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.
Alicia 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 →
This 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 →
The lionfish are ready for their GoPro camera close-ups!
As the crew from Mark Hixon’s lab at Oregon State University round the halfway point of their summer field season here at CEI, the team has already logged almost 200 dives while conducting their underwater research. Ph.D. student Tye Kindinger has started a brand new project this summer investigating the interactive effect of invasive lionfish predation on competition between two native species of basslets. Fairy and blackcap basslets are popular fish in the aquarium trade due to their bright and beautiful color.
Brightly colored blackcap and fairy basslets may be small and cute, but their aggression towards each other could lead to increased vulnerability to lionfish predation.
Off of Eleuthera, these basslets can be found on coral reefs, where they live under the same ledges and potentially compete for plankton (food) that is passing by. Invasive lionfish could affect these populations of basslets depending on whether lionfish prefer to eat one species of basslet over the other. In addition, aggressive behavior between the basslet species due to competition could cause one basslet species to be more vulnerable to lionfish predation, depending on where lionfish prefer to hunt under ledges. Continue reading →
Seven undergraduate students from Newcastle University have been on campus since July 1, assimilating with various research groups at CEI. Each student is working on an individual project for their undergraduate thesis. Click below for a summary of the projects:
Jocelyn and Kate recording fish along their transects.
The lionfish team has recently finished their fish abundance surveys, which are undertaken every three months. They visited sixteen reef patches in the Exuma Sound over three days. There are generally two or three recorders (who need to have top notch fish identification skills!). Two team members jump in onto the patch and do roving surveys and record all the fish they can see. Since the patches are part of a lionfish removal versus non-removal comparison study, they also record the number and size of both lionfish and competitors for lionfish, such as groupers.
A speared lionfish
Next, they lay three random transects over the reef and record the species and size of all the fish within one meter of the transect tape. The third recorder lays two transects on the sand on either side of the reef – there’s much fewer fish out there! Finally, if the site is a lionfish removal site, they spear all the lionfish on the patch and take them back to the lab for dissection.
A Caribbean two-spot octopus
The team was out on the boat the couple of days before tropical storm Chantal was supposed to hit Eleuthera and the weather was crazy! It could change from bright sunshine to lashing rain and waves crashing over the bow in minutes. Despite those moments, the team had a fun time and saw some pretty cool stuff; there was an octopus on one transect, as well as a Dwarf seahorse and a pipefish near different patches. Continue reading →
Lillian Tuttle is a PhD. student from Mark Hixon’s lab at Oregon State University, who is working at CEI for 90 days this summer studying the lionfish invasion. Broadly, Lillian is interested in the interactions among invasive lionfish, native parasite communities, and native cleaning symbioses. Her past research demonstrates that invasive lionfish have escaped the threat of parasitic infection here in the Atlantic, especially when compared to native fishes that are chocked full of parasitic worms and crustaceans. Without the need to fight infection, lionfish might be able to put more energy into growth and reproduction, perhaps explaining some of their success as an invasive species. But if lionfish don’t have parasites, might they still change the way that native fish get parasites?
Lillian’s hand getting cleaned at an underwater fish cleaning station!
This brings us to Lillian’s project this summer. Thus far, Lillian has logged many hours of observation and deployed many GoPro cameras to detect what lionfish are doing at cleaning stations, locations on the reef where small “cleaner” gobies and shrimp pick the parasites off the skin of larger fish “clients” (think, car washes in the sea!). Are lionfish eating cleaners? Are lionfish eating clients? Or might the slow, stalking, hunting behavior of lionfish interrupt cleaning somehow? These are all questions Lillian hopes to answer this summer at CEI.
Currently CEI is overrun with lionfish researchers; it’s an invasion!
The Oregon State University has a team of 6 here. The renowned lionfish researcher Dr. Mark Hixon was also on site for 2 weeks. We also have a group of 3 researchers from Simon Fraser University, as well as 3 researchers from the University of the West Indies. And, of course, the CEI team is always here.
Through perseverance and teamwork, the SFU team, stationed at The Cape Eleuthera Institute, has made great progress in gathering biological samples to assess the effects of the lionfish predation and other stressors on food webs of local reefs. So far they have sampled 7 out of 16 sites, catching over 300 different fish of different species. The structure and complexity of some sites greatly complicates the sampling effort, so as with any other fishing activities, “some days are better than others”.
Atlantic spadefish getting a fin clip for later stable isotope analyses.
SFU researcher Luis releasing fish after recovery.
It is important to note that their sampling effort is completely non-destructive (yay!)… But what does this mean? Well, they bring the fish up to the boat, fin-clip them, let them recover in floating cages hanging from the boat for 20 min, and then release them back to their home. Continue reading →
This past weekend, CEI participated in Conch Fest, the Homecoming celebration for the settlement of Deep Creek, where several CEI staff call home. The focus of this year’s booth was to promote the National Conchservation Campaign, as well as to serve lionfish samples as an alternative to conch.
Deep Creek Middle School students gathered around the CEI booth for a lionfish sample. They had to answer trivia questions on conch and lionfish to get a taste!CEI staff Claire Thomas, Meredith Lemon, and Jocelyn Curtis-Quick posing by the CEI booth, ready to cook some lionfish!
On Friday night, we served up fried lionfish, fresh out of the fryer. We gave away over 100 samples! Dozens of people came up saying “no you can’t eat that, it’ll kill you!” The truth is, lionfish do have venomous spines, but the meat is healthy and delicious, and once the fish is filleted it can be enjoyed in a variety of ways. Educating the community on the truth behind handling and eating lionfish was a priority for the researchers who came out to volunteer at the fest. Continue reading →
Alicia 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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