Happy Holidays from KML

Heddy & Lisa are keeping track of everyone's wish-list

Bill & Dave have Santa's sleigh in fine working order

Andrew & Cindy are keeping an eye on the weather forecast and sharp look-out for any stray reindeer

The staff at KML wish you all a Happy Holiday Season and look forward to seeing y'all in the New Year!

Students from University of Mainz, Germany

Professors Bernhard Lieb, Frank Depoix, and Bettina Ebner, from the Department of Zoology at the University of Mainz, led a group of 20 students on an extended field trip to Keys Marine Lab. Using KML as their home base, they explored a variety of tropical habitats. The students enthusiastically snorkeled mangrove, reef, and near-shore hard-bottom habitats in spite of unseasonably cool temperatures.

Students embarked on the self-guided tour of the former settlement at Indian Key State Park

...and explored the rocky intertidal zone at Indian Key

They collected and identified various marine flora and fauna and tried their hand at several collection and sampling techniques. The group also took some time to venture up to the Everglades, and of course, to Key west. As they departed, they were already talking about bringing another group next year.

Lower Keys Lionfish Derby

This past weekend KML staff participated in the 1st Annual Lower Keys Lionfish Derby sponsored by REEF, and placed 2nd out of 18 teams for most lionfish collected with 21!!

Follow the link below to see the complete results...

http://www.reef.org/lionfish/derbies/keysresults

The team hit the water bright and early in Long Key and had to be in Key West to have their lionfish counted and measured by sundown.



You can see that Andrew, Bill, and Cindy were glad to do their part to remove the invasive fish from the Florida Keys waters and also enjoyed eating their catch at the banquet.

Mooching Manatee

We found this big ol' manatee slurping the trickle of fresh water as we flushed our engines today! He looked in great shape, with no visible prop scars but lots of barnacles on his back. We don't normally encourage them into such close association with boats by offering them fresh water from a dock hose.

2010 Long Key Sea Turtle Nesting Season

With the end of another sea turtle nesting season the volunteers of Save-A-Turtle look back at the long and busy summer on Long Key beach.



The crack team was made up of Cindy Lewis (KML staff scientist on for her 1st official season), Nancy Godshall (Long Key Condo resident and self-proclaimed "Turtle Nazi"), and The Crowders (KML staff scientist Andrew, FWRI's biologist Whitney, and their son Finlee back for his 2nd season).



As you can see below Finlee is well on his way to following in his parents footsteps of tracking the "turtles", which was one of his first words!



The group walked the beach every morning again from mid-April to the end of October and marked a record high 49 crawls with 13 of those being nests. The first nest was laid May 11th and the last couple of nests weren't laid until July 19th and 29th, which is much later than any other previous few years. This was possibly due to the cold weather event the Keys experienced this winter and the sea water temperatures taking longer to warm up.


The nesting to false crawl ratio of 26.5% was the lowest percentage that had been seen in the last 3 years and far behind last year where the ratio was over 40% (11 nests and 16 false crawls).



Of the 1420 eggs that were surveyed by the team 860 loggerhead sea turtles hatched, which is over a 60% success rate. However that was down over 17% from the year before mostly due to 2 nests being over-washed by extremely high tides and one nest being destroyed by raccoons. Above you can see the nests that were affected by the high tides and were inundated with saltwater.



The group was encouraged by such a high number of crawls (only 25 and 27 the two previous years), and looks forward to next season where hopefully there will be even more nests!

FGCU students experience KML's Living Lab

Marine Ecology students from Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Meyers, visited KML to get hands-on experience in a marine environment. Led by their professor, Dr. Micheal Parsons, they participated in KML's Living Laboratory Project (see KML website for more details). Students learned first-hand the challenges of laying out a site grid and doing belt transects and point counts while snorkeling, at 2 of the selected sites.

Actual data collected by the students will be added to the growing data base for the project and can be compared to previous assessments at each site.

Also down from FGCU was Dr. Robert Erdman's Invertebrates class. Students snorkeled various habitats, including seagrassbeds, mangroves, intertidal zones, and patch reefs, collecting and identifying animals for their studies. One of the days' highlights included the thrill of observing an 8' Hammerhead chasing fish near-by!

