Weilenmann Students Discover the Wonderful World of CEI

March 3, 2014 ceiblogger

Students going out for an afternoon kayak adventure

Early morning snorkely and marine ecology class on the sandbar — Early morning snorkel and marine ecology class at the sandbar

Winter break at the Weilenmann School of Discovery in Park City, Utah, is usually synonymous with snow pants, ski lifts, and hot cocoa. However, for 16 students and 5 chaperones, this February gave them the chance to dust off their passports, unpack some bathing suits, and head down to the sunny land of CEI for the school’s inaugural visit!

Students ranging from grades 6 – 9 joined the campus family for a week as they explored the marine habitats around the Cape. Between dissecting lionfish, learning about island permaculture, and investigating calcareous algae, the group found time for endless adventures, tons of snorkeling, and so much fun! Some of the highlights of the week included snorkeling with 6 eagle rays at Green Castle Blue Hole, seeing a nurse shark on our nightsnorkel, and dropping conch shells into the blue abyss of Exuma Sound.

The group was also fortunate enough to spend a night in the presence of Dr. Jonathon Ruppert, a visiting scientist presenting on the anthropomorphic impact of humans upon apex predators. The students loved spending time with a marine biologist!

With boundless energy, fantastic questions, and smiles that never stopped coming, Weilenmann was a great presence to have at CEI. We hope to share many more trips with these wonderful kids!

Building sandcastles and snorkeling at Lighthouse Beach

Lionfish, Outreach, Research Programs

Lionfish Outreach at Central Eleuthera High School

February 27, 2014 ceiblogger

Fire up the grill! As the 22nd annual Bahamian Young Chef Championship rolls nearer, high school students around the island are fine-tuning their culinary skills and perfecting recipes featuring local ingredients and flavor combinations.

Students learning the location of lionfish’s 18 venomous spines

This week the CEI lionfish team headed to Central Eleuthera High School’s Family and Consumer Science class to speak with Mrs. Williams-Sands’ and Mrs. McKinney’s students about preparation of lionfish. A student representative from CEHS will be headed to the Young Chef’s district-based competition next week and is considering featuring lionfish as a local ingredient. This shows marked and exciting progress toward cultivating demand for the invader from the fisheries industry.

Alicia Hendrix, CEI's sustainable fisheries research technition speaking about the introduction of lionfish in the Bahamas — Alicia Hendrix, CEI’s sustainable fisheries research technician, presenting on the impact of lionfish in the Bahamas

CEHS students learned about the invasion of lionfish in the Bahamas and some of the work done at CEI both to manage and to understand its implications for affected ecosystems. After being shown where lionfish spines were located and having their proper removal demonstrated, students Nigel and Sam faced off to fillet two lionfish, and they and their fellow students worked together to prepare them. Lionfish were fried, baked, and sampled by all students, many of whom had never tried the fish before!

Not only was it exciting to share this delicious white-meat fish with so many new samplers, but being enthusiastically approached by CEHS to introduce this dish was equally thrilling. With the help of more students, teachers, and community members there may yet be a booming lionfish market. Stay tuned for updates regarding the lionfish team’s plans for a local fisherman campaign; best of luck to CEHS in their competition next week!

Outreach, Research Programs, Sea turtles

CEI Participates in Deep Creek Middle School’s “School Without Walls”

February 24, 2014 ceiblogger

CEI Researchers Annabelle Brooks and Meagan Gary took a class of Grade 7 students from Deep Creek Middle School to get hands-on learning experience, capturing and tagging sea turtles in Half Sound, Eleuthera. The class was part of the middle school’s “School Without Walls” program which aims to tackle unique and pertinent issues confronting the surrounding community. Students waded out into the mangroves and captured 5 turtles and multiple bonefish. All were measured and tagged and released back into the wild. For many of the students, this was their first time exploring the mangroves ecosystems of Eleuthera. Two of the turtles were captured for the first time, which the kids named “Franklin” and “Slash”.

Students form a “scare line” that spans the creek, chasing turtles and fish into the net near the mouth

The seine net is carefully rolled up, removing any debris.

DCMS Grade 7 and CEI Turtle Research Team

Research Programs, Sharks

Stingray Physiology Project Update

February 20, 2014 ceiblogger

Handling a yellow stingray prior to blood sampling.

