Thursday, June 5, 2014

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. 

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