Site Visit

Nature Coast Aquatic Preserve staff visited Anclote Key for a site visit for the RESTORE grant for the SCAR MAPS project. The project will evaluate the effects of marking an existing pole and troll zone on private submerged lands to hopefully see a reduction in prop scar in the area. Team members of the project include Aquatic Preserve staff from Big Bend Seagrasses Aquatic Preserve, Nature Coast Aquatic Preserve, University of Florida, and the federal grant management team.  

Nature Coast staff have been deploying BRUV (Baited Remote Underwater Video) units at several of the hardbottom monitoring sites as part of the Springs Coast Resiliency and Biodiversity Monitoring Network. The BRUV is filled with sardines and deployed for a minimum of 40 minutes to record what fish populations are using the hardbottom structures through different times of the year and the different sites in that are part of the network. This snapshot comes from one of the deep hardbottom sites approximately 9 miles from shore in Nature Coast Aquatic Preserve.