In addition to funding research, education, and outreach projects advanced by the nation's 30 Sea Grant progams, NOAA's National Sea Grant College Program also awards competitive research grants in major priority issue areas critical to U.S. waters and coasts.

Delaware Sea Grant recently successfully competed and was awarded funding for the following projects:

• Sea Grant Aquatic Nuisance Species Research Program: Risks of Survival and Establishment of Tropical Introduced Bait Species — A Case Study of the Nuclear Worm Namalycastis sp.
  
  
• Sea Grant Aquatic Nuisance Species Research Program — Southeast Regional Strategic Outreach Network
  
  
• Sea Grant Aquatic Nuisance Species Research and Outreach Program: Initiation of an Aquatic Nuisance Species Cooperative Education and Outreach Network in the Mid-Atlantic Region
  

• Sea Grant Oyster Disease Program: Development of Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) Markers in the Eastern Oyster for Genetic Improvement and Stock Enhancement
  

Sea Grant Aquatic Nuisance Species Research Program: Risks of Survival and Establishment of Tropical Introduced Bait Species — A Case Study of the Nuclear Worm Namalycastis sp.
Principal Investigators: Douglas Miller and John Ewart
University of Delaware Graduate College of Marine Studies, Lewes Campus
University of Delaware Sea Grant Marine Advisory Service, Lewes Campus
Project Period: June 1, 2003 – May 31, 2005

Nuclear worms are large, pink, semi-aquatic polychaetes imported from Vietnam and sold as fish bait. Import and sale of this species is unregulated and has received much media attention recently focused on the worms’ vivid coloration, unusual size (up to 2 m long), and the potential exposure of fisherman to pathogens associated with packing material.

"While many believe the nuclear worm poses little environmental risk to temperate coastlines, this assertion is lacking any rigorous scientific basis, and certainly is not a valid extrapolation to warmer, subtropical regions of the U.S. coast," says Doug Miller, an oceanographer at the UD College of Marine Studies.

In this study funded by the National Sea Grant Aquatic Nuisance Species Program, Miller and John Ewart, aquaculture specialist for the UD Sea Grant Marine Advisory Service, will conduct laboratory experiments to evaluate the risk of survival and establishment of nuclear worms in Mid-Atlantic waters and particularly in states farther south where warmer subtropical climates are found. Temperature and salinity experiments will be conducted in the first year. In the second year, the scientists will conduct aquarium experiments at optimal temperature and salinity to identify species of freshwater and estuarine invertebrates consumed as prey, the worm’s ability to regenerate when cut for bait, and their reproductive seasonality and success (if any) in the lab. Coastline regions at risk for nuclear-worm establishment (i.e., with tolerable temperature regimes) will be identified using electronically available temperature data. This approach also will be assessed for application to other tropical imported and invasive species.

The scientists will share their research findings with the public through Web pages, a fact sheet, and lectures. The project should benefit a range of audiences, from federal agencies, state resource managers, and invasive species working groups, to bait shop owners and local fishermen.

Sea Grant Aquatic Nuisance Species Research Program — Southeast Regional Strategic Outreach Network
Principal Investigators: Howard D. Walters, John J. Dindo, Michael Spranger, and William Hall
J. L. Scott Marine Education Center, Mississippi (Walters)
Dauphin Island Sea Lab, Alabama (Dindo)
University of Florida Sea Grant Program (Spranger)
University of Delaware Sea Grant Marine Advisory Service, Lewes Campus (Hall)
Project Period: June 1, 2003 – May 31, 2004

This regional proposal expands on existing efforts to develop K–12 and informal science education and outreach activities related to invasive species. Begun in Mississippi and Alabama as a two-state project with funding from the Environmental Protection Agency Gulf of Mexico Program, the Southeast Regional Network expanded with further fiscal support to include the four-state region from Louisiana to Florida on the northern Gulf of Mexico coast. This proposal refines the regional approach and begins the process of piloting the previous accomplishments into a second region of the country through further collaborative activities.

