Where Do Baby Shellfish Go in Shinnecock Bay?

In the past week, I have visited all my field sites in Shinnecock Bay three times.  Many of you might have noticed a series of six lobster buoys at a number of locations from Heady Creek to Quantuck Bay. These are my field sites, where I travel to a few consecutive days every three weeks to see where baby shellfish — in particular, scallops, clams, and oysters — might settle within the bay. I am interested in getting a baseline for the recruitment of these little guys so we can start to answer questions about why some of these shellfish are still present and why some of them are not. I actually started a pilot study last summer, which I have blogged about here.

In the past week, a few people approached me about what exactly I was doing out there, so I thought I might explain a little more here. In order to get a handle on where baby shellfish settle, I have to build a series of collectors. However, each of the shellfish settle to different substrates, so we use three different types of collectors. One is called a "spat bag" — this is essentially a fine mesh bag that contains a larger, more rigid mesh substrate. These bags specifically target scallops, but we also see blue mussels, slipper shells, jingle shells, and barnacles on these collectors. A second collector is a series of "oyster tiles," which are just ceramic tiles attached to a PVC frame. These are specifically used to target oysters, which require a hard surface on which to settle, but these also collect mussels, slipper shells, barnacles, and tube worms. The final collector, what I call a "clam box" is just a plastic shoe box which we fill with clean playground sand and cover with a mesh window screen. These are to target clams, however, I am not sure what else they will collect, as not many researchers use this type of collector.

The spat bags and oyster tiles sit in the water for 6 weeks before sampling. This should give little babies enough time to settle and grow to a size which we can see them without microscopes. The clam boxes will remain in the water for 3 months to allow the clams, which grow much more slowly, time to reach a size that is easy to count. Last week, we collected the first set of collectors, and baby mussels dominated the baby shellfish collected. Not unexpectedly, we had large sets of mussels at sites relatively close to the inlet and prevailing currents from the inlet — this includes a site behind Warner's Island, to the west of the Ponquogue Bridge, and one to the east of the Shinnecock Inlet. Another unsurprising observation was that essentially nothing settled in Quantuck Bay or Penniman Creek, at least not on this first set of collectors.

At the end of the season — we will sample these into the fall — we will have settlement data that can let us know whether or not a lack of competent to settle larvae are available in Shinnecock Bay. If we see alot of "spat" but no adult populations, we can assume that something that happens after settlement — competiton with other species, mortality due to predation, etc. — is having an impact on the populations. If we don't see a lot of "spat" on our collectors, we can assume that a lack of larval supply is diriving low populations.

In addition to baby shellfish, though, a number of other species have taken to the collectors — including numerous snails, spider crabs, starfish, baby flounder and even a momma toadfish and her babies. Enjoy the photos!