields Marina.
As for the aforementioned Wacissa trip, we went in search of Limpkins with Green Guides George Weymouth and Jim Dulock. George is a bird expert and a an artist. We’ll see him work on his current painting and talk about the many birds we saw on our canoe trip. Jim is a canoe guide and has a bird story of his own to share, about a bard owl he befriended on the Wacissa. That program will air on January 18 at 7:30 PM/ ET.
In this piece, we used the song Wakulla Green, written by Hot Tamale in tribute of the Green Guides. We used additional music from Kokenovem.
The Wakulla Ecotourism Institute has a program to certify qualified nature guides called “Green Guides.” On October 1, 2011, my musical group Hot Tamale is putting on a special show at Posh Java in Sopchoppy that will honor the green guides with the release of a new song called “Wakulla Green.”
-Excerpt from a comment by Craig Reeder.
Above is the song Craig was talking about in his comment on our EcoAdventures North Florida page. Thanks to his comment, we found out about the Green Guide program, and we produced a couple of EcoAdventures where we were guided by Green Guides. On last night’s dimensions, we were taken down the St. Marks River by Captain James Hodges. We featured portions of the song in our piece, and I thought some of you who saw the piece might like to hear the song in its entirety. In January, we’ll have a video about our trip down the Wacissa with George Weymouth and Jim Dulock.
Green Guide George Weymouth points something out to WFSU producer Rob Diaz de Villegas.
We’re starting to line up a good assortment of excursions for the new year- swamps, pitcher plants, fishing, scalloping- those are just a few of the things we’ve been talking to some of our local experts about. Of course, many of you know your corner of the panhandle better than anyone else. If you know where we should be adventuring, all you have to do is let us know…
If you missed Wednesday’s broadcast of dimensions featuring the St. Marks EcoAdventure, you can watch it again on Sunday morning at 10 AM/ ET on WFSU-TV. If you’re not watching TV on Christmas, then we’ll have it for you here next week. Happy Holidays!
Watch dimensions Wednesday, 7:30 PM/ ET to go on our latest EcoAdventure- up the St. Marks River (on WFSU-TV).
Click each flag to see a photo.
Rob Diaz de VillegasWFSU-TV
You may notice our EcoAdventures taking us further and further away from our usual dwellings In the Grass (salt marshes and seagrass beds) and On the Reef (oyster reefs). Our next couple of adventures take us up rivers, and away from the salt and the waves, and the little fiddler crabs. Yet these freshwater bodies are inextricably tied to marsh and reef ecosystems that sit in the Apalachee Bay, into where the St. Marks and Wacissa (via the Aucilla) empty.
We interviewed Cynthia in a favorite spot of hers, at the convergence of the Wakulla and St. Marks rivers. It's also this man's favorite spot to catch fish, as we found after starting our interview.
When you watch our trek to the ghost town of Magnolia, up the St. Marks, on Wednesday’s dimensions, you’ll see Captain James Hodges slow down as he passes a couple of fishermen. They tell us they are catching a pinfish. You can see that it’s a fully grown pinfish. If you set minnow traps in an oyster reef (like David Kimbro in this video) or dragged a net by a salt marsh (like Jack Rudloe does here), you can see where pinfish spend their juvenile years hiding from larger predators. Same for the mullet and redfish we spotted off of our canoes in the Wacissa. The osprey we see taking flight in Wednesday’s video depends on these fish for food. The health of the river is as dependent on these habitats as oyster reefs are dependent on rivers for fresh water to maintain a livable level of salinity.
A good stretch of the St. Marks River borders the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge. Having this protected land along his charter routes makes his tours a more profitable endeavour.
Among the beneficiaries of this interaction are people working in the ecotourism trade. The Tallahassee Community College Wakulla Center saw an economic opportunity for the county in its abundance of protected land- 73% of Wakulla is managed by state and local government. The Green Guide Certification Program gives people both the understanding of how local ecosystems work, and the business training so that they may make a living. Cynthia Paulson of Palmetto Expeditions set us up on two guided trips. The Magnolia trip airs this Wednesday, the Wacissa trip airs on January 18, 2012.
