Basslets Catching and Measurements Day 22

Today I was tasked to help out Tye and Alex out on the deep side of the island.  As a group, we needed to work on both Tye and Alex’s experiments and surveys.  Before we headed out, we had a delicious breakfast of omelets and potatoes.  It is nice having a hardy breakfast before a day of work here.  When we got out to our first reef, we dropped down and started clearing basslets from Tye’s experimental ledges.  It took us one and a half dives to finish up at Tye’s site and then we moved on to work on site assessments for Alex’s field study.  At each site, we would give Alex time to survey the reef from above and take photos and videos of the site.  Then we would go around the entire reef and count the total number of lionfish present.  Lastly, we would measure the length, width, and height of each reef to allow Alex to approximate the volume of the reef structure.  During measurement, Alex and I would stretch out a meter tape to take the measurement and Alex would sign the number to Tye so she could record it.  The funny thing is that we could have done this with two divers but we involved a third since there were three of us today. 

At our last site of the day, I had an interesting encounter with a sting ray.  As I swam around the reef looking for lionfish, I noticed it buried in the sand next to the reef.  It was not quite as big as the other sting ray I saw earlier this summer, but it was still quite large.  I took a video of it when I came upon it and it swam off shortly after I started filming it (video of it here).  After we finished up all of Alex’s reefs we headed back into CEI for the day.  We ended earlier than in previous days with Lillian so that gave me some time to make arrangements for the trip down island with Erica.  After dinner, I Skyped with Erica to make sure she has everything she needed to bring and then started to clean up and work on my blog.  I am very excited about Erica’s arrival tomorrow!  She will be here at around 5 pm which should be perfect timing for me finishing up work and Erica getting some dinner here.  Now I’m going to sleep to make sure I have energy for tomorrow.  Until later.

Cleaner Goby Collections Day 21

Today was a very productive day for the OSU research team.  It started off with me thinking that I slept through the weekly CEI staff meeting that our group attends but thankfully it got moved to tomorrow.  Since I was still up a bit before I usually would be, I took care of Erica’s expenses for staying here at CEI before heading off to breakfast.  Today Alex, Tye, and Stephanie stayed dry to work on our lab lionfish prey response experiment while Lillian and I went out to work on collecting gobies and working on the patches.  Our task for today was to catch gobies and transplant them on Lillian’s patch reefs.  We went to a site called Tunnel Rock on the deep side of the island to collect cleaner gobies.  The cleaners are interesting in that they hang out on coral to present themselves to potential client fish.  When a large fish stops near the goby and opens its mouth, the goby will swim into the mouth of the fish and clean the gills of the fish of parasites and other materials.  This is important for larger fish like grouper who can be significantly hindered by parasites in regards to their physical fitness if they are not periodically cleaned.  The fact that the cleaner gobies lay on the coral made spotting them easy but catching them was a whole different story.  They are very quick and small which makes it difficult to catch them.  We used small aquarium nets to try to herd them off their coral perches and into plastic bags to be removed from the reef which worked reasonably well.  Additionally, Lillian caught a trumpetfish while we were at Tunnel Rock to use for our lionfish prey response experiment.  After the dive, we headed back into CEI to drop off the trumpetfish and eat lunch.

After we finished lunch, we headed back out to the patches to release the cleaner gobies we caught on some of Lillian’s experimental reefs.  At each of these reefs, we needed to remove all lionfish present before we added the gobies.  We used the typical method of large hand nets and dry bags to clear out the lionfish.  After the reef was clear, we added the gobies to particular coral heads on the reef and waited to make sure they stayed in place on the reef.  Often gobies that don’t belong will attempt to flee the reef and look for where they came from.  It is funny to say but we had to babysit them for a bit at Lillian’s reefs to make sure they did not try to flee away (pictured here).  We did this at a few different reefs.  One reef I accidentally caught a mutton snapper in the net instead of the lionfish I was going for which was surprising and funny.  I stuck my net into this cave to coax out the lionfish when my net was pulled from my hand and a huge plume of sand arose from the hole.  When the sand settled I reached in to grab the net and realized that I had inadvertently caught a snapper in the net.  We let it go quickly to make sure it was not too stressed out and then we began to add gobies.  We continued this operation at a few sites, with the last being the most interesting.

On the last reef, there were three lionfish that we had to clear before we released the cleaners.  They were a cunning bunch that avoided our collection nets at every turn.  The second lionfish kept hiding away from Lillian but when she finally got it away from the reef, it bolted right into my open net (which I was not planning on happening or prepared for).   It was certainly the luckiest lionfish catch I have had so far.  We placed each lionfish one by one into a dry bag to be able to transport them back onto the boat (pictured here).  After this site, we headed over to one last reef to catch some small prey fish for the lab experiment before heading back in.

Once we got back to CEI, we took our bounty of 6 lionfish and a dozen or so prey fish over to the water tanks in the wet lab.  We met up with the rest of our team to look at the tank they set up for the experiment which looked fantastic.  We certainly have set ourselves up for success on this particular project due to Stephanie’s great planning and coordinating.  At dinner, we placed the trumpetfish inside the aquarium tank at the dining hall since it was decided that we were not going to use it.  It turns out that all the animals, even the lobster, in the tank were extremely hungry because they all started to attack the poor fish.  I would imagine even if they were not hungry, they might have had similar reactions to today because of the confined space and territorial nature of the fish.  It made me feel terrible about ever having an aquarium like that.  Sure it looks nice but these animals are meant to live with other animals on reef structures with very different community assemblages than what is available for fish tanks.  The only way I would ever consider having a tank like that would be if I made it into a functional replicate of a coral reef where all the organisms in the tank live as they would in nature (normal community interactions between species).   We are hoping to get our first trial running tomorrow to test out the tanks and our methods for conducting the experiment.  We had a long discussion tonight about this study and the details that are involved with executing it.  Now a bit past 11 but I am beat tired from the long day and lack of sleep.  Off to bed I go.  Until later.

