Celebrate Clean Water

During hockey season, we got a big bin over here, and that's usually stacked about 3 foot tall with the hockey sticks. Of course, summertime, we don't have much going on within the hockey world, but we're soon to have tons and tons of sticks coming in, literally. And we're going to make sure that we've got probably 30 or 40 for you guys when we do the big event in October. But this is kind of like a great orientation for you guys to see how they're assembled. And, and in a second I'm going to show you— I'm bringing a couple that we've got out here in the waterways to tell you about how they actually function. So just to give you a quick, uh, intro to building them, uh, we've got the hockey sticks back here. They are cut into 40-inch and 20-inch lengths. We just found that at about 40-inch lengths. We're trying to get— use as much of the material as possible. The sticks themselves— excuse me one second, let me grab one for you here. Um, the sticks themselves are made with a carbon composite material, all right? It's all carbon. The actual extra ingredient that's used to put all this together is a lactate, something almost like a milk substance. So any concerns about these things dissolving in the water or releasing or leaching any kind of negative impacts to the waterways, extra pollutants, absolutely null and void. They're 100% carbon with a little bit of lactate. That is what it is that it's made to keep them together. So you can see they're actually spun material. Here's a couple ribbons. So when they crack, they're just shredded. There's nothing that we can do with these when they break on the hockey rink except to throw them in the dumpster, fill up the landfills. So what we're doing is we're removing them from the landfill, utilizing them in a way we call repurposing, so that they're able to grow these oysters. So what we've also found trying to use the greater majority of the stick is that it seems to break about 40 inches or so. So that's why we come up with the 40 inches And then the extra pieces we're cutting into 20-inch lengths. And we're just making them in this simple Lincoln Log configuration. The Lincoln Log configuration, the way that we're doing this, maximizes the surface area of all the rings in order to maximize the numbers of oysters that can grow on each one of these units. So we add a little bit of spacer here instead of just having them right on top of each other. Gives a little extra space in between the sticks And again, so we estimate based on the numbers of oysters that we found, and once an oyster's matured on here, you can get a kind of idea of the area that it takes up. And based on that, we've estimated that one of these ringed reefs can, can hold up to 400 oysters. All right, that's a while. Wait, I'm not even done yet. Wait till you hear this. Wow, each one of those oysters can filter up to 50 gallons per day, okay? So when you talk about 50 gallons per day times 400 oysters, we're talking about a Rector Reef that's, that's able to filter 20,000 gallons of water a day, which is about the size of a typical classroom as far as the volume of water goes. That's a wow, because for such a simple device to be able to filter that kind of water time and time again, that's pretty cool, okay? Every single day, 20,000 gallons of water can be filtered by one of these. And I think that means that our contribution of 16 is going to be over 300,000 gallons. We're talking 30. Did you do— so what's 30 times 20,000 gallons? Oh, 30. No, what? 16. Well, we'll probably have 30 by the time we're ready down there, and we're going to put them everywhere. Okay, even better. That's the number you got to keep spreading to your friends out there. And, uh, that's why this is so important. In addition to just the oysters, what you're going to see when we lift this up off the dock here, you're going to see all kinds of other critters that utilize this reef for— as habitat. Um, you're going to find barnacles, you can see mussels on there, all kinds of different types of algae. Barnacles and mussels are also filter feeders. You can add that in addition to the 600,000. But, uh, all in all, this is a pretty cool little thing here. When you've got that base of algae and barnacles and things like that, that's going to have a tendency to attract the small fish, the juvenile fish, the snappers, all kinds of little minnow-type fish that are going to be utilizing this habitat. So what we saw was because there's this big cloud of small juvenile fish in here as well as small crabs and shrimp, we also see that big fish are utilizing this as a feeding zone. So We put this little piece of plastic on top. It offers it some stability in the water, but in addition to that, it just offers the fish that are growing in here a little bit of protection from the larger fish. Now, we can't do anything if they want to go wandering around, but at least they've got a little bit of protection here from, from the bigger fish. So, um, when we get back there, you're going to see we've got these slings on either side. The way we're going to mount these underneath the docks It's a simple procedure. This is a smaller lag bolt and a smaller washer, but we're going to use stainless steel with a large fender washer that's just drilled into the side of the dock. And then once that's secured inside the dock, we just place it right behind there. That way, when we've got the students that are going to come following up, and they're going to be coming down there to look at the actual growth of the, of the habitats, which growing on them. They're going to count how many oysters. They're going to also determine the size of those oysters because we've done previous experiments here that we've been able to determine how much water is actually being filtered based on the size of the oyster. 