Rob Youhas rinsing sea grasses before loading them into litter bags

Once the litter bags are ready, some are hung from buoys to simulate decomposition of floating seagrass detritus.  Here you see our buoys loaded up ready to be deployed from the boat the next day.  And yes, if it looks dark, that's because we got done loading the bags at 4am!

Rob tying the mooring rope for his buoy to the block that will form the weight for the array.

As a backup, in case the buoys deployed in the Bay are lost, replicate sets of litter bags are deployed from a Dock in more protected water.  Here Rob is seen loading the samples that will be placed at the bottom of the buoy system to simulate decomposition on the seagrass bed's sediments.

The ring is slid over the mooring rope and down until it rests over the block at the bottom

Finally the buoy with the surface litter bag samples is attached to the mooring rope and deployed