Last week, I took my underwater camera into the GOT, and followed around this pair of banded butterflyfish for a few minutes. They remained within a couple feet of each other the entire time I was filming, which you can see in this video:



Banded butterflyfish, Chaetodon striatus, according to fishbase.org, are monogamous, the practice of having a single partner during a period of time. Just like many humans!


Banded butterflyfish (Photo: Bernard E. Picton via Wikimedia Commons)

In fact, during our Bahamas Collecting Expeditions, we never take just one of these fish if it is seen as a pair with another. Trip rules. Speaking of, the next trip is coming up in just a few months. Stay tuned.

Chris

The New England Aquarium would like to invite you to join our upcoming Bahamas Collecting Expedition from April 27 to May 6, 2012! Destination: Bimini, Bahamas.


   
You'll bring back more than just the traditional slide show for friends and family. You’ll help collect colorful reef fishes and invertebrates while working alongside Aquarium professionals, increasing your fish identification skills and learning about our conservation efforts in the Bahamas.




This eight-day adventure features dive sites throughout the islands of Bimini, Bahamas. The final day of the trip is spent packing fish in Miami for shipment to Boston. All fish are collected under strict permits through the Bahamian government, and endangered or threatened fish are never collected.



Certified divers (and snorkelers) of all experience levels are welcome on this unique dive vacation. Must be 18 years old. The trip includes all accommodations (food, drink and lodging), up to five dives per day (weights and tanks provided), an Aquarium membership, and a dive in the Aquarium’s 200,000 gallon Caribbean reef exhibit. The cost is approximately $3,400.00.

Interested? Call Sherrie Floyd at 617-973-5248 or pop an email to sfloyd@neaq.org.

 

Posts from the Sea TURTLE teen diving program will continue, but at the same time New England Aquarium staff and volunteers are on their regular spring expedition to the Bahamas. You were introduced to Chad and Nichole earlier this week and how they found out about our Bahamas Collection Expedition. Now that they are actually on the trip, Nichole is back to share her experience.

I have to admit it…I don’t love diving. I am, however, married to a man who LOVES diving.  Therefore, I dive--for love of my husband.  Chad has his Advanced Open Water, Rescue Diver, and Shipwreck Certifications. He loves diving. Chad and I take a dive trip at least once a year. If any vacation is near a dive site, we are underwater. Before this trip I had logged at least 20 to 30 dives. But this trip is different. This trip has made me look forward to a dive.  There is something completely different when your dive has a purpose. There is now a renewed respect for the ocean God has created in my heart.


This is definitely not a vacation. Every night I have never been so thankful to enter my 7 x 7 foot room and climb onto a thin twin mattress and SLEEP. Diving can be exhausting, but I’ve never had so much FUN diving!  After each dive there is an air of excitement as everyone discusses what they saw, what they were able to collect, and “the one that got away." I have learned so much from the aquarists on this trip. I can easily recognize numerous more species of fish than before and between dives we have really enjoyed watching feedings and taking care of the fish onboard. Between dives there is always something to be done (which is helpful to occupy a man who can’t sit still). There were catch bags to be repaired (who knew my man could sew?) and holding tanks to be cleaned.



But if you just wanted to sit and enjoy a sunset…you were blessed by Beauty.



After our trip to Boston last year, which lead to us being on this trip, I never planned to make Boston a regular vacation spot. Now we are already planning a trip to the New England Aquarium to visit all of the beautiful specimens we have collected … and introduce our daughters, Caitlyn and Claire, to all of the animals (both aquatic and human) we met on this trip. These truly are AMAZING people. I am so thankful for the opportunity to join this group in their quest to share the ocean with the public. I hope this won’t be the only time we get to participate.


One warning … after this dive trip … recreational diving just might lose its thrill. But for a diver-who-didn’t-LOVE-diving it has given me a whole new reason to suit up, jump in, and go under.   

-Nichole

Visit this page for more information about joining the Aquarium Collecting Expeditions.

Posts from the Sea TURTLE teen diving program will continue, but at the same time New England Aquarium staff and volunteers are on their regular spring expedition to the Bahamas. This is that team's sixth post, written by Andrea.

In addition to diving; we used a seine net to target needlefish and barracudas. The seine net is 100 feet long and has floats the top edge and lead weights on the bottom edge. Two people at each end of the net they would start walking perpendicular to the beach, then turn 90 degrees and start walking parallel to the beach. [This process is described in this previous post from 2010, as well as this post from the 2010 teen diving expedition and this 2009 post.]


Then they would start walking toward the beach making sure the lead end stays on the bottom. 

