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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
Apalachicola Bay is home to 90% of Florida's oyster harvest and therefore the health of the bay, which is generally indicated by the health of the phytoplankton communities found within, is of great concern locally. Prior work has shown a patchy structure to the phytoplankton distribution within the bay although no explanation had been given for this structure. In Spring of 2015, a short term study was designed to address how physical processes might be affecting the lateral advection and diffusion of these phytoplankton patches. The goal of the study was to focus on the short term effects of winds, waves, and tides. A variety of observational techniques were used to assess the dynamics within the shallow, estuarine bay including low cost, student built drifters, arrays of hydrographic instrumentation, and a unique dye release (an analogue for a phtoplankton patch) with aerial imaging from a commercially available drone. The hydrographic data indicated that under the conditions observed during the study time frame (4 days), the region of the bay instrumented remained strongly, stably stratified, potentially leading to the suppression of resuspension in the water column, but tides and winds have significant impact on the lateral displacement of a dye patch. There were allusions to the possibility of scale separation, but it is agreed that for a quantitative assessment, additional measurements over a longer time frame are required. This qualitative study however, provided one of the first pictures of short temporal physical processes affecting phytoplankton patch movement in Apalachicola Bay.