A Long Day of Fish Surveys Day 20

Today I got up a bit early before breakfast to head over to the CEI offices so that I could pay for Erica’s accommodations here at CEI.  It wasn’t until I stepped in the door to the office that I realized that no one was working today since it is Sunday.  After realizing this, I headed off to breakfast and eventually down to the boathouse to get our gear ready for another day of fish surveys out at the patches.  We took our time at breakfast which turned out to be a good thing because both of the boats our group was supposed to use today were being fueled at the marina.  It took a bit longer than usual today for our boat drivers to fuel because they got stuck behind this huge private yacht that took over a thousand gallons of fuel to fill its tank.  My guess is that this yacht is not the most fuel efficient boat in the world.  We had to wait a while but once the boats came back to CEI, Lillian and I loaded up and headed out to the patches once again to do some more fish surveys.  Once we got out to the patches, we had to re-anchor four times at our first site which was pretty memorable.  The current and wind were going in very different directions very strongly today so it took a few tries to get the boat to hang in the correct direction near our first reef.  After that we plunged in and got started with our survey on the first reef (myself pictured surveying the first reef of the day).

We had a variety of patches that we visited today that had varying densities of fish.  There were a couple of reefs that were particularly memorable that we surveyed today.  The first was this patch that was large and covered with live coral (pictured here).  It was cool to see this much live coral out here and as a result, the fish community was abundant and beautiful.  It was so abundant that we decided we would not count all the fish on the reef but instead identify all the species present on the reef and measure the fish that were representative for each species.  After this reef we headed off to another reef that was also large but looked much different in structure and species composition. 

This reef seemed to be moving because there were so many fish on it.  In particular, the reef was covered with juvenile and adult grunts of a few different species (pictured here).  It was impossible to count all the grunts present on this reef so we just made some really rough estimates.  We figured that combined the two species of grunt that we saw totaled over a thousand fish alone on this reef.  There of course were many more individuals of different species on this reef which made this dive a bit longer than average.  I had a hard time with this reef in part because of its size but mostly because of the number of grunts.  Their presence in such great numbers here caused many of the reef associated fish to hide which made our job of counting and sizing fish much more difficult.  Afterward we did a few more quick reefs before heading back into CEI.  At the second to last reef we surveyed, Lillian finished her surveys a bit before me and took some photos of me at work counting and sizing fish (pictured here).  Our evening was quite ordinary other than us doing dish crew again so I am not going to comment too much more.  I need to Skype Erica to finalize some details about her trip before I go to bed so I must sign off.  Until later. 

Looking for Lionfish Food Day 19

It was a bit rough getting up today.  After a late night watching the Kings game, I was a bit drained this morning.  I was able to shake it off pretty quickly though and by the time I got to breakfast, I felt fine.  Over breakfast, Stephanie and I discussed the possibility of purchasing one of the USB LongShots we found online at Hardened Power Systems.  These units are awesome because they allow you to plug a GoPro into an AC adapter using a USB cable to supply continuous power to the camera without having to worry about batteries (pictured here).  Best of all, it is completely waterproof so we can use this to power a GoPro inside our experimental tank submerged underwater.  After breakfast, we called in to the company that makes the LongShots to see if they could send us two on short notice to Erica so she could deliver them to us.  The real issue with receiving parcels here is that packages  are only delivered on occasion from CEI’s warehouse in Florida.  This makes people who are traveling to Eleuthera the only viable options for getting deliveries quickly.  As it turns out, the company was open today and we ordered two LongShots with overnight shipping to get to Erica before she leaves.  The underwater GoPro in the experimental tanks will give us a vertical component to calculate distance between the lionfish and prey that we wouldn’t be able to have otherwise.  We had packed up most of our things on the boat before we made the order so we could get on the boat and quickly head out to the patches once again.

Once we got to our first site, I realized I had forgotten my booties.  This was unfortunate because wearing fins without booties can give you bad rashes on your fight.  To remedy this, I used some gauze and a sticky wrap to make padding on the back of my foot.  It looked like I had some intense foot injury or something.  Before I jumped in, Lillian, Stephanie, and I discussed a new method for doing the fish surveys.  What we decided would be best is to observe the reef from afar to get the big counts.  Then we would make a complete swim around the periphery of the reef keeping our distance to count any other large fish that were hidden from view before.  After these distant observations, we would hover over the reef to count any smaller coral associated fishes that we couldn’t see before such as damselfish and wrasses.  Then we would pass over the entire surface of the reef looking for cryptic species or fish that are hiding amongst or on top of the coral.  Then we would swim around the bottom periphery of the patch to look for parrotfish and other small fishes that may be hiding in the reef or the turtle grasses around the patch.  The idea is to have a standardized approach that would result in both observers (Lillian and I) to have the opportunity to see the same fish.  All the while, I would be following Lillian around the reef at a distance (about 2 meters behind) so that I do not disturb her first observations.  With this plan in hand, we got our stuff on and plunged into the water.

Once I jumped in, I noticed my gauze padding worked ok but of course was not as comfortable as booties.  The first reef went pretty well using this survey method and we decided to use it for the rest of the day.  Throughout the day there were a number of fish at each reef that I would always seem to miss that Lillian would find (cryptic species like gobies and blennies along with Nassau groupers and Graysby that are hidden in the reef.  I think with time, I will become quicker at observing and measuring the easily noticeable fish such that I will have more time to thoroughly examine the reef for the hidden fish.  Just like yesterday, I felt more and more confident as the day went by. 

