The Tomoka Marsh Aquatic Preserve (TMAP) recently partnered with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), the University of Central Florida’s Coastal & Estuarine Ecology Lab (CEELAB), DEP's Tomoka State Park, the Marine Discovery Center (MDC) and the Coastal Conservation Association (CCA) Florida to install a living shoreline aimed at restoring and protecting critical coastal habitat within the preserve. The collab

A decade and a half after Franklin Fifth graders first started planting a living shoreline at ANERR. It is exciting to see that the plant formerly known as Spartina alterniflora (smooth chordgrass) is flourishing. The most recent classes to visit and plant Spartina alterniflora dug into the sand and dug into the data with equal enthusiasm.

Through the Pensacola and Perdido Bay Estuary Program’s Collaborative Science to Assess Restoration Success (C-STARS) project, our team has been investigating the relationship between living shorelines and seagrasses. At one site, Project GreenShores (PGS), a large-scale living shoreline site in downtown Pensacola, 2 different species of seagrasses (Halodule wrightii and Ruppia maritima) have been confirmed, but not mapped.

EBAP assisted a researcher and interns from Mote Marine Laboratory in their collection of seagrass samples from Estero Bay. These samples will be used to study the genetic distribution of seagrasses and to determine experimentally if any genotypes are more resilient to various stressors than others.

Big Bend kicked off its first day of seagrass surveys last week in Steinhatchee. With heavy rain threatening to brown out many of the sites, the team launched two boats and set out to sample the entire system in one day. Thanks to the help of Nature Coast Aquatic Preserve contractor Morgan Edwards, all 25 sites were completed. It was no easy task, as each site required four replicate quadrats, but the team got it done.