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Volunteer Spotlight: Bob Neville & Sunnie Jones, Folly River (SC)

It has been almost six years now since Nancy Smith and the Folly Beach Turtle Watch Program asked their volunteers if anyone was interested in being trained to look at phytoplankton. A handful of people took the training, four became phytoplankton regulars, but over the years those four have been whittled down to two: Sunnie Jones and Bob Neville. Sunnie and Bob monitor the waters of Folly River, just a few miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean, on the other side of Folly Beach, next door to Charleston, South Carolina.

Bob was an outdoor kid growing up. For the past 27 years, his day job has kept him inside as the Assistant Dean at the College of Charleston's Library. However, to this day, he still enjoys spending much of his "free time" outdoors. Bob loves to bird watch and he has been with the Folly Beach Turtle Team for 7 years (www.follyturtles.com). As part of the turtle team, volunteers receive training from the SC Department of Natural Resources, walk over 5 miles of beach everyday looking for turtle tracks from May to mid-August, aid in nest relocations, and dispose of turtle strandings.

While he has had no formal training as a scientist, he has always been interested in science. Bob enjoys participating in programs like the PMN and Turtle Watch since they are "longitudinal studies" where "in a small way, I feel like I am contributing to something. And I've loved to watch the program (PMN) grow."

Bob and Sunnie collect their phytoplankton samples at the Folly River public boat ramp. Five years ago, they started sampling at the Folly Beach Pier. There they would get lots of people asking questions about what they were doing with that "windsock." However, as volunteers left the Folly Beach group, as the winters began to get really cold on the pier, and as they noticed very little difference between the phytoplankton found at the two sites, they decided to sample only at the boat ramp.

While they do not get as many questions as at the pier, Bob and Sunnie like to sample at the boat ramp because it is used a lot by recreational boaters and the citizens of Folly Beach. They enjoy meeting people "who don't know what they're doing." This gives them the chance to talk with them about the important role phytoplankton play in the marine ecosystem. Bob has noticed that most of the people he comes across have heard of Red Tide before.

After collecting the sample, they look at it back as Bob's Folly Beach house. When they first started with the PMN, they bought and used an inexpensive light microscope, but have been using the MIC-D ever since. The MIC-D is the "best thing that has happened" for our monitoring. It typically takes about 40 minutes for Bob and Sunnie to do a count. Over the years, they haven't seen "too many of the bad bugs" while monitoring Folly River. However, they have reported a few blooms, including Rhizosolenia and Skeletonema. Bob recalls how hard it was in the beginning to identify the phytoplankton, since "everything looked alike." But after a couple of months, they began to learn the different kinds of phytoplankton and it started to get easier to ID "most of them."

"Aside from general curiosity I initially became interested in the PMN because I was interested in the quality of the ocean environment for sea turtle populations. I really got hooked after reading And the Waters Turned to Blood by Rodney Barker which I found frightening and too close to home. Working with PMN has really reinforced how interconnected everything in our environment and how the health of any given species affects the whole ecosystem."

All of us at the PMN are thankful for your long-term monitoring that you are doing. We are extremely glad "science is something you enjoy," and that the monitoring network is a "great hobby" for you. Thanks Bob and Sunnie for keeping an eye on the waters at Folly Beach.

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Reporting a Bloom

If you and your group think that your monitoring site may have a phytoplankton bloom, please contact the Phytoplankton Monitoring Network (PMN) staff immediately via phone and/or email:

• Jeff Paternoster: 843-762-8657
• Allison Sill: 843-762-8656
• Steve Morton: 843-762-8857

Make as many observations as you can about the site: weather conditions, water coloration, tides, local flora and fauna, and/or any organism mortality. Record these observations on your data sheet. If you have a camera, we would love pictures of your site during a phytoplankton bloom. Please do not handle/touch any dead organisms found at your site.