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.