Basslet Season Opening Day 5

Today was the beginning of a new chapter in my diving career.  I have done many things while underwater but today was the first time I have caught fish by drugging them.  To clarify, Tye’s experiment with basslets requires that we remove basslets from certain treatments.  These fish are tiny (length of your pinkie at the biggest) and are really fast.  They can dart into a hole and hide long before you swipe them with a net.  To help make the process of removing the basslets easier, we use a fish anesthetic called quinaldine to cause them to fall from their protective holes.  My job today was to use the quinaldine to clear one of Tye’s ledges of all fairy basslets (pictured in an earlier post).  

To do this, I would approach the basslets slowly with a net to see if I could swipe them before they entered their holes.  If they hid, I would cover the hole with a small aquarium net and squirt a little bit of quinaldine into the hole.  Most of the time, the fish will slowly leave its hole and float near the opening which makes it much easier to catch.  Once I got one in the net, I would use the net to place it inside a plastic baggie for removal.  After a few minutes, the anesthetic wears off but they are trapped inside of a ziplock baggie.  We take these basslets and release them on other reefs so they can live elsewhere.  I did this for 3 dives today and steadily improved my efficiency as the day went by.  

Tye was busy doing more survey work and lionfish removal while I worked on a basslet ledge.  At one point, she speared a lionfish and took it over to a neighboring reef to leave it for the sharks to eat.  Apparently, Tye saw this lionfish swim toward our reef on its side (since it was wounded) and she speared it again to make sure it was dead.  Shortly after, a reef shark came by and ate the lionfish while we were removing basslets.  It was interesting to see the shark swim by as it curiously examined us wondering if we would provide another tasty treat for it.  In total we did 3 dives today and finished preparing DP-T08 as the low lionfish density reef for the Tye’s experiment.  Tomorrow we will be moving on to work at her high density reef and to prepare it for the experiment as well.  Now that it’s creeping toward 11 pm I think I am going to head to sleep.  I haven’t gotten to sleep before 1 am yet (I think I am still transitioning to east coast time) so I am going to try hard to do this tonight to rest up for another long day tomorrow.  Until later.

Lionfish Hunting Day 4

Today, the true lionfish research began.  Tye and I were tasked with mapping out her ledges where she will be monitoring her basslets for the basslet-lionfish experiments and transplanting lionfish from one reef to another.  Tye took care of the mapping on her own today because it is time intensive and a little complicated.  I was in charge of catching lionfish on the first dive and counting the total number of lionfish present/releasing them on the second dive.  On the first dive at DP-T08, I started off well.  First catch of the season is pictured here.  This little one had no idea what was going on until it was too late.  But after the easy first one, it got much harder.  I saw a couple at the end of the reef hanging out in the open.  When I got to them, they were slowly creeping toward cover.  They knew what was up and I couldn't catch them before they swam under a hard to reach ledge.  I'll be back to get those suckers soon.  Most likely we will have to spear them now that they react to seeing the hand nets.

The next dive at DP-T09 was at a high density lionfish reef.  The goal is to stock this reef with lionfish from other reefs so that they are more likely to stick to the ledges they are released on.  The idea is that when a lionfish is released onto one of Tye's ledges that have basslets, they will stay and feed there.  In practice, this does not always happen.  They tend to roam around the reef or leave it all together.  This makes stocking it even more important so that the densities of lionfish stay at high enough levels for the experiment even with some lionfish emmigration.  While I was searching for lionfish, I saw a really large sting ray buried in the sand near the reef.  I took some cool pictures and included one of them here.  They are such amazing animals to see when they are that big.  The eyes peering from the sand watching your every move...simply awesome.  After I finished up my search, I took some pictures of Tye at work, her ledges, and the reef in general before we released our lionfish we caught before.  Strangely, I went into deco without notice and had to do a few minutes extra at my safety stop.  Still getting used to the new computer but that shouldn't happen again.  When we got back topside, Tye wasn't feeling well so we decided to call the day short. 

We wrapped up the day back at CEI doing our logs as we do everyday.  When we started, Tye told me she received an email from Mark saying that he will not be coming down to the Bahamas this summer.  This is unfortunate because I was really looking forward to spending some time working with him and getting to know him better.  Tye originally encouraged me to come early so that I would be able to work with Mark but unfortunately, his surfer's ear issues popped up and he is going to have surgery.  Regardless, I am so happy to be here working with Tye and soon Lillian, Alex, and Steph on this awesome project here in the Bahamas.  Right now I am watching the Kings game so I am a bit distracted.  I will sign off here.  Until later.

More Recon Day 3

We started off the day right today with a nice bowl of traditional Bahamian Souse for breakfast.  The broth is like chicken noodle but way better!  It was amusing to hear Island School students and researchers talk about how they don’t like to eat that kind of meal for breakfast.  I guess it’s a white people thing...breakfast food only at breakfast J. 

