Estuarine & Marine Benthic studies of the New Jersey Coast, Life in the Sea.

1. Estuarine & Marine Benthic studies of the New Jersey Coast, Life in the Sea. Tony Castagna, Peter Gan, Dr. Peter Straub The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey The Estuarine Eco-system is fragile, valuable, diverse, and readily available for study. The Estuarine/ Bay was observed in this study for getting a better understanding of the habitat of the organisms found there. Many species were photographed, some were analyzed for photosynthetic properties. The estuary is a tidal meeting zone for the fresh/brackish water coming from the rivers, and the salty water coming from the ocean. The estuary has a fluctuating salinity but this range is within tolerable measures for many organisms. The estuary environment provides for a relatively safe, as far as hiding places are concerned, nursing ground for many juvenile species. The Marine Eco-System makes for a vast amount of dwelling places and the shear water volume and ranges of depth, temperature, salinity , and nutrient concentration make it a very diverse community. In this study the Marine/ ocean eco-system was observed and photographed to document species found and to help further research toward many other projects going on in the Stockton College community. The species found here are predominantly adult. With no coincidence our N.J. artificial reef program is helping the populations of fish and many other organisms have a place to call home, live and multiply. Many of our “reefs” were accidental but that makes no difference to the species that thrive on the abundance the they attract. 3 2 1 Orange sponge l We find a Northern Diamondback Terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin terrapin) digging in the sandy shore of a beach (1) in the bay, she is preparing to lay her eggs. With any luck these eggs will hatch in 7-10 weeks and the hatchlings will need to quickly become adapted to life, both as predator and prey. A large female Horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus), this is mating season and egg laying season as well, the horseshoe crab waits until a full moon tide to lay her eggs high on the sandy estuary shores (2). Buried much shallower than the terrapin, a great number of these fat and nutrient rich eggs will be used as a food source for many shore birds. The struggle of the horseshoe crab continues as their numbers have depleted greatly since the high harvest rates in the 1990’s, using the horseshoe crab as bait for more desirable catches. A juvenile flounder (3), these fish start out as any other with eyes on both sides of it’s body, however as it matures one eye migrates over and the flounder then spends most of it’s life hiding in the sandy and muddy bottom awaiting for an appropriate prey. A colony of anemone gently grazing on the passing by plankton, these anemone are quite satisfied to have a solid structure to attach to. Some of these Cnidarians are also hunters capable of paralyzing prey and drawing them in to be consumed. A colony of North Atlantic Star Coral is embedded on this part of the wreck, just as it is in more tropical locations every square centimeter of space that can be attached to will be, if not yet then just give it some time. These sturdy deep water facultative symbionts have become well adapted to deep cold water life and are continually making their presence known. Tube worm G h O S T P O T 6 4 5 Sea Star, Hermit Crab The bay and ocean are facing a new dilemma for our sea creature co-habitants on this planet of mostly water, discarded and/or lost harvest devices. This “ghost pot” as it is known because the trap is still viable and it has no surface dob/float. There have been efforts to put into legislation a means for allowing these traps to have biodegradable pieces in the frame so as to allow for a possible escape for any organism that became trapped in a pot that could never be tended. It would be like walking freely into an inescapable prison and living out the rest of your life there! The advances made in the biodegradable mesh that is supposed to help in this situation is proving to be not as degradable as it needs to be, it so happens that the iron rungs that hold the pots together are rusting apart faster than the mesh is degrading. These ghost pots not only cause for unnecessary death of marine life they also pose a problem during low tide periods when they were lost in a shallow region and are at risk of causing great damage to any vessel that might pass over it. Harvesting these Ghost pots may not be an option, with a greater concern for the marine life the best way to help cope with these ghost pots could be to leave them in place and simply use some wire snips to cut a fairly large (10cmX20cm) this would cause relief to the organisms trapped inside and leave the pot behind as a type of safe artificial reef. Many of these ghost pots were found during back bay Side Scan Sonar sweeps. Blue claw crab (Callinectes sapidus) Red Algae (4), growing in fair abundance is found being influenced by the shallow fast moving tide. Shallow clean water helps this and many other photosynthetic organisms thrive in this part of the estuary, known as the eelgrass beds. In some areas the eelgrass is so thick that you can see nothing else. Our underwater PAM is being used for the first time to take some initial measurements of the local underwater photosynthesizers, sea lettuce is shown here going through a photometric assay for fluorescence (5). American eelgrass (Zostera marina) the primary carbon fixer (6), and Yellow boring sponge (7) (Cliona celata), green algae (8), amphipods (9) also make up the inhabitants of this nutrient rich eco-system. The Underwater PAM (10) at work. American Spider Crab, (Pyromaia tuberculata) 7 10 8 9 I would like to thank Captain Steve Evert, the Faculty, the Crew, and the RV Gannet for a great journey in education and discovery. Frilled Anemone