All posts by ceiblogger

Educational Programs, SCUBA

Vermont Commons visits CEI and has a blast under the sea!

A group of 12 students, 8th – 12th grade, from Vermont Commons School in South Burlington, Vermont, is off after a week of SCUBA diving and research. This was their first time visiting CEI and they say it exceeded their expectations! They especially enjoyed night wading for octopus with Brendan Talwar, lionfish dissections with Elizabeth Underwood and Jocelyn Curtis-Quick, learning reef fish ID with Kristal Ambrose, ultimate frisbee with Jason Kincaid, and volunteering with SEEP (South Eleuthera Emergency Partners)! Each and every one of them loved our local lettuce and all the food provided by our kitchen staff. We couldn’t have done it without this amazing community!

Check out the link to their blog for a step by step log of their trip down to Cape Eleuthera Institute! http://vcsturtledivers.blogspot.com/

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Flats, Research Programs

Exciting juvenile bonefish research at CEI!

Since May 2011, Christopher Haak, a PhD student (and avid fisherman) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, along with other scientists, has been trying to solve the mystery of where juvenile bonefish live, from settlement through the time they join adult populations on the flats.  Exhaustive efforts to locate juveniles along the densely-developed coastlines of Florida were met with little success, leading researchers to the comparatively pristine shorelines of The Bahamas to continue their search.

For the past one-and-a-half years, they have scoured the coastlines of South Eleuthera, conducting 1000+ seine hauls, encompassing a broad range of coastal habitats. This project is funded by Bonefish & Tarpon Trust and based out of CEI.   These efforts (with the help of South-Eleutherans; thanks Denny and Kelsey Rankin!) have succeeded in locating over 800 juvenile bonefish as small as one inch in length, and have revealed some intriguing trends.  For example, contrary to what might be expected, juvenile bonefish do not appear to frequent the mangrove creek systems or expansive tidal flats commonly used by adults, preferring instead to remain along shallow, sheltered shorelines near deeper basins or channels.

Can you find the juvenile bonefish among the mojarra in the picture below?

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Educational Programs

The Island School Hosts New York Harbor School SCUBA Divers

Last week The Island School hosted 12 SCUBA divers from the New York Harbor School. Accompanying the divers were dive instructors Liv Dillon and Joe Gessert and board member Eli Smith. The divers continue the relationship between the New York Harbor School and The Island School, which includes dive trips such as this one as well as bringing students to enroll in Island School semesters as part of the City Bridge program. Students participated in up to 22 dives (four per day), 10 received their Advanced Open Water Certification, while the other 2 students (who had already completed their Advanced Open Water) worked towards their Divemaster.

For more information on the New York Harbor School, check out their website, and for a glimpse of what the students experienced, check out these photos and the video below:

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Educational Programs

Gap Year Program Update

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=o01WD8fUUKE

This first GAP year update was written by a gapper reflecting on their first week:

When I asked the copious newcomers that arrived at Cape Eleuthera Institute in the past week or so if they could describe their experience so far, they responded ultimately a plethora of words: surreal, funky fresh, refreshing, really salty, lots of lettuce, and extremely informative. Personally, I would not object to any of those, but due to lack of time, as I am a gap year student here at The Cape Eleuthera Institute, and have to finish my prerequisites for SCUBA training, I am only going to focus on the week being “surreal, informative, and refreshing.”

Along with four other gappers (for the sake of an easier flow to this blog post, and a more real description of our time here, I am going to refer to a gap year student as a “gapper”, what everyone else has come to call us), we arrived at the sunny south side of the island Eleuthera, and it immediately seemed as if the luminous sun hovering the enticing, crystal, teal waters sucked out the oxygen from the moment, where we were all amazed at how perfect a place can really be. Continue reading →

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Educational Programs, Student Research

Carleton University visits CEI to study coral reef communities

From December 27th, 2012 to January 10th, 2013 a field course from Carleton University, led by Dr. Nigel Waltho and coordinated by the Ontario Universities Program in Field Biology, came to CEI to conduct reef ecology research.  Through snorkeling and scuba diving, 8 teams of students studied the distribution and community organization of various marine habitats as it relates to ecological processes.  Some examples of projects included studying the effects of the lionfish invasion on fish community structure, studying fish species richness and abundance relative to a gradient of habitat types, as well as interspecific competition for space among corals, sponge and algal species.