Thursday, February 13th, researchers from the Shark Research and Conservation Program completed the second round of sampling for the program’s stingray physiology project. The project aims to understand how the immune response of yellow stingrays (Urobatis jamaicensis) changes as a result of long-term exposure to a chronic stressor. After Thursday’s sampling, stingrays will be exposed to increased levels of dissolved carbon dioxide for two weeks at levels forecasted from climate change models. This project has implications for better understanding the long-term responses of sharks to a chronic stressor since stingrays are closely related to sharks, and it is more practical to keep stingrays in a lab for long durations.

Drawing blood from the caudal vein using 27 gauge needles

A typical sampling event involves drawing blood from all 20 stingrays. Blood is drawn from the caudal vein running along the bottom of the tail. The vein is encased in a cartilage sheath and is so small that needles used are 0.016 inches, or 0.4 millimeters, wide. Blood is prepared in a neutral buffered formalin solution and smeared on slides in preparation for tests to determine the total white blood cell count and proportions in which different white blood cells occur together. Sampling will occur three more times until the end of the month, at which point all current animals will be released, and 20 more will be caught for a second replicate.

Preparing blood smears on slides for differential white blood cell counts

The research team is particularly excited because this is only the third study to observe changes in immune function in sharks and rays, and this is the first study to observe changes in the immune response over a long duration. This project is a collaborative effort between researchers at the New England Aquarium, Carleton University, the Baltimore Aquarium, and the University of Illinois.

Lionfish, Outreach, Visiting Scientists

RSMAS help with the lionfish invasion

February 17, 2014 ceiblogger

This week, the RSMAS group had a class on invasive species. As part of the class, team RSMAS got to go out with the lionfish researchers and help with spearing, dissecting, and filleting of fish.
RSMAS team
Megan Gleason said, “The spears were easy to use, and the lionfish were abundant. We got 14 of them!” Team RSMAS had the opportunity to dive and spear in an uncharted spot which was great.
It was alarming to see the amount of lionfish on a reef that had not been monitored, but it was also a cool experience having so many potential targets to spear!

2014-02-11 17.20.14
They got back to campus and began to dissect the fish in order to see what they had been eating. There were some baby crabs and shrimp in their stomachs; it was incredible that we were able to see them in their whole form. Then it was time to fillet the fish. Afterwards, the group reflected, “We are all looking forward to eating them and experimenting with ways they can be prepared. The cookbook we had the chance to look through gave us some good ideas.”

Research Programs, Sea turtles

Research Technician Project Update

February 13, 2014 ceiblogger

Meaghan Gary, Research Technician for the Turtle Research team, discusses her project:

We are currently conducting a study on the in-water thermal variation across a juvenile green turtle foraging ground and the thermal preferences of the juvenile green turtles utilizing this foraging ground. We have placed habitat temperature data loggers in sixteen different locations throughout our study site, Starved Creek, which is located on the west coast of Eleuthera. These temperature data loggers are called iButtons (Maxim Integrated Thermochron ® Temperature Data Loggers) and are programmed to record every hour so that we are able to account for tidal differences.

We are also in the process of attaching iButtons to juvenile green turtles in order to investigate their thermal preferences. The iButtons attached to green turtles will record a temperature every ten minutes due to their movement throughout the tidal creek. We hope to continue to attach more iButtons to green turtles throughout the spring and recapture as many as possible.

Educational Programs

Gap Year Week Two Update

February 11, 2014 ceiblogger

After mangrove ecology class and snorkel

Week two was very full as we began to get into the swing of things on campus. As always each day was new and exciting and there was never a dull moment.

Human ecology classes began this week where we were given a deeper understanding of how humans impact the environment. We were all very shocked about the average consumption of an American in a year. For example the average American will use 43,371 soda cans in a life time. The gap students then began presentations on environmental issues. Stef discussed overpopulation and Kaitlin presented on the dredging in Gladstone, Australia.

Continue reading →

Educational Programs, Visiting Scientists

University of Illinois’ Inaugural Visit!

February 10, 2014 ceiblogger

CEI launched into 2014 with a busy EP season. Amidst the many veteran programs was the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, with 8 students visiting for their inaugural trip to Eleuthera!

students learning snorkeling and transect techniques in boathouse cut prior to starting solo research — Students learning snorkeling and transect techniques in boathouse cut prior to starting solo research

Led by Dr. Cory Suski, with years of CEI research under his belt, students spent their first 3 days at CEI learning proper research techniques in various environments. While surveying patch reefs, executing mangrove transects, or seining creeks for live specimens, the students were developing their own research proposals for field research to occur later in the program. Dr. Jocelyn Curtis-Quick and Zach Zuckerman were instrumental in passing along effective sampling techniques to the students. Once equipped with methodology, 4 projects were launched, and the students were scattered throughout the Cape collecting data.

