December 15, 2003 — The Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve was designated by NOAA in 1989 to protect one of New Hampshire’s most important natural areas. It is one of 26 NERRs in a nation-wide network of state owned and managed coastal protected areas. The reserve is managed by the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department and encompasses over 23,000 acres. The reserve’s mission is to promote informed research and management through linked programs of stewardship, public education and scientific understanding.

Great Bay NERR Facilities
The GBNERR is based at the NHFGD's Marine Fisheries Division in Durham, N.H. Other offices include the Sandy Point Discovery Center, which was constructed in 1993 on the shores of Great Bay (Stratham, N.H.) to serve as the conservation-education headquarters for the GBNERR. The University of New Hampshire’s Jackson Estuarine Laboratory is also located within the reserve, offering an ideal platform for water quality monitoring (i.e., part of the System Wide Monitoring Program) and other ongoing research. The reserve also serves as the host site for NOAA’s Cooperative Institute for Coastal and Estuarine Environmental Technology. CICEET was established in 1997 as a national center for the development and application of innovative environmental technologies for monitoring, management and prevention of contamination in estuaries and coastal waters. The Institute is a unique partnership between the University of New Hampshire and NOAA, promoting collaboration among academia, government and the private sector. CICEET uses the capabilities of UNH and those of the Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, as well as the other 25 Reserves in the system, to develop and apply new environmental technologies and techniques.

Significance of the GBNERR
Although New Hampshire has only 18 miles of coastline, more than 200 miles of tidal shoreline exist due in large part to the inland nature of the Great Bay estuary, which alone accounts for 144 miles. (Click NOAA image to the right for a larger map of the GBNERR. Please credit “NOAA.”) Located within the Gulf of Maine watershed, the Great Bay estuary is a drowned river valley extending 15 miles inland from the mouth of the Piscataqua River. Great Bay has a total of seven tributaries and a tidal range of roughly three meters. Tides carry salt water into the estuary twice daily (from the Atlantic Ocean) where it mingles with the fresh water influence from the various rivers that empty into Great Bay. It is one of the largest estuaries on the Atlantic Coast and at 15 miles inland is one of the most recessed.

The water surface of Great Bay covers 8.9 square miles at high tide and 4.2 square miles at low tide, leaving more than 50 percent of the Bay exposed at low tide. (Click NOAA image to the right for a larger aerial view of the GBNERR. Please credit “NOAA.”) There are five very different water dominated habitats that make up the Great Bay. In order of abundance they are: eelgrass meadows, mudflats, salt marsh, channel bottom/oyster beds and rocky intertidal. These habitats are home to 162 bird, fish and plant species (23 of which are threatened or endangered), countless invertebrate species and even the occasional harbor seal. The Great Bay plays a crucial role in the life cycle of migratory species of birds and fish. Thousands of ducks and geese winter here each year and tremendous runs of anadromous fish species (such as alewife and blueback herring) pass through Great Bay en-route to spawning areas.
Great Bay also has a rich cultural history and was the first commercial waterway developed by the early settlers [LINK]. Historically, it has been a source of livelihood for tens of thousands of commercial fishermen. The Reserve supports multiple recreational uses on both water and land, including kayaking, walking, hunting, boating, fishing and bird watching.

GBNEER Programs
GBNERR’s successful educational, coastal training and land acquisition efforts can be attributed primarily to the partnerships it has formed with both public and private sector entities.

• Education: The Sandy Point Discovery Center, GBNERR’s education facility, welcomes thousands of visitors each year. The Center offers spring and fall school programs on the cultural and natural history of Great Bay, including organized field trips for school and other groups, informal interpretive programs for the general public, research and stewardship projects, bird walks, archaeological digs and a coastal decision maker lecture series. Over the past few seasons, education programs have even expanded to include instructional and interpretational kayak tours of Great Bay.
• Coastal Training Program: GBNEER’s Coastal Training Program, a NERR System-wide initiative, has begun working with coastal decision makers to provide them with information they need to make decisions with the best interest of the nation’s water-ways in mind.
• Land Acquisition: Another large initiative GBNERR is pursing is land acquisition. The Great Bay Land Protection Partnership is a collection of nine different natural resource agencies representing state and federal governments, as well as non-profit organizations. Since the creation of the partnership in 1994, more than 4,000 acres of land have been protected in the Great Bay watershed and an additional 4,000 acres have been targeted.

