South Florida Fish and Invertebrate Assessment Network; Year 1 Annual Report

Robblee, Michael; Browder, Joan

The FIAN monitoring component is designed to support the four broad objectives of MAP: (1) to establish a pre-CERP reference state, including variability for each of the performance measures; (2) to determine the status and trends in the performance measures; (3) to detect unexpected responses of the ecosystem to changes in stressors resulting from CERP activities; and (4) to support scientific investigations designed to increase ecosystem understanding, cause-and-effect, and interpretation of unanticipated results. This study quantifies change and trend in the shallow water epibenthic fish, shrimp, and crab communities in relation to bottom habitat and environmental conditions (salinity) in nearshore marine waters of southern Florida. Specific objectives include: (1) to extend and expand the existing seagrass fish and invertebrate database for Florida Bay and southern Biscayne Bay and to expand sampling coverage to include Whitewater Bay and adjacent estuaries of the lower southwest mangrove coast, as well as North Biscayne Bay, Manatee Bay, and Card and Barnes sounds; (2) to adapt quantitative 1-m2 throwtrap sampling protocols to fit the distribution characteristics of the expanded sampling environment with the goal of maximizing change detection; (3) to monitor epibenthic populations twice yearly, once each at the end of the dry and wet season, April/May and September/October, respectively; (4) to perform data analyses that evaluate variability in these communities before, during and following implementation of upstream CERP related changes to freshwater inflow to downstream estuaries; and (5) to tightly link PIAN monitoring with concurrent seagrass and algal monitoring under MAP (FHAP-SF, South Florida Fish Habitat Assessment Program, MAP activity 3.2.3.3). The data developed will be used to evaluate the success of CERP by contributing to the assessment of the impacts of restoration-related modifications to freshwater inflows to downstream estuaries.