2013 Bahamas Expedition | Round Three 
About a year and a half ago, this trip's blogger became an intern diver in the Giant Ocean Tank at the New England Aquarium. Luigi loved being at the Aquarium so much that he became a volunteer diver after his internship was over. He also joins Aquarium divers to help collect fish, under special permits, so that visitors in Boston can appreciate the splendor of a healthy Caribbean reef. 

Luigi joined the dive team on a recent trip to the Bahamas to collect animals for the new exhibit.

Today was another great day here on the R/V Coral Reef II! We finally woke up to beautiful weather and calm seas. Our day today consisted of four dives at two different dive sites. The first of the two sites was called Frank and John's. At this site, we collected many fish, but our target was blue chromis.  These are beautiful little fish and are always a big hit in the Giant Ocean Tank.

On the first of the two dives at this site, we saw a scrawled filefish and a queen triggerfish! We already have a few beautiful scrawled filefish in the new exhibit who will be eventually moving into the Giant Ocean Tank, and the colorful queen triggerfish was just a little bit too quick for us to collect and take home to Boston. On the second dive at Frank and John's, we saw a unique fish called a highhat.

Juvenile highhat

This little guy was a juvenile and probably about half the size of a dollar bill. We would have taken this little guy home with us too, but he was smart enough to hide out in some large sea urchins where we couldn't get him (little did he know how lucky he would have been to come home to the G.O.T.)!  What is really fascinating about highhats is the way that they change over time. If you look up a picture of an adult highhat and compare it to the juvenile above, you would never even guess it was the same fish!

After splashing down at Frank and John's, we decided to make our way over to a new site called Lunkers Head (couldn't tell you where the name came from). Though the visibility (the distance you can see underwater) wasn't all that great at this site, we didn't mind all that much because we were able to collect a lot more blue chromis! It was also at this site that we were able to finally find and collect some really cool fish called hamlets! It is difficult to get pictures of the fish we collected, because, well, we are busy collecting them, but it is nice being able to get some great shots of other amazing animals on these sites. In an attempt to collect a hogfish, the chef on board (Chris) and I were unknowingly brought within inches of a large, rather grumpy looking barracuda!

Barracuda

On the second dive at Lunkers Head, we chose to collect at the part of the reef in front of where the boat was anchored. In this area, we saw huge, amazing schools of beautiful Creole wrasse.

Creole wrasses

These colorful fish are really gorgeous, and a few of them were already collected for the newly renovated Giant Ocean Tank by the an earlier collecting group to Bimini this year! We also happened to see a few random, larger fishes during the dive on this site as well.

Tomorrow we will be doing some more diving, as well as a special method of collecting fish called a beach seine. Usually in a beach seine, we attempt to collect needlefish, barracuda, small parrotfish and sometimes different kinds of box fish. The fun and exciting parts of this method of collecting is that there is always a surprise and always something interesting that turns out. Be sure to check back to see what comes up in our nets!

2013 Bahamas Expedition | Round Three 
About a year and a half ago, this trip's blogger became an intern diver in the Giant Ocean Tank at the New England Aquarium. Luigi loved being at the Aquarium so much that he became a volunteer diver after his internship was over. He also joins Aquarium divers to help collect fish, under special permits, so that visitors in Boston can appreciate the splendor of a healthy Caribbean reef.  He is also a diehard Boston Bruins fan.

Hello again!  Today was another great day filled with very interesting dives here in the Bahamas! Our dive team conducted four dives today at two different dive sites. The first two dives were at a site known as Bimini Road. Bimini Road got its name because of the giant slabs of stone at the bottom of this particular plot of ocean. The stones resemble a long underwater road.

Following Bimini Road...

following Bimini Road...

On our first dive at Bimini Road, we collected a lot of fish including a really cool rock beauty.  When I was learning my fish ID, I always remembered the name rock beauty by remembering that it is the “beautiful Bruins fish”, and I'm sure you can see why.

A beautiful Bruins fish!

We also saw two really cool, smaller yellow stingrays on this first dive. [Check out a video of a yellow ray here!]

Yellow ray

Peekaboo, I see you, yellow ray!

