The Decline of Seagrass Meadows 
Eelgrass, Zostera marina, is a flowering, marine vascular plant that remains submerged all the time. This is quite a feat for vascular flowering plants, and only a few dozen species world wide are capable of growing completely submerged in a marine environment. Eelgrass creates and extremely important habitat, its upright structures and complex root system create a 3-D living space for many different types of animals. It is (or was) the dominant habitat forming SAV (submerged aquatic vegetation) throughout much of the coastal waters in the northeastern United States. Unfortunately, for various reasons, eelgrass meadows have seen drastic declines, and in many locations eelgrass only exists in a mosaic of small patches. This is extremely bad news as many of the important, and formerly important, commercial and recreational fisheries of the northeast US are dependent on Zostera at some part of their life cycle as a nursery and foraging ground. Some of the species are finfish like tautog, bluefish, fluke, winter flounder, porgies, while others are shellfish such as blue mussels, hard clams, oysters, bay scallops, and blue crabs. Many of the aforementioned species support or once supported vibrant fisheries. Many of those fisheries have collapsed, also for various reasons. However, is it possible there is a link between the crash of the fisheries, the decline of Zostera and the failure for recovery on both ends? Bay Scallop on Eelgrass 
Bay Scallops, Argopecten irradians , have developed a very close relationship with eelgrass, Zostera marina. As larvae, they are passively transported, and tend to settle in eelgrass meadows when the current is dampened by the 3D structure of the seagrass. This same 3D structure provides post-set juvenile scallops a spatial refuge from predation. Even as larger juveniles and adults, scallops are capable of, and have been shown to, actively select eelgrass habitats. Other species also use eelgrass 
A number of other species utilize eelgrass as a habitat. Included are grass shrimp, like the Palaemonetes pugio, other decapods such as blue crabs, bivalves such as hard clams, gastropods (snails), and numerous fish species, including winter flounder, tautog and cod.
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By JohnnyScallops, on January 23rd, 2012%
So I have returned from Jamaica, which ended up a pretty cool trip. Unfortunately, the internet was slow and made loading images difficult, so I wanted to put another few photos up from my trip before I start talking about my research some more in the coming months. Good news, manuscript reviews came back, and were pretty positive, some moderate changes and it should get published. Another manuscript is getting ready for submission, and I am starting to get stuff written. But before I go on about that sort of thing, just enjoy these new photos from diving in Jamaica!
 school of jacks  sea turtle!  anemone shrimp  nudibranch  flamingo tongue  LIONFISH!!!  crab in the sponge  My favortie! A scallop spat on a dead sea biscuit  the hunt
By JohnnyScallops, on January 14th, 2012%
Lets see, Thursday we went to the Dunn’s River Falls as a break from the daily grind here at the marine lab. That was a lot of fun.
 Bottom of the falls  Look at me! Then in the last 2 days I have put in 7 dives, 4 outside the reef and 2 in the lagoon and one on the other side of Discovery Bay. I have seen many cool things, collected cool shells, so its been pretty fun. I had some issues with my camera at the Rio Bueno dive yesterday, so my pictures didn’t come out so well, although I was lucky to get a few shots.
 Peek-a-boo  Anemone Shrimp  Anemones! Today we did 2 dives on the fore-reed and 2 within Discovery Bay. Outside the reef I logged over 2 hours of bottom time, and took many, many pictures. More anemone shrimp, lionfish, gastropods, and lots more. Enjoy!
 Some star  Another goby of some sort  Flamingo's toungue!  LIONFISH!
By JohnnyScallops, on January 11th, 2012%
So yesterday was a little rough… I mean the weather wasn’t terrible, but there was still some swell from the days of wind previous. So during our safety stop, I was feeling it a little bit, so I only did the one dive and took an early boat ride back.
Today, sea was almost like glass, did 2 dives outside on the fore-reef, and then one inside the lagoon. Saw some cool things – invasive lionfish, big schools of creole wrasses, bluehead wrasses, giant queen cocnh, and lots of other fish. However, this site was fairly impacted, so not so much live coral as the reef I saw yesterday. Oh well. Was still fun to get 2 dives in outside and not feel like total crap. And diving in the lagoon was cool, despite it being so shallow, it was nice to be able to lay down and just look. In the lagoon, we saw inking sea hares, a peacock flounder, yellow ring sting ray, little crabs, another sharptail eel, spiny lobster, and lots more fish. So cool.
I haven’t loaded my pictures from today yet, but I’ll leave you with a few more photos from earlier in the week/weekend.
Enjoy!
 French Grunt
 Some sort of small bass, dunno the name  Indigo Hamlet  Common octopus?  Lesser electric ray  Mating sea hares  Lizardfish!
By JohnnyScallops, on January 9th, 2012%
So we have been extremely busy since we arrived. We have essentially crammed a coral reef ecology class into 4 days, which was overwhelming for the students. Their practical exam is this afternoon, so they are all cramming and freaking out a little bit. I have tried to quell some of their anxiety, but at least by this evening, the lecture and exam portion of their class will be over. In between lectures, we have been snorkeling, and today I did my first dives since arriving. So that’s good. The students will start their projects tomorrow, and have ~1.5 weeks to conduct a research project. The weather (wind) hasn’t been very good, so hopefully we get more dive opportunities, but the lagoon has been pretty cool.
Some things I’ve seen:
 Red Mangrove  Sharptail eel More photos to come, but internet here is incredibly slow so I am having a hard time uploading. But, you should check out the student run blog to see what they have been seeing/doing as well.
By JohnnyScallops, on January 4th, 2012%
So we landed in Jamaica this afternoon. When we left New York it was below freezing, and when we arrived in Jamaica it was over 80 Fahrenheit, so that was a nice change. It was about an hour (exciting) bus ride from the Montego Bay Airport to the Discovery Bay Marine Lab, where we will be staying for the next 17 days. We took a little tour of the facility, had excellent dinner, and then met with the class to go over the syllabus. It is intense. We essentially are fitting a 3 credit course into 2 and a half weeks, and the next 4 days are going to be intensive lectures, because the meat of this course is in student run projects and experiments, so we want them to have as much time as they can get to work on data collection. So, I am trying to squeeze a basic intro to ecological thought into 100 slides for my lectures tomorrow (haha try that!), so that the terms we will used throughout won’t be foreign to the students. Then, I am giving lectures on marine algae, coral reef fish ecology, seagrasses, mangroves, and food webs. Within the next 3 days. So yeah, I’ll be as busy as the students.
We’ll be going snorkeling tomorrow, so stay tuned for pictures of that. Well I hope. Internet here is slow and spotty, so most of my pictures will likely have to wait until I make it back home. But I can’t wait to use my home made slurp gun, aka yabbie pump, to try and catch marine critters (you can watch a build your own video here). Yes!
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About me  I am a marine biologist that is currently attending graduate school at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Marine Sciences Research Center, of Stony Brook University, New York. I am very interested in marine ecology and have been focusing my studies on bay scallop interactions with their habitats. I plan to investigate various anthropogenic impacts on bay scallop populations for my PhD dissertation. This blog will highlight the details of my graduate research, from bay scallop-eelgrass interactions as previously mentioned, to alternative habitats for scallops, such as Codium, to trophic cascades, and more. Enjoy! Artificial Seagrass Is a useful experimental tool to mimic natural seagrass while controlling many factors, such as density, canopy height, leaf number, which are usually confounding in natural eelgrass meadows.
Scallops seem to love this stuff!
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