Category Archives: Visiting Scientists

Award for Excellence in Research

November 6, 2014 ceiblogger

swim tunnel lemon shark — A swimming respirometer controls the speed at which a fish swims, while concurrently measuring oxygen consumption.

Each year, CEI offers two in-house studentships to graduate students conducting research at CEI and teaching research class though The Island School. Applicants of the Award for Excellence in Research are evaluated based on their teaching and research experience, and the conservation relevance, publication probability, and outreach potential of the applicant’s proposal. In addition, proposals are evaluated on their ability to contribute meaningfully to CEI and the applicant’s home institution.

lemon shark accelerometer swim tunnel — Though sharks can fully turn around in the respirometer, confinement can have effects on swimming performance and energetics.

For the fall semester, University of Illinois graduate student Ian Bouyoucos received the Award for Excellence in Research. Ian’s research focuses on understanding activity-specific metabolic rates of juvenile lemon sharks so that we can better understand what happens to these sharks when caught on hook-and-line. The award will improve Ian’s research by improving CEI’s capacity to for respirometry studies through constructing a swimming respirometer suitable for juvenile sharks, barracuda, and even fish schools. CEI has used both swimming and resting respirometers extensively in the past to measure metabolic rates of fishes, as affected by angling and climate change, by measuring the rate at which fish consume oxygen in the sealed respirometry chamber.

Flats, Visiting Scientists

Bonefish movements in Grand Bahama

October 27, 2014 ceiblogger

Eric Schneider bonefish — CEI Research Assistant Eric Schneider releases a tagged fish that has fully recovered from the surgical procedure.

Blacktip shark — Bonefish are not the only economically important species found on the flats! Bonnethead, lemon, blacktip (pictured), and other sharks all visit shallow nearshore habitiat and were spotted while seining for bonefish.

Bonefish are a highly sought-after sportfish, supporting a $140+ million industry in the Bahamas. Shallow coastal waters that bonefish inhabit are under threat from development and other human-induced stressors; identifying how bonefish use critical foraging and spawning habitats is essential for securing the longevity of the Bahama’s bonefish fishery.

Over the past week, CEI’s Flats Ecology and Conservation Program (FECP) has been conducting a field study on Grand Bahama Island as part of a joint effort to further investigate the spawning activities of bonefish. The FECP is joined by a diverse team of scientists, fishermen and stakeholders that hope to learn more about local populations to direct future conservation efforts. The overall objective of this multi-year study is to determine the location of bonefish spawning aggregations to best determine possible sites for the establishment of Marine Protected Areas and National Park’s to conserve the local bonefish population. Continue reading →

Sharks, Visiting Scientists

Graduate Student Update: Brendan Talwar and longline post-release survivorship

October 2, 2014 ceiblogger

CEI is lucky enough to host an array of graduate students conducting collaborative projects between us and their home institutions. In this way we are able to maximize our facilities’ potential and to share it with a broader scientific community.

The Cuban dogfish, a common bycatch in deep sea fisheries, is one of the two shark species with which Brendan’s study is concerned. Photo by B. Talwar.

Brendan Talwar, an MSc candidate at Florida State University’s Coastal and Marine Laboratory is currently working with CEI Shark Conservation and Research Program Manager Edd Brooks to assess the post-release survivorship of deep water shark species caught on longlines. In an effort to better inform fisheries policies, Brendan hopes to look more closely at the effects of capture stress on Cuban dogfish and gulper sharks, two common bycatch species in deep sea fisheries, with the end goal of understanding why some sharks die while others survive during and after a capture event.

Recently, Brendan has been returning longline-caught sharks to the deep in a constructed cage and monitoring them for behavioral effects post-release. Check out Brendan’s progress and the success of his caging experiments thus far in this post, where you can hear a bit more about the potential complications that predation may introduce as well as some broader implications of his work.

Lionfish, Research Programs, SCUBA, Visiting Scientists

Simon Fraser University’s Gotta Catch ‘Em All

September 23, 2014 ceiblogger

fish catching blog — Fiona Francis catches juvenile fish on the patch reefs to be incubated in sea water.

Summer 2014 was a fun but busy field season for the research team from Simon Fraser University. This was the first field season at Cape Eleuthera Institute for Fiona Francis, an MSc student studying the indirect effects of invasive lionfish under the supervision of Dr. Isabelle Côté. Two undergraduate field assistants, Kyla Jeffrey and Severin Vallaincourt, were assisting Fiona as well as working on small side projects of their own.

patch reefs south eleuthera — Schools of juvenile grunts, prey for invasive lionfish, often cover the patch reefs off the Cape in South Eleuthera.

