Four diagrams in pocket in back of book. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida State University, 1982. / Bibliography: leaves 146-149.

Oyster tongers are a cultural icon of Florida's maritime heritage and geography. Challenged for generations by the vagaries of weather, including catastrophic storms and years-long droughts, and economic uncertainties this maritime heritage is fading fast. While Florida's north and west coasts produce 90 percent of the Florida oyster harvest and ten percent of oysters consumed in the United States, the industry is at risk today for reasons including a declining demand for Florida oysters because of health concerns; water pollution; population growth and its accompanying development of condominiums, gated communities, and retail shopping centers; and declining interest in the hard work of oystering as a livelihood. This work investigates those challenges to Florida's Gulf Coast oyster industry through the lens of a twenty-first century consumer. I examine why the U.S. Department of Agriculture considers raw oysters a significant challenge to public health and how local, state, and federal government regulations, along with cooperative efforts of the seafood industry, offset the potential for oysters to convey foodborne illness to human consumers. The fact that raw oysters carry a high propensity for conveying bacterial disease makes them a unique marketing challenge, especially outside of months that have an r in them. As a subject of culinary tourism, Florida oystering maintains an iconic maritime heritage. The labor force of the commercial oystering business has ranged widely-from migrant mothers working with toddlers at their side and their school-age children forgoing education for shucking oysters at the turn of the twentieth century to a new, Hispanic work force whose strong work ethic heartily satisfies oyster processors as local interest for the hard work in the industry declines. The threat to sustainability of both the working traditions of the Apalachicola oyster folk, and the oysters themselves as a bountiful resource, grows in direct proportion to the environmental pressures fostered by rapid and poorly-regulated population growth. A legitimate question might be, given the difficulties of the work and challenges to the industry, is it worth the state's effort to help sustain this industry?

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-99). / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 1998.

With this thesis, I aim to fill a gap in our knowledge of shell artifacts from the northwest part of the state of Florida. It represents a first look at the range of shell artifacts in the collections of the University of South Florida (USF) obtained during the ongoing program of archaeological investigations in the Apalachicola Valley and surrounding region. There are 46 sites in the study area that have been identified as yielding shell artifacts, of which samples from 27 sites are curated in the USF Archaeology Laboratory. The proposed typology is based on an analysis of over 2300 specimens collected from archaeological sites in northwest Florida, including the Gulf Coast, barrier islands, St. Joseph Bay, and the Apalachicola River drainage. Shell artifacts represent one informative set of strategies that pre- and proto-historic Native Americans used to make a living. Despite this recognition, shell artifacts from northwest Florida have thus far received very little attention when compared with collections from south Florida. The paucity of available chert or other stone raw materials probably helped encourage south Florida peoples to utilize marine shell resources more extensively (White, Fitts, Rodriguez, and Smith 2002:16). The USF Apalachicola collection clearly demonstrates that marine shell played an important role in the lives of prehistoric native peoples from the north Gulf Coast as well. Twenty-two artifact types, including adzes, hammers, and dishes have been identified at 46 sites extending as far as 70 river miles inland. It is hoped that the research here presented will provide an opportunity to expand our knowledge of how past peoples lived in their everyday settings and help anthropologists categorize material culture in a more organized fashion. The provisional typology of shell tools is intended as a foundation for future work in the Apalachicola River area and in neighboring regions.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2004. / Advisor: Dr. Frances C. James, Florida State University, College of Arts and Science, Dept. of Biological Science. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed June 16, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

Fort Walton, the local variant of Mississippian culture in northwest Florida, has long been studied in the Apalachicola River Valley beginning in the early 1900s, most notably by Clarence B. Moore (though he did not call it Fort Walton), and has continued to intrigue archaeologists and collectors alike. Gordon Willey and Richard Woodbury were the first to create a ceramic chronology for the Florida Gulf Coast. Willey continued this work, resulting in the publication of Archeology of the Florida Gulf Coast, an impressive compilation of information on prehistoric cultures, sites, and their ceramic technologies and typologies. This book has continued to be most widely accepted reference for Fort Walton ceramics. This thesis builds on knowledge of ceramic seriations for the Apalachicola River Valley, working toward a more accurate chronology. Two sources of data are utilized in this study. Each comes from the Curlee Site (8Ja7), in Jackson County, Florida, just south of the Jim Woodruff Dam near the top of the Apalachicola River. The first, the Leon Perry Collection, is an unprovenienced collection donated to the University of South Florida. The second, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History Collection, consists of excavated data and materials collected in the late 1970s. Over 10,000 sherds were documented in the Leon Perry Collection. Type, weight, vessel shape, temper, and decorative attributes of each sherd were recorded. The type Fort Walton Incised in this collection revealed several variations of scroll designs increasingly varied through time. Commonalities were found between Lake Jackson Plain and Lake Jackson Incised types. These two should should be consolidated into one ceramic type. Ceramics from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History collection were reexamined by White and Yuellig in the spring of 2006 with consideration toward patterns found in Fort Walton Incised and Lake Jackson types in the Leon Perry Collection. Trends in the stratigraphic distribution of these patterns were documented in order to test whether they could result in better temporal control. This research serves as a case study in how knowledge gained from an unprovenienced collection can shed new light on archaeological data with temporal control.

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2008. / Title from file title page. Jeremy E. Diem, committee chair; Jeremy W. Crampton, John W. Matthews, committee members. Electronic text (84 p. : ill. (some col., maps (some col.)) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Oct. 1, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 77-84).

Thesis--University of Florida. / Description based on print version record. Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 376-388).

