Last week, the nearby settlement of Deep Creek had their annual homecoming called Conch Fest. The Cape Eleuthera Institute (CEI) set up a booth amongst all of the conch fritter and local craft stalls at Conch Fest to give information and answer questions about CEI and Island School, as well as play a few games with the children who stopped by the booth. Here are a few pictures of the booth at Conch Fest.
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The past two days have been primarily taken up with learning about and surveying green sea turtles in the local sounds and creeks. We began yesterday with a mini-class taught by Lucie, a researcher at CEI completing a baseline survey on turtle populations in South Eleuthera. We learned that there are 5 different species in the area–Green, Olive Ridley, Loggerhead, Leatherback and Hawksbill–though some are more abundant than others. All of the species are protected under international treaties, though very little is known about their populations, migratory habits, etc.
After learning about the turtles and how Lucie conducts her studies, we headed out to Jack’s Bay to do our first survey. We hiked in to the beach and got picked up to go out to the seagrass beds where the turtles usually hang out. Spotting turtles requires two people to stand on the bow deck of the boat and look in the seagrass for turtles. It is not an easy job, but once we all saw one turtle, it was much easier to spot them. We saw a few from the boat (and we were all really excited!), but when we got in to snorkel with them, they had all disappeared! We were a little bummed to miss swimming with the turtles, but Lucie assured us that the next day would be even better at Half Sound.
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Today (Tuesday), we woke up and completed a run-swim for our morning exercise. Continue reading
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Two students from Carleton University in Ottawa, Felicia St-Louis and Petra Szekeres, will be on The Island School campus until June 19th collecting data for their research on the thermal biology of the checkered puffer fish (Sphoeroides estudineus) and bonefish (Albula vulpes). Over her short visit this past February, Felicia was able to validate intra-muscular cortisol injections as a method of increasing blood cortisol (i.e. a stress hormone) to ecologically relevant levels in the checkered puffer for her MSc project. She is examining the effects of short-term cortisol elevation on the thermal biology of the puffers in the lab as well as in the field. By building a thermal profile of Page creek and releasing puffers tagged with thermal logging iButtons within the creek for a one month period, she will be able to compare habitat preferences between control and cortisol-dosed puffers. Continue reading
by Cape Eleuthera Institute’s Kristal Ambrose embarked on her epic journey to of plastic research, leaving on April 24th.. From Nassau, Bahamas to Texas, USA; from Tokyo, Japan to Guam; and finally, on to Majuro, Marshall Islands, the last two weeks have been a whirlwind of exploration, opportunity, and learning for Ambrose, CEI’s Aquaponics Intern and researcher dedicated to finding solutions to plastic pollution in the world’s oceans.
“Most of what we eat, drink or use in any way comes packaged in petroleum plastic—a material designed to last forever yet used for products that we use for as little as thirty seconds then throw away,” describes Ambrose on her blog. “Plastic creates toxic pollution at every stage of its existence: manufacture, use, and disposal. This is a material that the Earth cannot digest. Every bit of plastic that has ever been created still exists, including the small amount that has been incinerated and has become toxic particulate matter. In the environment, plastic breaks down into small particles that release toxic chemicals into the environment. These particles are ingested by wildlife on land and in the ocean, contaminating the food chain from the smallest plankton to the largest whale…This trip will serve as my formal training experience to tackle the plastic pollution and marine debris issue within my country.”
In Nassau during the days before departure, Ambrose was invited to tea at the home of His Excellency Sir Arthur Foulkes, Governor General of The Bahamas. Continue reading
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A PhD student from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, Mike Logan, will be on the Island School campus until May 31st collecting data for his research on thermal adaptation in lizards. Mike’s PhD focuses on the response to climate change in lizards, and in the Bahamas he is conducting transplant experiments to examine how traits like the thermal sensitivity of running speed might evolve in response to environmental warming. This May, Mike is capturing roughly 100 individual Anolis sagrei (Bahamian brown anoles) from a shady habitat on the interior of the island, measuring their running speeds as a function of body temperature in the lab, and then releasing them onto a sun-baked peninsula. Each lizard will be individually marked, so that when Mike returns in late August he can recapture all the survivors from the sunny habitat and figure out which lizards were “selected for.”
