{"id":429,"date":"2016-03-14T13:02:58","date_gmt":"2016-03-14T17:02:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.spcollege.edu\/science\/?p=429"},"modified":"2024-01-30T15:55:24","modified_gmt":"2024-01-30T20:55:24","slug":"reef-monitoring-pier-cleanup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.spcollege.edu\/science-mathematics-educational-information\/reef-monitoring-pier-cleanup\/","title":{"rendered":"Reef Monitoring teams with SPC for Pier 60 cleanup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update: The date for this cleanup has been changed to May 21 from 9 a.m. – noon. This event is free and open to the public.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

On May 21\u00a0this year, our newly-formed SPC Underwater Research Society on the Clearwater Campus\u00a0will have around a dozen divers working under Pier 60\u00a0alongside\u00a0non-diver members\u00a0of the Science Adventurers Club to clean\u00a0debris that has accumulated there from fishing and crabbing.<\/p>\n

In the months before the 2010 BP oil spill, \u00a0I formed Reef Monitoring Inc., a non-profit corporation.\u00a0 I enlisted several marine science faculty and several of my former\u00a0marine biology students to be on the Board of Directors, and we began teaching local sport\u00a0divers how to make underwater fish and invertebrate surveys. \u00a0Many of these local divers are ones\u00a0I certified \u00a0in my SPC scuba classes (PEN 2136) over the last 40+ years. \u00a0The main purpose\u00a0of\u00a0our\u00a0group was to collect baseline data on the existing marine communities off Pinellas\u00a0County, so when we later have fish kills or man-made disasters in local waters, we will be able\u00a0to evaluate and possibly mitigate the damage.<\/p>\n

Once we began doing these underwater surveys on local artificial reefs, we found that they were\u00a0accumulating large amounts of old crab trap rope and fishing line that poses a very real threat\u00a0to marine birds, turtles, and mammals, including the now-famous dolphin, \u00a0Winter, who lost her\u00a0tail to old crab trap rope. To combat this problem, Reef Monitoring\u00a0 began in 2012 to host a series of\u00a0Reef Clean-Ups, where we enlisted local sport divers to go out into the Gulf to remove as much of this material from the Clearwater Artificial Reef as possible.\u00a0 I admit I am a bit\u00a0partial to our artificial reefs because I founded the Pinellas Artificial Reef Program\u00a0back in 1974.<\/p>\n

In 2015, the City of Clearwater Harbormaster requested our group do a cleanup of crab trap rope\u00a0that had accumulated under Pier 60, a favorite fishing spot on Clearwater Beach.\u00a0 We removed\u00a0several hundred pounds of old rope on a Saturday morning, but found the actual fiberglass crab\u00a0traps were embedded in the sand and our divers needed\u00a0to pull them up to remove them. So this year, the teams will work together with hooks and heavy ropes to pull the old crab traps\u00a0up out of the sand.\u00a0 We will have a local crab trap person pick up and recycle the fiberglass crab traps.\u00a0\u00a0The students will then have a free lunch provided by Hooters, an organization that has been very supportive of all\u00a0our clean ups and has provided lunches for these events.<\/p>\n

Our choice of April 23 was simple: That is one day after Earth Day, when similar clean up events will\u00a0be occurring all over the country. \u00a0Also, on that same day, the Natural Science Department is hosting an open\u00a0house event for local high school seniors to encourage them to enroll in science classes for the fall.\u00a0We hope to set up a large screen TV at the science building and have live streaming – both under and above water – of the clean-up\u00a0event to spotlight our\u00a0science-related studies at SPC.<\/p>\n

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