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News2026-01-27T21:46:33+00:00

TBS News

Stay current with our latest updates and announcements.

Introducing McKay Bay TRACE (Targeted Research and Assessment of Contaminants in the Estuary) … and two different types of field days with the same week! 🐟🧪 McKay Bay TRACE is a new companion project to our Tampa Bay Surveillance (TBS) study. Similarly to our TBS study, McKay Bay TRACE will investigate contaminants in sediment, oysters, and recreationally harvested fish, but with a targeted focus on McKay Bay and the lower Palm River. 🎣 Field sampling is officially underway! Throughout the duration of the project, our team will take a closer look at what’s in these waters, what’s making its way into the species people catch and eat, and what it means for the health of this unique urban estuary. Learn more about the project by clicking the link in our story and follow along as we TRACE McKay Bay! 🌊🔬 #contaminants #TampaBay #McKayBay #marineresearch #PalmRiver waterquality
Join us Thursday, August 6, from 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. EDT for @noaa Student Experiences 3-Minute Lightning Talks: Gulf of America Forum Webinar. Tampa Bay Surveillance Project graduate students Kylee Rullo-Soletti and Alexandra Lee will share their research in fast-paced, three-minute presentations: 📍 Kylee Rullo-Soletti: “Location, Location, Contamination: Spatial Patterns of PFAS in Tampa Bay Red Drum” 🐟 Alexandra Lee: “Investigating Parental Offloading of Chemical Pollutants in Spotted Seatrout” Fellow @usfmarinescience graduate student Hallie Repeta will also present “Evaluating Climate-Responsive Management Strategies for Gulf Menhaden Using an End-to-End Ecosystem Framework.” Tune in for a quick and engaging look at the impressive research being conducted by students throughout the Gulf region! Register here ➡️ https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/4196055686550101592 (find the live link in our stories)
Meet Alexis Mitchem, a PhD candidate in Dr. Mya Breitbart's lab and our resident DNA Diva! 🧬🐟 For the Tampa Bay Surveillance Project, Alexis is uncovering what common snook are really eating using DNA metabarcoding and stable isotope analysis. By piecing together these underwater food webs, she's exploring predator-prey relationships, trophic positions, and how snook diets change as they grow. Her research helps us better understand Tampa Bay's ecosystem and provides valuable information to support fisheries management and conservation. Every DNA sequence tells a story—and Alexis is helping us read the menu! 💙🌊 Check out where she hopes to go next in her career path, what her favorite field snack is, and advice to her younger self in this staff feature! #StaffFeatureFriday #TampaBaySurveillance #Snook
What’s in the freezer? A whole lot of fish stomachs...and food-web clues. 🐟🔍 Before stomach dissections begin, Dr. Steve Murawski and members of the Tampa Bay Surveillance team gathered to take stock of the samples and discuss methods for the work ahead. Next came a visit to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute (FWRI) for hands-on training with Julianne Knight, a veteran of the Fish Feeding Ecology Lab, affectionately known as the “Guts Lab.” Julianne shared her expertise and plenty of tips for dissecting fish stomachs and identifying their contents, including fish, crabs, mollusks, parasites and even bait. It’s as gross as it sounds, and every bit as fascinating. Identifiable features such as shells, bones and other hard structures can reveal important clues about what these fish are eating. (Thank you, Julianne and FWRI!) Graduate researchers Lauren Bulik and Alexis Mitchem recently joined the TBS team to help take this work further. By combining diet analysis with research on contaminants across trophic levels, they will help us better understand predator-prey relationships and how contaminants move through Tampa Bay’s food webs. We’ll be introducing Alexis, the DNA Diva, this Friday. Stay tuned! 📻 🧬 🔍
✨ Staff Feature Friday is back! Meet Lauren Bulik, a Ph.D. student in Dr. Steve Murawski's Lab… and new appointed Marine Science Advisory Committee Secretary (Congratulations!🎉) For the Tampa Bay Surveillance Project, Lauren is investigating contaminants in the prey found inside the stomachs of our study fish. That's right, she gets to uncover what predators like red drum are eating! 🐟 By identifying their prey and analyzing contaminants, Lauren's research will help us better understand how contaminants move through Tampa Bay's marine food webs and ultimately reach larger predators. Get to know Lauren by learning her favorite spot around Tampa Bay, the one animal she'll eat despite being a vegetarian, and the advice she'd give her younger self. We can't wait to see what our fish have been ingesting! #TBSProject #FoodWebs #biomagnification
Lights, camera, DISSECTION!🎬🦪 Layne Leggett (TBS/Barnacle Baseline Graduate Student Researcher) photographs barnacle tiles pulled from Bayboro Harbor. Remarkably, these were removed from the dock behind the Marine Science Lab just one day before the fire. Before any dissecting happens, Layne sets the mood (shutting the blinds and turning off the lights…) to get glare-free, consistent shots of each tile. Those images feed into ImageJ, software that measures barnacle growth, size, and percent coverage — key data for the Barnacle Baseline project. Swipe to see the largest barnacle Layne has laid forceps on! #BarnacleBaseline #MarineScience #Love4Inverts
