Excellent Initial Mussel Survival
From the data collected in February we estimated that our transplanted mussels had consistently very high initial survival, regardless of the site they were deployed in. The results suggest that the mussel translocating methods worked great, with much better initial mussel survival than recorded for some other restoration that has occurred in the Hauraki Gulf.
Managing Starfish Threat
The 11-arm starfish are voracious predators that are a threat to the newly restored mussel beds, but we can protect the mussels by removing the starfish. Continuing reinvasion of the beds by the starfish seems to occur, so we will measure and remove the starfish at every sampling interval. This will help us understand predation patterns and look at the affect they may have on mussel survival.
Understanding Movement
One interesting aspect of our study is to understand how the newly restored mussels move post-deployment. So far, we found that the transplanted mussels stay put and organise themselves into a coherent mussel bed all by themselves, allowing us to measure their spread. We are also interested to understand how different sediment types will affect this behaviour.
A photo showing the measurements that were taken of the mussel bed spread from the margins of each treatment plot.
Monitoring mussels with underwater drone
We are using underwater drones to capture three dimensional images of our mussel beds to see if it can provide a more efficient way to monitor mussels than using divers. The 3D images from the Boxfish drone are being compared with results from divers to test their usefulness for measuring mussel densities, survival, and counting predators.
Havelock Mussel Festival
This past month was the Havelock Mussel Festival. It was a great way to spread the word about our project as there was a large amount of public interest and positive feedback on the project. Below is a photo of the poster that I presented there.
If you have any questions or comments on this project, please feel free to reach out to Emilee Benjamin via email at egol669@aucklanduni.ac.nz.