For our last dive of the day, we stopped at a larger patch reef to collect juvenile fish for our lionfish prey response lab experiment.  We used hand nets to catch a variety of small fish (wrasses, damselfishes, and gobies) that were three or less centimeters to serve as prey for the lionfish (Stephanie pictured here after she caught a fish).  We were able to do a long collection dive at this reef because it is in about 6 feet of water.  After about an hour and twenty minutes, we called it quits and headed back in to CEI.  When we got back we unloaded our gear and our cooler that we placed our prey fish in on a transport tricycle to carry our stuff over to the tanks in the wet lab (cooler of fish on tricycle pictured here).  For dinner, we had some pasta and meat sauce which was nice after a long day of diving.  Our OSU team had dish crew duties tonight so we were assigned to wash up dishes and serving trays that were used for the meal.  There were only 15 other people that were eating with us so it was not too big of a deal.  Before that though, Stephanie and I went off to the tanks to set up our dusk trial for the lionfish prey behavior experiment.  After struggling to wrangle out the old lionfish, place a new one in with our prey, and turn on the GoPro, we went back to the dining hall to help with dishes.  However when we got there, the rest of our team had already finished all the dishes.  We headed back to Hallig and had our meeting for the evening to do logs and then I Skyped Erica for a bit to fill her in on some details about her upcoming trip.  It is crazy to believe she will be arriving on Wednesday.  I am very excited to have her come down and hang out with us in the Bahamas.  I best get to bed now to try to catch up on some sleep.  Until later.

My First Fish Survey Day 18

Today was my second day working with Lillian out on the patches.  Before we headed out, Lillian needed to figure out which sites she wanted to visit for the day so instead, I went with Stephanie to work on the lionfish prey response experiment.  We sat down with the head of the lionfish research program here at MSI to discuss logistics related to the project.  Stephanie during the meeting mentioned me as the head of this project after she leaves which I was very happy to hear.  This will give me a great opportunity to execute an awesome study and potentially have some sort of authorship on the resulting publication.  I am very excited to see how this study progressed over the course of the summer.  Once Lillian was ready to go, I went with her to go out to the patches while Stephanie stayed behind to set up a trial for our experiment. 

The weather could not have been more different from yesterday.  We made our way out under sunny skies and a light breeze.  Once we got out there, we discussed what I would be doing for the day.  I was surprised to find out that I was going right into doing fish surveys with Lillian as the second observer.  We discussed the general plan of how we would survey the reef and got right to it.  Once we got in, I was blown away by the patch reef.  It was teeming with fish and I must admit that it was completely overwhelming for me.  I identified and sized as many fish as I could and then stopped after I realized I was causing Lillian to wait for me.  When we came up, I was happy to hear that many of my fish length estimates matched up well with Lillian’s.  It was clear however that I had a lot of work to do in order to improve my speed and observational skills.  I will certainly never forget that reef.

As we did more survey’s, I began to get the hang of what I needed to do in order to effectively estimate the number of fish and their sizes on these patch reefs.  By the end of the day, I felt much more confident.  My last reef we did was pleasant despite its size.  We saw a cute little nurse shark hiding in the middle of this cave in the reef.  Since I was in reef fish counting mode, I totally forgot to take a picture of it when I had the chance.  After we finished up, we went back to CEI, had dinner, and did our logs.  When we finished, Stephanie, Alex, and I headed over to the tanks to check up on our lionfish prey experiment.  We noticed that the night vision feature of the security camera system CEI researchers had setup for the trial were not nearly good enough to visualize the prey and the lionfish at night.  This is actually ok because we will not be doing trials at night but rather at dawn, during the day, and dusk when they are most actively hunting.  Regardless, we are thinking about using GoPro cameras for the whole project because they have a much greater field of view and produce much higher quality of video. 

Once we finished up, I turned on the Kings game to watch with Stephanie and Lillian.  We all had our dark and stormy adult beverages to drink and enjoyed some intense Stanley Cup hockey.  Both Stephanie and Lillian were not able to hang around for the whole game since it did go to double overtime.  Eventually, the Kings won the cup and it was awesome to see it end in overtime in Los Angeles.  It was an amazing celebration for an amazing playoff run by the Kings.  Wish I could have been there to see it.  Being here in the Bahamas doing what I love though is not a bad alternative.  It is super late now so I best get to bed.  Until later.

First Day with Lillian and Squall 2.0 Day 17

Today was a start to a new chapter for me in the Bahamas because I was assigned to work with a new PhD student today named Lillian from OSU.  She is interested in studying species of fish (cleaner gobies) that clean the gills of larger fish of parasites and how this mutually beneficial interaction between cleaner and client species (the fish cleaned of parasites are called client species) could be altered by the presence of invasive lionfish (cleaning picture from the internet).  Her work will be mostly based in the patches this summer which lie out in the uniformly shallow waters of the sound directly off shore of CEI.  Because Lillian had some things she needed to do before our trip out, we didn’t leave until around 11 am  to go out to the patches.  In the time between when we left and breakfast, I went over to the CEI office to finalize Erica’s planned dates that she will be staying at CEI.  It turns out that the group that would have a member stay with me while Erica is here pushed back their arrival date to June 30^th.  This will work out better for us such that Erica and I will be able to vacation up island at the end of her stay here on Eleuthera. 

