A Little About Me

Hello everyone! I’m Kristina Gjergjaj but everyone calls me Tina. This upcoming fall I will be a junior studying Environmental Conservation and Sustainability at the University of New Hampshire. Sophomore year flew by at UNH but I am excited for the experiences and knowledge I will gain this summer. I have been given the opportunity to work with Alyson Eberhardt and Caitlin Mandeville t as the summer 2018 Coastal Resilience Intern for UNH Cooperative Extension and New Hampshire Sea Grant. For the next couple of weeks I will be taking part in numerous projects including beach profiling, sand dune restoration, glass eel monitoring then creating reports summarizing the data that was gathered. I am thrilled to be joining a team of like minded individuals and making a difference.

My main focus is to assist with data collection and volunteer training efforts in New Hampshire related to beach and sand dune restoration management. While developing reports to connect beach profiling data to management needs and stakeholders. With this opportunity I will gain skills in public communication and outreach, valuable experience in experimental design and experience with final reports.

So a little more about me, I grew up in Bronx New York and eventually moved to upstate New York. I have three younger siblings, I’m the oldest of 16 grandchildren and I can put a baby to sleep faster than you can say “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” Growing up consisted of my family and I constantly being outside, like when I lived in the city I would always ride my bike around the block or later on in the countryside planting 30 fruit trees, two gardens and exploring the state park behind my house. No matter where I lived I was always outside, since a young age nature has always been apart of my life.

When trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life and where I wanted to continue my education. I had to pick out a major I knew I wouldn’t lose interest in and make a meaningful career out of it. The knowledge I was gaining from countless documentaries, the importance of the environment, how critical the quality of life is and that fact that I wanted to make a difference. When adding all four of my interests together, it made me realize what I wanted to study and do with my life. I wanted to save the environment. Saving the environment would have powerful endless effects on the world and generations to come. I wanted to learn the science behind protecting the environment and what it would take. Which is when I decided to go to the University of New Hampshire one of the top ten schools in the country for sustainability. Through this school I have gained field experience, knowledge of sustainability, strengthened my opinions and have been given numerous opportunities further my skills.

Stay tune for more updates!

~Tina

Welcome 2018 Doyle Fellows

New Hampshire Sea Grant would like to congratulate our new Doyle Fellows and Cooperative Extension Intern.

Audrey Berenson, a Biomedical Science: Medical Microbiology major at UNH, will work with Dr. Steve Jones on oyster farm sanitation practices. Collecting oysters and water samples in the Great Bay Estuary, testing for the presence of various bacteria, and working with oyster farmers will keep her busy.

Robert Lafrieniere, a Marine, Estuary & Freshwater Biology major at UNH, will work with Alyson Eberhardt and Caitlin Mandeville on evaluating the success of completed dune restoration activities. Developing a research study, monitoring coastal fieldwork, and participating in citizen science events will fill his summer.

Nicole DeRoche, a Biology major at Saint Anselm College, will work with Gabby Bradt on invasive green crabs in the Great Bay and Hampton Estuaries. Monitoring the molting cycle, recruiting and training volunteers, and working to develop a green crab fishery are only a few of the items on her to-do list.

As Coastal Resilience Intern, Krtistina will assist with data collection and volunteer training efforts related to beach and dune management in NH and will develop communications products to connect beach profiling data to management needs.

We look forward to working with and learning from our Fellows, as part of this unique exchange of knowledge and experience.

Visit our blog often and follow their stories this summer.

Thank you!

This is the last week of my Doyle Fellowship. I would like to thank The New Hampshire Sea Grant for this great opportunity they have given me. A special thanks to Alyson and Caitlin for guiding me throughout the summer, teaching me valuable experiences.

One of the best experiences I had this summer was seeing how The Sea Grant and UNH Extension connects with citizens in the area about issues related to their communities. I also got valuable experience on field data collection during all the projects I was a part of. Lastly the information I learned about coastal ecology and the in depth importance of these valuable systems. I look forward to continuing my studies at UNH using all the experiences I learned this summer.

Update

Over the last few weeks I have spent my fellowship working on several projects with The Sea Grant and The Nature Conservancy.

In July I did a snapchat takeover with the University of New Hampshire to show students the work being done to study horseshoe crab populations around Great Bay. Snapchat is a social media app that lets you send photos and short videos to people to communicate. The University of New Hampshire has an account that is followed by about 4,000 students and lets students use it for a day to share their projects or events. I thought sharing the research being done on horseshoe crabs was important because it is happening so close to campus that students can get involved and volunteer without traveling to the seacoast. UNH saved the takeover and added it to their youtube page. To view it follow this link: https://youtu.be/kFnAfCadsmY

At the end of July I attended The Beaches Conference in Wells Maine. This conference is focused on the condition of local beaches from Maine and New Hampshire organizations. These organizations included: New Hampshire Sea Grant, Maine Sea Grant, The University of Maine, UNH, The Maine and New Hampshire Coastal Programs, and many others. I attended many seminars that shared research and strategies to engage communities in building resilient coastlines. I thought the conference was great, I learned so much about the beaches in the Gulf of Maine, and met all the people involved in these projects.

Throughout the last month I have been helping The Nature Conservancy with their oyster restoration project. The goal of this project is to restore the oyster population of great bay that has been diminished by disease and silt. The projected started by taking dead oyster shells, donated by local restaurants, and putting them in oyster cages. We then placed the cages into large tanks and added oyster spawn that estimated to be 12.5 million oyster larvae.

The shells from local restaurants used to fill the cages

All the cages filled with shells before they are placed in the tanks

The raft that the oyster cages are tied too

After the larvae settle out of the water column onto the shells, the being to grow. After a few weeks, we took the cages out of the tanks and tied them onto a raft in Great Bay for them to grow large enough to see them. This week we took cages out of the water to cout the spat, baby oysters, on the shells of some cages to get a subsample of the success rate of the spawn settling. For the rest of the summer the cages will be delivered to volunteers around great by that will monitor the growth of their cage from their docks. At the end of the summer the oysters will be added to the existing oyster reef in Great Bay to help restore the depleted population.

Meghan 2017

Updates:
    As my fellowship winds down I have been compiling data, making a field guide, making a story map, and collecting our traps. In addition, we have also switched over from only collecting males to only collecting females. As the Summer has progressed, females are now molting. We found about 5 or 6 soft shell females at Adam's Point Landing yesterday. Dr. Bradt will be continuing the work with the females for the remainder of the Summer.
    So far we have had 27 molts out of 123 crabs that we put into individual containers. Of these 27, 5 were an orange coloration which was believed to be a terminal molt, however now we know that this isn't always the case. In addition, The size classes that grew the most were crabs with carapaces 1.8 and 2.2 inches prior to molting. There were 5 crabs in each size class that molted. On July 3rd and 4th we had the most crabs molt in one day. On both the 3rd and 4th, 4 crabs had molted. We think that this may have been because of the temperature, which was around 20 degrees Celsius.
    Next year it would be interesting to put go pros in the large tanks so we could actually see the molting process happen. Also, I was asked how many times a Summer green crabs molt and I wasn't sure about the answer. An idea for next Summer is to keep the molted crabs in the tanks and see if they molt again instead of release them or cook them like we did.
    Thank you to NH Sea Grant and the Doyle Fellowship for an awesome experience! Can't wait to see soft shell green crabs on the menu one day!

A molted green crab and its orange carapace

Kids in Ogunquit at Footbridge Beach were catching green crabs with nets and using hot dogs as bait

Thank you!