Time flies when you are turtling!

DSCN1321Our Gap Year crew has been very busy in their first month here at CEI with marine research, road trips, classes and community service. We’ve studied human ecology, coral reefs, mangroves and more.  We analyzed sustainable aspects of our Island School/CEI community here and compared them to our home communities with the ultimate goal of designing a solution to an issue of sustainability at home.

Outside of our classes, we’ve helped out with many on-site research projects studying everything from green sea turtles to Caribbean sharks to a local favorite, queen conch. We’ve also conducted plastic surveys and helped out in our permaculture garden. Last week we explored outside our immediate community and volunteered at the Tarpum Bay Arts & Cultural center doing a landscaping project (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Eleutheras-Art-and-Cultural-Centre/234550843232729). There we met the lovely director, Audrey Carey, who regaled us with stories about what life was like when she grew up in the Bahamas (very sustainable!) and showed us the local students’ and artists’ work.  Continue reading

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New graduate housing facility

The Island School along with Cape Eleuthera Institute and the new Center for Sustainable Development are attracting young professionals from around the world looking for post graduate level experience in the tropical marine and applied sciences as well as more teaching focused fellowships.  Through the generous support of Ed Anderson and Linda Cabot, Island School parents, Georgiana (SP 11) and Noelle (SP 13), we will be able to build-out the first phase of the project that includes all the living spaces, capacity to house up to 40 graduate students. Ed Anderson shares, “With expanding resources and an ideal location, Cape Eleuthera Institute promises to be the next Woods’ Hole of the Caribbean.”  Now we can properly take care of the people engine that helps support research and a range of design and build projects.  In addition Anderson- Cabot Hall promises to be an ultra-green building. With state of the art lighting and passive cooling the building will be a net exporter of energy from its 10 kW solar array.  A 40,000 gallon basement cistern will collect more than enough water to care for the inhabitants and an advanced waste water system will recycle and responsibly manage all discharge.  We imagine that this ecologically designed building will do more than just provide comfortable living space; Cabot- Anderson Hall will inspire all who come to live and work our campus to believe that we can design for a more sustainable future.

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CEI represented at Ecological Gap Analysis workshop in Nassau

At the end of March, Kate Barley represented CEI and attended a stakeholder workshop on Ecological Gap Analysis at the Wyndham Nassau Resort.  Decision makers from government, policy makers, academics, and NGO’s were also in attendance.  This workshop was a part of the larger Global Environment Fund (GEF) Project titled “Building a Sustainable Network of Marine Protected Areas for The Bahamas.”  The main objective of this is to expand the coverage of Marine Protected Areas in The Bahamas.

An ecological gap analysis is an assessment to check if the the goals and objectives for the area are being met.  An ecological gap is where a certain species or ecosystem (e.g., A reef, mangrove, forest, etc.) is not represented enough for the long term protection that it needs.  This is important because The Bahamas is part of an international agreement, The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and as part of this, has agreed to protect at least 17% of the land and 10% of marine environment by 2020.  This protection does not all have to be in the form of closed areas, but does need to be effectively managed, ecologically representative, and connected to other ecosystems with the overall goal of reducing the pressure on biodiversity and promoting sustainable use of resources. Continue reading

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Meet our Fall Gap Year Students

Here are short bios from our three Gap Year students:

IMG_1223Eryn Dioli: My name is Eryn Dioli and I just graduated from high school in June of 2013. I’m taking a gap year before I start college, and in the fall of 2014 I will be attending The University of Colorado at Boulder where I hope to study international relations. I was drawn to CEI because of the way sustainable living is so much a part of life here. I have grown up on the ocean and it’s a great experience to be living in a  place that is so dedicated to conserving it. I’m looking forward to learning more about permaculture and how I can implement that in to my own community at home, and to take part in the turtle research project. Continue reading

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CEI’s Sea Turtle Researchers visit Fishbone Tours in Savannah Sound, Eleuthera

Up-close shot of a juvenile green sea turtle.
Up-close shot of a juvenile green sea turtle.
Meagan spotting a turtle.
Meagan spotting a turtle.

Annabelle Brooks and Meagan Gary, researchers with the CEI Sea Turtle Research and Conservation Program, recently spent a day in Savannah Sound, Central Eleuthera, with Fishbone Tours (http://www.fishbonetours.com/). Established by Julius Rankine, resident of Savannah Sound, Fishbone Tours offers fishing trips and adventure tours that include a variety of activities including snorkeling on reefs and in mangroves, visiting a conch ranch, lunch on a secluded beach, and catching sea turtles. Not only a fun day out, Julius and his wife also take the opportunity to educate visitors about the various marine environments and species of the Bahamas.

Julius Rankin from Fishbone Tours measuring the carapace length of a green sea turtle.
Julius Rankine from Fishbone Tours measuring the carapace length of a green sea turtle.