State of the Estuaries Conference
Recently, GBNERR partnered with the New Hampshire Estuaries Program to host a State of the Estuaries Conference. The purpose of the workshop was to provide a forum for local and regional scientists, resource managers and community planners to collaborate on an interdisciplinary influenced ecosystem based strategic plan that will drive Great Bay estuary research activities over the next five-years. The workshop was attended by more than 70 natural resource professionals and concerned citizens representing positions from town and county planning boards to federal and state agencies, non-profits and research institutions. The conference was a great success and will lead to the development of a well balanced research plan that accounts for the needs of the management community, makes use of local technical expertise and takes an ecosystem approach to integrate projects in the Great Bay system.

GBNERR Shellfish Research
Although there is a variety of research being conducted within the GBNERR, one of the areas of interest to research scientists, resource managers and the public alike involves shellfish. Eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) are an important part of the Great Bay estuary for a number of reasons, including their filtering ability, the complex bottom habitat created by the oyster beds and their popularity among recreational harvesters. Great Bay oyster populations, like many others along the East Coast, have suffered severe declines as a result of disease, over-harvesting and habitat degradation. In 1995, conditions were right for an outbreak of MSX, an oyster disease caused by a protozoan parasite infection. This disease decimated Great Bay oyster beds and they remain at historically low levels today.

Graduate Research Fellowship Program
Currently, graduate research centered around the restoration of degraded oyster habitat is being supported in Great Bay by the Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Jennifer Greene, a graduate student at the UNH and GBNERR GRF, is researching the growth and survival of juvenile oysters on various substrate types, otherwise know as “cultch.” Early stage larvae are free-swimming in the water column until they settle out or “set” and begin growing. Usually this takes place on top of other oyster shells, however, in areas where shell has been removed by harvesting or covered by siltation, the addition of cultch material is often needed. Natural material in the form of oyster shells is difficult to come by and alternate sources of cultch are often needed — examining the effectiveness of various cultch types is one aspect of Jennifer’s work. Another common practice in oyster restoration allows early stage oysters to settle out on the cultch material in tanks to reduce predation at this vulnerable time. This practice allows for the recently settled oysters, or “spat,” to be placed on a restoration site at a known density. Jennifer’s research will examine several cultch types and seeding densities in order to determine optimal conditions for the growth and survival of the juvenile oysters for future restoration efforts.

Advancing Monitoring Techniques
Another project aimed at strengthening our understanding of oyster population changes involves developing tools to support annual monitoring efforts. The New Hampshire Fish & Game department conducts annual monitoring of selected oyster beds in the Great Bay estuary. The data collected is used to generate an index of population status and disease presence. A critical component of the index involves accurately mapping oyster bed locations and size. These figures are updated periodically to support calculations of the standing stock of harvestable size oysters from bed density estimates collected by NH F&G divers. New technologies available to scientists in the form of underwater video imaging and acoustic techniques can drastically improve the resolution and timeliness of these oyster bed maps.

The UNH’s Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping, a UNH/NOAA cooperative, is a leader in acoustic research techniques. Using a combination of side scan and ecosounding sensors, UNH C-COM characterized large scale bottom habitats, including entire oyster beds. Investigators from UNH Jackson Estuarine lab, in conjunction with divers from NH F&G, then visited the same habitats. Employing video, along with more conventional quadrant sampling techniques, researchers collected additional data for C-COM to use as ground truth information to support their acoustic interpretation. Stand-alone products, such as video mosaics of the oyster beds, were also created from this data collection. These advanced technologies have assisted in more accurate calculation of standing stock of harvestable oysters and in future investigations of changing bed structure.

The amount of public support and strong partnerships built since the reserves' designation deserves much of the credit for the success of GBNERR and its programs. Fostering partnerships and utilizing tremendous volunteer support, GBNERR is able to focus on issues deemed important by citizens, resource managers and scientists. The reserve has and will continue to be active on the education, research and stewardship fronts, focusing efforts to address the needs of each community mentioned above.

Relevant Web Sites
Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve

Great Bay NERR Local Site

NOAA

NOAA National Estuarine Research Reserve Program

New Hampshire Fish and Game Department

GBNERR Sandy Point Discovery Center

Jackson Estuarine Laboratory

NOAA System Wide Monitoring Program

NOAA Coastal and Estuarine Environmental Technology

GBNERR Regional Significance, Cultural and Natural History

NOAA Coastal Training Program

NOAA Graduate Research Fellowship Program

Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping

Media Contact:
Glenda Powell , NOAA Ocean Service, (301) 713-3066 ext. 191 or Ben Sherman, (301) 713-3066 ext. 178