Spattering back to life

2010 was a great year for oysters in the Chesapeake Bay. According to the MD DNR's annual oyster survey, recruitment rates and oyster survival were the highest since 1985 (MD DNR press release). 1997 also saw an exceptional spatfall (spat are recently settled oysters that "rain" out of the water column) but only on the eastern shore oyster bars, whereas this year, oysters recruited throughout the Bay, even in lower salinity waters where recruitment events are rare. Dermo and MSX diseases, major sources of mortality for Bay oysters, were at a low. I'm looking forward to getting back in the Rhode River at SERC to see if any recruits came our way (although the Rhode is never a major area for oyster production).

The MD DNR oyster survey has been conducted since 1939, one of the longest running of its kind, and includes 260 oyster bars.

Cranes in the marsh

I spent a lot of time on I-95 this Thanksgiving weekend. A lot of time. However, in the throng of grumpy travellers, there was a happy sight for which I was thankful. And this small delight came when I least expected it - when traversing the badly degraded Hackensack Meadowlands, which is generally, for me, a mournful crossing. The sight: cranes on the marsh. Not avian cranes...construction cranes!

There is a massive restoration taking place on the Richard Kane Wetlands, where the Meadowlands Conservation Trust and EarthMark Mitigation Services are removing invasive Phragmites, reconnecting tidal creeks, and planting salt marsh grasses on >200 acres of brackish marsh. The area is large - the photo below (a good one, no? I was pleased with it.) does not capture the full area being restored. This work is financed as a "mitigation bank" - companies or agents (in this case, mostly transportation agencies) degrading or destroying wetlands in other places compensate by paying for the restoration improvements. It is positive that this approach can fund truly large scale restoration efforts. However, these positive advances come at the cost of continued wetland degradation and destruction elsewhere. Is this tradeoff the best option for funding restorations?

Eaten to death: salt marshes in Cape Cod

Eric Van Arsdale, a senior at Brown University working with my graduate advisor Mark Bertness, published an excellent op-ed in the Cape Cod times about salt marsh die-off, which is caused by runaway consumption of marsh grass by the nocturnal squareback marsh crab, Sesarma reticulatum. In his article, Eric mentioned a cool You-Tube video of the crab's nighttime activities that I'm re-posting here.

Travels to the South and the North

I've been traveling these past two weeks, first to a TNC workshop in lovely Sanibel Island, Florida, and then to the equally lovely city of Chicago, where I met the other Smith Fellows for a retreat at the Lincoln Park Zoo (LPZ).

Appropriately, we spent the majority of our time at the LPZ in the Great Ape House, where we saw an experiment examining taste preference in chimpanzees. A false termite mound in the chimp enclosure is seeded with different sauces - peanut butter, bbq, ketchup, vinegar - and the scientists can do taste tests to see what flavors chimps prefer, and how the social structure of the chimp group affects an individual's access to condiment resources.

The chimpanzees use sticks to access the condiments, and we saw what zoo intern (a term which does her extensive knowledge and experience no justice) Kathy described as "the most explicit demonstration of tool sharing [she] had ever witnessed," when a crafty adolescent female chimp, coaxed by submissive smiles and an outstretched palm, passed her stick to her mother. How I failed to get this momentous instant on camera is completely beside me.

Instead, here are a few photos of the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge in Sanibel, where I cleverly brought my camera.

Invasions

I was hanging with the folks from the Invasions Lab at SERC today, and it reminded me of several photos that I took in the Boqueria in Barcelona, an open-air food market with a heck of a seafood selection. In with the medley of clams, snails, and squid, there was even a green crab (invasive in the northeastern U.S., among other places) - no doubt, an accidental tourist.

Around the lab at SERC

This year, I've moved my home (to Washington, DC), my job (to Smithsonian Environmental Research Center), and my field sites (to the Chesapeake Bay), with many of opportunities to see coastal mid-Atlantic flora and fauna. Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay are rich with life - here are a few photos. (Of course, I've yet to catch on camera many good sightings - blue-tailed skinks, great blue herons, bald eagles, swallowtail butterflies, luna moths, and watersnakes, to name a few. More photos will come later!)

Mi casa es su casa, caterpillar

I saw these house-building caterpillars last week outside of my office at SERC in Edgewater, MD. Anyone know the species? I will rear a few out to adults to figure it out. I'll post here if I can figure it out. Please let me know or post a comment if you recognize it!

UPDATE July 7, 2010: Dean Janiak helped me find it on bugguide.net - It's a bagworm moth, genus Thyridopteryx!