RECOVER MAP 3.2.3.5 and 3.2.4.5 South Florida Fish and Invertebrate Assessment Network (FIAN)

The South Florida Seagrass Fish and Invertebrate Assessment Network (FIAN) is an element of the Monitoring and Assessment Plan (MAP) a part of RECOVER, the Restoration, Coordination and Verification Program of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). FIAN is an element of the Southern Coastal System module of MAP (MAP activities 3.2.3.5 and 3.2.4.5). FIAN monitors seagrass-associated fish and invertebrate (penaeid and caridean shrimp and crabs) communities present in shallow waters of South Florida; the pink shrimp, Farfantepenaeus duorarum, as an indicator of restoration success, is a species of special interest. FIAN represents the first region-wide view of these communities and the pink shrimp.

The FIAN monitoring component of the Southern Estuaries module of MAP is designed to support the four broad objectives of MAP: (1) to establish a pre-CERP reference state, including variability, for each of the performance measures; (2) to determine the status and trends in the performance measures; (3) to detect unexpected responses of the ecosystem to changes in stressors resulting from CERP activities; and (4) to support scientific investigations designed to increase ecosystem understanding, cause-and-effect, and interpretation of unanticipated results.

The data developed in FIAN will be used to evaluate the success of CERP by contributing to the assessment of the estuarine response to restoration-related modifications to upstream hydrology in the freshwater Everglades. At present, FIAN provides input to the pink shrimp performance measure (RECOVER, 2004; SFWMD 2005). The pink shrimp emerged as an ecosystem attribute to be monitored from the Florida and Biscayne Bay conceptual ecological models. More generally, these data will be used to relate seagrass-associated faunal communities to habitat and environmental conditions in South Florida shallow water estuaries.

FIAN is closely coupled with the MAP seagrass monitoring project FHAP-SF and other seagrass monitoring programs in South Florida, e.g. DERM. Close coupling with seagrass monitoring recognizes the importance of shallow seagrass systems to the function of coastal waters and their vulnerability to anthropogenic change. Estuaries downstream from CERP projects will be affected by changes in the quantity, timing, and distribution of freshwater inflows. Associated changes in estuarine salinity regimes and subsequent, long-term, changes in benthic vegetation are anticipated. We hypothesize that abundance and diversity of seagrass-associated fish and invertebrates including the pink shrimp in nearshore waters of South Florida will increase as the overlap of favorable salinity conditions with favorable seagrass/algal habitat increase.