Once we headed out from CEI, we made our way to a large array of patch reefs in the sound.  My job today was to approximate the sizes of the patches, describe their structure and coral composition by percent cover of coral, and to count and size lionfish.  Since the patches are only in about 10 feet of water, it is much easier, safer, and quicker to snorkel for the recon of these reefs.  We moved quickly from patch to patch spending about 5 minutes or so at each one.  Our boat driver Jeremy live boated for us so that we didn’t need to anchor at each site.  After 6 or so reefs surveyed, we stopped for lunch at around 1 pm when it was super calm and sunny out.  Over the course of the next hour though, it began to get cloudy once again and the winds started to pick up.  Soon the wind swell was reaching 3-4 feet tall with heavy rains.  It got to the point where it was no longer safe for us to be pulling ourselves onto the boat in such conditions.  At our last site, we were uncomfortably being tossed around on the surface as we took data.  As we were about to leave and get back to the boat, I noticed a lionfish that I hadn’t seen while I was surveying.  I dove down to estimate its size and as I made my way back up to the surface, I saw a large nurse shark swim out of nowhere underneath me.  It proceeded to stick its head under a small ledge where I had spotted 2 Caribbean lobsters hanging out.  I’m pretty sure this nurse shark was looking for a nice tasty lobster to eat and it was astonishing to see it just wedge its head underneath a ledge like that to get one.  I sat and watched the shark thrash about under the ledge for about 15 seconds before I swam back to the boat so we could get out of there.

Once we got topside, it was pouring with the winds howling all around us.  We started back to CEI very slowly so that we wouldn’t roll in the large, choppy swell.  As we made our way through the storm, we were constantly being splashed and thrown around by the relentless wind swell.  As this was happening, all Lillian and I could do was laugh about it.  It was certainly nice to be in the company of a person who found the entertainment and humor in a situation like that.  Even though we weren’t in any immediate danger, situations like these would make many people overly uncomfortable.  But for Lillian and I, we thought it was a pretty fun to experience.  Once we got back to CEI, we cleaned up and ended early.  We had planned on coming back in later and looking at more patches but of course the weather just didn’t cooperate today. 

It was another day of storminess at Eleuthera in the Bahamas and so it was nice to hunker inside and to work on my blog and emails.  After dinner, we did our logs as usual and soon thereafter marveled at Tye’s enormous catch of the day.  She captured a 41 cm lionfish today before the storm hit them out on the outer side of the island.  Even though they planned to release it out on one of Tye’s high density lionfish reefs, they didn’t end up having enough time after having to wait out the storm in a nearby harbor.  As a result, she brought the lionfish back to CEI and it will soon be a nice meal for us (pictured here).  We decided to wait on filleting the fish so that the lionfish research group here at CEI could remove the gonads and stomach for analysis.  Gonad mass as well as stomach content can tell you much about the how often the fish may reproduce and what it has recently been eating.  Sometimes, researchers here at CEI have found as many as 30 or more juvenile fish inside the stomachs of large lionfish like this one which is pretty incredible.  After snapping some photos, we all retired to our rooms and I am now finishing up my blog for the night.  Hopefully I will get to looking at some possibilities for lodging for Erica and my trip up island tonight before bed.  Until later.

The Squall is Coming Day 16

Today our OSU group had a short meeting before breakfast.  We toured around the water tanks area to begin to plan out what we would do for our lab experiment on lionfish prey behavior.  At this point, it appears that we will be using this home security camera system that one of the researchers at CEI has used in the past to observe lionfish.  We discussed possibilities for camera arrays and then went off to breakfast. 

Today was Alex’s first dive day.  She came down to the Bahamas with a minor ear infection and had to finish off her antibiotics before she could dive (which happened yesterday).  She joined Tye and I to do some site recon for Alex’s habitat project.  It was a productive morning in which we visited a handful of prospective sites.  In the early part of the afternoon, we dove a couple of Tye’s experimental reefs to see if it would be suitable for Alex’s study.  When we came up from the second of Tye’s experimental reefs, the sky looked dark and ominous.  We all made the observation getting out of the water that the weather sure had changed for the worse.  It was clear that we needed to head in as we started to see lightning offshore from where we were.  We started to head very close to the shore on the way back but as we did the weather got worse and worse.  Wind swell was at times 5-6 feet and the wind howled along with the crashing thunderous sounds off in the distance.  Tye and Alex were really concerned as this was one of the worst storms they had ever been stuck in.  We nearly decided to anchor the boat and swim to shore to wait it out but we made a decision to press on thinking the storm would thin out as we headed toward CEI.  It turns out that the opposite was true.  The going was slow and we moved along at a deliberate pace to try to get away from the storm while simultaneously trying not to flip the boat (the swell was that big).  It turns out that the system dissipated eventually and we were able to make it back to CEI safely.  It was certainly not an adventure for the faint of heart.  We sat down to have lunch at the boathouse while we waited for the storm to pass.  The storm moved very slowly so we had to wait over an hour before we were able to think about going back out to the sights Alex wanted to visit today. 

Once we got back out, we dove a number of sites that were no deeper than 20 ft or so.  They were beautiful reefs for the most part and I was quite impressed by the amount of live coral there was on some of them.  The best reef however is what I want to call “nurse shark heaven”.  It was a large reef that had two massive formations.  One of these formations had an enormous cave underneath it that housed what we first thought was just one large nurse shark.  This particular shark swam out of one of the cave openings as we approached the reef (pictured with Alex).  As I followed Alex to the hole, I saw her peer into the opening to see if there were any lionfish hiding underneath.  Right as she did this I

heard a high pitched scream and out came an even larger nurse shark right next to her.  It quickly swam off past Alex but I could tell she was startled by it as it just appeared out from the cave.  As I swam around the reef to look for lionfish, I spotted another opening to this cave and was able to see 3-4 nurse sharks piled up on top of each other.  Apparently right now it is mating season for the nurse sharks so it is possible that this cave was a safe place for them to copulate.  I took some pictures as I peered through the hole (pictured here) and just the same as with what happened to Alex, 4 nurse sharks in a delayed succession came darting out of the hole underneath me.  It was startling to see them come out of this hole because they seemed to barely fit through due to their large size.  After all this happened, I kept thinking to myself that I should have had my GoPro to film that. 

