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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Remember when Ghostwriter was an after school show…
By JohnnyScallops, on November 17th, 2010
 On PBS. It was awesome (and I use that term loosely)! You remember the one, a group of kids would get clues from a ghost who could only rearrange letters that were available in their settings (hence, Ghostwriter) that helped them solve mysteries?
Well as posted over on the Southern Fried Science page, there is a disturbing trend in American colleges and universities. Apparently, a lot, and I mean A LOT of students are utilizing ghostwriters. And yes, if you guessed that ghostwriters are not ghosts who communicate by rearranging letters like the old show, than you are right! Apparently, companies generate large amounts of money by employing teams of writers to write any paper on any subject, from proposals to term papers to full theses, all for a fee. It seems as though more and more students are utilizing these “resources.” This was highlighted in a first person expose of sorts, in a blog post to the Chronicle of Higher Education (A+ for being another Chronicle!), entitled The Shadow Scholar, one of these ghostwriters speaks up. Its an interesting story, and makes you stop to think. How big is this problem? How do we address it? Who is to blame?
I’ll just leave you with this quote from the article to entice you to check it out if you have not yet already:
“You’ve never heard of me, but there’s a good chance that you’ve read some of my work. I’m a hired gun, a doctor of everything, an academic mercenary. My customers are your students. I promise you that. Somebody in your classroom uses a service that you can’t detect, that you can’t defend against, that you may not even know exists.”
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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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I can think of a few papers I have read that I seriously questioned….although I couldn’t find a good reason to question the student. This is disturbing.