Science Meets Management in the Keys

KML staff scientists were available to answer questions at the Keys Marine Lab display

Nearly 300 researchers and managers converged on Hawk's Cay Resort on Duck Key in October to attend a conference and workshops on the Marine Ecosystems of the Florida Keys, "Linking Science to Management". Celebrated researcher, Jeremy Jackson, was the keynote speaker for the event. Special focus of this first-time-ever conference was on resource issues important to the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and the Dry Tortugas National Park. Topics presented in nearly 50 talks included climate change science, reef restoration and ecology, fish and invertebrate ecology, food web structure, hardbottom and grassbed habitats and ecology, spatial management and marine zoning, oceanography and water quality, regional connectivity, and fisheries management. Two interactive poster sessions, featuring nearly 150 posters, followed the day's talks and provided a stimulating backdrop for scientific networking. The conference was a huge success, judging by the numerous requests for "a next time"!

Tortugas Take Two

The FWRI's Finfish group just returned from another successful 10 day trip to the Dry Tortugas National Park aboard KML's R/V Diodon.



The group visited over 60 sites (which included 9 sites at Riley's Hump in the Tortugas South Ecological Reserve over 18 miles from Fort Jefferson) and conducted 65 research dives during the span of 8 days in the field with AVERAGED sustained wind speed just over 20 mph. As you can see below even the fish were impressed with just how very hard the team worked!


The goal of this trip was to again retrieve, download, and replace acoustic receivers (Vemco VR2) at various locations throughout the park that are tracking the movements of tagged fish, mainly snappers and groupers, but are also recording other researchers' animal movements such as sea turtles and sharks.



The early returns of the data have shown that mutton snappers that reside near Fort Jefferson in the newly formed Research Natural Area (RNA) are traveling back and forth between there and the group's sites at Riley's Hump that are known to have spawning aggregations in the summer months.



KML staff was again happy to be involved in this research and looks forward to possible trips with FWRI scientists in the future.

Hot Summer Nights on the Reef

M. faveolata colonies tented in anticipation of the annual mass coral spawning event

Once again, Dr. Mary Alice Coffroth, from the State University of New York at Buffalo, staged her coral spawning research out of KML. Coordinating an army of 30 AAUS divers and snorkelers from multiple institutions, researchers assembled out at Looe Key Reef for the anticipated Acropora palmatta (elkhorn) spawning after the August full moon (Aug 25-28). But no luck this year!

Divers placing mesh nets over coral heads prior to spawning

Meanwhile, another team of divers traveled each evening to Cheeca Rocks on KML's R/V Diodon to capture the Montastrea faveolata (mountainous star coral) spawning event Aug 27- Sept 1. Success! The spawn was brought back to KML's Wet Lab and reared in special chambers of circulating filtered seawater, until ready to settle on ceramic tiles.

First coral rearing Kreisel is up and running!

Coral rearing activities in KML's Wet Lab

The new coral recruits will be used in various experiments to study algal symbiont uptake and selectivity both in the field and at the University of Miami coral nursery.

Divers setting out tiles with newly-settled coral recruits
and

Spectacular sunset from Cheeca Rocks

The Summer of Sharks

This summer KML has been glad to again be a part of Dr. Neil Hammerschlag's shark research.

Dr. Hammerschlag is from the University of Miami's R.J. Dunlap Marine Conservation Program and his work focuses on examining shark biology, population dynamics, and habitat utilization which are all needed to ensure their conservation and improve their management.

The group has gone out 10 times with KML on the R/V Diodon to locations off the reef near Long Key, in Hawk Channel, bayside near Conch Key, and in the Everglades. All trips have been very successful and they have been able to collect data on over 60 sharks and even satellite tag 3 of them (2 Hammerheads and a Bull). Follow the link below to see where Chad, Rose, and Sandy are heading...

http://www.rjd.miami.edu/learning-tools/follow-sharks/

Last month a news crew from CNN accompanied Hammerschlag's group along with a troop of high school volunteers that are always eager to learn more about the ocean's top predators. CNN's story is about how the sharks are responding to the oil spill and the implications it may have. Follow the link below to see the story...

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/06/28/oil.spill.sharks/index.html?hpt=T2

The KML staff is looking forward to assisting the group with their upcoming research trips next month.