RESPONDING TO PINEY POINT Kristen Kusek
Most of us had been working from home for more than a year when the lining in the Piney Point “gypstack,” the retired fertilizer processing plant in Manatee County, Florida, failed at the end of March 2021. The event seized Florida headlines, spiked blood pressures, and required the release of 215 million gallons of nutrient-laden wastewater into Tampa Bay. It also plucked many of us out of our COVID-19 cocoons. “We were fortunate to be able to mobilize our research group in short order,” said Tom Frazer, dean of the USF College of Marine Science (USF CMS). “Rapid deployments like this one provide us with an unprecedented opportunity to get out there and provide the science necessary to help inform an effective response, as well as any necessary mitigation efforts, so that we can safeguard our vulnerable coastal resources.” Between April 7 and June 22, USF conducted five research cruise efforts in response to the spill involving three field research teams. Shorebased sampling and small-boats (in partnership with the Florida Fish & Wildlife Commission) were also conducted throughout April to collect additional data in the vicinity of the spill. “COVID put the breaks on field work in a major way,” Frazer said, “and while responding to an environmental emergency is never fun, getting
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back into a research groove sure was.” All field operations and related media events were held in a USF-approved COVID-safe manner. The aim was to figure out a wicked problem: how Tampa Bay would respond to such a significant influx of nutrients. “The nutrient chemistry of seawater is a complex issue, and that is certainly true for Tampa Bay,” said USF chemical oceanographer Kristen Buck, who led the largest research team abord the R/V Weatherbird II, a ship that was also used in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill response effort led by USF. The initial Weatherbird cruises were made possible by USF’s partnership with the Florida Institute of Oceanography (FIO). Buck’s team, many of them graduate students for whom this was their first shipboard science experience, collected samples for analyses of dissolved inorganic carbon, pH, nutrients, metals, radioisotopes, bacteria, and phytoplankton. These initial samples were further processed in partnership with other USF labs and partners at Fish and Wildlife Research Institute and Florida State University. “It was remarkable to see all of our partners around Tampa Bay team up in the response effort,” Frazer said. The full suite of the data being collected at Piney Point, including USF’s data, was displayed on a dashboard maintained by the Tampa Bay Estuary Program.
