With spectre of off-shore oil drilling looming on the horizon, now is the time to assess the current health of our local reefs by getting a base-line reading!

Mac?s Sports and St. Petersburg College are starting a joint project to collect scientific data on our local artificial and natural reefs. There is a bill now before the Florida Legislature to allow oil drilling in state waters off Florida?s beaches. They are not talking about deep ocean drilling, they are talking about waters from the beach out 9 ½ miles! An oil spill this close could simply devastate not only our local beaches, but do great damage to the near shore hard bottom reefs most of us dive on. One thing scientist need to fight the oil companies on this plan is accurate ?base line data? on just how much of our inshore waters have these vital reef communities and what are their populations?

To provide answers to these questions Dr. Heyward Mathews, an oceanographer at St. Petersburg College and the founder of the Pinellas County Artificial Reef Program, has organized a joint effort between the college and Mac?s Sports. The plan is to train local sport divers to begin collecting much needed scientific data on these reefs. This project began back in the Fall with a series of lectures by several college marine scientist held at the dive shop on Drew Street, followed by a training session at Mac?s Indoor heated pool. Additional pool training sessions will be held in April, May, and other dates as needed.

This is how the program will work. A pair of divers will contact the dive shop, either by phone or online, and reserve a set of the collecting equipment. There will be no rental charge for the use of this equipment. Then on the day of the planned dive, or the night before, the dive teams will pick up a bag with the reel, clipboard, data sheets (waterproof paper), and the ¼ meter benthic frames. The divers will then go out to which ever reef they plan to monitor, either in their own boat or on a dive charter with one of the local dive boats. At this time there are no funds in the program to cover the cost of these dive trips, however there are plans in the works to apply for some grant money to cover the cost of the dive trips. If such grant money does become available, first priority will go to those divers who have been in the program prior to the grant funding.

A list of artificial and natural reefs will be provided, or each dive team can monitor a reef of their choice. Once the dive team arrives on the site, they will drop a small marker buoy to serve as the reference point for the monitoring event.
Once the divers reach the bottom, they will move the marker to what appears to
be the center of the ledge, rock outcrop, or artificial reef structure. Then they will anchor the end of the reel line into the bottom with the spike provided. The two diver team will then swim a random line 50 meters long (about 160 feet). As one member of the team reels out the survey line marked off in meters, the other member of the team will count the larger food and game fish along a 2 meter wide transect, giving a total area counted of 100 square meters. The diver doing the counts will be using a clipboard with a data sheet of waterproof paper. At the end of the 50 meter transect, the divers will change places, and the diver with the reel now will slowly wind the reel back to the starting point while the other diver counts the motile invertebrates (the animals without backbones). These will include the crabs, conchs, urchins, starfish, and other motile non-fish marine species. Once back a the starting point, a 1/4 meter PVC frame will be deployed and placed on the hard surface of the reef. The divers will estimate what part of that ¼ meter surface is populated by algae, corals, sponges, and other attached marine species. The training classes we will conduct will teach the divers how to identify these benthic species. When the dive team returns the equipment and data sheet to the dive shop, the dive shop will refill their tanks at no cost! The data will then be compiled and posted on our own web site, the data will be available to anyone online. The data will be shared with several biologist at the FWC lab in St. Petersburg and the Pinellas County Environmental Management Department.

For more information on this project, contact either Dr. Mathews at 727 799-4326 or the staff at Mac?s Sports at 727 442-9931.