The course included writing a proposal, species identification, project design, data collection, statistical workshops, and a final scientific paper.  These final reports, in addition to their publication potential, will have the opportunity to be used by the Bahamian government to inform local conservation efforts.  Highlights from the trip included seeing a whale shark, squid, eagle rays, a hammerhead shark as well as attending local Bahamian Junkanoo festivals and exploring the island!

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Sustainable Systems

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle! Construction continues on new Resources Building

January 2013 has seen lots of action at CEI; programs are visiting, research is ongoing, and buildings are going up. Carter Brown (SP09) visited CEI for a week to assist with construction of the new recycling facility on campus. While on Eleuthera, Carter installed the first completed segments of the building’s glass bottle walls, demonstrating reuse at its best!

Carter created a mosaic of color that both permits natural lighting to the building and makes use of bottles collected over the last several months. Nice work, Carter!

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Educational Programs, Sea turtles

Visiting program gets up close and personal with sea turtles!

Recently, students from the Maine School of Science and Mathematics (MSSM), hailing from Limestone, Maine, spent their 2 week J-Term learning about sea turtle research and conservation at CEI.While here they learned about how the Bahamas is a unique foraging ground for juvenile green sea turtles. The students traveled to Half Sound, located northwest of the Cape, on the Atlantic side of the island. This site provides a protected habitat with a small opening to the ocean, a seemingly ideal place for juvenile green sea turtles to forage.

For their research, MSSM students built on research conducted by Annabelle Brooks and The Island School Fall 2012 research group. During their field time they conducted habitat mapping and surveys of the sound- observing shoreline habitat, taking depth measurements, and noting bottom type. They also set up the first baited remote underwater video (BRUV) in the sound to capture footage of the possible predators in the sound. Boat surveys were conducted, where students did actual counts of sea turtles, and a seine net was set up in the mouth of the tidal creek, to capture and tag sea turtles. The tagging of sea turtles done at CEI is in partnership with the Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research at the University of Florida, which aims to form a global database of sea turtle tagging data.

 

 

 

 

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Lionfish, Outreach

CEI researcher Dr. Jocelyn Curtis-Quick gives presentation for the World Wildlife Fund

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Over the holiday break, CEI Lionfish Research and Education Program Manager Dr. Jocelyn Dr. Jocelyn Curtis-Quick presenting CEI lionfish research for WWF D.C.Curtis-Quick took a trip to the states to promote CEI lionfish research. She traveled to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) headquarters in Washington, D.C., and presented a talk entitled “Not on my reef,” discussing the threat of invasive lionfish to Caribbean marine ecosystems, and efforts to mitigate the problem. She also presented on other current CEI research, while highlighting the organizations’ goals of research, outreach, and education. Thanks Jocelyn!

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Aquaponics, Outreach

Aquaponics lettuce harvest

The Aquaponics team has been busy harvesting lettuce throughout the holiday season. Before Christmas, Kristal Ambrose, Aquaponics technician, along with interns and other staff, harvested a total of 45 lbs. of lettuce, grown in the aquaponics grow beds at CEI. This lettuce is watered with the “waste” water from the tilapia tanks. The lettuce filters out nutrients, making the water suitable to be recirculated to the tilapia. This type of water recirculation system uses 98% less water than typical agricultural lettuce grow beds.

Aquaponics Lettuce Grow Beds, CEI

Besides being used in the dining hall, the harvested lettuce was handed out to CEI employees, as well as community members throughout South Eleuthera, making for a joyous holiday season for all.

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Educational Programs

Hope College visits Eleuthera

On December 13, six college students from Holland, Michigan’s Hope College arrived on campus to participate in a week-long field course focusing on Island Ecology and Geology. Led by Professor Brian Bodenbender, the group explored the island of Eleuthera- both above and below water. During their many field excursions, they examined the cross bedding of ancient sand dunes and the magnificent coral reefs of Half Sound. Although challenged by the sustainable lifestyle of our small island community, the group returned to the the states with a refreshed understanding of island ecology and the ways in which humans are connected to and impact their environment.

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