Pepper Busting at Rose Bay

Civic responsibility is learned as we see in a student created PowerPoint on "Pepper Busting" which involves the removal of exotic plant species from Volusia County.

Here is a copy of the text from a PowerPoint written by Chris Cardino.

The Beginning: Over the last year, Mainland High School has been working at Rose Bay to eliminate the Brazilian Pepper Plant. The reason we are eliminating this plant is because they are not native to Florida, they are an exotic plant.

The area [of the Brazilian Pepper Plant] increases over time because the plant has little red berries that are just like seeds. The wind blows the berries to a new location and the plant starts to grow. With the help of teachers and students, we have been able to get rid of a lot of the pepper plants in Rose Bay. One of the problems is that the pepper plant can be any size. It can grow to be anywhere from three feet, to twenty feet.

There are lots of ways to destroy these plants but I'm going to tell you the three ways we take care of them at our park. If the plant is small enough, we will just pull it out of the ground with the roots. We also have a tool called a Hypo hatchet which is an all metal hatchet that has an hole in the top corner that lets Round-Up (A chemical that kills plants) into the plant and it kills it over a period of time. We can also chop down the plants and spray Round-Up on the stump.

After two pepper busting days, the students and the teachers are proud of the outcome of this project.

Student Created Surveys

Students at Mainland High School also painstakingly create surveys to help evaluate the community's perceptions of Rose Bay. Here is a copy of one of those surveys with a sample set of answers.

Survey of Rose Bay (for Limnology)

    1.    How long have you lived in the area of Rose Bay?
            29 Years

    2.    Do you use any resources from Rose Bay? If so, what kind of resources do you use? (fish, water, oysters) 
           Fish, boating, catch crabs.

    3.    Have you noticed any changes in Rose Bay?
           Yes - Filling in with silt and mud. At low tide there is no water. All you can see are the mud floats.

    4.    Have you ever seen any dumping into Rose Bay?
           No.

    5.    Has the quality of the water changed in Rose Bay since you've lived here?
           Yes - is not clean.

    6.    Do you think the bridge has affected Rose Bay?
           Yes.

    7.    Is there anything you would like to see the city do for Rose Bay? If so, what kinds of things? 
           Wider and raise the bridge to get a good flow of fresh salt water.

    8.    Do you think Rose Bay is polluted? Why or why not?
           Yes - not enough flow of water.

    9.    Do you fish in Rose Bay? If so, can you tell us what kind of fish you catch.
           Mullet, bass, cat fish, sting ray.

    10.    Do you think the bay contributes to any health problems you have?
             No.

    11.    Do you notice a difference between the cloudiness of the water on the east and west sides of the bridge?
             Yes.

    12.    Do you see rusting pipes leading into the bay?
             Street drain pipes- don't know is they are rusty.

    13.    Do you see green slime on top of the water during the summer months?
             At times.

    14.    Is there anything else you think we should know about the bay?
            Would be a good idea to keep close watch on the high and low tides.