The team spent most of the summer studying how invasive lionfish can change primary productivity on reefs. Native fish provide nutrients to algae and seagrasses, and Fiona was trying to determine if lionfish predation on these native fish reduced the availability of those essential nutrients. To do this the team spent long hours catching fish to determine the levels of nutrients excreted by different species into the water around them. While this might not sound too hard, fitting a wriggling, venomous, spiny fish into a Ziploc bag full of water proved to be quite a difficult task! Continue reading →

Conch, Lionfish, Research Programs, Student Research, Sustainable Fisheries, Visiting Scientists

Sustainable Fisheries team is busy in the wet lab!

September 5, 2014 ceiblogger

This past summer was a busy time for the sustainable fisheries team, with numerous conch and lionfish lab trials.

Students and interns observing lionfish in the lab

On the lionfish side of things, Helen, one of the visiting Newcastle students, is looking at prey density as well as whether or not it benefits lionfish to hunt in groups. She does this by adding 1 (or more) lionfish to a tank containing varying densities of prey fish (grunts) and observing the rate at which the grunts are eaten. Emily (another student from Newcastle University) is exploring prey preference in lionfish. She ran a series of trials to determine whether lionfish are more likely to attack a grunt or a damselfish if given the choice. She is now determining if lionfish rely more on visual or olfactory signals when hunting.

Oli, a third student from Newcastle, was running behavioral trials on conch. A fisherman’s tale suggests that the declining numbers of conch available is due to the fact that the animals run away from knocked shells that have been thrown back into the water by other fishermen (as opposed to overfishing). Oli is testing this explanation by dropping empty conch shells (as well as rocks as a control) in a tank with a live conch and monitoring its movement for 4 hours. We will keep you updated on the results of these trials as they progress!

Flats, Research Programs, Visiting Scientists

Grand Bahama Bonefish Research Trip Update

July 28, 2014 ceiblogger

The Island of Grand Bahama. The dark blue color on the south side of the island indicates deep water. The red line is the Grand Lucayan Waterway built in the 70’s that connects the north and south side of the island.

Major man-made changes to the geography of Grand Bahama in the 1960s – 1970s altered the connection between the shallow Little Bahama Bank on the North side and the deep New Providence Channel on the South side of the island. In particular, the construction of the Grand Lucayan Waterway created a new connection, while construction of a shipping harbor obstructed a natural waterway, Hawksbill Creek. These land-use changes potentially altered the spawning migration patterns of fish around Grand Bahama.

VR2 receiver that was placed in the waters around Grand Bahama to record bonefish locations.

Bonefish, sometimes referred to as the gray ghost by anglers because of their elusive nature, are extremely important sport fish in the Bahamas. Recent research on Eleuthera, Abaco, and Andros has shown that these fish migrate from shallow flats to form pre-spawning aggregations near deep water. The goal of this project was to assess present-day movement corridors of bonefish around Grand Bahama during the spawning season (October to May).

To accomplish this task, CEI in collaboration with Fisheries Conservation Foundation, College of the Bahamas (Freeport), University of Illinois, Illinois Natural History Survey, Carleton University, and H2O Bonefishing surgically implanted 30 acoustic tags into bonefish and deployed 17 acoustic receivers around the island in October 2013. The receivers were downloaded in June of 2014 and revealed that 7 of the 24 fish tagged on the North side used the Grand Lucayan Waterway as a corridor from the north side to the south side of the island. 2 fish were recorded swimming around the west end and 2 others around the east end of the island, which are each over 80 km journeys. This indicates that bonefish are most likely forming pre-spawning aggregations on the South side of Grand Bahama and will guide research efforts during the next spawning season. The outcomes of this project will be shared with decision makers so they can make informed decisions about protecting migration corridors from spawning grounds to aggregation sites.

Bonefish spawning aggregation. Photo by A. Danylchuk.

Lionfish, Research Programs, SCUBA, Visiting Scientists

Update from the Oregon State University lionfish team

July 21, 2014 ceiblogger 1 Comment

Tye collecting fish — Alex collecting fish

Mark Hixon’s Ph.D. students from Oregon State University have returned to CEI for a third summer of invasive lionfish research! This year, they have been busy both above and below the water, performing field and lab experiments. Alex Davis is observing the natural locations of lionfish on large reefs in order to understand whether different types of habitat affect whether lionfish frequent certain areas of a reef and/or leave a reef altogether. Tye Kindinger is testing for competition between two native basslets (popular aquarium fish) by comparing basslets on reef ledges where the two basslets co-occur versus on ledges where she has removed all the individuals of one basslet species. She is interested in seeing whether basslets are less or more vulnerable to lionfish predation when they are competing under ledges.

Lillian Tuttle wants to know if lionfish harm the cleaner goby, a small but important reef fish because it keeps other fish healthy by picking parasites off their skin. To do this, she moved gobies to small reefs and is now comparing their survival, growth, and behavior before and after adding lionfish, and between reefs with lionfish and those without.