As we restock our changing lab and office spaces and keep our field and analytical operations moving, each new delivery feels a little like Christmas morning. We felt compelled to capture the immense JOY of receiving and opening all these very special presents. 📦🎄 From making lists (and checking them twice) to receiving ongoing guidance, assistance, and generosity from our partners, colleagues, and extended CMS and TBS family, we have so many people to thank for helping us barely miss a beat. A very special shoutout to the USF mailroom team, the true MVPs of this operation! 🏆 Please enjoy this utterly fabulous, highly sophisticated, and extremely festive production of TBS’s Christmas in July. (Should the marine science thing not work out, Hollywood clearly awaits…)🎬✨
✨Spotlight on outreach & education💡: Over the last couple weeks, TBS had a positive impact at USF’s Oceanography Camp for Girls! The OCG toxicology lab was created by TBS students Kylee and Alexandra to encourage the campers to think not only about their environment but how human activities affect the health of the environment and the organisms living in it, namely important recreational and subsistence fishes in Tampa Bay. The girls used Kylee and Alexandra’s real fish data to learn about bioaccumulation and biomagnification of chemical contaminants, to learn how chemists use lab machines such as the ASE and GC-MS, and to develop their own hypotheses to test, evaluate, and share their findings! “We constructed the Toxicology Lab as a way to show OCG Campers what we do in TBS in a daily basis. We teach them everything from terms like bio accumulation to the internal workings of the GC-MS to ageing fish using otoliths. They got to be real TBS scientists for the day and learn the impacts that environmental contaminants can have on the ecosystem and the community.”- Kylee Rullo-Soletti We are so proud of our team for teaching a younger generation about our project, inspiring them to be environmental stewards and maybe even scientists themselves one day! Swipe to see education in action, the campers final toxicology poster, otolith investigation, excel sheet creation, and science experienced in a fun way🤝🏼 👩‍🔬 #TBSProject #Outreach #GoTeam
✨Repost (with link added to story and News Highlights and photos reformatted).✨ Fishing piers🎣. Bookstores 📚. Coffee shops☕. What do they all have in common? Earlier this spring, Tampa Bay REACH co-PI Noelle Boucquey joined @wusfpublicmedia Florida Matters for a conversation about "third places" and the many ways they support connection, community, and well-being. During the discussion, Noelle drew on research she conducted with Jessie Fly exploring Tampa Bay shore fishing spaces as third places. The episode also features Terra Dunham of St. Pete’s Book + Bottle, highlighting how different spaces help people gather, connect, and belong. 🎧 Give it a listen, then tell us: What's your favorite third place? 🔗Link in our story + News highlights, with the discussion beginning around minute 47. Photos 📸: Dr. Noëlle Boucquey appears on WUSF's Florida Matters podcast; local fishing spots in Tampa Bay - Ballast Point Park Pier and a pier next to the Courtney Campbell Bridge; WUSF Florida Matters logo. #thirdplaces #podcast #wusf #shorefishing #eckerdcollege
Way to go, AJ! 👏🌊🦪 Big, belated congratulations to Tampa Bay Surveillance Project team member AJ Gross on receiving a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP) award, one of the nation’s most prestigious graduate fellowships! 🤯 AJ was one of only five recipients from USF and selected from nearly 14,000 applicants nationwide. Through this fellowship, AJ will continue research at the University of South Florida College of Marine Science studying contaminants and pathogens in Tampa Bay oysters, including PFAS “forever chemicals,” pesticides, norovirus, and Vibrio bacteria. We’re incredibly proud to see AJ recognized for his hard work, dedication, and impactful research. Congratulations, AJ! 🎉 #NSFGRFP #MarineScience #TampaBay #USF #STEM #Research #PFAS
In the weeks following the fire at the @usfmarinescience , we have seen our community show up in extraordinary ways. From lending equipment and workspace, to donating funds, sharing meals, offering encouragement and helping hands, the support from our St. Pete neighbors and beyond has meant more than we can express. We are also deeply grateful to the first responders and, above all, thankful that no one was injured. While recovery and inventory efforts will continue for quite some time, the Tampa Bay Surveillance team remains hopeful and determined. We have been actively involved in salvage efforts and have already returned to the field to continue the work and stay on track with our project objectives. None of this has been easy, and we truly could not do it without all of you. This video captures just a few moments from the past several weeks – including the Ocean of Support fundraiser hosted at @thehubstpete , recovery efforts at CMS, time back out in the field, and a special evening with the larger CMS community at the @tampabayrowdies match on May 23. (And yes, a 3-0 Rowdies win certainly lifts spirits.) We still have a lot to celebrate, and we look forward to continuing to share updates as we regain our footing together. Thank you. 🙏
Next week, the TBS team is headed to #GulfCon in Mobile, Alabama 😁 Many of us will be presenting our research in the session “Shoreside Livelihoods at the Crossroads: Coastal Change, Contaminants, and Community Well-Being”. As scientists, it is important that we share our data and increase our network so that we can broaden our impact. Our goal is to turn knowledge into meaningful action. We love attending this conference to collaborate with and encourage our colleagues all along the Gulf coast! We can’t wait! ✈️🐟💧 #GulfCon #TBSProject #ScienceCommunication #EnvironmentalHealth
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Funding for this work was made available through award NA23NOS4690261 of the NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science Competitive Research Program to the University of South Florida Tampa Bay Surveillance Project.

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