As well as a few awesome bluestriped lizardfish!

Bluestriped lizardfish

On our second dive at Bimini Road, one of the fish that was collected was a juvenile orange spotted filefish. This is a really cool fish with a protective trigger on the top of its head! On this same dive, we were also lucky enough to see very large schools of grunts and even a great barracuda!


After our two dives at Bimini Road, we decided to move on to another dive site called Three Sisters. It was at this site that our dive team conducted what is called a grunt roundup. A grunt roundup is a large group effort to collect as many grunts as possible in one dive using special nets and barriers. We collect so many grunts on these dives that we even designed a special underwater device that we call a Grunt Hotel. We use the Grunt Hotel to hold all of the collected grunts and keep them very happy until the dive is over. A few kinds of grunts we are collecting for the reopening of our Giant Ocean Tank on July 1st include French, smallmouth, Caesar, bluestriped and white grunts. These are all beautiful fish who will form a wonderful school when introduced to Boston's largest fish exhibit in July!


Unfortunately throughout the day weather conditions deteriorated and the final dive of the day at Three Sisters was made optional. I and a few other divers decided to tough out the bad weather and jump in again, and we were all very glad we did!  On a relatively short dive, we saw a beautiful hawksbill sea turtle and two very large midnight parrotfish. These beautiful fish were way too big to ship back to Boston, so we did not collect any of them. We did however, catch another orange spotted filefish!

Hawksbill Sea turtle

Hawksbill Sea turtle

Midnight parrotfish

That's it for today everybody! Be sure to check back again soon to continue following our adventure here in the Bimini Islands.

This is the third in a series of guest posts from Aquarium volunteer Sarah M. Winchester. She participated in the most recent Bahamas Collecting Trip. As our expedition leaders are gearing up for next Spring's expedition, Sarah chronicles her experience with the Aquarium in Bimini.
 
After a late night dive we were up and at it again early the next day. We started the morning with a beach seine. Andrea blogged about it here, so if you read about it earlier, you already know a seine is a technique used target needlefish and barracuda. With the net stretching over 100 feet, it took the whole crew to accomplish this task.


Barbara directing the group.




Deana on the “float side”


Steve and Don hard a work


The labor-intensive task was well worth our efforts as we collected three barracuda and many needlefish.




Barbara and Chris

We folded up the net and headed back to the boat for some more diving. No rest for us divers when there are fish to be had.

Like what you see? Join us for this Spring's expedition to Bimini, Bahamas! There are a few spots left.

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 third post, written by Andrea.

At 5:45 a.m. my alarm went off. It was not the alarm on my watch but the noise of the engines starting up. We are on our way! Everyone got up early to watch the bridges go up to let us pass as we sailed down the Miami River.


The crossing was a little rough but bearable (though I will admit I slept through most of it). There was an exciting moment when a few dolphins were riding our wake on the bow! I was an incredible sight to watch these amazing animals keep up with our boat (unfortunately they showed up so suddenly and left so suddenly that no one got a photo of it). [Past expeditions have encountered dolphins as well. Video from the Spring 2010 expedition is in this post and the 2010 teen diving expedition also reported swimming with dolphins.]

Six hours later we arrived at Bimini, cleared customs and were ready to head out to our first dive site. Everyone was very excited to get in the water. The stern deck was a buzz with all of us getting our dive gear ready. We were just about at the dive site when the captains decided the conditions were so rough that we needed to find another site. And boy did we hit some rough seas! For the next thirty minutes (though it felt like an eternity to me) the boat was rocking back and forth as we tried to sail to calmer waters. Chad, a participant from North Carolina, got some great video of the waves crashing on the boat that I will post once we get back to Boston.

Finally we arrived at a nice calm dive site, called Inside Turtle Rock. And everyone was so excited to finally get in the water. We did two dives the first one was just to get comfortable in our gear. During the first dive we saw some pretty cool animals like a big barracuda and a small school of squid. For me, who seems to spend more time in the water than out, it was felt so great to be in the water.




Our second dive we actually attempted to collect some fish. We were successful in collecting some slippery dick wrasses. As their name describes they are long, swim fast and are wiggly; so they can be tricky to catch, but we got some.



