It's good to be back in the Keys

Ah, back in the Keys again for the summer. After a long and harrowing trip down last Saturday, TJ and I arrived to bright sunny skys, azure blue water, and fish looking at us pleadingly from the water (please fish for me, please). Before we could go fishing though (okay, after we went fishing, but only once. . . ), we needed to to do a bit of work to start off the summer, namely check the collectors for baby lobsters (or puerulus postlarvae as we lobster nerds like to say). We picked up our intrepid leader (Michael) from the airport in Miami on Tuesday and headed out to check the collectors on Friday, which had been floating on the ocean side of Long and Matecumbe Keys since late March of this year, accumulating lots of algae, sediment, and yes, tiny, clear, and exceedingly cute baby lobsters like the one you see on my finger above. Forget baby dolphins, baby lobsters are way cuter. . .


Checking collectors, such as the one you see above could be construed as hard work, even on a gorgeous sunny day like yesterday. First the boat approaches the collector, moving into the wind. Next Pete reaches down with a giant bag and captures the collector, which is floating about a foot under the water. TJ unhooks the whole shootin' match from the anchor and Pete hauls it all on board. Next, each section of the collector (sheets of genuine hogs hair filter material made for industrial air handling units) is checked meticulously for little lobsters, many of which are completely transparent.


Some, like those you see above, are a bit easier to spot. The little stripy lobsters are 1st, 2nd, and 3rd stages, which have probably been on the collectors for over a month now. After checking, the collectors go back into the water for another few days, before they are pulled again. After 28 collectors, my arms felt like they were about to fall off. But it was all worth it for the little buggers you see below.


The striped pattern on the lobster helps it hid in the algae habitat it normally would settle in, but makes it stand out a bit against the blue hogs hair. All the better for us. We had a pretty good haul and ended up with about 450 lobsters total in two buckets.


What can I say. I was a hot day and I was really dirty. . . not a bad time for a swim once that 28th collector was back in the water. After we got back to the house, we tagged all the lobsters with a little magnetic piece of wire. A very expensive and delicate machine injects these through the needle you see below into the tail of the lobster. We can then release these tiny modified Robo-lobsters back on to our sites. Every month, we will take the metal detector and check each lobster to see if it is one that we released.


Not bad for a day's work. Tomorrow we seed the lobsters onto the sites, should be fun!

The New Lab Logo

Welcome to the B.E.E.R. Lab. Our new lab logo designed by Dr. Pete Bouwma touts Behavioral Ecology and Evolution Research at Clemson University. Adorned with the research subjects from the Childress & Ptacek labs, this logo has found its way onto an entire line of Zazzle.com products. Click here to place your order http://www.zazzle.com/pbouwma/

Benthic Ecology Meeting 2008

The 2008 Benthic Ecology Meeting was held in Providence, RI; a very long 16 hour drive across 10 states (SC, NC, VA, WV, MD, PE, NJ, NY, CN, RI). Kirk, TJ, Pete and Michael all made presentations and enjoyed visiting with friends old and new. Photo by Janessa Cobb.

The Childress lab gets into the spirit of the Beach Party BEM banquet with a furious game of beachball volleyball. We always knew those Hawaiian shirts would come in handy someday. Photo by Janessa Cobb.

Final Days in the Keys

Tommorow TJ, Sara, and I head back to SC to return to our normal lives after 3 fantastic weeks in the Keys. We are all quite sore and tired from hauling concrete around for the last few days, but all is finished: 40 larval collectors are in the water off Lower Matecumbe Key and Long Key, all of the control blocks are nicely re-fitted with pieces of wood, octopuses are tattooed, and the entire census is completed. Plus we got a few days of fishing in and a trip to Key West as well. Not too bad for 3 weeks, considering the iffy weather we had most of the time down here. Long drive to Clemson tomorrow, but we leave tired and aching, but very happy and bit more tan (+ plus a few weird burns where we missed with the sunscreen).Glad we weren't in the water this day. When the wind blows hard from the south like it did on Monday and Tuesday, we start seeing Portugese Men-o-war showing up in near shore. The wind catches the sail on top and drags them off the open ocean. We saw close to 50 in the last few days.Ah, the very last of 40 collectors gets deployed. . .And the field crew rejoices! No more collectors (for a little while). As you can tell from the chalky-looking water, this was a pretty nasty day to be on the boat. It was beautiful on shore. Pretty typical in the Keys, the nicest days on shore are the lousiest on the water.With that finished in the morning, we were able to put in a few hours of fishing in the afternoon with Cindy's boyfriend Joe and his daughter Riona. We caught 2 of these sandbar sharks, one of which broke Joe's rod. This one fought TJ forever and was still pretty feisty when we brought it on the boat to remove TJ's precious hook. No pictures of that part since TJ and I were in hand-to-fin combat with the shark. Fortunately everyone is doing fine, shark included. After this, I even managed to land some ladyfish using a topwater plug. Not a bad day and not a bad trip in general. Back again in May!

A Long and Winding River

The Ashepoo River is the longest black water river in the US. Over the past two weeks Kirk's team surveyed for blue crabs over more than 48 miles from St. Helena Sound to Horseshoe Creek. Neither wind, nor faulty wiring could prevent the team from completing the survey.

Building modified crab pots behind the McKinzie Field Station at Bennet's Point, SC.

Aligators appear on the banks of the Ashepoo at a salinity where the blue crabs begin to disappear.

Looking forward to our next visit to the ACE Basin National Estuarine Research Reserve.

Down in the Keys in March

After 2 weeks and a few days, Peter, TJ, and Sara are done with the community censuses! Good thing too, because the weather has just gone down the tubes. Wind just kicked up to 20 kts under a sunny sky. Our various itchy spots are thanking us for a day with out knees planted firmly in hydroids, cuts from lobsters, or bites from octopus (Sara got bitten by a little one). Just a few more blocks to replace and some collectors to put out and we are finished for this trip. Tonight we celebrate St. Patrick's day here in the Keys with some green beer at the Dead Animal Bar. In the meantime, here are some photos of the expedition. Back to SC next Saturday!
Here is a nice block, just waiting to have some wooden pegs driven into it. It will most likely just break my heart when it decides to split in half on the very last peg. Why wait until all the rest are in? Why!?Sara shows off her newly acquired octopus bling bling. Although you can't see it, the arm the octopus autotomized (dropped) is still wiggling and sucking on to things. I'm sure this will be all the rave next fall.This is a spotted cleaner shrimp in a sun anemone. It didn't seem real pleased by the interruption, but we ended up getting along just fine. Nice to see a few sun anemones on our sites this time down.This is the way that inshore hardbottom is supposed to look back in Florida Bay rather than the wasteland left at our sites that were impacted by the sponge kill/die off. Beautiful vase sponge and soft corals.

Catching Crabs in the Ashepoo

After much work preparing the boat and pots, Kirk gets started with his project to census the blue crabs of the ACE Basin National Esturine Research Reserve. This research will track the distribution of juvenile and adult crabs along the Ashepoo and Edisto rivers from St. Helena Sound to the freshwater boundary. Joe Bisesi shows his tiger pride while helping to measure the catch.