Everyone else would stand in-between the ends of the nets and the shore, and would splash to try to keep the fish from swimming out of the net. This was a fun job just standing around and splashing. I felt like Poseidon controlling the water and fish.


Once we got to shore we would pick up the two ends and form a hammock containing all the fish, and the upside down jellyfish. We would toss out the jellies because they could sting the fish and us. We had a very successful seine pull collected a lot of needlefish and three little barracudas. 


While on the beach we found a lot of trash; including some balloons in a tangled mess. While any trash in the oceans is not a good thing, balloons are especially dangerous when they land in the oceans because they often resemble sea jellies and can be eaten by sea turtles and other sea creatures.


Seeing trash on this little deserted strip of land that seems like it is in the middle of nowhere brings to light the importance of  how our actions (both good and bad) in our own backyards can have an affect way out here.

-Andrea

Posts from the Sea TURTLE teen diving program will continue, but at the same time New England Aquarium staff and volunteers are on their regular spring expedition to the Bahamas. This is that team's fifth post, written by Andrea.

As I went to bed after our first night at sea I was a little worried about the conditions of the seas. If the whole week is going to be as rocky as yesterday; it is going to be a long week. But looking on the bright side we did have two beautiful dives and I went to bed dreaming of catching more fish. 

I woke up prepared for another day of rocky conditions but was surprised to find the seas smooth as glass! It was a perfect day to get a lot of dives in and catch some fish. We did five dives; two at North Turtle Rocks, one at Piquet Rocks and two on the wreck of the Sapona (the last dive was a night dive). [Previous dives to the Sapona have been reported on this blog in this 2008 post, this 2009 post, this 2010 night dive post and this 2010 post.]


During our dives at North Turtle Rocks, Barbara and I were focusing on trying to get blue chromis. Blue chromis are small bright blue fish that swim in groups along the reef and the Aquarium wants to bring back 50 of them! At first they were pretty tricky to get as they would just hover and not move as we approached with our nets but as we were just about to close in they would dart away in every direction finding the smallest gaps in between your nets. It was a little frustrating to say the least. Finally we managed to catch one and as I was swimming around I noticed another blue chromis swimming near the one in my bag. I looked over at Barbara and she saw this too and we both instantly knew what we needed to do. I set my catch bag down on a nice sandy spot and we would back up and watch as more chromis would come and hang out with the one we caught. Then we would slowly move in and catch them. This process worked really well and we were able to catch about 10 chromis before the dive was done.



Once we finish the dive we will hook our catch bags to a big barrel that is suspended underwater. Then we slowly bring the barrel up five feet every 20 minutes. This allows the fish to slowly get used to the change in pressure as they rise to surface. As the barrel reaches the surface everyone huddles around anxiously waiting to see what we all caught and to help put the fish in the tanks. Even though this process happens after every dive, it still feels like Christmas morning every time the barrel reaches the surface.



Well off to prepare for another day of diving.

-Andrea

We're back where we started, at the Jones Boatyard in Miami, where I just heard it from a security guard about my painted toenail.

Yesterday was 'Pack Day,' a long day of packing up the animals we've collected and sending them back to the Aquarium in Boston. It's a nerve-racking process: the fish are booked onto a specific flight, so we need to make sure they make it, but we also don't want them to be sitting in boxes for hours and hours just waiting to go. So we basically have to cut it close on purpose. It makes everybody a little nervous.

Taking a last look at the fish, and knowing that they actually came from the ocean, and weren't created in some laboratory or by an artist somewhere, it was hard not to be kind of awestruck by them, and the fact that things like them even exist - just out there, natural, going about their business. They're amazing. It makes you realize why people go to such lengths to conserve their habitats, and also to try to give other people a chance to see them.


Photo Credit: Russ Haims



Soon enough, though, it was time to get moving. Here's a basic rundown. First, we remove the fish from their wells (starting at 3:30 am):


Using a headlamp in the wee hours of the morning
Photo credit: Steve Winer

Then, we place them into specifically-sized bags which are filled with water, arranged into Styrofoam containers, and then saturated with oxygen for the trip (the coily, yellow wire leads to the oxygen "gun"):


Bagged fish go into the Styrofoam containers
Photo Credit: Steve Winer

The Styrofoam containers are then loaded into boxes:


Styrofoam containers are boxed
Photo Credit: Steve Winer

…and driven off to the airport to be sent off to Boston. It sounds simple, but requires a lot of planning and preparation to make sure that things run smoothly and that the fish aren't too stressed out by the process. All of the trip participants (again, who pay to go on this trip) were completely gung-ho and great, as always.