Specifically, the principal investigators will implement six formal workshops on aquatic nuisance species for classroom teachers; 15 informal, short-duration, and school-based workshops for teachers and students; and two to four workshops for informal science educators and/or extension agents. They also will implement a structured communications system via the Internet for sharing information, ideas, and curricular materials among the workshop participants. Upon completion of this phase of the program, a total of 540 classroom teachers from Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania will be engaged in education-related communications to support ANS education and outreach activities in their classrooms, along with 225 informal educators and/or extension agents and an additional 250 policy, research, and educational leaders from an on-line workshop.

Sea Grant Aquatic Nuisance Species Research and Outreach Program: Initiation of an Aquatic Nuisance Species Cooperative Education and Outreach Network in the Mid-Atlantic Region
Principal Investigators: William Hall, Adam Frederick, and Ann Faulds
University of Delaware Sea Grant Marine Advisory Service, Lewes Campus (Hall)
Maryland Sea Grant (Frederick)
Pennsylvania Sea Grant (Faulds)
Project Period: June 1, 2003 – May 31, 2005

Marine and aquatic habitats increasingly are being threatened by non-indignenous invertebrates and algae — 298 of these species are now documented as having invaded marine and estuarine waters. Many aquatic nuisance species (ANS) have been transported by ballast water, although aquaculture and the pet trades have also been contributors to the problem. Some ANS have impacted human health with grave effects. When Vibrio cholerae was released from ballast water and contaminated a Peruvian drinking water system in 1991, over a million people were infected, resulting in over 10,000 deaths. ANS impacts on ecosystems are a major national issue, and biological invasions are believed to be the second-largest cause of biodiversity loss after habitat destruction. Environmental economic losses due to non-indigenous species currently are in excess of 137 billion dollars annually in the United States alone.

In this regional project, Sea Grant marine educators William Hall from Delaware, Adam Frederick from Maryland, and Ann Faulds from Pennsylvania are working to increase public education of aquatic nuisance species through the design and implementation of two pilot ANS teacher professional development workshops using a successful model already developed by the Southeast ANS Education and Outreach Network. The Mid-Atlantic team will complete six ANS professional teacher development workshops over the next two years, reaching a total of 180 educators. The target audience will be minority teachers and teachers of minority students who need science certification or re-certification to continue their teaching careers. The regional team will design evaluation materials complementary to those that have been developed by the Southeast ANS Network, facilitating educational research between geographic regions and meeting national education standards. The team also will initiate a Mid-Atlantic ANS Web site that will contain downloadable curricula and other ANS resource materials for teachers.

Sea Grant Oyster Disease Program: Development of Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) Markers in the Eastern Oyster for Genetic Improvement and Stock Enhancement
Principal Investigators: Patrick Gaffney, Kimberly Reece, Ryan Carnegie, and Ami Wilbur
University of Delaware Graduate College of Marine Studies, Lewes Campus (Gaffney)
Virginia Institute of Marine Science (Reece and Carnegie)
University of North Carolina at Wilmington (Wilbur)
Project Period: June 1, 2003 – May 31, 2005

The continuing decline of Atlantic oyster fisheries in the face of the diseases MSX and Dermo has sparked a multimillion dollar effort in the Chesapeake Bay to revitalize the bay’s ecosystem by planting hatchery-propagated oysters on restored oyster bottom and reefs. In order for restoration projects to be cost-effective, deployed hatchery oysters must show substantially better growth and survival than wild oysters in the presence of disease.

In this regional research project funded by the National Sea Grant Oyster Disease Program, UD marine biologist Patrick Gaffney and colleagues Kimberly Reece and Ryan Carnegie from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and Amy Wilbur from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington will be developing a set of 100 genetic markers (single nucleotide polymorphism markers) in the Eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica). These DNA-based markers should improve scientists' ability to track the survival and reproduction of hatchery stocks in order to assess their contribution to the local ecosystem. They also will allow breeding programs to establish pedigree control, reducing the damage caused by inadvertent inbreeding and contamination.

When the project is completed, all of the genetic markers will be made available for use by researchers and resource managers via a Web data base.