Students seining Rock Sound for bonefish and other flats fish with Zach

Among the topics studied were the impacts of take vs. no-take zones on lionfish presence and biodiversity, abiotic factors in various creeks in relation to the biodiversity of these zones, and anthropogenic impacts among various mangrove communities. A symposium was hosted on the final day of program, during which students presented their findings to the CEI community. Keep your eyes on U of I as these students return home and ready themselves for graduation in the spring – their dedication to science and research will undoubtedly take them far!

Students test out the Manta Tow during a search for aggregate grouper spawning site with Sustainable Fisheries

Visiting Scientists

Putting Puffers in the Lounge Chair – Personality, Stress, and the Checkered Puffer

February 7, 2014 ceiblogger

Do animals have personality? If so, how do we define and measure it? How would personality types affect an animal’s fitness?

Researchers define “animal personality” as structured differences in the behavior of individual animals across time and context. They have observed a variety of personalities in animals such as shyness and boldness, exploration and avoidance, and activity . These individual differences may affect how animals interact with each other and their environment.

Naomi Pleizier, an MSc. student from the Cooke Lab at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, returned to CEI this January to study the effects of short-term stress on the personality of checkered puffer fish (Sphoeroides testudineus). Living in the ever-changing mangrove ecosystem, checkered puffers thrive despite challenges such as large shifts in salinity and temperature. True to their name, puffers have also developed an unusual defense against potential predators – filling their bodies with air or water to puff up to a surprising size. Despite the resilience of these fish, additional stressors, such as climate change and the destruction of mangrove habitat, may affect their behavior (including personality) and health.

Naomi and her team from Carleton and CEI collected puffers from Page Creek and tested their behavior before, during, and after treating them with a stress hormone, cortisol. Behaviors tested included puffing, activity, and fright response. The puffers were returned to Page Creek and will be caught again in the few days to be sampled in order to measure the activity of their immune systems. With these results, the team will be able to determine how personality differs between puffers and how this personality, as well as immune function, is influenced by an increase in cortisol levels.

Educational Programs, Research Programs, Sea turtles, Sharks, Student Research

Exeter field course visits CEI

February 5, 2014 ceiblogger

Visiting CEI for the first time, 26 students and 4 professors from the University of Exeter, UK, completed a 12 day program during 6th- 17th January. As part of a field trip module, where students can choose to explore South Africa, Borneo, the Canary Island or The Bahamas, these final-year college students started off the New Year with an immersion into tropical marine ecosystems and conservation. Over the course of 12 days, students got hands-on lessons about the major ecosystems and habitats right on their doorstep here at Cape Eleuthera. What better way to learn about mangrove flats than snorkeling through the creek channels and peaking into the roots of red mangroves and seeing all sorts of juvenile fish species that would normally live in this type of habitat? The team also had a class on bonefishing in the Bahamas, reef fish identification and patch reef surveys.

Edd securing the head of a bluntnose sixgill Hexanchus griseus caught in 700 meters of water

The students spent time with the shark research team at CEI. Highlights included catching a smoothskin dogfish and a rare sighting of a recaptured bluntnose sixgill shark with the deepwater shark team; they also tagged several sea turtles! The group also visited Jacks Bay to survey seagrass and encountered numerous turtles and spotted eagle stingrays there.

The group also had the opportunity to explore Eleuthera and went down island to check out the most narrow place on the island, Glass Window Bridge. They also swam like royalty in the Queens Bath and paid a visit to the Rock Sound Ocean Hole. Over a BBQ on their last night, students and professors reflected on how anxious they were a year ago while planning for this trip and how fast it went by now it is over. Some students commenting that this trip had exceeded their expectations. Everyone in this group experienced something that they had never seen or done before, whether it be snorkeling, touching a shark or holding a turtle.

A Cuban dogfish Squalus cubensis immediately prior to release

The University of Exeter left CEI and The Island School satisfied.Their first field course to the Bahamas was a fun-filled, educational, and life-changing one. The professors of this group are now planning for another visit next year and more years to come, with more students! Thank you everyone that took part in working with this group. Your hard work is really appreciated!

Yearly Archives: 2014