We Have Plans for You This Saturday!

OceanWise: An Evening for the Estuaries

Are you facing another mundane weekend at home? We have a wonderful solution for you! The Friends of the GTM Research Reserve invite you to join us for a signature evening event in one of the most beautiful settings northeast Florida has to offer. The evening begins at 6 pm Saturday, October 13, with a beer and wine cocktail reception featuring live music by the Dunehoppers, a St. Augustine based Folk, Bluegrass, Swing, Blues, and Old Time String Band.

The evening will continue with a delectable variety of ocean-friendly sustainable seafood prepared by select chefs from some of our favorite local restaurants. It doesn't stop there! Participate in our exciting silent auction to benefit education, research and stewardship at the GTM Research Reserve, and celebrate with featured honoree Jim Kern, Wildlife Photographer, Author, Conservationist, and Founder of the Florida Trail Association and the American Hiking Society.

Come join us in this opportunity to support the GTM Research Reserve while enjoying an evening of live music, good food, drink and fun!

Details and Registration:

When-

Saturday October 13, 2012

6:00 PM to 9:00 PM EDT

Where-

GTM Research Reserve

Environmental Education Center

505 Guana River Rd.

Ponta Vedra Beach, FL 32082

Donation Amount-

$50 per person

Dress code-

Cocktail Attire

For Information Call-

904-823-4527

Or email-

GTM_Friends@gtmnerr.org

Registration Link-
http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?llr=8px5tmeab&oeidk=a07e6308vyzabf38ae4

Please note: Registration is processed through PayPal. If you do not have a PayPal account use the guest option on the PayPal page.

Thank You to Our 2012 OceanWise Sponsors:

Nature Nut’s Tech Corner

Illustration by Jean Bitting, 2012

 Do you feel like your inner nature nut and techie geeks are at odds with each other? Are you looking for a fresh new way to explore nature?  Are you a technophobe looking for a way to start plugging in? Perhaps you wish you had a way to inspire today’s technologically bound youth to re-connect with the natural world surrounding them? Whatever your current relationship with the ever-changing world of technology might be, our new Nature Nut’s Tech Corner is the perfect resource to help you get your geek on with nature!  Visit us on the last Friday of each month, right here, as we spotlight a new field tested application.

Nature Viewing Along the Great Florida Birding and Wildlife Trail

This month we are encouraging you to check out the Nature Viewing Along the Great Florida Birding and Wildlife Trail application (Also known as the Nature Viewing in Florida application for Android). This application, which is put out by Natural Guides, LLC and can be downloaded for free on both iPhone and Android platforms, helps you to identify the birds, butterflies and flowering plants seen along the Great Florida Birding and Wildlife Viewing Trail and throughout Florida. The tool was originally developed through a joint effort by the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida IFAS Department of Entomology and Nematology and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission with support from grants from the Florida Wildflower Foundation and Florida Museum Associates.

The developers had youth, novice, and visiting explorers in mind when creating this application. With its child-friendly icons, users can search 200 birds, 106 butterflies, 247 flowering plants, and 491 sites along the Great Florida Birding and Wildlife Trail.  Numerous filters such as color and size make for more easily identifying of species which can then be bookmarked as favorites. The beautiful full color photos are sure to delight novice users and advanced birders alike.

There are a few considerations for this application we would be amiss if we did not mention. At a hefty 330MB, the size of the application could be a deterrent for some. We suggest downloading this one using a wi-fi connection in order to conserve your data plan. Downloading without wi-fi can also take several minutes even with a 4G connection. The applications child-friendly icons can also sometimes stump its new adult users with their simplicity. Don’t expect to see a great deal of instruction or labels, just follow the pictures to access your desired information. To make it even easier for you, here are descriptions of the home screen icons:

Android home screen (Letters added for purpose of article only).

A.     The Florida Icon opens a site search. Using your GPS location, the alphabetized list will show you the site name and distance from you. You can also switch the view to order by distance, search for sites, or access a list of cities. Selecting a site will show you it’s city and county as well as will bring up a map and option for navigation.

B.     The butterfly icon will bring you to the butterfly filter screen. Filter by color using the color wheel, simply touch it then touch the color(s) of the butterfly you are looking for. Click the ruler to select size, the season icon for season filter, and the landscape icon for habitat. Filter availability can change based on previous filters selected. Once you have selected your filters, select the ‘Matches” button at the top of your screen to review the matches. Select the butterfly that best matches what you are looking for to learn more about it. You can select the caterpillar icon at the bottom to learn more about related species and flowers or the my stuff icon to bookmark.

C.     Use the landscape icon to learn more about the different types of areas of Florida as well as to see additional landscape photos.