Led by Eric Dilley and Dr. Stephanie Green, the OSU team is also working on a lab experiment that measures how 3 small fish species react to the presence of native predators versus invasive lionfish. Can small native fish recognize and evade this novel predator? How “appropriate” is their reaction given the serious threat that lionfish pose to their survival? Alex, Tye, Lillian, and Eric are excited to be back working at CEI, and we can’t wait to see what they discover this summer about the ongoing lionfish invasion!

Conch, Flats, Lionfish, Research Programs, Sea turtles, Sharks, Student Research, Sustainable Fisheries, Visiting Scientists

CEI and Island School Research Symposium a big success

June 16, 2014 ceiblogger

Students on the lionfish team discuss their project with Dr. Stephanie Green.

Congratulations to all of the Spring 2014 Island School students who gave oral and poster presentations at the Research Symposium. This event is a culmination a semester-long research class, where students become involved in all aspects of research. It is a chance for them to showcase the data that they collected, along with real world implications of the work.

We had many special guests in attendance this semester:

David Knowles, Director of Parks, Dr. Ethan Freid, Chief Botanist, and Camilla Adair Deputy Preserve Manager at Leony Levy Preserve, the Bahamas National Trust

Dr. Andy Danylchuk, past Director of the Cape Eleuthera Institute and currently Assistant Professor of Fish Conservation at UMass Amherst, collaborator with Flats Ecology program at CEI

Dr. John Mandelman, Director of Research and Senior Scientist at the New England Aquarium, collaborator with Shark Research program at CEI

Dr. Brian Silliman, Associate Professor of Marine Conservation Biology at Duke Marine Lab

Dr. Jeanette Wyneken, Associate Professor at Florida Atlantic University

Dr. Mike Salmon, Research Professor at Florida Atlantic University

Dr. Stephanie Green, Postdoctoral Researcher at Oregon State University

Thank you to all of our guests, and congratulations again to the students for a job well done.

A group photo of the Spring 2014 Island School students.

Students on the flats project discuss their poster with Dr. Andy Danylchuk.

SCUBA, Visiting Scientists

A coral nursery at CEI!

April 16, 2014 ceiblogger

Scientists from the University of Miami, Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, and the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratories, NOAA, visited CEI to install a coral reef nursery on Cape Eleuthera.

A beautiful staghorn coral fragment at the nursery

Dr. Ian Enochs and Francesca Forrestal, PhD candidate (RSMAS), who is an Island School alum and sits on the CEIS foundation board, made the initial connection between the various institutions that resulted in this exciting opportunity. Dr. Diego Lirman and Stephanie Schopmeyer (RSMAS) have installed and studied staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis) nurseries in Florida and throughout the Caribbean and were able to offer their expertise to the research team at CEI, through funding from Counterpart International. Over the course of two days, two nursery trees were set up at a local dive site and wild staghorn fragments were collected from local colonies. These fragments will be left in the nursery to grow and the nursery will hopefully be ready for expansion in the next 6 months. The goal is to be able to outplant these fragments next year and help restore wild populations of staghorn on Eleuthera. Staghorn – a major reef-building coral – has suffered major decline in recent decades and was listed as critically endangered in 2008 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Restoration efforts are critical and the new nursery at CEI will also help raise awareness with all our visitors about the threats facing coral reefs globally. Visitors will be able to snorkel and dive the site and assist with maintenance – we’ll keep you updated on how the grow out goes!

Sustainable Systems, Visiting Scientists

NSF site visit to CEI

April 14, 2014 ceiblogger

A group of biologists from Universities throughout the United States gathered to discuss the improvement of the research facilities at the Cape Eleuthera Institute (CEI). This meeting was funded by a National Science Foundation planning grant written by PI Dr. Bill Louda (Florida Atlantic University) and Co-PIs Dr. Dave Philipp (University of Illinois), Dr. Brian Lapointe (Florida Atlantic University), and Aaron Shultz (CEI). The expert panel, along with their individual research interests, is listed below. The three day meeting started off with a tour of The Island School and CEI campus, and an excursion to some of the natural points of interest on the island.

DSC07559_resize Several group meetings were held to discuss other research stations in the region (E.g., Central Caribbean Marine Institute, Florida Keys Marine Lab, etc.), current research projects at CEI, how to diversify the research portfolio at the institute, and the infrastructure needed to meet current and future demands. The following are highlights from the discussions: the need for an ecosystem based approach to our research initiatives; the need for water quality analysis; and more lab space for visiting researchers and graduate students. Overall, it was a very productive site visit that will aid in the development of the full NSF laboratory improvement grant. CEI looks forward to collaborating with these researchers in the future.

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Education, Research, Outreach