CEI’s Sea Turtle Research and Conservation Program has teamed up with Fishbone tours, training them on measuring sea turtles that they catch and release, gathering valuable data about the sea turtles using the rich habitat of Savannah Sound. This collaboration will allow us to expand our existing data set from South Eleuthera. During their time in Savannah Sound, Meagan caught a juvenile green turtle and recorded carapace measurements, and the team explored the variety of different habitat types found throughout the sound. This was a great way to start collaborations on Eleuthera and start planning for future research in the rich ecosystem of Savannah Sound.

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Highlighting 3 Fall Interns with the Lionfish/Conch Programs

This Fall semester, The Lionfish and Conch Programs decided to do something new. They instituted a dual internship, which would focus on sustainable fisheries and marine conservation; interns would work with both the lionfish and conch projects. Three lucky interns are being put to the task this fall to work among projects in both programs, and their bios are below.

picAlicia Hendrix: A Washington state native, Alicia finished her B.A. in Biology and Fine Art at Scripps College this past January.  Since then she has been at the University of Washington labs in the San Juan Islands expanding upon the work completed for her undergraduate biology thesis and teaching high school students scientific illustration. During the course of her undergraduate studies, Alicia conducted research on trace metal chelation by jelly DOM at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Science and on protein localization in trypanosomes at the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute.  In 2011 she earned her Divemaster certification at Utila Dive Center, where she also assisted with the Coral Watch program on the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef. She is thrilled to be a part of the internship program here at CEI, and is already learning so much! Continue reading

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Lionfish Research Manager Dr. Jocelyn Curtis-Quick expands the program over the past year

G0051160This September marks the one year anniversary of the arrival of the current Lionfish Research and Education Program (LREP) manager, Dr. Jocelyn Curtis-Quick.  Jocelyn is a marine ecologist with over ten years of tropical marine field experience from all over the world.  She has a Master’s degree from Plymouth University and PhD. from the University of Essex, both of which primarily focused on reef resilience and how fish respond to habitat degradation.  Many reef fish play important ecosystem functional roles and their demise can have significant implications for the reef system.  The Indo-Pacific, where Jocelyn conducted her studies, has especially high diversity and functional redundancy, which means that reefs in this area are more capable to resist and recover from disturbance.  Jocelyn’s PhD. increased our understanding of niche partitioning and resource utilization by key fish taxa and importantly identified the plasticity of fish to adapt their feeding strategy in response to changing habitat quality. Continue reading

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A Spotlight on CEI’s new Research Assistants

Here are brief bios from CEI’s three fall research assistants:

IMG_2278Ian Bouyoucos graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in ecology and evolutionary biology. This research assistant position is his third time at CEI, following an internship in the summer 2010 and spring 2013 semesters. Ian’s research background is focused on shark stress physiology, as well as sturgeon bycatch reduction. Specifically, he has conducted research concerned with the secondary stress response in the smooth dogfish, and the potential for electropositive metals to serve as a method of bycatch reduction for Atlantic sturgeon. In addition, he has assisted on projects dealing with nursery habitat use of juvenile lemon and blacktip sharks, and bycatch reduction in sandbar sharks. On top of the research he will be involved in with the shark research and conservation program, Ian will be conducting a project focused on the immunological response in yellow stingrays to a chronic stressor, which will serve as a model for sharks. Continue reading

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Shark team recovers satellite tags as part of ongoing project

An X-Tag on a shark's dorsal fin.
An X-Tag on a shark’s dorsal fin.

Last Thursday our shark team, captained by Dr. Edward Brooks, embarked on another exciting satellite tag recovery to the Exumas – a small group of cays situated due west of the Cape Eleuthera Institute.  This particular project, run in collaboration with Microwave Telemetry Inc, has deployed eight Microwave Telemetry X-Tags  over the last two years.  This particular PSAT had popped off a male Caribbean reef shark (Carcharhinus perezi) after five months, three months earlier than its planned 8 month deployment, due to a failure of the tag anchor.  The X-Tag has been logging the depth and temperature of the shark every two minutes, in addition to logging ambient light levels, from which daily geolocation estimates can be generated from day length and sunrise and sunset times.

The team searching for the tag.
The team searching for the tag.

These tags are not designed to be recovered, instead transmitting their archived data via the ARGOS satellite system.  Typically 100% data transmission is not achieved due to limitations in battery life and satellite bandwidth, so if a tag washes ashore it provides a rare opportunity for 100% of the logged data to be recovered manually.  The two minute resolution data will yield a treasure trove of information on this poorly understood species.

At 6:30am the team readied the boat with all necessary gear for a long day out in the field. The two most important items aboard consisted of a GPS with approximate location of the last transmission, and a VHF receiver and yagi antenna to narrow the search area from the individual burst transmissions from the tag. Timing is imperative, as detections from the tag only transmit during a two-hour window when the satellite is directly above the tag’s location. Transmissions were in one-minute intervals, between 9:15 and 11:15, meaning the team had to arrive at the Exumas no later than 9 am in order to anchor the boat and assemble the GPS and satellite receiver. Continue reading

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