D.     Use the flower icon to explore flowering plants. The same filtering process will be used as described in B above. Once you have selected a species, you can also bookmark by selecting the my stuff icon at the bottom.

E.     Use the bird icon to explore birds. The same filtering process will be used as described in B above. Once you have selected a species, you can also bookmark by selecting the my stuff icon at the bottom.

F.     Use the My Stuff icon to access any bookmarks you have set. Book marks are sorted by favorite sites, birds, butterflies, and flowers.

Once familiar with the icons this application can be great fun and quite useful. Download the application for your Android or iPhone today, use the Florida icon to search for a site near you, get out there and start exploring natural Florida! 

Android filter screen.

Android results screen.

iPhone site detail screen.

iPhone species results screen.

International Coastal Cleanup - come on out!

Tomorrow we will be making conservation history by participating in the largest and most unique beach cleanup campaign in the world, the Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup!

To better understand how impressive this international collaborative effort is…let me share some data tabulated from last year (2011)
More than 600,000 people participated from 114 countries and 45 states here in the U.S.

Over 8 million pounds of trash from our waterways and coasts was collected.

This will be the GTM NERR’s 11th year participating in this event and we hope you will join us!

One quite unique and important aspect of the International Coastal Cleanup is data collection. By cataloging the type, amount and location of the debris (during our cleanup) we will be providing information vital to identifying sources of trash that becomes marine debris.  The Marine Debris Index (MDI) in the only index of its kind where every piece of trash collected is identified by: item, county, state, and country where it is found. This integral data that YOU could collect this Saturday will be used to create long term solutions and to improve citizen education programs about the problems caused by marine debris. 

Bring yourself, your friends, family, neighbors and colleagues and make a difference through a wonderful experience of international camaraderie on behalf of our coasts and oceans!!

Saturday September 15, 2012  8:00am-11:00am 2 locations

GTM NERR Education Center:  505 Guana River Rd., Ponte Vedra Beach, FL 32082   
GTM NERR Marineland Office:  9741 Ocean Shore Blvd.  St. Augustine, FL
More info: 904-823-4500

Post courtesy of Lauren Flynn

All rights reserved

The 'Shell'ebration Continues!

A little more than a month ago we walked you through a day in the life of the glamorous (albeit smelly) party that picking up oysters for an oyster recycling program is. While all aspects of our recycling program here at the GTM Research Reserve continue, we wanted to take a brief pause from “boogying down” with our oyster shells to bring you some very exciting updates.

The Numbers

Two of the seven successfully installed sections of oyster reef.

First we would like to puff up our own feathers and brag a bit about what we have helped to accomplish so far along with the GTM Research Reserve staff (whom we could not be accomplishing any of this without by the way- call them our “party hosts”!). 46 volunteers have contributed more than 470 hours of volunteer work to the recycling program since March. So far we have successfully installed seven sections of oyster reef. These seven sections required 1,260 bags of shell equaling more than 37,800 pounds in total! Although we still have quite a ways to go, it is exciting to reflect upon all we have accomplished so far.


The Babies

Yep! You read it correctly! This party is family friendly, and the “babies” have arrived at our oyster reef! The life cycle of the oyster begins with a free-swimming larval stage that eventually attaches to a hard substrate forming an oyster spat. The spat then begins a growth period that is classified into sub-adult and adult phases. It is with as much pride as any parent that we announce the arrival of our very own oyster spats amongst our completed reef sections. We expect, by the end of the project, to identify many other species benefitting from the restoration of this oyster reef nursery habitat and look forward to sharing those with you in the upcoming project phases!

Oyster spat on a shell at our restoration site.

 

 

The “Shocking” Announcement



SHELLSHOCKED follows efforts to prevent the

extinction of wild oyster reefs, which

keep our oceans healthy by filtering water

and engineering ecosystems. Wild oyster reefs

have been declared 'the most severely

impacted marine habitat on Earth’.

Now scientists, government officials, artists and

environmentalists are fighting to bring oysters

back to the former oyster

capital of the world - New York Harbor.

We recently learned that the director and producers of a new (not yet released) and powerful documentary titled SHELLSHOCKED: Saving Oysters to SaveOurselves read about and were so impressed with our community-based efforts that they offered us a pre-screening of the film! The pre-screening event will consist of the 40 minute film, a question-and-answer follow up with film director Emily Driscoll that speaks specifically to what this means to us in NE Florida and a tie-in to our project at the NERR, and finally an oyster tasting/shucking demonstration by the Matanzas Inlet Restaurant. The screening will coincide with the 2012 National Estuaries Day being held September 21^st & 22^nd. Click here to learn more about the events and to reserve your place!

The“Actual” Party!!

