The 2020 Do-It-Yourself Great Bay Scallop Search
Tampa Bay Watch recently held their annual Great Bay Scallop Search, but participants conducted the survey on their own this year to allow for safe social distancing. Thirty-six teams of volunteer boaters and kayakers snorkeled in lower Tampa Bay, finding 133 scallops August 15-23. This year’s total is the highest since 2015.
Some years, volunteers find many scallops and other years they don’t. Water quality, red tide, high rainfall, and storms all have an effect. An all-time high was 674 scallops, in 2009. Bay scallops disappeared from Tampa Bay in the early 1960s when the bay water was highly polluted from dredging operations and industrial and municipal wastes.
Recent research by scientists with the Southwest Florida Water Management District’s Surface Water Improvement and Management state that Tampa Bay now supports 40,652 acres of sea grass. This continues the success of the previous mapping efforts reported in 2015, supporting the largest amount of sea grass measured since the 1950s.
Scallops are filter feeders, therefore they are highly sensitive to changes in water quality and can be used to measure an ecosystem’s health and signal changes in water quality. Adult bay scallops can pump as much as 15.5 quarts of water per hour, improving water quality resulting in long-term growth of sea grass beds.
Although bay scallops are edible, it is illegal to harvest scallops in Tampa Bay in order for restoration efforts to be successful. Special thanks to SeaWorld Busch Gardens Conservation Fund and the Tampa Bay Estuary Program who supported the event.
Creature Feature: Cormorant
If you have ever kayaked in the shallow seagrasses of the estuary, you’ve probably been surrounded by hungry double-crested cormorants looking for prey. These inhabitants of coasts, bays, lakes, and rivers are excellent swimmers with an appetite for fish. From afar, cormorants are plain birds, however when close, you will realize that cormorants have beautiful turquoise eyes that shimmer like sapphire. When not in the water, cormorants can be seen standing in the sun with their wings spread since they do not have as much oil in their feathers as other waterfowl do. Instead of water rolling off of their feathers like ducks, their plumage becomes soaked with water, which makes them less buoyant and allows them to dive deeper for tasty fish. They must get rid of it to fly. Source: allaboutbirds.org, audubon.org