Measuring the recruitment and growth of biofouling communities using clear recruitment panels

Abstract

Ecological monitoring has been recognized as a key tool for guiding biofouling management practices. A two-year study was designed to collect comprehensive data on the biofouling community progression at Port Canaveral, Florida, using clear recruitment panels and a scanner to directly observe organisms attached to the surface. This method allowed for minimal disruption to the natural community development and aided the collection of a suite of metrics to explore environmental relationships. Seasonal changes in community composition and biofouling pressure, especially at earlier stages, were related to abiotic conditions. Interannual variation within seasonal communities was also observed. The type of dominant organism present impacted the rate at which surfaces were covered (e.g. fastest cover with tunicates) and the overall biomass accumulation (e.g. highest rate with tubeworms). Results highlight that understanding the influence of the time of year and the dominant organism identity is ecologically vital for improving biofouling management.

Keywords:

• Community composition
• biomass accumulation
• biofouling ecology
• environmental relationships
• dominance
• biofouling management

Acknowledgements

This work was completed in fulfillment of a PhD at the Florida Institute of Technology, and the authors thank the committee members for their invaluable advice on data analysis. The authors thank all the graduate students, undergraduate students, and other members of the Center for Corrosion and Biofouling Control who helped with fieldwork and frame maintenance. The authors also thank the two anonymous reviewers for their feedback which helped improve the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data is available on the request from the corresponding author.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Office of Naval Research [Grant # N00014-20-1-2243 and N00014-16-1-3123] and the ASTM Graduate Project Grant Program.