Students plant marsh grasses
Volunteer effort to help Nueces Bay

HRI PhD candidate Michael Ruescher plants marsh grasses on new terraces in Nueces Bay.
PHOTO: JACE TUNNELL/CBBEP
Several HRI students planted marsh grass in Nueces Bay on March 6 as part of a community-based wetlands restoration and education project sponsored by the Coastal Bend Bays Foundation (CBBF). The students are members of the TAMU-CC Marine Science Graduate Student Organization, a student-run club that gathers together like-minded graduate students. Most of the members are housed in the HRI building. Those doing the planting included Michael Reuscher, Sharon Jacqueline Furiness, Eleonor Barraza, Judd Curtis, Anthony Reisinger and Lauren Hutchison.
   Historically, the Nueces Bay project area was more densely covered by marsh grasses and its shoreline stretched farther out into the bay. The newly built terraces and newly planted marsh grasses will benefit the bay by reducing erosion and calming the shallow bay waters, thereby improving water quality and providing more habitat for aquatic organisms and coastal birds. The plantings and marsh creation project is funded by the Texas General Land Office and NOAA and developed under a partnership between CBBF and the Coastal Bend Bays & Estuary Program.

Welder becomes Knauss Fellow
HRI student to study one year in DC
HRI graduate student Kathleen Welder, who is getting her master's in environmental science, has been awarded a Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship to serve a one-year position in Washington DC beginning this February. Named for former NOAA administrator John A. Knauss, the fellowship program matches graduate students with legislative and executive branch offices in Washington to enable them to learn and participate in marine policy making at the highest level. Welder specializes in ecosystem services under HRI’s endowed professor of socioeconomics Dr. David Yoskowitz and researches the value of freshwater inflow-dependent habitats in Texas estuaries. She will be accompanied by four other Texan fellows when she joins the Knauss class of 2012.

Barraza receives award
PhD student's paper named outstanding
HRI doctoral student Eleonor Barraza received an Outstanding Student Paper Award for her presentation at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in December 2010. Her talk "How would a more resilient Galveston Island look?" co-authored by HRI's Chair for Geospatial Sciences Dr. James Gibeaut was selected among the best student presentations in the Public Affairs section. Barraza works as a Graduate Research Assistant in Gibeaut's Coastal and Marine Geospatial Lab. She also received the highly-competitive Student Travel Grant to attend this meeting. The AGU Fall Meeting is one of largest scientific conferences worldwide. In 2010, more than 18,400 scientists attended the meeting.

Reuscher at Smithsonian
HRI PhD student examining polychaetes
HRI marine biology doctoral candidate Michael Reuscher is spending two months at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Washington DC to examine paraonid polychaetes (segmented worms) from the museum's rich collection. From May through July, he will be collaborating with a world-famous polychaete specialist at the NMNH, Dr. Kristian Fauchald. Reuscher's specific project is to examine 45 species using scanning electron microscopy and morphometric measurements to study the ultrastructure of morphological characters, allometric change of those morphologies, and to reveal the relationships among the different species of these microscopic soft sediment dwellers.

Curtis awarded scholarship
Money to fund red snapper research
The Coastal Conservation Association recently awarded HRI Doctoral Scholar Judd Curtis a scholarship to pursue ongoing research in red snapper ecology in the Gulf of Mexico. Curtis works with Dr. Greg Stunz' Fisheries and Ocean Health Lab at HRI. The prestigious $5,000 per year scholarship is awarded each year to one student conducting graduate-level research that will contribute to the understanding of marine fisheries and management in the Gulf of Mexico. Curtis’ dissertation focuses on studies in red snapper mortality, recruitment and population connectivity of this economically important and overfished species. The ultimate goal of his research is to provide more informative data to fishery managers to help make better management decisions.

HRI student joins expedition
Lavelle conducts research in Honduras

Researchers from the DeepCAST II Expedition with the submersible in Roatan, Honduras.
HRI student Kate Lavelle and Dr. Tom Shirley took part in a successful research trip, the DeepCAST II Expedition May 21-28 to Roatan in the Bay Islands of Honduras. "DeepCAST" stands for Deep Corals and Associated Species’ Taxonomy and Ecology. Lavelle is earning her master's in marine biology and working in HRI's Biodiversity and Conservation Science lab. Since she's writing her thesis on the ecology of deep-sea coral communities, this expedition directly relates to her research focus.
   Dr. Peter Etnoyer with NOAA’s Deep Coral Ecology Lab was the expedition's science director and organizer. In 2009, he became the first graduate student fellow to receive a doctorate through HRI. Other participants in the expedition included the curator of marine mollusks at the Smithsonian Institution and a group from Conservation International’s Sojourns program.
   The team explored deep-sea habitats using Roatan Institute for Deep-sea Exploration’s submersible, "Idabel," which is designed to safely transport three people to 3,000 feet below sea level. The team met their objectives to estimate coral, sponge and invertebrate abundance and diversity, to characterize water chemistry, and to discern the relationships between corals and their epifauna. Video transects revealed a high diversity of octocorals, echinoderms, crustaceans, slit shells and sponges.

Oyster video wins award
Video chosen as best conservation film

Click on video above to watch

A short film introducing HRI's Oyster Recycling Program was awarded Best Conservation Film in the Beneath the Waves Film Festival, which was held during the 40th Annual Benthic Ecology Meeting (BEM) in Mobile, Alabama, March 16-20. The “Sink Your Shucks” video was created by HRI’s Ecosystem Studies and Modeling Lab. The five-minute video competed against 46 other submissions, including productions by NOAA and National Geographic. Covering a broad range of marine issues, the films were submitted from a diverse group of filmmakers, scientists, and conservationists. TAMUCC graduate student Lauren Hutchison directed the oyster video. She studies ecosystem-based management and ecosystem services and has a film degree from the University of Texas at Austin. The film was written by TAMUCC PhD student Brittany Blomberg, whose research focuses on oyster reef restoration, and narrated by HRI Associate Director Dr. Wes Tunnell.