What’s not to love about oysters? They clean the water, they’re delicious, and they have surprising economic value. Members of the Kimbro Lab found this unique oyster, which itself seems very loving, on one of their study sites. “Now I’ve seen a lot of weird-shaped oysters,” says lab tech Tanya Rogers,” but never one quite this perfect. I took it on a photoshoot this evening for some nice background and lighting.”
St. Joe Bay is really jumping in the summer. People are everywhere; scalloping, fishing, kayaking and snorkeling. The people are mostly gone in the autumn, as they head back to work and school, and the weather is a little cooler. With less people to scare them off, you see more blue crabs, stingrays, and sharks swimming closer to the shore. It’s my favorite time of year to get footage there. When winter rolls around, the only people out on the water either have to be because they’re working (like Randall and her crew), or they’re just hardcore ecowarriors. It can make for difficult paddling in the winter (though this December is much milder than last year, when we shot this footage).
Super-low tide in St. Joe Bay.
The difficulty doesn’t so much stem from the cold, though it can get cold (especially for a native Floridian who thinks Massachusetts beach water is too chilly in July). The real challenge is the wind and the tides. It makes for a surreal landscape. It’s mostly devoid of living animals, at least on the surface, but that north wind does push some interesting seagrass bed denizens onto the marsh with the seagrass wrack.
As I noted earlier, it has been milder this year. Hopefully that holds for our next few EcoAdventure shoots, which include trips down the Wacissa and St. Marks rivers. And I’ve already started planning some of next year’s shoots as well, so stay tuned!
Sawtooth palmetto lining a natural levy above the Sopchoppy River.
I was walking with my wife the other day and I asked her, “Did Tallahassee always have so much fall foliage?” She assured me it did. I guess I remember seeing red and yellow leaves in past fall seasons, just not so widespread. Ever since I went with Kent Wimmer to shoot a dimensions segment on the Florida National Scenic Trail, I can’t help but notice it everywhere. You don’t get vast expanses of orange and red, like you do in New England. Instead, we get these great red and gold highlights popping out of the green. Why had I not been paying more attention to it before? I guess, just like with the salt marshes that had looked like “just a bunch of grass” to me, I don’t always notice a good thing until I get a camera on it.
Shepherd Spring is a nice spot to sit and reflect.
The depth of my obliviousness went beyond foliage. The trails we walked with Kent and the Student Conservation Association (SCA) volunteers were just off of roads I’ve been driving for years. The woods that filled the distances between destinations contained the Cathedral of Palms, and Shepherd Spring. Those are both in the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge. A little to the west in Wakulla County, it takes just a few moments to drive over the Sopchoppy River on 319. But then, a couple of weeks ago, I spent a couple of hours walking alongside it, eating sparkleberries growing by the trail. It made me think about what I might be driving by when I visit family in Miami or Tampa. This state has a huge diversity of ecosystems, and I’m realizing that although I’ve lived here over thirty years, there is a lot of Florida that I know nothing about.
Taking a stroll in the Cathedral of Palms. A slight variation in elevation makes this ground a little damper, giving palm trees an advantage over surrounding hardwood trees.
“It’s a lot different than a lot of the other trails in America.” Said Sean Ogle, Field Support Coordinator for the Florida Trail Association, “I’d say it’s the only place that has this many different types of ecosystems in such a small area.” The trail starts in the Everglades and passes through forests, palm stands like the Cathedral of Palms, and along lakes, rivers, sink holes, and salt marshes. The Florida Trail Association web site is a good resource for finding what trails are near you or to plan a trip. The FTA and its chapters across the state (the Apalachee, Suwannee, Panhandle, and Choctowhatchee chapters fall within the WFSU TV & FM spheres) maintain the trail using mostly volunteer labor. That includes the students that the SCA sends here from all over the country and locals like George Weaver, the Sopchoppy River trailmaster who guided us in the video.
