| Sarah Grap - Crab Lab
Coastal Carolina University, Conway, SC |
| This
summer at SERC I worked with the Atlantic Slope Consortium –
Environmental Protection Agency Grant that is creating an index of the
plants and organisms in different subestuaries of the Chesapeake Bay. As an intern, I conducted research on the density and
abundance of the clam Macoma
balthica. I also compared
two types of sampling devices, a corer and a grab.
The subestuaries studied were broken down into six stations where I
took four cores and four grabs at each station.
The cores and grabs were sieved, preserved, and sorted for clams.
Then the clams were classified by species, measured, and the data
was recorded. Next I compared
the abundance and density of Macoma balthica in the cores from the different subestuary sites.
I analyzed the data for the sampling device to identify the device
that retrieved the largest quantity of clams.
From this research I was able to find the subestuaries in the Chesapeake Bay with the largest amount of clams of certain lengths and what device worked best for retrieval of these clams. |