We finished off our field day with a couple more dives to count lionfish for Alex.  They were also cool sites that had interesting structural features (one was shaped like a banana).  Throughout the day, we measured and counted lionfish to assess whether there were enough present of Alex’s study.  After we finished for the day, we came back to clean up and went to dinner.  Since it was the last night the Island School students were here at CEI, they prepared a Thanksgiving like dinner with mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and turkey which was delicious.  Afterward we came back to do our logs for the day at Hallig.  We got through those pretty quickly and then had some dark and stormy rum drinks to cap the day off.  I stuck around inside the Hallig lobby to watch the Kings game with Lillian.  Unfortunately the series did not end tonight but on the bright side, the Kings have a chance to win at home in Los Angeles.  After a few drinks and a long day I am super tired so I am going to head off to bed.  Until later.

Up Close and Personal Day 15

It was a unique start to the day this morning having a roommate.  I haven’t had to worry about waking someone else up the 2 weeks I have been here so it’s a bit of a change.  All of us with OSU went to the staff meeting that started at 7:30 to get an inside scoop on what is happening this week.  Afterward, we got some breakfast, packed up our gear, and headed out to Tye’s reefs.  Our mission today was to go back to each of her 6 reefs and clear any basslets on her ledges that may have moved in after our initial removals and to clear any remaining lionfish.  Our first site we visited was a lionfish removal site.  It was my job to first clear any lionfish that remained on the reef and secondly to remove basslets with Tye.  I came upon a lionfish pretty quickly and dispatched of it for my seventh lionfish kill.  As I continued my way around the reef I stopped to take a few photos of a large moray eel that was perched in a hole (pictured here).  Shortly after seeing the moray, I found a second lionfish but was not able to get a clear shot at it.  It’s always best to not shoot if you do not have a clear shot because if you miss or hit it and it gets away, it will most likely never come out when divers are around.  As I made my way around the reef to finish my search, a curious reef shark swam near me (pictured here).  I pulled out my camera to take some awesome photos.  Most likely smelling the lionfish I had killed earlier, it wanted to check me out.  At one point, I picked up my pole spear to ensure that it kept its distance from me because it turned to swim directly at me slowly.  After two passes, it swam off down the reef and out of site.  We saw this same shark before when we killed a lionfish at this reef which must mean it remains in the area most of the time. 

                        

The rest of the day was pretty typical.  We removed basslets at 5 of the 6 total sites and then called it a day. 

A storm was rolling in when we started to head back to CEI so our timing for calling it quits was quite good.  After we cleaned up I headed back to Hallig to shower up before dinner.  I caught up with my roommate Duncan on what he was up to today.  He and a few other researchers went out to catch lemon sharks to photo their heads for some exploratory data.  He and I discussed ways of potentially counting all the Ampullae of Lorenzini on the bottom of the sharks’ heads (picture here from the internet).  These small pores are specialized tissues that allow sharks to sense electrical impulses in the water.  This is very beneficial for sharks to be able to sense their prey from a distance (especially organisms that are nearly dead).  Most sharks are most interested in an easy meal so these tissues are incredibly important to them.  We also discussed his research interests in geckos.  He studied them throughout graduate school and into his academic career.  His studies ultimately led him and his collaborators to mimic the feet of geckos to create an adhesive called Geckskin.  This Velcro like material allows you to hang as much as 700 lbs from a vertical wall.  It can be removed by peeling it off just like a sticker but it does not remove anything from the surface it was attached to.  It was really interesting to get his take on it and see some videos of it in action.  It is currently being commercialized and he has a stake in the company that will sell this product that will certainly have many everyday uses for people.  I think the coolest part of what he told me though was not about the business per say but more about what he wants to do with the money.  As a research scientist, he is more interested in giving back and supporting educational programs, outreach, and further research to spread awareness about the benefits of looking to nature for ideas to better our lives.  I anticipate we will continue to discuss this and much more in the time he will be staying with me.

                        

After dinner, Tye, Alex, Lillian, Steph, and I sat down and had our nightly meeting where we take care of our logs and discuss plans of action for the next day.  It was really nice to listen in on their conversations about their projects for me so that I could get a better grasp on what they will be using me for this summer.  I was also able to get more information out about Erica’s trip here and discuss those plans with them as well.  After a productive meeting, I came back to my room to write the blog and do some more research into accommodations for our trip.  Hopefully I will get to that before I pass out tonight.  Until later.

OSU Team Assembles Day 14

Today was quite the mellow day.  I had the opportunity to work on personal stuff and be productive on my own.  At around 3, we headed to the airport to pick up Alex and Lillian along with some other researchers including my roommate Duncan.  I was happy to be able to quickly get to know Alex and Lillian on the way back to CEI.  They are super nice and seem to me like they will be great to work with this summer.  Once we arrived back, we headed straight off to dinner.  We had a short chat after dinner about what we were all going to be doing tomorrow and then we all parted ways for the night.  After the meeting, I watched the Kings game with Lillian.  It was a convincing win for the Kings who now are one game away from the championship.  The Stanley Cup will be in the building on Wednesday night for that game so I am very excited for that game.  Now it’s getting late and I need to get off to bed to get ready for the field day tomorrow.  Until later.

A Day of Work then a Day of Rest Day 13

This morning it was super muggy out.  You could feel it in the air that the rain was coming as it got stickier and stickier.  By the time I walked over to the boathouse, it had started to downpour.  As we gathered our gear for the day before breakfast, we left it all under the boathouse roof to keep it dry.  One bummer about today was once again I found my mask missing from my storage cubby.  When it went missing a few days ago, I was super happy to find it and made a concerted effort to keep track of it.  After looking all around the boathouse and inside all the other cubbies, it seems that someone may have taken it.  That mask is my first and only mask I have ever worn so it has sentimental value as well as just being an awesome mask.  I wore Tye’s pink framed backup mask instead for the day which was certainly a fashion statement. 