Yesterday, things went really well - everything was packed up on time, and the fish made it onto their flight without a hitch. We also received word that they arrived at the Aquarium last night, where Aquarium staff opened up the boxes, identified the fish, and began the process of acclimating them to their new environment. We'll see them when we head back to Boston tomorrow. (Here's a taste of what it looks like when the fish arrive at the Aquarium, courtesy last year's collecting trip!)

-Tim

Right now we're docked at a marina on South Bimini Island, preparing to make the crossing back over to the U.S. The surrounding area looks like a beach resort in a movie. There's even a soft-voiced, head mic-wearing yoga instructor giving directions to a small group of guests on a little pavilion about 50 yards from here. It's a funny digression from the surroundings we've had for the last two weeks. I wandered over and took some pictures.


Where are we?

On Saturday we docked in Alicetown (also on Bimini) for our community outreach program. The Aquarium has been doing collecting expeditions in the Bahamas for about 30 years, and this has only been possible because the Bahamian government has allowed us to do it. It's extremely generous on their part—they absolutely don't have to give us permission to collect in their waters, but they do, and as a result, the Aquarium is able to share really beautiful, unique animals from this part of the world with over 1.3 million Aquarium visitors every year.

It's amazing to think about the journey that a lot of the fish living at the Aquarium have made.
In recent years, Sherrie has been working to make this process more transparent for the people of the Bahamas—to provide them an idea of what's made possible by their nation's generosity, and to give them a glimpse into the entire process of how the fish get from the Bahamas to Boston. (Click here to learn about last year's education program for Bimini school kids.) This year, we organized a community open house on the boat for the people of Bimini, so anybody on the island was welcome to come aboard to learn about what we've been doing. Trip participants and Aquarium staff were stationed at different parts of the boat to talk to the folks as they came aboard.

Although Sherrie had been communicating for months with the local board of tourism and other community groups to publicize the event, people also did some great on-the-spot advertising. After we docked, two trip participants, Russ and Mike, walked off towards town to spread the word. Here's Russ coming back fifteen minutes later:



Mike had paid to rent the golf cart (when they told him the price, I heard he said something like, "We don't have time to negotiate!" and threw right down for it), and then he came back on foot so Russ could load up with the maximum amount of local kids. To see them pull up was this great mixture of touching and hilarious.

Everyone on the boat, from cook to captains to paying participants, completely threw themselves into the event. Here's John showing kids what it's like to wear SCUBA equipment and breathe off of a regulator:


Photo Credit: Steve Winer

And here's Caitlin showing a little guy some of the invertebrates we've collected:


Photo Credit: Steve Winer

It was also fun to see a mixture of people from Bimini and families who were visiting from other places, and to watch them get a chance to interact with each other. Here we're looking at some of the fish in the main wells:


Photo Credit: Steve Winer

The guy in the middle, Chadwick, ended up sticking around for about two hours. We had caught another lionfish, and had it in a little tank so Don could talk to people about them during the event. I pointed at it and asked Chadwick if he knew anything about those fish. He said, in his great Bahamian accent, "They are dangerous, and they don't belong here. But they are good to eat." It made my day. You're the man, Chadwick. (In case you missed it, the divers sampled lionfish and Tim shared some of the reviews in this recent post!)

About fifty people came onto the boat, and I think everybody had a great time. It's nice to feel like we're slowly strengthening the bond between the Aquarium and the people from whose country many of our fish come. Both Sherrie and Deb did a really great job of setting it up, and all of the trip participants were incredible. It was a great day.

We're finished collecting, so tonight we'll go back to Miami to pack up all of the fish for shipping back to Boston. It's quite a process. (Check out the all-nighter last year's group pulled to get the fish ready to ship!) I'll keep you posted.

Go Celtics.
-Tim

The night dive was quite an experience; as we dove through the pitch-black (with flashlights), Captain John was on the boat piping down music through an underwater speaker. It wasn't very loud, but every couple of minutes, as I was drifting through the dark and seeing the reflections of huge, shiny fish-eyes in my flashlight beam, I'd catch a distant, barely recognizable earful of a 'Barenaked Ladies' album that was popular when I was in high school. It was pretty surreal. This was mostly just a pleasure dive, so we didn't do much collecting.

Yesterday morning we pulled up our first lionfish, although we've actually been seeing them with alarming frequency.


