James F. Reinhardt

BP Deepwater Oil Spill PEIS Scoping meeting

2011-03-29T08:37:00.000-07:00

My Knauss Fellowship with NOAA has started and I have been thrown into the restoration process taking place in the Gulf of Mexico related to the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. Currently my position in NOAA Restoration Center has me down in Louisiana participating in public scoping meetings. This process seeks input from the public related to restoration types that could be used to compensated the public for damages to natural resources from the oil spill. The task is daunting but it is encouraging to be working with a highly dedicated group of people with lots of knowledge!

Knauss Fellowship Week

2010-11-21T08:13:00.000-08:00

I have just returned from Washington D.C. where I had the chance to interview with a variety of government agencies as part of the Knauss SeaGrant Fellowship program. The other fellows in the program could not have been nicer, or more accomplished people in the field of marine sciences and policy.

On Friday we all sat in a room and decided which offices we would spent the next year with. The choice was difficult to make but I have decided to work with NOAA DARRP. This will be a unique opportunity to participate in one of the most historic oil spill projects in history as part of the damage assessment and restoration team.

I look forward to starting the new position and moving to the DC area in February!

A Team Benthos Summer - Cross posted on Marine Sciences Blog

2010-08-06T08:09:00.001-07:00

Team Benthos is at it again this summer! If you have walked around the Rankin Lab this summer you may have noticed graduate students and interns working hard maintaining a set of mesocosm tanks on the back patio. The mesocosms are part of an EPA funded project examining the effects of climate and land-use change on native and invasive species and their ecosystems in southern New England. Inside the tanks you will find eel grass, seaweeds, at least 4 different snails, oysters, as well as Team Benthos’ favorite group, the tunicates.

The project, in its second full year of operation, uses an automated system to regulate temperature and nutrient additions. Still, the mesocosms need plenty of TLC from the interns to make sure water is still running and the tanks are cleaned.

Also, Team Benthos has been conducting a survey of the shallow hard substrate benthic community from Branford, CT to Newport, RI. Divers have been documenting the benthic assemblage in order to make a comparison to previous surveys as well as establish a baseline for understanding rates and processes of change in our coastal environments. Last year divers documented a recently introduced species. Surveys are also necessary to document the persistence, spread or extirpation of this new invasive.

Other projects include our ongoing benthic recruitment monitoring, and predator experiments. If you have more questions check out Teambenthos.uconn.edu and check out the map of some of the sites that have been surveyed and the images of the communities present!

View 2010 Team Benthos Coastal Subtidal Survey in a larger map

Official first report of Clavelina lepadiformis in NW Atlantic

2010-05-31T16:54:00.000-07:00

The Team Benthos paper on Clavelina lepadiformis is on the web as a corrected proof. This was truly a team effort from members of the University of Connecticut's Department of Marine Sciences, utilizing diving, genetic, ecological and taxonomic expertise to get this work done! Check out the the paper... HERE.

Benthic Ecology Meeting 2010

2010-03-26T14:26:00.000-07:00

The Benthic Ecology Meeting was quite a success in 2010. Held at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington from March 13-17, scientists from all over the USA and from as far away as Australia shared the latest research in benthic ecology. I presented work from the past summer entitled "Metacommunity Dynamics: A Marine Model System". I manipulated distances between 10cm X 10cm fouling communities to test theoretical predictions. The 12 minute presentation I gave illustrated the usefulness of the model system and provided evidence that indeed the experimental units operate as a 'metacommunity'.

Passport

2010-02-16T17:44:00.000-08:00

Well, it has finally arrived. James Andrew Reinhardt has finally got his passport. I must say I have a lot more faith in the passport office then I do in the Social Security Administration. The SSA still has not been able to spell our last name correctly.

Getting a passport has it's own unique challenges. For instance, holding a baby off to the side for two minutes trying to kept your own body out of site while the photo is snapped. Which is not as bad as filing out all the forms at the US Post Office.

I can forget about all that now. Instead I will think about our first family trip to Europe!

Clavelina Lepadiformis in the Thames?

2009-11-11T18:49:00.000-08:00

Finally after getting some nice weather and everyone's schedule aligned we made a trip to the Thames River to look for Clavelina lepadiformis. "SCUBA" Joe Magniafico had thought he had seen the invasive tunicate during the winter of 2007-2008 off a pier on the New London side, but we needed to go back to confirm it's presence.

After a smooth ride 10 minute from the Uconn Avery Point campus in the R/V Challenger Joe and Lauren Stefaniak splashed over the sides in their dry suits. In a few moments SCUBA Joe's suspicions were confirmed, Clavelina lepadiformis is indeed present in the Thames River.

New London is an international port with large commercial vessels using the harbor everyday and are perhaps serving as a vector to spread this new invader. Where else might Clavelina lepadiformis be going?

My first siting of Clavelina sp. in Long Island Sound

2009-10-16T12:58:00.000-07:00

Yesterday (October 15th, 2009), Dave Hudson and I were taking some survey photos in Stonington Harbor, New London Co., CT. We were just checking out the usual fouling community species Botrylliodes violaceus, Didemnum vexillum, Bugula neritina, (all invasives) when Dave pointed to something different. I immediately got excited. I have never seen this species before. So I started snapping some pictures. Dave and I took a sample so that we (or maybe Lauren Stefaniak) can make a more exact species identification latter in the lab.

Well after doing some preliminary investigation on the internet, the species is almost certainly of the genus Clavelina order Aplousabranchia. The common name is the "light bulb tunicate". I would say that it is quite a good looking species, but I don't know if it belongs here. Please let me know if you are familiar with this species. Have you seen it in Long Island Sound before?

James.Reinhardt@uconn.edu

Summer SeaGrant Project

2009-10-16T09:42:00.000-07:00

This past summer I worked with a high school student on a Connecticut SeaGrant funded project to gather preliminary data of the biomass of hard-substrate epifaunal communities, also affectionately called fouling communities. It was a great pleasure to work with Olivia Fortunato, I only hope that she got as much out of the project as I did. The research we did this past summer has laid a great foundation for future work investigate biomass and energy flow in benthic communities.

Dave Hudson PNB Student Conducts Marine Research

2009-10-01T07:30:00.000-07:00

Dave Hudson is a PhD student at the University of Connecticut in the Department of Physiology and Neurobiology. His dissertation is on the ecophysiology of invasive crabs on the New England and East coast United States. Naturally, he has established close collaborations with other scientist and students in the Department of Marine Sciences (DMS) an the Marine Science and Technology Center. DMS and MSTC, through the dive program and boat operations, help supply Dave with the necessary resources to undertake his research.

September 30, 2009

2009-09-30T14:02:00.000-07:00

Finally, I was able to get out for a dive today [60 mins at 17ft]. The visibility was pretty terrible after the wind and choppy conditions we had yesterday. Rick Osman and I took the R/V Tautog out to Bushy Point. We had two objectives: 1) Take pictures of Rick's 'piling experiment' and, 2) start to dismantle my metacommunity experiment. We got all the pictures taken and we put a small dent in the dismantling process. It was a little frustrating out there today... someone had altered my weight belt, the camera fogged up briefly, my masked kept filing up (I need a haircut) and I could only see three feet. I've had better dives. But, hey, not everybody gets to do this for a living!!!

September 29, 2009

2009-09-29T11:21:00.000-07:00

Well the sun is shining, the weather is warm but it is blowing like hell. Rick Osman and I were planning on doing a little diving today, but we have scrubbed the dive.

Check out www.mysound.uconn.edu for live weather data on long island sound.