1-inch is going to have perhaps maybe like 15 gallons an hour, 2-inch 30, up to 3-inch maybe 40, and then 5, you know, the 4-inch oyster size. That's what we're talking about, the 50-inch. So they'll be able to go down there, determine how many oysters, how much size each, or how large each one of those oysters, and determine how many gallons per day each one of those units. So that's kind of cool little information that we're going to have in our back pocket. So it's as simple as just winding these out 1 or 2 threads, taking them off the loop, bringing them up on the boat, being able to do their work, get back in the water, hang them back up, and let them keep Marching right along. So, uh, what we're going to do now— any questions? So how many reefs do you have currently in the waters in Southwest Florida right now? How many of these reefs currently are installed? Probably 40, 45, and that's just getting the word out, um, now that we're actually campaigning to get people to use these. Uh, we probably started out with 25, 30 in different areas just to determine how these things are how, how successful these things are going to be. Once we determined that, hey, these things are growing pretty well and it's pretty cool, we've started to publicize it and get the word out. So we just went up to City of Fort Myers about 2 or 3 weeks ago, and they were so impressed with the idea, they've, um, they're giving us $10,000 to build 50 of these and put them throughout their waterways. In addition to that, They've also said that anybody, any constituents within the City of Fort Myers that wants to buy one of these, they're going to pay half the price for that. So also encourage landowners and dock owners and any kind of commercial endeavors to have one of these placed underneath their dock. Units, and during hockey season we've got a big bin over here, and that's usually stacked about 3 foot tall with the hockey sticks. Of course, summertime we don't have much going on within the hockey world, but We're soon to have tons and tons of sticks coming in, literally, and we're going to make sure that we've got probably 30 or 40 for you guys when we do the big event in October. But this is kind of like a great orientation for you guys to see how they're assembled, and in a second I'm going to show you, I'm going to bring in a couple that we've got out here in the waterways to tell you about how they actually function. So just to give you a quick intro to building them, Uh, we've got the hockey sticks back here. They are cut into 40-inch and 20-inch lengths. We just found that about 40-inch lengths— we're trying to get— use as much of the material as possible. The sticks themselves— excuse me one second, let me grab one for you here. The sticks themselves are made with a carbon composite material, all right, it's all carbon. The actual extra ingredient that's used to put all this together is a lactate, something almost like a milk substance. So any concerns about these things dissolving in the water or releasing or leaching any kind of negative impacts to the waterways, extra pollutants, absolutely null and void. They're, they're 100% carbon with a little bit of lactate. That is what it is that it's made to keep them together. So you can see they're actually spun material. Here's a couple ribbons. So when they crack, they're just shredded. There's nothing that we can do with these when they break on the hockey rink except to throw them in the dumpster, fill up the landfills. So what we're doing is we're removing them from the landfill, utilizing them in a way we call repurposing. So that they're able to grow these oysters. So what we've also found trying to use the greater majority of the stick is that it seems to break about 40 inches or so. So that's why we come up with the 40 inches, and then the extra pieces we're cutting into 20-inch lengths. And we're just making them in this simple Lincoln Log configuration. The Lincoln Log configuration, the way that, that we're doing this, maximizes the surface area of all the rings in order in order to maximize the numbers of oysters that can grow on, on each one of these units. So we add a little bit of spacer here instead of just having them right on top of each other. Gives a little extra space in between the sticks. And that again, so we estimate based on the numbers of oysters that we found, and once an oyster's matured on here, you can get a kind of idea of the area that it takes up. And based on that, We've estimated that one of these ringed reefs can hold up to 400 oysters. All right, that's a wow! Wait, I'm not even done yet. Wait till you hear this wow. Each one of those oysters can filter up to 50 gallons per day. Okay, so when you talk about 50 gallons per day times 400 oysters, we're talking about a ringed reef that's able to filter 20,000 gallons of water a day, which is about the size of a typical a typical classroom as far as the volume of water goes. That's a wow, because for such a simple device to be able to filter that kind of water time and time again, that's pretty cool. Okay, every single day 20,000 gallons of water can be filtered by one of these. And I think that means that our contribution of 16 is going to be over 300,000 gallons. Well, we're talking 30. So what's 30 times 20,000 gallons? Oh, 30. 16. What? 16. Well, we'll probably have 30 by the time we're ready down there, and we're going to put them everywhere. Okay, first people right here. Even better. That's the number you got to keep spreading to your friends out there. And, um, that's why this is so important. In addition to just the oysters, what you're going to see when we lift this up off the dock here, you're going to see all kinds of other critters that utilize this reef for— as habitat. Um, you're going to find barnacles, you're going to see mussels on there, all kinds of different types of algae. Barnacles and mussels are also filter feeders. You can add that in addition to the 600,000. But, um, all in all, this is a pretty cool little thing here. When you've got that base of algae and barnacles and things like that, that's going to have a tendency to attract the small fish, the juvenile fish, the snappers, um, all kinds of little minnow-type fish that are going to be using— utilizing this habitat. So what we saw was, because there's this big cloud of small juvenile fish in here, as well as small crabs and shrimp, we also see that big fish are utilizing this as