Virginia Sea Grant supports research and extension efforts to enhance ecosystem health, resilience, and sustainability.
On a warm morning last August, Ryan Schloesser and his labmate, student Lauren Nys, trawled off Oyster, VA. After a summer filled with collecting fish, they worked with experienced ease, throwing around jokes as smoothly as they tossed their nets behind the boat. What they pull up in their nets should help fisheries managers better predict the size of fish populations.
These videos show our friends at the Tidewater Oyster Gardeners Association (TOGA) assembling containers typically used in oyster gardening. Virginia Sea Grant is a proud partner with VIMS and TOGA. Together we train residents of coastal Virginia in the benefits, practice, and science of oyster gardening.
Old Dominion University professor Dick Zimmerman and his lab are developing a new model to predict where seagrass can grow in the Bay. This article features the work of communications intern Kate Schimel and photography intern Carly Rose.
On a mid-October evening, Gene Burreson, who colleagues consider “one of maybe two of the most important figures in the field” of fish and shellfish pathology, stood before a room of resource managers, industry members, scientists, and family and humbly stated, “Although this award is only given to one person, science is not done alone. I’ve been lucky that I’ve always hired good people to work with me.”
Virginia Institute of Marine Science Marine Extension Program will host two workshops to help watermen and aquaculturists put together applications for 2012 Fisheries Resource Grant funding.
Living shorelines use grasses instead of rocks to control coastal erosion, but are they big enough to provide habitat for salt marsh fishes as well? Jessica Thompson of Christopher Newport University will work with a team of four undergraduate researchers to measure the effects of living shorelines on populations of mummichog, a small fish that [...]
Virginia’s hard clam industry produces between $20 and $30 million-worth of clams annually. Iris Anderson, Mark Brush, and Mark Luckenbach of VIMS will expand upon their 2010 preliminary study of ecosystem responses to clam aquaculture and calibrate their model of how nutrient availability and transformations affect ecosystem health and clam aquaculture sustainability. The model will [...]
Delmarva’s shallow coastal lagoons are important for seagrass, fish, and human recreation, but little is known about how they will fare in a future characterized by increased nitrogen inputs. A group of regional research partners are joining forces to develop new models that will help resource managers quantify how land-use changes will alter nitrogen inputs [...]
Windmill Point Marina received Clean Marina designation on June 26, 2011. The marina, which has 96 slips, is located in White Stone, VA, the western side of the Chesapeake Bay.
As a Knauss Sea Grant Fellow with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Branch of Aquatic Invasive Species, I have been engaged in debates over possible invasive species management strategies. Rarely does a “simple” policy issue pass over my desk.
Colonial Beach Yacht Center (Colonial Beach, VA) and Chesapeake Boat Basin (Kilmarnock, VA) received Clean Marina designations this month. Virginia Institute of Marina Science and Virginia Sea Grant are proud partners of the Virginia Clean Marina Program, which recognizes marinas that voluntarily take measures to prevent or reduce pollution at their facility. There are currently 69 Clean Marinas in Virginia. Here’s more about the two newest additions to the Virginia Clean Marina family:
This fall at Deltaville Yachting Center, volunteers gathered to help the owners find a more natural way of combatting coastal erosion. See how they did it in this slideshow.
During the Spring of 2011, Virginia Sea Grant continued its Coastal and Marine Law & Policy Internship. This year’s interns, second year William & Mary law students Jennifer Lonergan and Ryan Stephens, have been working on creating a comprehensive list of state, local, and federal officials who are important to marine spatial planning on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. This has involved building from the work of past interns, who began a database of contact names, email addresses, and phone numbers of people in Eastern Shore communities, Virginia State Government, and relevant federal agencies. Jennifer and Ryan identified relevant local officials, state agencies, and federal officials in order to find key players in the region who could be instrumental in the implementation of marine spatial planning. “This project has given me substantial insight into all of the different interests involved in policy decisions,” says Ryan. Ryan and Jennifer are both returning to their studies at William & Mary after the completion of the internship.
How many fish are in the sea? For obvious reasons, it’s difficult to estimate fish populations. But Patrick Lynch and Mark Henderson are trying to figure it out. This fall, Virginia Sea Grant awarded Population Dynamics Fellowships to Lynch and Henderson, both graduate students at Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS). The fellowship, co-funded by [...]
Seagrasses in the Chesapeake Bay have been declining since the wasting disease of the 1930s. To help seagrass restorers predict which places will be the best for planting seagrasses, Richard Zimmerman and Victoria Hill of ODU and Charles Gallegos of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center will combine two models that will predict restoration success based [...]
Striped bass prefer the cool waters deep in Chesapeake Bay, but in the last 50 years, these places have experienced extensive deep-water hypoxia, or lack of oxygen. Researchers are wondering how the stress of low-oxygen zones combined with a common contagious disease might affect the survival of resident striped bass. Researchers Wolfgang Vogelbien and Mary [...]
Harmful algal blooms occur regularly in the Chesapeake Bay, and these blooms could have negative effects on oysters grown for human consumption and for restoration. Kimberly Reece, Wolfgang Vogelbein, Thomas Harris, and Ryan Carnegie, all from VIMS, will study the effects of algal bloom toxins on larval and adult oysters. By understanding the toxicity of [...]
Although scientists have determined the minimum light requirement for seagrass to grow, they don’t know how various dissolved particles affect water clarity and seagrass growth. Knowing this information could refine tools seagrass restorers use to choose places to plant grass and monitor its progress. This grant will fund a UVA graduate student to work with [...]
Ecosystem-based fisheries management incorporates information about multiple species and their habitats and interactions into a more comprehensive and accurate system for keeping fisheries sustainable. This requires good comprehensive data and analyses of the interaction between species and environmental factors. This grant will support VIMS Ph.D. student Andre Buchheister working with Robert Latour to analyze extensive [...]
Fish species such as striped bass and summer flounder can show remarkable fluctuations in abundance from year to year. The roots of these fluctuations can be found in differences in the success of spawning and the survival and health of young fish. This grant will support VIMS Ph.D. student Ryan Schloesser working with Mary Fabrizio [...]