The sweetest "oyster" you will ever eat sits
against the backdrop of the GTM Research Reserve.
Top a cupcake with icing, graham
cracker crumbs, a “shell” cookie, and
a white chocolate covered espressobean
or yogurt covered raisin and you can
enjoy one too!

We wanted to end our updates today with a huge THANK YOU to Lauren Flynn and all of the GTM Research Reserve staff members that made us feel extra special at a recent thank you luncheon put on for us oyster volunteers. We were treated to some amazing food, oyster themed decorations & trivia, and the cutest “oyster” cupcakes you’ve ever seen!

To learn more about the oyster project and volunteer opportunities with the GTM NERR, visit our Volunteer Wiki site at: http://www.gtmvolunteerprojects.wikispaces.com/



Introducing the Nature Nut’s Tech Corner



Illustration by Jean Bitting, 2012






Do you feel like your inner nature nut and techie geeks are at odds with each other? Are you looking for a fresh new way to explore nature?  Are you a technophobe looking for a way to start plugging in? Perhaps you wish you had a way to inspire today’s technologically bound youth to re-connect with the natural world surrounding them? Whatever your current relationship with the ever-changing world of technology might be, our new Nature Nut’s Tech Corner is the perfect resource to help you get your geek on with nature!  Visit us on the last Friday of each month, right here, as we spotlight a new field tested application.

Project Noah

We are kicking off our Nature Nut’s Tech Corner with Project Noah, which defines itself as a tool to explore and document wildlife. Project Noah acts as a platform to harness the power of citizen scientists everywhere.  Named after an award-winning software program, Project Noah allows you to sign up using one of many popular internet homepages and social networking platforms like Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Twitter and more. Though originally designed to build a “digital butterfly net”, Project Noah now uses the popularity of mobile technologies to collect ecological data on all types of organisms, helping to preserve global biodiversity.

Project Noah has quickly become one of the most popular communities for nature exploration and documentation. Users can access the Project Noah website and mobile app to post photos of their finds, to ask community help in identifying specimens, and can even use the Map feature to check out what other users have spotted near them.




The Mission Page on
Project Noah for Android

Another exciting feature of Project Noah is the “Missions” feature. Users can contribute to and create missions- some of which involve serious scientific studies. The mission search allows you to search both globally and locally to get involved. A local search of St. Augustine reveals a mission centered around our own GTM Research Reserve. The GTM NERR Plant Hunt mission challenges local users to document as many plants as they can find within the reserve’s boundaries. Project Noah missions in Florida range from contributing to Invasive Plant studies to photographing Florida Orchids and other plant and wildlife species.

To unleash your Citizen Scientist download the Project Noah App for your iPhone or Android, get outside, and start exploring today!

Project Noah's Main
Page on Android

Project Noah's Map
Page on Android

Completing certain tasks in
Project Noah will award patches

2012 Adventures in the Estuary Summer Camp Success!

Were you looking for a way to reduce your child’s ‘sit-around-the-house time’ this summer? Did you hope to extend their learning throughout those months and get them up and active and exploring the world around them? Did you think to look to your local Research Reserve to help out?!



The GTM Research Reserve Education Center
 in Ponte Vedra Beach

The GTM Research Reserve not only provides stewardship of our natural & cultural resources and implements national-level long-term research, but also is committed to engaging and exciting people about estuaries and the animals and plants that inhabit them. One of the many exciting education programs at the GTM Research Reserve is the Adventures in the Estuary Summer Camp.



2012 brought the first long-term camp offered here at the GTM Research Reserve, which was held this summer. The camp allowed for students from grades 1 through 8 to participate in a hands-on adventure in the estuary. Students were able to build confidence and knowledge while conducting real estuarine science. The weeklong camp began with the students selecting a topic from a list of topics currently researched and monitored, and ended with a creative presentation of that topic to family, GTM Research Reserve staff, and fellow campers during a closing ceremony.

1st through 3rd grade campers conduct
research during the 2012 camp

The camp was met with great success as happy campers, parents, and staffers alike sang its praise:

• “Thank you! Our girls loved it!”
• “(Student) was excited about camp and had a great time! He asked if he could come back! Thank you!
• “We had to drive an hour every morning but it was worth it!”
• “I loved this camp!”

6th through 8th grade campers prepare to get
up close and personal with the beauty of the estuary
 in a kayak tour provided by Ripple Effects Ecotours

When surveyed, most campers even responded they would very much like to attend another camp! Based on this feedback you can anticipate seeing the Adventures in the Estuary Summer Camp as an annual opportunity each July, so be sure to add us to your summer activity planning!



