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.
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