Photo Credit: Steve Winer

I think I've seen at least one, and often more than one, every time we've gone in. They're kind of everywhere. The problem with this is that lionfish don't belong in the Bahamas; they're an invasive species. Getting into the water and seeing lots of them is not a good feeling—it'd be like walking down the street in Boston and seeing dingoes, or hyenas, or some other obviously foreign animal, just trotting around in the park, eating the local animals with impunity. Something inside you just says, "This is definitely not going to be good."

Lionfish are native to the Indo-Pacific, thousands of miles from here. Being as beautiful as they are, though, they're very popular fish for home aquariums. They were first seen in the Atlantic Ocean in 1992, and one theory is that that year Hurricane Andrew smashed somebody's home aquarium in Florida that then swept a couple of lionfish into the ocean.


The initial report of a lionfish sighting in 1992

Since then, it hasn't taken the lionfish population long to completely explode in the Atlantic. (Trip participant and long-time Aquarium volunteer Don spoke to our teen divers program earlier this year about this very problem! Read more in this SEA TURTLE post.)


A map of all reported lionfish sightings as of 2009

Basically, the Atlantic was not ready for lionfish. They reproduce multiple times a year, they're voracious eaters, they eat things as big as 1/3 of their own size, and they're covered in unbelievably venomous spines. Even though lionfish stings aren't fatal, I've heard that people who have been stung by lionfish have actually pleaded to have the affected limb amputated because the pain is so intense, even though they know it's eventually going to go away. As such, no other animal in the Atlantic seems willing to try to eat the lionfish.

For that reason, seeing them everywhere while SCUBA diving is even more disconcerting. They don't sweat you at all; they just slowly drift along, as if they know that nothing in this part of the world can mess with them. As you can imagine, this is a major problem; if left unchecked, lionfish could completely take over this ecosystem in a matter of decades. So, upon seeing one today, trip participant Don did exactly what environmental agencies recommend people start doing. He caught it, cooked it up, and we ate it. (You may remember Don from this recent post, he helped train the rest of us on collecting non-venemous fish!)



Of course, catching lionfish isn't something that you can just jump in and do. Don has been trained in lionfish collecting, and he uses special HexArmor gloves that are puncture-proof.


Don carefully collects a lionfish

Once their spines are properly removed, the lionfish are completely safe to eat. There's no risk at all. It's just like eating any other fish.



When Don was finished, Chef Matt prepared a lionfish ceviche.



And this is a 100% genuine, non-staged Sherrie reaction shot after trying it for the first time.



It really was that good, which is great news—lionfish are one fish species that we'd actually like to overfish, so an ideal situation would be that people start wanting to eat lionfish so much that fishermen begin to actively target them. Again, I can testify that they're actually really good, so next time you're at a seafood restaurant, ask them if they have any lionfish dishes. And if they don't, act kind of surprised and annoyed.

In a couple of hours we'll be docking the boat on Bimini Island and inviting the local folks aboard for a community open house, so everything is buzzing in preparation right now. It should be lots of fun—I'll talk about it more soon.

-Tim

I didn't manage any pictures of the wreck, but I did make sure to get stung by fire coral so I'd have something to remember from the dive. Mission accomplished. (Learn about fire corals and other hydrozoans here.)

Yesterday we took a different tack on collecting - we anchored the research vessel at a site called Dollar Harbor, and took inflatable boats out to a nearby beach:


The sun sets on Dollar Harbor

The amount of plastic that ends up on the shore of a tiny, secluded beach like that is pretty shocking; I saw everything from plastic water bottles to oil containers to the entire front bumper of a car. Moments like that one can be effective reminders of how long plastics stay around, and how far they can travel. Although being diligent about where one's trash goes is obviously a positive thing, I think it's always good to try to think of ways to actually reduce one's plastics use altogether, because it's very hard to be sure where those things will end up. I don't think many people toss their plastics directly into the ocean on purpose, but over time they often just get there. Seeing that much plastic on a beach as secluded as this one definitely drove this point home for me.

As we were getting off of the boat, we were told that there would likely be jellies in the water, so most people wore full-length clothes to cover their skin. Deb's Catwoman costume, of questionable purpose up to this point, proved a perfect melding of style and function for this type of event.