His hypothesis is that the lizards with the highest thermal tolerance (highest ‘optimal temperature for running’) Continue reading
by The Rosenstiel School for Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS) at University of Miami has announced its new Coastal Sustainability Science and Practice Track through their Master of Professional Science Program. It will be offered for the first time this fall 2012 at the Cape Eleuthera Institute. We are excited to welcome these Masters students to the CEI campus! This course will equip students with advanced training in the expanding field of sustainability, with a combined focus on the practical aspects of systems management and the theoretical understanding of whole-systems design. The goal of this track is to train future leaders who create solutions for sustainability issues at local and global levels. If you are interested in this program or would like more information, visit the program’s website here.
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Since its creation just over one year ago, the Lionfish Research and Education Program (LREP) at CEI has strived to become a hub for lionfish work in the Caribbean. Recently, LREP has taken some exciting steps toward reaching this status! Just last week, CEI hosted three producers and videographers from ZED (www.zed.fr), a major French documentary company that is working on gathering footage for an upcoming TV series featuring invasive lionfish. Specifically, the documentary team was interested in learning about Bahamian lionfish research and management initiatives. Luckily, visiting scientist, and partner of LREP, Nicola Smith was able to come over from Nassau to support the week’s activities and be featured in the film! Nicola is the lead coordinator for the Bahamian-wide lionfish research project that operates under the Bahamian Department of Marine Resources (DMR) and partners with CEI.
ZED producer, Jerome Segur, sound engineer, Olivier Pioda, and underwater videographer (and former member of Jacque Cousteau’s prestigious dive team!) Didier Noirot, joined Nicola and LREP researchers in the field to get a closer look at lionfish and to better understand the project’s research objectives. Continue reading
by The first week of research was a big week for the Lionfish research project. We oriented ourselves to our goals, methods, and systems. We discussed what an invasive species means, the invasion of lionfish, their life cycles, and their anatomy. On Thursday, we dissected lionfish in the lab. Our project began with learning external anatomy, including how to prevent lionfish stings. Next cut their bellies and look into the internal anatomy. We saw their key organs, and even their super stretch stomach that makes them such a successful predator. I found it especially interesting when we opened their stomach; we identified their stomach contents. This is especially significant because we identified their stomach contents to determine which species were suffering due to lionfish predation. I really enjoyed our dissection. The following week was our first field day. We went diving on a reef and practiced protocol for surveying a particular reef. The group was really excited to begin their work and get in the water. Stay tuned for new updates from the Lionfish research project!
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by Researchers from Carleton University (Cooke Lab) was at CEI last week studying flats ecology. The team is determining whether radio tags can be used to track the movements of checkered puffers in shallow mangrove habitats. Radio tags normally are used only in freshwater because signals are attenuated by sea water. However, the researchers have modified the tags such that the antenna points vertically and breaks the water surface as puffers swim about in tidal creeks. In addition, the researchers placed tri-axial accelerometer loggers on bonefish in McKinney Creek at CEI. The loggers record information on swimming (e.g., tail beats) and feeding (e.g., tilting as they dip their heads to feed) activity. This is the first time that such loggers have been used on bonefish and will provide information that will serve as the basis for a bonefish bioenergetics model. The same loggers were also placed on some fish in Kemps Creek to evaluate the effects of different handling techniques on post-release behaviour. The Carleton team includes Jake Brownscombe, Felicia St. Louis, Charles Hatry, Jason Thiem, and Dr. Steven Cooke.
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The joint CEI and University of Illinois shark research team just returned from the second of four, 2 week field expeditions to a shallow bank known as “the bridge” that connects the southern tip of Eleuthera to the northern tip of Cat Island. The first expedition went out in November 2011. The historical project is re-creating a study from a dataset detailing the diversity and abundance of shark populations in The Bahamas that took place over 30 years ago. Back then it was conducted by Captain Steve Connett and the crew of the R/V Geronimo from St Georges, Rhode Island. The current study is conducting surveys identical to those performed by Captain Connett and his crew 33 years ago, and has already discovered some very interesting results. In the original dataset, 96 sharks from six species were captured during 25 scientific longline sets. In just 12 sets, we have already caught 84 sharks from three species! Continue reading
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