November 9, 2013

On November 9, 2013 we arrived on site, at GTMNERR, around 8am. Our main focus was collecting our settlement trays for oyster spat settlement and benthic fauna. We began by pulling up our trays behind the restoration site and moved down the shoreline pulling up all the trays. When we pulled up the trays we removed the bricks, then put the oyster shells for oyster spat in bags and then stored them on ice. After the bricks were removed we poured the contents on the trays into a mesh filter to remove the oyster shell and allow the organisms to fall through. In some of the trays we found a couple fish and a few crabs, but most of the organisms consisted of shrimp. Dr. Smith was able to identify one of the crab species to be an exotic species of interest. All of the organisms were bagged and put on ice to be identified back at the lab. We were also fortunate enough to get our transects of fiddle crab burrows, thanks to Julianne and Nadja. Once all of our data was collected we went back to the lab to try and finish up our core samples as well as start on our identification of the organisms found in the settlement trays. Overall it was another long day, around seven hours, but we were able to get a lot accomplished. We still have a good amount of work left, but we are moving at a good pace and have an efficient flow within our team.