Counting Phytoplankton. One, Two, Three!

Karena brevis - a Dinoflagellate
A Potentially Toxic Phytoplankton.

GITTO has embarked on a different kind of outdoor adventure; collecting and counting phytoplankton, or plant plankton as part of the Florida Paddling Trail - Trail Keeper Team.

Following the completion of our training by NOAA, we will be participating in the Phytoplankton Monitoring Network assisting a group of researchers at the Center for Coastal Environmental Health and Bimolecular Research and the Hollings Marine Laboratory in Charleston, South Carolina with monitoring Harmful Algae Blooms or HABs, along the US Coast. We will be sampling in the Intracoastal Waterway just south of the St. John's River in Jacksonville, Florida.

The goal of the program is multi fold. Essentially we hope to monitor a specific water area throughout the year to help scientist create a comprehensive list of harmful algal species inhabiting coastal marine waters and help identify trends where HABs are more likely to occur.

Why?
Some algae produce potent toxins which cause morbidity in humans and often mortality in marine life. Often, these blooms have significant economic and sociocultural impacts on the area they affect. The estimated national economic impact exceeds 82 million dollars per year, with the majority of costs occurring in public health and the commercial fisheries industry. Florida is often affected by the organism pictured above which causes respiratory symptoms in many people and results in the death of large numbers of fish.

NOAA's Plankton Monitoring Program hopes to minimize future public health effects, sociocultural impacts, economic losses and costs by improving prediction of blooms and developing methods of controlling the blooms that do occour.

Who Cares?
Almost everyone may be affected by harmful algae blooms. Effects range from the availability and cost of seafood items, to respiratory and sometimes neurological symptoms, to reallocation of governmental resources, to simply just not being able to Get into the Outdoors to enjoy recreational activities.

GITTO hopes that our assistance with this program may aide scientist in their discovery of why these organisms experience periodic blooms and why their dormant toxins become active. Ultimately we hope to increase our governments ability to make accurate predictions of blooms.

The Chemical Structure of Brevitoxin - Floirda's Red Tide

In the near future, GITTO Events hopes to educate children participating in our Safari Mornings programs by letting them assist with the collection and identification of dinoflagellates and diatoms after our official collections and counts are completed. How exciting it will be for them to discover, long before high school biology, microscopic life exists all around them!