HERRNKIND ET AL RECRUITMENT OK Sl'lNY LOBSTERS 



Florida Keys ^ 



-r«*. 



^B'' 



LITTLE PINE 

 KEY 



/ 



NAME 

 KEY 

 r BAHIA 

 ' HONDA 

 KEY 



^NEWFOUND 

 HARBOR KEYS 



BURNT POINT 



GRASSY 

 KEY 



Figure l. — Map of field sites in the middle and lower Keys, Monroe County, FL, U.S.A. Insets provide more detail of the areas 

 surrounding our field sites (•). Diagonal lines depict approximate extent of the heavily silted area we surveyed. 



of sieves (500 |x, 250 |jl, and 63 jx; U.S. Standard 

 Sieve Series), but only the two smallest size frac- 

 tions were retained because subsamples >500 |x 

 consisted entirely of shell and algae fragments. 

 Silt samples were dried for 48 hours at lOO'C and 

 then weighed. The amount of algal-entrained silt 

 at the two sites was compared using a two-sample 

 ^-test. Organic weight of the silt was derived by 

 digesting three silt samples in SO^f hydrogen per- 

 oxide for 1 week, then oven drying the remaining 

 silt at 60°C for 48 hours (Cortes and Risk 1985). 

 The fraction of carbonates in the silts was deter- 

 mined by dissolving the three samples in 5% hy- 



drochloric acid for 1 week, then drying the sam- 

 ples as above (Cortes and Risk 1985). Percent 

 organics and carbonates (by weight) in the silts at 

 the two sites were compared in two-sample ^-tests 

 on arcsin transformed data. 



We counted the number of epifaunal prey in 

 silted and unsilted clumps to determine the possi- 

 ble influence of siltation on juvenile spiny lobster 

 food abundance. The reported estimates of prey 

 abundance are means of two separate counts per 

 clump; 5 clumps per treatment were processed. 

 The volume of each Laurencia clump was deter- 

 mined by water displacement, and all silt load 



333 