When we reached the beach, we unfurled a 100-foot long seine net about 100 feet from shore, and then walked it in to the beach, effectively corralling in the fish in that area. I should point out that we're very careful about only taking fish that aren't considered threatened or endangered, and that we're specially permitted by the Bahamian government to perform collecting practices like these. Sherrie is very conscientious about the entire process; she personally inspects every fish that we bring up to make sure that only those with healthy wild populations come aboard, and that none of them are too stressed out when they do. She made her way all the way up and down the seine net making sure that we only ended up with fish that fit these criteria, and everything else was let go. It was a lot of net to cover:



We did end up with several needlefish this way, and now they're safely
on board:


Needlefish are thin, surface dwelling fish who are closely related to flying fish

Mangroves were growing on the beach, and submerged mangrove roots often serve as a sort of nursery for younger fish, because larger predators can't reach them there. Back in the Boston area, salt marshes serve a similar purpose, and both habitats are very important for that reason. We did a second round of seine netting in a smaller cove, and I couldn't believe how many young, 12 to 18-inch barracudas we found in the net. We were reaching in by hand and pulling them out, and there must have been fifteen in there. It was like they were swimming out through the bottom and then swimming back in. We decided to keep a small pair of them. (Click here to meet a barracuda back in Boston who made this same journey from the Bahamas!)



Now we're back in Bimini, and tonight we'll be doing our first night dive. I'll try to get another post up tomorrow.

-Tim

I'm enduring an emotional low right now after coming back from a dive with an empty catch bag. (Unlike the success of my first dive.) Even though all of us on the trip are working towards the same goal, there's definitely a sense of pride about personally having a successful dive. Afterward, you find yourself walking around asking people what they caught in hopes that they'll ask you the same question, although sometimes they don't, and then you tell them anyway. Coming up empty-handed can be hard, though, and the fish don’t make it easy on us.


What am I doing wrong?

We have a very specific list of fish that we're looking for on this trip, which means that to get them, we have to actually dive down and find them. This is difficult because 1) we need to memorize what lots of different fish look like, and 2) fish are much better at swimming than we are. This second fact is actually one reason that scuba diving is so much fun: the fish are well aware that they're great swimmers, so they let us get really close to them without worrying about it too much, since they know that they'll be able to scoot off in a second if they need to. It's relatively easy to see cool fish for this reason—catching them, though, can be really hard.

Some of the participants on this trip are very experienced divers (one, named Steve, has been diving for 50 years—I picture him walking on the ocean floor wearing one of those big spherical brass helmets, while two guys on a boat pump air down to him with a bellows). Many of them, though, have never collected fish before, so on the first night, Sherrie and Don (who's an experienced participant and an Aquarium volunteer, he recently gave an interesting talk on lionfish to budding teen Aquarium divers) gave us a demonstration. These pictures take place in the boat’s salon, where we do most of our meeting.

Each diver goes down with two nets. Mesh can hurt the fishes' skin, so we use big plastic nets that are gentler on them. Carrying these underwater is kind of like trying to swim while holding two open parachutes, so we need to fold them up against our bodies as we go:



Once we've found a fish that we're interested in, the goal is basically to surround him with our nets without spooking him so much that he swims away. This requires a lot of communication and teamwork, which can be hard underwater. We basically need to move really, really slowly, until the edges of our nets are touching each other and the fish is boxed in.



I was surprised to find out that it doesn't occur to the average fish to just swim upward and away in a situation like this, so they'll usually swim into one of our nets once they've been surrounded. It might sound simple enough, but it takes a lot of practice and finesse. Some people are amazing at it—the ship's cook, Matt, is not only an excellent cook, but also one of the best collectors. He also does all of his diving in jean shorts, which is awesome.

There's a whole other process that needs to take place once the fish have been caught, which I'll talk about tomorrow. Here's what Sherrie was sneakily doing to me as I was typing the previous paragraph, oblivious.



Here’s how she felt about it.



Troublemaker.

-Tim

When I sent in this earlier blog post, I was sitting with my laptop on the asphalt at the Jones Boatyard in Miami, picking up a wireless internet signal being broadcast from a yacht docked nearby. All of the trip participants arrived soon after that--there are four paid Aquarium staff, two captains, a cook, and eight paying participants. The participants are SCUBA divers who are interested in taking part in the expedition, so those spots are available to anybody who’s SCUBA certified and willing to pay their way onto the trip. (More info here!)

After spending last night on the boat, today we traveled up the Miami River and over into the Bahamas--about 60 miles in total. Bridges had to come up just for us when we passed under them. I think it made all of us feel pretty important.



Right now we’re anchored a few miles offshore of Bimini Island. Earlier we did our first collecting dive, and had what Sherrie seemed to think was a surprising amount of success for a first try. Here are some highlights.

One participant caught these balloonfish:


Another got this trumpetfish:


Here are my first catches—two banded butterflyfish and a bluehead wrasse. I feel an embarrassing amount of pride about having caught them.


There’s really nothing quite like catching a fish using the methods that we do on this trip. It’s really, really hard, but so, so fun and exciting. Soon I’ll post about how it’s done.

-Tim