Sea level rise and changing storm frequency and intensity resulting from climate change create tremendous amounts of uncertainty for coastal species. Intertidal species may be especially affected since they are dependent on daily inundation and exposure. The eastern oyster Crassostrea virginica is an economically and biologically important sessile intertidal species ranging from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Declines and changes in distribution of oyster populations has forced commercial harvesting to spread from subtidal to intertidal reefs. We investigated the potential responses of intertidal C. virginica to sea level rise, and the response of larval settlement to sedimentation which is likely to increase with higher water levels and storm frequency. Inundation was used as a proxy for sea level rise. We hypothesized four possible outcomes for intertidal oyster reefs as a result of changes in inundation due to sea level rise: (a) intertidal reefs become subtidal and remain in place, (b) intertidal reefs will be lost, (c) intertidal reefs migrate shoreward upslope and remain intertidal, and (d) intertidal reefs will grow in elevation and remain intertidal. To test the plausibility of these four outcomes, oyster ladders were placed at two sites within Apalachicola Bay, Florida, USA. Ladders supported oyster recruitment mats at five heights within the range of intertidal elevations. The bottom-most mat was placed near mean low tide, and the top mat near mean high tide to investigate the effect of tidal inundation time on C. virginica. Sediment traps were attached to ladders with openings at equal elevation to the oyster mats. Ladders were deployed for one year starting in June 2012, and again in June 2013, during peak oyster recruitment season. Monthly for six months during year one, sediment was collected from traps, dried to constant weight and weighed to obtain a monthly average for total sediment at each elevation. At the end of one year, oyster mats were collected from the field and examined for the following responses: live oyster density, mean oyster shell length of live oysters, mean oyster shell angle of growth relative to the benthos, and mean number of sessile competitors. We used AICc to identify the most plausible models using elevation, site, and year as independent variables. Oyster density peaked at intermediate inundation at both sites (maximum 1740 oysters per m2), it decreased slightly at the mean low tide, and sharply at the mean high tide. This response varied between years and sites. Mean oyster shell length peaked near mean low tide (6.7 cm), and decreased with increasing elevation. It varied between years and sites. Oyster shell angle of growth relative to the benthos showed a quadratic response for elevation; site but not year affected this response. Sessile competitor density also showed a quadratic response for elevation and varied between sites and years. Barnacles were the primary spatial competitor reaching densities of up to 28,328 barnacles per m2. Total monthly sedimentation peaked at the lowest elevations, and varied by site, with an order of magnitude difference between sites. Sediment increased with decreasing elevation. Outcomes a, c, and d were found to be viable results of sea level rise, ruling out complete loss of intertidal reefs. Outcome (a) would be associated with decrease in oyster density and increase in oyster length. Outcome (c) would require the laying of oyster cultch upslope and shoreward of current intertidal reefs, as well as the removal of any hard armoring or development. Outcome (d) remained possible, but is the least likely requiring a balance between sedimentation, oyster angle of growth, and recruitment. This should be further investigated. A laboratory experiment was designed to test relative impact of varying sediment grain sizes on settlement of C. virginica larvae. Previous studies showed that suspended solids resulted in decreased larval settlement when using mixed sediment grain sizes. Predicted storm levels and hurricane levels of total suspended solids were used in flow tanks. Sediment from the field experiment was sieved into seven size classes, the most common five of which were used in the experiment since they represented 98.8% of total mass. Flow tanks were designed and built that held 12 aged oyster shells, instant ocean saltwater, and sediment. Oyster larvae were added to the flow tanks and allowed one hour to settle on shells. Each run utilized one of the five size classes of sediment at either a high or low concentration. Following the one-hour settlement period, oyster shells were removed from the flow tank and settled larvae were counted under a dissecting microscope. Settlement was standardized by settlement area using Image J. AICc model selection was performed and the selected model included only grain size, but not concentration. A Tukey's post hoc test differentiated < 63 µm from 500 – 2000 µm, with the < 63 µm grain size having a negative effect on oyster larval settlement. This indicates that the smaller grain sizes of suspended solids are more detrimental to oyster larval settlement than larger grain sizes. The oyster ladder experiment will help resource managers predict and plan for oyster reef migration by cultch laying, and or associated changes in oyster density and shell length if shoreward reef growth is not allowed to occur. The laboratory experiment will help to predict the impacts of future storms on oyster larval recruitment. Together this information can help managers conserve as much remaining oyster habitat as possible by predicting future impacts of climate change on oysters.

Several river basins in the world are faced with growing water scarcity and water use conflicts attributed to increasing water demand and competition among users, climate change and variability, and environmental degradation. Addressing these challenges necessitates shifting from the traditional uncoordinated sectoral approach to more integrated and fully participatory approaches supported by credible information generated by reliable and robust technical tools. Combining engineering, economics and hydroclimatological science, hydro-economic tools are well suited to provide reliable and impartial technical information that can support multi stakeholder negotiation and decision making processes in a river basin. This research develops and applies a detailed hydro-economic model to support multi-objective water resources assessments. The model supports integrated assessments of physical and economic impacts of changes in water demand, climate conditions, water resources management objectives and policies, and other system constraints on a basin's water resources. The main contribution of this research is the systematic coupling of detailed water resources and economic assessment models that are capable of (a) representing complex physical system characteristics and constraints; (b) simulating system operation at diverse temporal and spatial scales; and (c) representing water-based economic production processes at a basin scale. The research integrates a wide range of potential climate change impacts into the hydro-economic modeling framework through consideration of multiple future climate change scenarios from 13 Global Circulation Models under the medium and high emission projection scenarios. Economic uncertainty is characterized through conjunctive use of Monte Carlo simulation and Geometric Brownian Motion techniques to generate multiple forecast traces of important economic parameters. The model is applied to the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River basin in the southeast USA as a case study.