Category: Seagrass

Time for some fieldwork! This time not in Indonesia but 7 hours flying further east in Sharkbay, Australia!

Together with Laura Govers, Tjisse van der Heide, Leon Lamers and Fons Smolders and researchers for the University of Western-Australia we will investigate the driving mechanisms behind the unique seagrass patterns of Shark Bay (picture below). Recently, van der Heide et al. demonstrated that banded spatial patterns in seagrasses (France) resulted from a scale‐dependent feedback between seagrass and hydrodynamics. Moreover, additional measurements showed that stress predictably influenced patterning in the seagrasses, hence suggesting that self‐organized patterns might be a useful stress‐indicator in seagrass ecosystems. Now in Sharkbay, there are patterns at 2 scales: Inside larger seagrass bands smaller seagrass bands occur, we will try to unravel the underlying mechanisms of their formation. We will post updates of our fieldwork on this blog.

 lat=-25.93828707492374 lng=113.92822265625

The Radboud University has recently updated it’s “virtual classroom” with interesting microscopy pictures of tropical seagrasses and other submerged water plants, check it out, (Thanx Liesbeth Pierson)

There is also a movie in the virtual classroom (in dutch only) to explain students what kind of research we do at the department of Environmental Science .

During our divetrip to the Similan and Surin island in the Andaman sea I found some seagrass (a Halophyla sp. >8 cross veins) growing very deep, between burrows of the shy spotted garden eels. While I know that some species are found much deeper, e.g. 50m deep (Beer et al. 1982) I was quite happy finding it as a variation to the depressing coral reef. This reef consisted of 90% dead coral probably as a result of the 2004 Tsunami, 2010 Bleaching event (after some months with 34C water temperature, in contrast to the normal 29C), and some local dynamite fishing.