Education at the GTM Research Reserve isn’t just for the school aged! For additional information on the various offerings of the Education Program (including teacher resources), visit us at: http://www.gtmnerr.org/educationindex.htm

 

3rd through 5th grade campers participating in a scavenger 
hunt at the GTM Research Reserve Education Center

2012 Sea Turtle Hatching Update– Our Own Exciting ‘Triathlon’ Here at the GTM NERR

Approximately 120 Loggerhead hatchlings emerge naturally from nest GS025 at the GTM NERR. Photo courtesy of Irene Kaufman.

2012 Sea Turtle Hatching Update:




The 2012 sea turtle nesting season here at the GTM NERR has been very exciting so far. To date, our beaches have over 180 nests. While the number of nests is on target with last season, the timing of the nesting has had some interesting differences. The turtles began to nest early compared to recent years and as far as we can tell have consequently tapered off early as well.

While the baby turtles hatch, marine turtle volunteers conduct evening evaluations three days after the first signs emergence or after 70 days of incubation as a part of our Nesting Beach Survey. These evaluations are well underway this season, with roughly 60 nests already having been evaluated. We are encouraged about the success of this season so far since these nests are looking relatively well with an overall high hatching success rate. With all this activity taking place mid-nesting season, we wanted to take a moment to celebrate their success and reflect upon their journey thus far.

The Baby Sea Turtle Triathlon:

Most sea turtle species hatch in summer after a 45-70 day incubation period depending on species, clutch size, temperature, and humidity. In a way, their journey from nest to sea can be compared to an Olympic athletic event! Their “Triathlon” consists of:

·       Hatching & Emerging –



When a sea turtle hatches, it uses a carbuncle, or temporary egg tooth, to break open their leathery shell.  Once hatched, the dig begins! It can take three to seven days for these young turtles to finally dig their way to the surface.

·       The Crawl-



As if these ‘tri-athletes’ had not been tested enough during hatching & emerging, they still have to reach the ocean. It is theorized that a hatchling may use an internal magnetic compass to crawl towards sea, or that they may distinguish light intensities thus following the light toward the horizon. During this time they are exposed to predators such as birds and other animals, many hatchlings wait until night to emerge to reduce this exposure.



Loggerhead hatchlings of nest GS025 head toward the sea.
Photo courtesy of Irene Kaufman.

• The Swimming Frenzy-

If a hatchling is able to successfully completes its crawl and reach the surf it will dive, riding the undertow to sea. There is a 24 to 48 hour “swimming frenzy” period during which they swim continuously. This is another vulnerable time for our young ‘athletes’ as they are open to exhaustion and predation. For the winners, the prize is a deep sea trip. It is not known for sure where they spend the next “lost year”- they are rarely seen.

 How you can help:

As you can see it is a long and difficult journey from nest to sea for sea turtle hatchlings. The Georgia Sea Turtle Center, has stated that an estimated 75% of all sea turtle eggs laid will hatch.  Fewer will make it all the way to sexually mature adulthood- according to The Sea Turtle Conservancy and the U.S Fish & Wildlife Service, recent research estimates it at only 1 out of every 1000. We have some tips that can help us all reduce our own negative impact on their success:

If you see hatchlings emerging-

• Provide plenty of distance between you and the nest.
• Do not shine lights on or near hatchlings, this can disorient them and prevent them from reaching the ocean.
• Enjoy the amazing event!

During nesting season (March through October on Florida’s Atlantic Coast)-

• It is against the law to touch or disturb nesting sea turtles, hatchlings, or their nests. Sea turtles are protected by both the Federal Endangered Species Act and the Florida Marine Protection Act.
• If you must be on the beach at night, limit your walking and do not use flashlights or flash photography.
• If you live on the ocean, turn off outside patio lights and shield indoor lights from shining directly onto the beach by closing the drapes at night. Light may cause the female to abort the nesting process, or other sea turtles nearby may be discouraged from nesting if there are lights on the beach.
• Avoid disturbing marked sea turtle nests.
• Report signs of nesting to a GTM NERR employee so nests can be marked.

Don’t forget you can also adopt a sea turtle nest to support The GTM Research Reserve Sea Turtle Patrol Program. Your support will enable volunteers to increase awareness and continue their outreach and educational efforts. Through our outreach and education programs, we hope to have a long-lasting and meaningful impact on the sea turtle nesting population by:

1. Reducing the disturbance and harassment of nesting sea turtles by educating the public about the hazards of night time beach activities and the importance of responsible beachfront lighting.
2. Increasing the hatchling survival rate by educating the public of the dangers associated with beach obstructions on the beach and human intervention.
3. Aiding injured sea turtles and returning them to their natural habitat.

For more information on the GTM NERR’s sea turtle research programs and conservation efforts, visit us at: http://gtmnerr.org/researchindex.htm .