I can’t wait to see what else I might have been missing out on. You can tune in to dimensions later this month (or check back here) to see my next EcoAdventure, probably in some place I’ve zipped past a million times…
Don’t know what to bring when you go hiking? Check out this video with the FTA’s Kent Wimmer.
What would you like to see as an EcoAdventure? Let us know what you’re doing out in the unpaved places of North Florida, we might want to tag along.
As I mentioned in my last update, we have been working to set up a new marsh experiment in St. Joe Bay. The goal of the experiment is to see whether the genetic diversity of marsh cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora) affects how quickly or abundantly the plants grow, or influences the number of fiddler crabs, grasshoppers, snails, and other critters (like Ibis??) that call the plants home. But what is genetic diversity, exactly, and why do we think it may be important?
A flock of Ibis resting among our experimental marsh plots.
Spartina is a clonal plant, which means that a single “individual” or clone made up of many stems can dominate a large area (low diversity), or there can be lots of different individuals mixed together (high diversity). In our surveys of marshes in the northern Gulf of Mexico, we find that there can be as few as 1 and as many as 10 clones in an area of marsh about the size of a hula-hoop. You may notice that our experimental plots are about that same size, though we used irrigation tubing rather than actual hula-hoops (not as fun, but more practical and less expensive!). We’re testing whether the differences in genetic diversity (1 vs. 10 clones) that we see in natural marshes has any influence on the marsh community.
A single experimental plot of Spartina that is 1m in diameter.
But why genetic diversity? We know from experiments by other researchers that Spartina clones grown individually differ in height, how many stems they have, and other characteristics. These same plant traits affect the critters that live in and among the plants – for example, periwinkle snails preferentially climb on the tallest plants. Because different animals may be looking for different plant traits, then having greater diversity (genetic and trait) may lead to a greater number of animal species that live in that patch of marsh. Or, a single clone may be the “best”, leading to higher numbers of animals in lower diversity areas.
A view of the existing marsh behind our experiment.
As my title alludes, this experiment has taken a long time to come to fruition, in large part because it’s impossible to look at any 2 stems in a marsh and know for certain whether they’re the same individual or not. Unlike some clonal plants such as strawberries, where there are multiple berries connected by a single above-ground “runner”, Spartina has runners (aka, rhizomes) that connect stems of the same genetic individual under the ground, making it difficult to tell which stems are connected to which. We have 2 ways to get around this problem: (1) we use small snippets of DNA (analyzed in the lab) to tell clones apart, and (2) we start with single stems that we know are different clones and then grow them separately in the greenhouse until we have lots of stems of each different clone. It’s this latter part that has delayed this experiment – it has taken much tender loving care from Robyn over the last 2 years to get our Spartina clones to grow in the greenhouse to the point that we have enough of each clone (36 small flowerpots of each, to be exact) to plant in our experiment.
Emily and Robyn work to remove existing rhizome material from around the plot edges.
But plant we finally did! With lots of help from members of the Hughes and Kimbro labs, we got all the sand in the experimental plots sieved (to remove any existing root material) and all the plants in the ground the Thursday and Friday before Thanksgiving.
Team Hug-bro (Hughes and Kimbro) helping sieve sand!
Meagan and Randall get the easy job - planting the plants.
Now we get to wait and see (and take data) whether Spartina genetic diversity matters for the marsh plant or animal community. There won’t be any quick answers – the experiment will run for at least 2 years – but we’ll be sure to keep you up-to-date!
Randall’s research is funded by the National Science Foundation.
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EcoAdventures North Florida
Tracking Red Wolves on St. Vincent Island. Paddling and snorkeling in St. Joseph Bay. Photographing limpkins on the Wacissa River. North Florida may have more outdoor adventure opportunities than anywhere else in this country. Follow us as we leave the paved world and get a little wet and dirty in diverse and fully functioning ecosystems.
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One of the Gulf's beloved animals ends up a little bit away from home: an endangered Kemp's Ridley turtle washed ashore in Europe. Listen to the full story.
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New U.S. catch limits on commercial and recreational fishing aim to help 500 marine species and keep fishing sustainable. Critics say the limits are based on bad and out-of-date science.
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