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

On this wonderful adventure our education team took a local group of high schoolers from EdCorp out to St George Island State Park. There they investigated Vertical Oyster Gardens (VOGs) and natural oyster ecosystems. The goal for the students was to be able to identify what species are living inside or on top of oysters and what is the “big deal” about oysters. Looking for and counting spat numbers on the oysters was a big hit.

For the past five years, Northwest Florida Aquatic Preserve has been working on a grant funded by Deepwater Horizon Program’s Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) to add additional plantings of native vegetation to the islands at Project GreenShores II, place informational signage, remove invasive species and debris, and conduct monitoring.  

Oyster monitoring season is underway at the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve (GTMNERR), marking the start of another year of hands-on data collection across the Reserve’s intertidal reefs. The season began in mid-December with a volunteer training day focused on assessing oyster reef condition, including estimating percent cover and counting oyster clusters. 

Northeast Regional Aquatic Preserve Manager Irene Arpayoglou attended the Central Indian River Lagoon Living Shorelines Training Workshop, hosted by Florida Sea Grant for contractors and members of the public. The workshop explored the benefits of living shorelines, presented a range of design options and components, and guided participants through the permitting processes that make these projects possible.

Quantifying River Flow Metrics for the Apalachicola River was the focus of November’s Sci-Café webinar. Dr. Steve Leitman, who has worked on Apalachicola River issues for decades, provided an overview of a new project aimed at developing scientifically defensible river flow metrics to evaluate potential modifications to federal reservoir operations in the Apalachicola–Chattahoochee–Flint (ACF) River system.

A Franklin/Gulf County affiliation of home school students recently joined us to study oysters and other animals in the estuarine habitat. Even the youngest students are able to draw, and so it was easy to see evidence that they could understand why oysters are a keystone species.

This month was the first time that third graders from Franklin County Schools created vertical oyster gardens (VOGs) as part of their annual field trip that focuses on oysters as a keystone species in our bay. These oyster gardens were created with the help of Oyster Corps and their representatives.

Indian River Lagoon Aquatic Preserve (IRLAP) staff, under the direction of Emily Surmont, conducted biobox monitoring in the Indian River Lagoon as part of an on-going collaborative research project with the University of Florida, Florida Oceanographic Society and Smithsonian Marine Institute.