In December 2013, the Cape Eleuthera Institute (CEI) and Center for Sustainable Development (CSD) launched The Local Schools Program which has several education programs that reach young Bahamians.  Our Local School Programs connect CEI and CSD to schools throughout Eleuthera and share information about current research projects. Through this program, young Bahamians get to understand principles of marine conservation and environmental stewardship participate in research themselves and get hands-on experience with topics covered in the national curriculum.  Students gain a deeper appreciation for their natural resources and the need to protect them.  Local School Programs support and supplement students’ experiences in school and engage a future generation of scientists, guides, and policy makers.

Principals from schools throughout Eleuthera and senior members of the District Education Office spent a day on campus to experience the program first-hand. The morning session was dedicated to understanding the program design and how the curriculum is built around the Bahamas National Science Curriculum which will be delivered to students as an experiential addition to lessons learned in the classroom. In the afternoon, Principals got down and dirty participating in research projects involving farming, aquaculture, aquaponics, conch and lionfish. A brief taste of some of the exciting projects researchers are involved in.

Courses are designed to reach students in Pre-K to Ph.D. and can be customized to various curricular objectives. Teachers and groups can learn more about these programs by contacting the Outreach or Educational Programs Department at CEI at 1-242-334-8552 (Danielle Gibson/Tiffany Gray/Karen Knight). Educational Programs are delivered year round on space available basis. In addition, see our website for information on Summer Camps, Summer Apprenticeships, and BESS Applications at www.ceibahamas.org

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Kristal’s study was supported by the BNT, Bahamas Reef Environment Foundation (BREEF) and The Nature Conservancy, all of whom were represented at the meeting Wednesday night. Also in attendance were the Young Marine Explorers, a non-profit environmental organization that provides transformational educational experiences to Bahamian youth. With support from these organizations, Kristal aims to continue to raise awareness and work together on future projects, such as community beach clean ups around the Bahamas. She remarked, “I believe that sharing my experience helps to create recognition of this very important issue right here in this country. I am excited to keep up the momentum with future projects and collaborations.”

You can read more about Kristal’s internship from earlier posts on blog on May 3 and May 14.

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Research class is an exciting opportunity for students to gain new skills in the field – from fish identification and handling to public speaking and PowerPoint creation. Students learn about and contribute to global conservation issues, work in small groups, and ultimately, have the experience of a lifetime!

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Mark and his team our the first long-term residents in Hallig House. He speaks about his experience at CEI in the video below. Mark will return later in August with Carl Safina and a film crew in tow. They will be shooting an episode for Saving the Ocean.

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Currently shark team is very excited about retrieving a satellite tag, which just spent 8 months on a reef shark. We spent 5 days on Lighthouse Beach looking for the tag, which had washed up on shore. The search was very time consuming and at times a bit stressful but we finally found the tag under a huge rock. This tag is extremely important because it shows us the movement of the reef shark over the last 8 months. Most satellite tags barely last a couple weeks on these sharks.

I’m so excited to be spending my third summer in a row on Eleuthera and I can’t wait to see what other exciting shark adventures are in store for the rest of my time here!

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Louise

My name is Louise Shiverick and I am lucky enough to be working at the Cape Eleuthera Institute with the Shark Research and Conservation Program for my Senior Project. At my school, Hathaway Brown (in Shaker Heights, Ohio), the last thing that the seniors do before graduating is a two week senior project. The point is to give us one last opportunity in high school to get involved with something that we find really interesting. People do a variety of things, from community service at soup kitchens to shadowing a doctor at one of the nearby hospitals. While most people stay at home, I decided to do something different and come to CEI.

I was an Island School student in Fall 2010 and was on the Lemon Shark research group back then as well. I loved each part of my semester, but research class was on average my favorite part of each week and I loved learning about sharks and spending time in the field. I want to be a marine biologist, and this was the first hands-on experience that I got. I can remember the first time that I got to hold one of the juvenile lemon sharks that we caught and how cool it was to really be able to be a part of the research instead of just sitting back and watching. I knew that I wanted to come back to the Island School someday, and doing my senior project here seemed to be the perfect way to do this.

It definitely was. These past fifteen days have flown by in a blur of fascination and excitement coupled with hard work and new friends. As there is no “typical day”, everything always feels like a new learning opportunity, and each day I become more and more used to the way of life. It’s a lot different on the CEI campus than on the Island School side of things, and it was crazy at first to adjust to that. I have spent most of my time working with Ian Hamilton and the rest of the shark team as they collect data to address the question of how predation affects growth rate. The hypothesis is that as predation risk increases, growth rate of the juvenile lemon sharks will also increase because the sharks are under more pressure to become bigger faster so that they are not eaten by the mature adult sharks. We use a variety of different methods, including using seine nets at the mouths of the creeks to catch juveniles and prey, BRUVS data (Baited Remote Underwater Video Surveys), and drumlining, a fishing method used to catch the big predators outside of the creeks. There are other parts of the project as well, but these are the parts that I have mostly been helping with.

A day in the field is usually a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. The shark team is a great group of people that are not only a ton of fun to hang out with, but also provide a wealth of knowledge and experience that seems greater than any textbook could ever offer me. It’s easy to get lost in their enthusiasm and passion about this stuff because as we’re discussing complex scientific concepts it seems more like a conversation, and they have a way of melting away all of the nitty gritty scientific language and hard to understand mumbo jumbo to reveal something that’s very real and interesting.