Although the day started out on a low note, it was awesome to dive with Steph today.  This was her first day of diving as well as her first time out on the side of the island where we have been working.  While Tye and I removed basslets, Steph swam around to do some predator counts all around the reefs we dove.  We dove Cathedral for the first dive to attempt to finish what we had started with our basslet removals on Friday.  The ledge where I was removing the fairy basslets is quite large and has many small caves and holes for the basslets to hide in.  Not to mention that it is here you always have an audience of Nassau grouper (one pictured here).  I had such a tough time that we decided we would need one more dive to take care of it.  That means we will have spent 4 full dives attempting to clear this one ledge which goes to show how difficult it was to do.  Topside we decided to move on to our second site called Shack to take care of the ledges there and to give Steph a new reef to do predator counts on.  This reef was much easier to clear than the one at Cathedral.  There were maybe a total of 10 fish that we needed to clear there as opposed to the 25+ we needed to remove from the Cathedral ledge.  After a shorter 45 minute dive at Shack, we took Steph back into CEI so she could finish on some paperwork while Tye and I finished up.  We spent our surface interval at CEI so that I could look around some more for my missing mask but I still couldn’t find it.  We finished up Cathedral after another hour long dive and then headed back in for the day.

To finish up the day, Steph, Tye, and I got together after dinner to speak about the upcoming lionfish prey response experiment that Steph will be conducting at the wet lab at CEI.  In order to understand how prey species react to lionfish predation as opposed to natural predators (snappers, groupers, jacks, etc), we will conduct an experiment where we measure certain metrics of prey species’ stress responses to predation threat.  This is a crucial question in understanding to what degree lionfish are better and more efficient at eating reef fish than other native predators.  The underlying problem with lionfish is that they hunt in a manner that is completely foreign to native fish.  To fish like the fairy basslet, a lionfish looks like a giant piece of seaweed floating toward them.  Basslets have limited visual and chemical cues that would cause them to have a predation avoidance response.  Examining this difference between responses by prey to lionfish vs. native predators allows us to better understand how lionfish are so successful here in the Caribbean.  We didn’t go completely through the experimental design and logistics yesterday because Steph wanted to wait for tomorrow night when Alex and Lillian arrive to explain the project to the entire team at once.  Now I am back in my room finishing tidying up the room for my roommate who is showing up tomorrow and finishing my blog.  I’m really sun baked and tired from today so off to bed I go.  Until later.

Island School Symposium and Conchfest Day 12

Today was a day off for us for a very special reason.  We had the opportunity to view the Island School’s symposium put on by their students (high school age) where they presented their research they had been working on for their semester in the Bahamas.  Going in, we had moderate expectations and in general hoped for the best.  Boy was I pleasantly surprised.  All the presentations put on by the students were fantastic.  They worked in groups of 6 students each on various projects that were headed by specific research faculty at CEI.  Among the notable presentations, I learned about a new species of giant isopods found in the deep sea (>3000 ft depths) off South Eleuthera, attitudes of local fisherman toward fisheries management and conservation, lionfish preferentially predation, and much more.  The content of not only their presentations but also their posters were certainly on par with undergraduate honors research and early graduate level research.  It made me feel so happy and optimistic that students of this age could produce such awesome studies (under the fantastic guidance of their CEI advisors).  I feel incredibly optimistic that the students will pass along their knowledge and understanding of the importance of ocean ecosystems to their families, friends, and peers regardless of what profession they seek.  As an advocate for experiential learning, I believe programs like this can profoundly change the world.  I was overjoyed to be able to witness the passion and interest of these high school students in striving to understand the natural world.  The art of learning how to ask questions in my mind is the most important part of becoming an intellectual and I believe these students have seized the opportunity to become active learners as well as educators.

                        

The symposium ended at around 3 so we had some down time today before the evening festivities of Conchfest.  Conchfest is an annual event that celebrates the cultural and economic importance of conch in a fun festival environment.  I thought I missed the shuttle to get to conch fest so I hitched a ride with a couple of CEI researchers.  It turns out that we left at almost the same time as the shuttle so we got their shortly after the rest of the guests, researchers, and faculty of CEI.  Shortly after I arrived, I was offered a warm welcome to come to Owen’s house in Deep Creek who is one of the main researchers at CEI.  I stayed over at his house and socialized with a number of other CEI staff and really enjoyed getting to know them on a more personal level.  I was also able to open up to them to the extent that I told them about my situation with Mark and how I am telling a little white lying about being a graduate student to everyone at CEI because I was told to do so by Mark.  It turns out that research assistants never stay in Hallig so the deception, although trivial and ridiculous, is necessary in order to not stir up the pot too much.  After about an hour, I hitched a ride back to Conchfest (which was on the outskirts of Deep Creek closest to CEI) to meet up with Tye and Stephanie.  I got some conch fritters and ribs for dinner (which I thoroughly enjoyed at the festival and back at CEI) and another beer to wash down the food.  I was really happy about being outside CEI for the first time and exploring the local area.  I also took a funny picture with one of the Simon Frasier University students named Severin near the CEI lionfish table (pictured here).  This setup of CEI’s at Conchfest was very impressive.  They presented lionfish as a culinary alternative to conch (which are an endangered species) and directly as well as indirectly spread awareness about the economic and environmental benefits of targeting lionfish as a viable source of fishing income.  Providing the knowledge and awareness accompanied by some tasty cooked lionfish seemed to go a long way toward educating the Eleuthera public about the conservation issues associated with lionfish and conch.  This was super gratifying to see in action.  After we hitched a ride back as a group, I quickly turned on the Kings game to see what was going on.  As I did this, they had just started the first overtime.  The game went into double overtime before the Kings scored the deciding goal to take a 2-0 lead in the Stanley Cup finals.  It is impressive and exciting that they are doing so well and are 2 games away from a championship.  Now I am finishing up the blog and heading off to bed.  Until later. 