Today was a long, but ultimately productive day. I can’t wait to get more dives in tomorrow.

-Andrea

Although the anticipation of the start of the 2010 Bahamas collecting trip was killing me, there was a wee bit of pressure on me to stay healthy. My last collecting trip just 2-weeks ago, to the southern Bay of Fundy, was interrupted by the necessity to drive me to the Machias Medical Center in Down East Maine for a few staples in my head. What turned into a 3 hour nuisance for Bill Murphy and myself in rural Maine would have been a major ordeal in the Bahamas. If I pulled another stunt like that on board the R/V Coral Reef II, I would have dragged everyone along for a day-long excursion to a medical center in Alice Town, North Bimini--including Bill again.

Fortunately we all managed to stay healthy and, except for some skin left on the lower cabin ladder and the need for some decongestants, I can say with certainty everyone had an amazing trip.

I had no doubt that this trip would be amazing, but I didn't predict it would turn into one of the most rewarding professional experiences of my life. It started with three days of busting our butts: getting the holding tanks and filtration system ready for animal, and the boat ready for our guests. [Learn what it takes to get the boat ready by reading this post and checking out this post.]


Dave prepping the holding tanks of the R/V Coral Reef

The work then morphed into the cyclic routines of life on the Coral Reef II as we dived our faces off in one amazing coral habitat after another, then stuffed our faces with Orvis's great cooking. Capt. John provided the entertainment and Capt. Lou was the backbone of the ship that kept us all working together.

The trip then culminated in the 4-hour madness and frenzy of pack day starting at 2 am (yes 2 am!) and this was after a friendly meeting with customs officials at 11:30pm the night before. Needless to say we were all a bit sleep deprived but everyone stepped up to the tasks they were given and I couldn't be more impressed with the work that was done on this entire trip.

Oh, and did I mention we collected an amazing array of animals that I can't wait to bring back to the visitors of the New England Aquarium. 56 shipping boxes worth to be exact, the largest shipment in recent history. Thanks Scott, Suzanne, Sarah-O, Jill, Mike and Mariah -- great job!


Dave Wedge (photo courtesy of Sarah Taylor)

Highlights for me include the 100-foot seining tow we did in Cassiopeia infested water where we collected 2 juvenile barracuda and 11 needled fish. Needlefish are extremely delicate and we managed to deliver 11 healthy animals back to Boston, well done team! On one dive, Bill and I also managed to wrangle a 5-foot spotted moray eel out of its cave and bring it back to the ship (even though we were quite sure Sarah told us, "no spotted moray!"). Bill gracefully delivered it back to its cave the next dive.

Sam and I redeemed ourselves soon after by collecting a small 16-inch golden tail moray in the bowels of the cement ship wreck The Sapona. To top it all though was the cuttle fish we encountered. What an amazing creature to watch in its natural habitat. Outstanding! There were also two squid that tried to out-do their cephelopoduskin cousin by inking Scott in the face. This was one hell of a night dive despite getting lost on Bimini road.


Dave and Captain Lou

And of course working with the great people and friends I got to spend seven days living with on board the R/V Coral Reef II. I have no reservation in saying that anyone who considers themselves a SCUBA enthusiast should find the resources to take part in this trip in the future. It is an amazing opportunity to apply your hobby in a spectacular location, while working and learning to collect on a very cool research vessel.

All this while helping to bring a fraction of the world of the Bahamian ecosystem back to Boston, to teach our students and amaze our guests, it doesn't get any better than that. See you soon Capts. John and Lou, I miss you already.

- Dave

A school of grunts

Hey, what's in the bucket?

Terrestrial hermit crabs

I was struck with just how well we all work as a team. It is really a testament to the character of the staff and participants on this trip – everyone is so friendly and willing to work together, there is not a feeling of competition but of camaraderie. When the barrel comes up with our catch from the dive, everyone gathers around like kids on Christmas waiting to see what we got. No fish or invertebrate is too small for commendation.