It’s also awesome to be a part of this project because one of the ultimate goals is conservation of shark populations as well as land. Lemon sharks, being a keynote species, are very vulnerable to fishing pressure and human impacts. They take around 12 years to reach sexual maturity, and only produce small litters of pups every two years once they start reproducing. In addition, lemon sharks exhibit natal site fidelity, which means that they return to the same creek where they were born to have their own pups. This puts them at large risk because in coastal places where they live, anthropogenic development is common and often alters or destroys their habitats, leaving them with no place to go. Juvenile lemon sharks use mangrove creeks as nurseries, and they are imperative to their survival in early years before they can move out to more open water where bigger sharks also live. This study is valuable because it can help prevent development in places that are vital to lemon sharks. Each creek is different, and because of different abiotic and biotic factors, some are more valuable than others. By collecting data about different abundances in several creeks, we can use this to sway developers from using one area to using a different area, because even though you can’t stop development, you can use logic and science to help protect certain areas.

During my previous semester here, I learned a lot about these concepts. However, we didn’t have research class as often as I would have liked, and I only got a glimpse of what the shark team did. Now that all of my time is dedicated to CEI, I have been able to see more into the life of a researcher. Some days are slower and we don’t catch as many sharks as we’d like, and some days we don’t get to go out into the field at all because of weather. Days like those are used for things like data entry and video analysis, or equipment repairs. In a place where most of the people are used to being outside these indoor tasks are considered pretty boring. However, “not every week is shark week”, as the team says, and there is a lot of behind-the- scenes work that goes into an exciting research project. They also gave me a few scientific papers to read, which are extremely dense and confusing but it feels really good when you get to the end and understand it.

When I’m not with the shark team, I’m usually either at meals or in the dorms or around CEI, often hanging out with the interns. It was hard for me at first to get used to not being an Island School student but also not being a CEI intern, and I felt for a little bit like I didn’t really know what my place here was. It also was challenging to be new around people who have been here for so long, and I was pretty shy at first. People forget that new people don’t know things about the way of living here that seem very simple and obvious to them, so it takes a little bit to feel comfortable. After a week or so though, this place felt like home again and I started to open up more to everyone and be myself. Experiences like this that put you out of comfort zone are really helpful, and this fall when I go to college I know that these couple weeks will help me adjust to college life without knowing anyone. I’m headed to Trinity College in Connecticut, and I can’t wait to begin that next phase of my life. I plan to major in Biology, and this experience will also help me know that I can conquer a difficult piece of scientific writing and understand it. When I left this place a year and a half ago, I never imagined that I would be back so soon doing all these things that I love, and it’s really been amazing to come back to CEI. The only thing that I wish I could change is the amount of time that I have had because it has gone by so fast. I feel like I just got here, and now it’s already time to leave.

Sam

I am a high school senior at Thayer Academy in Massachusetts. Thayer Academy gives seniors the month of May to explore careers that interest them. I love science and I love travelling, so I decided to combine these two passions by doing my senior project at CEI.

Since arriving, I have been working with the shark team. Our research focuses on baby lemon sharks and how their mortality and growth rates are connected. Our hypothesis is that if mortality rate increases, growth rate will increase because there is more pressure to grow to a size safe from predation.

Shark populations have been steadily declining, and it’s important to preserve this animal’s existence since they are top predators and have a great effect on their entire ecosystem. Without sharks, prey animal populations would grow uncontrollably and diminish resources. Our research will give insight into the life cycle of lemon sharks and will offer ways of how to best protect these organisms so that they can continue to dominate the sea.

While ate CEI, I have gotten a glimpse into what it’s like to be a researcher. There are fun days where we get out into the field, capturing sharks and taking down data; there are also days in the office where we analyze this data to see what it all means. I have seen the scientific process in action, and how researchers go about answering the questions that they strive to know. I have really enjoyed this experience, not only because catching sharks is awesome, but also because I am contributing to an important research project with real world applications.

Aside from what I’ve learned through research, I have learned much about sustainability. Many of the rules here have taken some getting used to, like the brief showers and the bathroom flushing protocol; however it has made me realize that everyday resources, such as water, are limited. We must conserve our resources so future generations can enjoy them as we have. Food is another resource that I have learned to appreciate while here. Whatever we don’t eat, we feed to the animals, and eventually, we eat the animals. This is a much more resourceful process than simply throwing away the food we don’t finish. At home, I will be more conscious of conserving resources. I will not put more food on my plate than I can finish, and I will take shorter showers.

I look forward to continue studying science next year. This experience has augmented my passion for the subject. I will be more motivated to understand new concepts in the classroom, so that one day I can do meaningful things in science like all the researchers here at CEI.

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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.

The week proved to be a big success for ZED, DMR, and CEI! The documentary will provide a valuable avenue for scientific communication and represents a great opportunity for Bahamian scientist’s work to be recognized by wider audiences. It is very exciting that the initiatives taking place on Eleuthera will now be shared with people all over the world! The documentary is scheduled to air by the end of the year in both France and Germany… keep your eye out!

-Skylar Miller (S’03), LREP Manager

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