Socializing About Science Day 11

Our day in the field today was quite short.  We headed out a bit early to Cathedral to attempt to set it up completely for the basslet-lionfish experiment.  We had a new boat driver today who was driving for the first time at CEI.  We actually ended up going to the wrong site to start off which was definitely our fault not his.  Once we got to the site, I was tasked with getting basslets off Tye’s fairy basslet removal ledge.  By removing fairy basslets at one ledge, black cap basslets at another ledge, and leaving another ledge as a control, Tye is attempting to detect the affect of lionfish on fairy and black cap basslet competitive interactions.  Manipulating these two species of basslets allows for a greater mechanistic understanding of how the fish community is affected by the presence of lionfish (high and low density reefs as explained previously).  By understanding the fish community, it is possible to ask questions related to trophic cascades and how lionfish may be affecting the entire coral reef community. 

                        

Once I got down to the ledge, I noticed that there were a ton of fairy basslets to remove.  As I worked on herding and drugging up fairy basslets, I noticed that I had attracted an audience of Nassau groupers.  These fish are one of the natural predators of basslets and they always seem to have a great deal of interest in what we are doing when we are removing basslets.  They are really goofy looking in that they just float right next to you waiting to see if they can get a stray basslet as an easy meal.  At our safety stop, we spotted this really nice sized amber jack floating over the reef.  It was noticeably beaten up toward its tail and it appeared that it was attacked by a shark or some larger animal due to the large gashes near its tail.  I swam over to take a few pictures while we did our safety stop (pictured here).  After we finished our dive, we had a long surface interval and I was able to take a short nap while we waited to go back in.  Our second dive was pretty usual.  Once again, I removed basslets and yet again I was intently observed by Nassau groupers.  After our dive, we decided to end our day early because it would have taken far too long for us to build up time for us to be able to go down again.  Tye decided that we could finish Cathedral on Sunday. 

Dinner again was pretty tranquil without the Island School kids.  They must have gone out to eat once again tonight.  After we finished, we headed on over to the Hallig common room to have some beers and socialize with some visiting scientists.  It was fun to speak with some of the researchers from CEI in a very informal setting about their research and their experiences here on Eleuthera.  Steph also arrived during the social so I was able to chat with her briefly as well.  Steph is the post doctoral fellow for Mark Hixon’s OSU lionfish lab and will be here working with us for a couple of weeks.  I also was able to catch up with some of our colleagues from Simon Frasier University in Vancouver who are also here studying lionfish.  I look forward to hanging out with them more after work hours in the future as they are a really fun group of people.  At the end of the social, there was a small group of us who were speaking with a visiting researcher named Brian who was really getting us to think about what it means to be a scientist.  It was a cool and enlightening exercise because he was able to frame what we do as scientists into a very simple layman terms definition while simultaneously helping us understand how to easily frame the questions that drive our research.  His philosophy was straight forward in that we must highlight what we are doing under a simple definition of science.  To him, science is the study of cause and effects using the scientific method.  When put into these simple terms, it becomes much easier for us to frame what we are doing as researchers and to communicate why we are doing it to broad audiences.  Although it was getting late, I really enjoyed listening to Brian speak about how he teaches his graduate students to write up their research as well as how he teaches his undergraduate students to understand and embrace scientific inquiry.  A unified approach and practice of using the scientific method to explain what we are doing is crucial to greater understanding within academia and society at large.  It is now getting late and I am going to turn in.  We have a symposium to attend tomorrow where the Island School students will be presenting their projects they did while attending school here.  I want to be sure to be fresh for these presentations so that I can learn as much as possible and potentially ask some thought provoking questions to help these students further understand their research topics.  Off to bed for me.  Until later. 

Sneaky Reef Shark Day 10

Today we got off to an early start so that we could do some longer dives to set up some more of Tye’s sites.  We packed up the boat before an awesome chocolate chip pancake breakfast and then headed out.  We were relieved to get moving out to the site because there was no breeze today and it was summer time hot.  When we arrived at our site, we dropped anchor and put on our gear to hop down to the reef.  Then we realized that the boat was not swinging in the way we thought and so we decided to re-anchor.  When I was pulling it up, I could feel it was snagged on something.  I tried to unhook the anchor but it became clear that we needed to dive down to free it.  By this point, I was sweating so much that I decided to jump in the water while Tye went down to take care of the anchor.  

After re-anchoring, we dropped down and I began my task of removing fairy basslets from Tye’s ledge (pictured here).  Just as I was getting started, I saw a large fish in my peripheral vision.  I turned to see that it was a reef shark swimming by to check out what I was doing.  I was so excited to see a shark up close for the first time here in the Bahamas and snapped some photos as it swam by.  It circled a few times and then uninterested, bored, or otherwise it swam over the reef and off into the blue.  I continued my work of removing the basslets and before I knew it, the site was prepped and ready with all fairy basslets removed from the ledge. 

