Cayla Sullivan
Current Job: Life Scientist
Current Project: Restoring and Protecting Eelgrass in Long Island Sound
State(s) working in: New York, Connecticut
Where are you from: Long Island, NY
What do you think is the main reason we should protect SAV?
By protecting SAV, we protect both the quality of environmental and public health. SAV provides a multitude of ecosystem services, including habitat provisioning for key recreational and commercial fishery species, stabilizing sediment to reduce erosion, and removing nutrients from the water column. All services are invaluable and enhance the livelihood and longevity of coastal communities.
How do you feel your research will make a difference in the SAV community?
In the Long Island Sound, we are working to better restore, protect, and manage by maximizing the utility of the available tools and technologies. Our goal is to develop a strategy to define when, how, and under what conditions to use different remote sensing technologies to ultimately map the extent of eelgrass and identify the health of the meadow.
What is one of your best memories working with SAV?
Last year, I was lucky enough to spend two weeks in Puerto Rico studying the applicability of the Nutrient Pollution Index in tropical seagrasses. For this project, I stayed at the Jobos Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) – an incredible opportunity to learn about the restoration and research efforts carried about by the NERR and appreciate the beauty of seagrass in the NERR’s area.
What keeps you motivated to keep caring about the future of SAV?
The people! In Long Island Sound, the partnership, the Long Island Sound Study, is an amazing group of federal, state, and local government, non-government organizations, academia, and other concerned stakeholders whose dedication is infectious.
More about Cayla’s story
Born and raised on Long Island, NY, I always had a passion for the ocean. In 5th grade, when all my classmates wanted to be singers, dancers, and soccer players, I wanted to be a marine biologist. Fast forward to 2017, I graduated from Monmouth University with a BS in Marine and Environmental Biology and Policy. At Monmouth University, I discovered how much I enjoyed research where I was able to get involved in several projects including nitrogen removal rates in salt marshes (Undergraduate Thesis), eDNA, and oyster reef restoration techniques. Following undergraduate, I attended the University of Florida and graduated in 2019 with a MS in Soil and Water Science. My lab’s research, the Coastal Ecology and Marine Lab, predominantly focused on tropical seagrass species in the northern Gulf of Mexico. For my MS Thesis, I investigated climate change impacts on seagrass – specifically, how does the shift in intertidal plant dominance (salt marshes to mangroves) impact adjacent seagrass meadows.
In 2020, as an Oak Ridge Institute of Science and Education Fellow, I started to work in the federal government where I developed a database for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to host all data collected during the Lake Ontario 2018 Cooperative Science and Monitoring Initiative. A few months later, I joined EPA as a Life Scientist for the Long Island Sound Office (LISO). The LISO manages and hosts the Long Island Sound Study, an EPA National Estuary Program dedicated to restoring and protecting the Long Island Sound. For EPA LISO, I am the Habitat and Reporting Coordinator where I am currently leading our partnership to meet our Eelgrass Extent Ecosystem Target. In 2022, we developed a Long Island Sound Eelgrass Management and Restoration Strategy. The strategy provides guidance for short and long-term actions that should be taken to manage and restore eelgrass meadows in the Long Island Sound. The LISS is already implementing these actions including increasing coordination through the development of the Long Island Sound Eelgrass Collaborative, enhancing water quality in eelgrass meadows, mapping and monitoring eelgrass meadows, updating habitat suitability models, and determining the resiliency of eelgrass genetic populations. To communicate the importance of eelgrass to the public, I am also leading the development of a Long Island Sound Eelgrass StoryMap which showcases results from an ongoing research project, led by EPA, to estimate eelgrass using satellite imagery and connect those trends back to our LISS partners’ water quality monitoring data.
