Erin Weinreich U.R. - This Past Week

Cabbage Algae 

This past week our class was given information from the Marine Discovery Center about the seagrass levels in the Indian River Lagoon. It was a shock to me to see how much the seagrass counts have dwindled from 1995 to 2013. The numbers were actually very shocking to me because I didn't think that it was even possible for anything to decline that quickly (especially something like sea grass that I though was very common). I was reading in an article that some places in the world where sea grass grew all the time just died off. Luckily scientist are working on transplanting fertile specimens on this barren ocean land to help spark what once grew there. The talk about seagrass sparked my interest into doing my research project on the subject. I have been going back and forth with what I am choosing to do with it. I was leaning more towards the subject of marine life living in the Indian River Lagoon and measuring what type of sea life lives there by the amount of sea grass in the area. My main goal is to be able to achieve what I want to in this class, but also further my research in the near future as well. Nutrients came to mind last lab when we were doing our water samples. I have been looking a little more into sea grass and the type of nutrients are in them such as nutrients in apples and oranges for humans, there are nutrients in sea grass. One thing that Annie did talk about on the boat when we were doing our sea grass transects was how there were different types of algae growing such as the cabbage algae which was caused by drainage in the Indian River Lagoon. The question sparked in my head "Does local runoff/pesticides affect sea grass nutrients?" Looking at the cabbage algae in my hand near the second transit our class did near the shore, just feeling the slimy texture and bright green color didn't seem like it belonged in the area. It also didn't look like it was any benefit for the animals that live their either. Especially if any of the animals were to eat this chemically infested algae confusing it for sea grass, what would it do to them? Questions.. Questions ..