a feeding zone. So we put this little piece of plastic on top. It offers it some stability in the water, but in addition to that, it just offers the fish that are growing in here a little bit of protection from the larger fish. Now, we can't do anything if they want to go wandering down, but at least they've got a little bit of protection here from, from the bigger fish. So when we get back there, you're going to see we've got these slings on either side. The way we're going to mount these underneath the docks, it's a simple procedure. This is a smaller lag bolt and a smaller washer, but we're going to use stainless steel with a large fender washer that's just drilled into the side of the dock. And then once that's secured inside the dock, we just place it right behind there. That way, when we've got the students that are going to come following up, and they're going to be coming down there to look at the actual growth of the, of the habitats, what's growing on them, they're going to count how many oysters, they're going to also determine the size of those oysters, because we've done previous experiments here that we've been able to determine how much water is actually being filtered based on the size of the oyster. 1-inch is going to have perhaps maybe like 15 gallons an hour, 2-inch 30, up to 3-inch maybe 40, and then 5, you know, the 4-inch oyster size, that's what we're talking about, the 50-inch. So they'll be able to go down there, determine how many oysters, how much size each, or how large each one of those oysters, and determine how many gallons per day each one of those units So that's kind of cool little information that we're going to have in our back pocket. So it's as simple as just winding these out 1 or 2 threads, taking them off the loop, bringing them up on the boat, being able to do their work, get back in the water, hang them back up, and let them keep marching right along. So what we're going to do now— any questions? So how many reefs do you have currently in the waters in Southwest Florida right now? How many reefs currently? Probably 40, 45, and that's just getting the word out. Now that we're actually campaigning to get people to use these, we probably started out with 25, 30 in different areas just to determine how these things are, how successful these things are going to be. Once we determined that, hey, these things are growing pretty well and it's pretty cool, we started to publicize it and get the word out. So we just went up to City of Fort Myers about 2 or 3 weeks ago, and they were so impressed with the idea, they've— they're giving us $10,000 to build 50 of these and put them throughout their waterways. In addition to that, they've also said that anybody, any constituents within the City of Fort Myers that wants to buy one of these, they're going to pay half the price for them to also encourage landowners and dockers owners and any kind of commercial endeavors to have one of these placed underneath their dock. All right, um, all right, Sam and I are going to bring this one up and show you a little bit here. Wow! All right, all right, here's what's interesting about this and this site. The fact is, as far as oyster growth goes, this area, I mean right here, is the worst area for growing oysters because oysters need a— there's a range of salinity that they need, somewhere mid-salinity. In the Gulf of Mexico, we've got 34 parts per thousand. In fresh water, that's 0 parts salinity per thousand, correct? So they like to have something somewhere between 15 to 25. Unfortunately for oysters that live in this particular area, we get both ends of the spectrum because we got so much water coming up from the Imperial River and that whole watershed. Right now this water is at 0 parts per salinity, and that really stresses oysters in this area, as well as on the other side of it. After we get through with the rainy season, then this is going to be 100% percent saltwater, 34 parts per thousand is what this— so even for this area stressing the oysters as much as they are, you can still see we've got some pretty good growth. Now we had a lot more growth before Hurricane Irma, and then post-Irma we had 8 weeks of floodwaters, uh, fresh water coming by here, which really stressed and eventually killed the oysters that we had on here. But the good news is when they died, they left valves, the old parts of the shell that was connected to the oyster, to the ring-to-wreath unit, and those shells became the new site for the new oysters to grow. So you can see we've got a lot of algae growing on here, all kinds of different things. We'll have different seasons, we'll have sponges growing on there, and these are all filter feeders. In addition to that, about 2 weeks ago I lifted this up and it was covered with about 20 5 seahorses, which was pretty cool. They were all monsters too. So there's all kinds of great things happening here. So, uh, we have been pulling the, uh, Brink the Reefs in other areas behind Estero Bay and Estero Island, back at Fort Myers Beach area where we got them. And you can see a huge amount of growth on these as far as the oyster spat that's beginning on there. And we expect we're going to have much, much greater results as far as the oysters go, but for this area, for the stress that they're getting, this is some pretty good growth. So this is an oyster here that's probably about a year and a half old. You can see how big they're getting, and he's probably filtering about 35 gallons per day now, and as they get bigger, they're going to be filtering more water. On occasion, when we have a high tide where the water is just still. It's amazing to see, but you can look down and you can actually see an aura of clear water that is from the surrounding, from just these oysters that are sucking in that much water that quickly. So we'll get them back in there now so they're not stressed, and then we're going to wander back over to the Tiki Hut. Okay. This is some good engineering, team. Look at that. Well done. When you pull it up, does it stay together? Thanks, Musso. Woo-hoo! Look, it even stays together! Solid piece! Hey, we got it! I love it!