Today we checked out the sites we didn’t get to yesterday.  My job today was solely looking for lionfish on the patch reefs we went to.  There were not as many as I would have thought.  At the 6 reefs we visited, I saw a total of 8 lionfish.  This is both a good and a bad thing.  It is good because that means the local dive and fishing operations are taking a toll on the population and driving the abundance of lionfish down.  Less lionfish is great news for the reefs since they have been implicated for being able to reduce the abundance of fish on these patch reefs by up to 90%.  This is bad news for us however because we are trying to manipulate lionfish densities for our basslet experiments and that requires a few lionfish to make it possible.  At this point, it looks like we will need to transplant a good number of lionfish from reefs that are not going to be used for the experiments themselves.  This is extra work for us because we have to go out of our way to find lionfish at other reefs as opposed to grabbing them from the reefs that will be made into the low lionfish density treatment reefs.  But at the end of the day, this is good news that forces us to work more.

The last two dives of the day were on dive site reefs for the recreational dive boats.  Cathedral and Tunnels were both awesome to dive because the had a ton of deep cracks and caves to explore.  This made looking for lionfish a bit more difficult and time consuming for me but it was a great deal of fun to be honest.  I included a cool video of our safety stop at Cathedral at the bottom of the post.  On our way up from Cathedral, I started to think about my GoPro setup and how it was not really as secure as I would like it to be attached to my BC.  The second I started to think about that, the strap slipped and it fell off my BC.  Lucky for me I was on top of it and was able to snatch the tray and camera before it fell 50 ft to the bottom.  That certainly was a close one today.  After we got back from our dives, we had a fried chicken dinner, finished up our dive and boat logs, and headed back to our rooms.  Now that I am finishing up the blog, it is time for me to retire.  I need a good 9 hours of sleep tonight to try to catch up from the lack of sleep the other two nights.  Until later. 

Recon Day 2

Today I woke up feeling some jetlag but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.  Our day was oriented toward collecting some preliminary observations about the sites that will be used for Tye’s basslet lionfish experiments.  In essence, she is interested in looking at how lionfish affect reef fish competitive interactions.  She focuses in particular on blackcap and fairy basslets (pictured here) to see if competition for resources between these species is potentially altered by the presence of the voracious lionfish predators.  To set up for this experiment, Tye and I needed to scope out some patch reefs

and find potential ledges where these basslets might reside.

Our day consisted of mostly short dives that ranged anywhere from 19 to 40 minutes long.  My primary job was to flag ledges that Tye identified as good locations for her experiments.  Additionally, I spent some time looking around attempting to find lionfish.  We came upon a really funny group of 4 lionfish just hanging out under a ledge on our first dive.  I should have taken video because they were just sitting there staring at us in a way I have never seen before.  They are usually far too busy hunting to ever really pay attention to you as a diver so seeing them peer out at us as if to be thinking, “how’s it going?” was really funny.  Silly little lionfish.  We also saw a reef shark off of one of the reefs for a quick second before it swam off into the blue.  I got a short video of it swimming away but hopefully better shark footage is to come.  We also saw a turtle cruising along the sandy bottom while on our safety stop which was neat.  

We did 5 dives in total and despite our late start from our boathouse orientation and SCUBA equipment setup, we finished up by around 5:30.  Dinner was some comfort food pizza today which was nice after a day of diving.  Nothing like a carbo load after a long day out on the water J.  Afterward, Tye and I finished up with entering our dive log data for the day and then I was off to watch the Kings game.  I just got done watching it and unfortunately it was a double overtime loss for the Kings.  The next game in LA will be really fun to watch though.  I am going to try to get some sleep now with the long day ahead tomorrow.  More pictures and videos, particularly of CEI, will be posted soon.  Until later.

Arrival Day 1

Coming down to the Bahamas for this year's lionfish field season with Mark Hixon's graduate students from Oregon State was pretty smooth and effortless.  No fuss or problems to speak of other than a complete lack of sleep throughout for me.  Upon arrival to Nassau, Tye and I were greeted by a fancy new domestic terminal (which was not there a year ago) and got onto our puddle jumper to Eleuthera.  As I listened to the airport staff and flight attendant speak, it finally hit me that I was in the Bahamas.  I would say that in comparison to a Jamaican accent, it is similar but more proper sounding English (which sounds cool to me).   Flying in was beautiful with all the shallow reefs and sandy stretches.  Landing in Rock Sound, I felt like I was back in Moorea because of the climate but not so much the topography which is completely flat in comparison to Moorea's steep mountainous terrain.  The drive to the research station along with the humidity reminded me of my drive around Moorea to get to Gump Research Station.  When we arrived at the Cape Eleuthera Institute, it was very obvious I was not in Moorea.  The facilities here are quite a step above.  There is of course the room I am staying in, which is a fantastic room with a great view of the beach and ocean (pictured here).  I feel like I am staying in a hotel, which is leaps and bounds above my Moorea experience.  Apparently in the past, sickness spreads really quickly in the dorms here at CEI so I'm happy with living the high life at the Hallig House courtesy of Mark.  Dinner was nice with some bbq chicken and assorted veggies.  I think I will be happy coming home to these meals after long days of work.  Tomorrow I am getting up to go do some sight recon with Tye to check out how past experimental plots are faring.  I should really stop writing and go to sleep, especially considering the coming jetlag.  Until later.