Last week, Dr. Colin Little and his wife Penny Stirling joined the IRES students here at Lough Hyne. The pair makes this yearly trip over from their home in England to work in the lough and share their knowledge about the area and the creatures that reside within it. This trip marks Dr. Little’s 20th year surveying 10 of the historic monitoring sites scattered around the lough.
In 1955, Prof. Kitching, Ebling, and colleagues established 20 rocky-shore monitoring sites in the lough. Each of these spans 10 meters of the shoreline. Both the intertidal and shallow subtidal regions were monitored, including within beds of seaweed and above and below rocks.
Today, 10 of these 20 sites are monitored yearly. Each site is marked by plaques and yellow squares painted 10 meters apart on the rock. The monitoring site is then split into five, 2-meter sections using survey poles painted like candy canes. Surveys of each site are done at low tide, exposing the subtidal algae and allowing the rocks just below the tide line to be lifted and examined. A few of the brown algae that are monitored include Cystoseira foeniculacea, Sargassum muticum, Ascophyllum nodosum and Stilophora sp. The invertebrate communities at the site are also monitored, including the purple urchin Paracentrotus lividus, the sea star Marthasterias glacialis and multiple other creatures hiding under the rocks.
During the time that Colin and Penny were at the lough, each of us had the opportunity to join them as they surveyed one of these historic monitoring sites. When I joined them, I helped by recording data and later, flipping rocks. Other students did more or less of the same. Some helped count Patella vulgata (i.e., limpets) or determine the percent coverage of the different algae.
Besides their work on the monitoring sites, having Colin and Penny here at Lough Hyne with us was invaluable. The experience that we gained working with them was just the icing on the cake. Both are wonderful people who are more than happy to share their wealth of knowledge about the lough. Last night we said goodbye over a wonderful dinner of Penny’s curry. I’m very glad that we had to opportunity to meet and work with them both during our time in Lough Hyne.
-Written by: Jill Lundquist
-Written by: Jill Lundquist