                     

Our next site was a really cool site called Shack.  This reef is relatively shallow compared to the others and it sticks up from the bottom to where the top is at about 15 ft.  This provides a ton of habitat for corals and other organisms to settle on and it was a beautiful sight.  My job on this reef was to count all the lionfish.  I was able to do this relatively quickly and as a result, I spent the rest of the dive swimming around taking photos.  The coral photos I was able to get were fantastic since the light from the surface was bright and the depth was shallow.  Despite the abundance of live coral, you can see that many coral heads are struggling.  It is possible that the invasive lionfish (which eat the herbivores that graze down the algae so the corals do not get overrun by it) in combination with climate change, ocean warming, and ocean acidity are destabilizing normal coral reef community interactions and as a result causing many species of coral to suffer.  Diving here in the Bahamas although beautiful has been at times quite depressing considering how much of these reefs are covered with algae that smothers and shades out the foundational corals.  In this coral head photo to the left, a small part of the coral most likely died and then algae took over that dead patch.  Once algae gets a foothold on a coral head, it can spread by shading out other portions of the coral and cause it to look like the pictured brain coral. The hope is that a mechanistic approach of understanding these community interactions through research like our project could go a long way toward informing proper management of these reefs.  During this dive, Tye was busy setting up her ledges at this site which took a good deal of time and as a result I had ample photo time.  This was one of my favorite dives so far.

Our last site today was a recreational dive site called Cathedral.  This was my second trip here and I was tasked with clearing lionfish.  Since many recreational divers come to this reef, it is assumed that the density of lionfish would be lower due to divers spearing them.  Despite this, I found one in the giant tunnel that goes through the formation and found another under a ledge on the reefs edge.  I speared them both and took them off the reef to be food for the sharks.  This brought my speared total up to 6 lionfish!   I then spent the rest of the dive searching some of the surrounding patch reefs to make sure there were no lions that could move onto our experimental reef.  It is very common for lionfish to move from reef to reef so it is important for us to ensure that the reefs that are close to ours (about 100 ft or less) are cleared.  All the swimming I did during the dive caused me to suck down my air and I had to shorten my dive accordingly.  Since Tye and I dove nitrox for all three dives, our surface intervals were short and we finished early today.  Dinner was great but odd since all the Island School students were out to dinner for their last meal on Eleuthera.  I guess this class is ending and a new one will be coming in shortly.  Now I am back in my room finishing up some data entry and the blog.  I plan on getting to bed early tonight in lieu of the late night last night.  Off to do data entry and to go to bed.  Until later. 

Hungry Moray Day 9

Today was overall a great day.  It started off with some really good banana nut bread for breakfast.  I definitely ate my fill of this bread.  After breakfast, we shoved off for the same low lionfish density reef that we worked on yesterday.  Once again, my job was exclusively to remove lionfish from the reef.  As I moved around the reef, I found one in the same cave as I found lionfish from the day before.  I tried to catch it with the nets but it was too quick.  I then resolved to spearing it and when I did, it actually swam off the tips of the spear.  Spearing lionfish in the muscle tissue can lead to this result because they are capable of surviving some puncture wounds where it is through muscle tissue.  It scurried off into a hole and I had to leave it be so that it would hopefully come back out later.  As I continued to swim, I found another lionfish and successfully speared it.  Although it was not a kill shot, I speared it well enough so that I could take it off the reef and deal with it as I had before to put it out of its misery.  After taking care of that fish, I continued on to find a ledge that had 3 more lionfish hanging out under.  By this time I was low on air but I attempted to catch one to no avail.  At that point in the dive, I had to ascend to a shallower depth while I waited for Tye to finish her work.

On the second dive, I was on a mission to find the 4 lionfish that we knew were on the reef (1 injured and 3 under the overhang).  I first came upon a lionfish that seemed unaware of my intentions and I was able to catch it and bag it for later use.  As I continued on, I found a couple near the same cave that I speared the first fish unsuccessfully.  I speared each of them separately and took them to a small patch reef slightly off the main reef.  When I brought the second speared lionfish to the patch, I noticed a spotted moray was nibbling on the first dying lionfish that I had set in the sand next to the patch reef.  I left the second fish near the moray and while I was getting it off the hook, I noticed the other fish that was getting nibbled on began to convulse.  I immediately took my spear and finished off both lionfish to make sure they wouldn’t suffer.  I snapped a few photos of the moray nibbling away at the carcass.  I am pretty sure that I became a good friend of the moray since I brought it two lionfish to feast on.  At this point in the dive, I was running low on air since I had been swimming around quite a bit.  I went up to my safety stop while Tye speared the last lionfish that we knew was left on the reef.  From above, I saw this 9+ foot long reef shark cruise near the ledge where Tye was as if it was looking for a freshly killed lionfish.  It circled and circled this particular patch of the continuous reef which I thought was a bit strange.  When Tye and I got onto the boat, she told me that she successfully speared the lionfish and the shark came swimming in almost immediately after she speared it.  On the bottom, Tye said it was actually circling the lionfish that was lying on the reef as I am sure it could sense that the lionfish was still partially alive.  Native predatory fish do not eat the adult lionfish without them being dead.  It is likely that sharks and morays get stung on occasion even when the fish is completely dead.  Tye thinks that the toxin just causes pain for predators temporarily.  Over a short time, the sensation most likely subsides such that sharks will come back to eat lionfish.

After I surfaced, we moved on to the high density reef to release the one caught lionfish (pictured here).  After quickly releasing it under a nice ledge, Tye and I caught fairy basslets for the remainder of the dive.  Once we finished, we came back and put everything away as per usual.  I was really happy to find my mask that was lost from the day before in the fray of the DCS scare.  After cleaning up we had dinner and did our logs.  Strangely, Tye was not feeling too well when we did logs complaining about some joint related soreness and pain.  This is a bit of a red flag but thankfully her symptoms subsided.  We discussed ways to make the rest of the week more conservative for diving and then ended the day.  I watched the Kings game shortly thereafter and was delighted to see them win in overtime.  It was a hard fought battle with the Rangers but the Kings came through.  Now that I am finishing up the blog, I need to go to sleep because it is about 1:30 (the latest I have stayed up).  Until later.