Speaking of size – we see cool critters of all shapes and sizes on these dives. This last one we saw a giant barracuda on the way back to the boat, and I spotted a pea-sized juvenile trunkfish hiding in his hole! He’s the little yellow blorp with brown spots.




Tomorrow is the last day of collecting – I can't believe it, the trip has flown by!

You've got to give it to this group of SEA TURTLErs. Every Wednesday from now until April, they'll wake up before 5am, commute to ten different schools in MA and NH, take tests, go to sports practice and then, before even eating dinner, they are out the door again to come to the Aquarium for SEA TURTLE classroom sessions.


Barbara keeping a watchful eye over her dive gear.

For two and a half hours, the SEA TURTLErs are quizzed on weekly readings, watch movies as part of the PADI dive training program and explore group dynamics. After all, they will be living on a boat together for nine days over April school break.

We started our first Wednesday night class on January 27th. After chowing down on the exotic dinner of Oreos, microwave popcorn, some scavenged fruit salad and a few grapes, the teens learned about the basics of dive gear and had the chance to model some of their favorite buoyancy control fashions under the eyes of Barbara (since it was her equipment, Barbara's eyes were very watchful).


Evan modeling buoyancy control fashion.



Alex demonstrating how to descend under water.

The teens also learned about how to identify fish from our GOT that they will see in the Bahamas, like butterflyfish and barracuda (see other Aquarium blog entries about these fishes here and here). At the end of the night, everyone departed to their other life, one filled with homework and dreams of secret underwater communication.


Jane loving the feel of wearing dive gear for the first time.

- Jenna

It's hard to believe that 2009 has already retired, heralding in not only a new year but the exciting prospect of an entirely new decade. How time flies, it seems as if it was just last week that I sat down and wrote about the Best of 2008. If there's one thing's for sure, there's never a dull moment when working in the Giant Ocean Tank. So take a break, grab a snack (I'm currently munching down a fantastically tasty spicy turkey panini from the Aquarium's cafe), and let's cheers to 2009, GOT-style...

The Best of 2009

2009 saw us entering into an exciting partnership with Roger Williams University that includes a larval fish program. This program has already yielded results, including the little guy below - a juvenile Queen triggerfish. Queen triggerfish have not been reared in captivity, until now, so we are very pleased with this achievement.

The GOT is nothing without its inhabitants. In 2009, we had the good fortune of adding some very interesting animals to the already diverse exhibit...

• In March we introduced a new green moray eel into the tank. He had a rather interesting history prior to making the GOT his new home and I'm happy to say he is doing extremely well!
  


• In July we added a second barracuda, a juvenile that was MUCH smaller than the big guy we already had. However no one told him he was small and, like the new moray, has adjusted to his new home with ease.
  


• Finally, we recently we added Ari, a Kemp's ridley turtle that had been rehabilitating down at the Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans after sustaining serious wounds from an unfortunate encounter with a boat's propeller. What an amazing story, and what an amazing turtle. We all love Ari!
  
  

In the fall, we temporarily removed all four of the GOT's resident sharks (three sand tigers and one nurse) for physicals. That equates to 32 feet, 878 lbs of shark (!). The dive staff is very skilled at this process and the sharks were all pronounced quite healthy.

2009 brought us Big Blue, a brand new SCUBA air compressor. GOT divers use a lot of air, about 215,000 cubic feet of it for 2009, so we need a hard working compressor to meet the demand, and I know Big Blue is up for the task. (By the way, that amount of air would fill over seven GOTs!)

Speaking of large numbers and hardworking equipment, in 2009 the pumps for the GOT pushed over 1,168,000,000 gallons of clean water through the tank (yes - that's over one billion gallons).

Of course, the GOT couldn't exist without the hard working staff, co-ops, interns, and volunteers that work so diligently at making the GOT such a fantastic, diverse, and healthy exhibit.

• 2009 saw a surge in diving interns. All told, we had seven: Franco, Linda, Suzanne, Alex, Lizzie, Samantha, and Kristen.
  
  
• We had four fantastic teen interns: Isaiah, Nick, Oriana, and Tizzy.


• Six new volunteers were added to the ranks of GOT volunteers: Rob, Daire, Ashley, Doris, Alfredo, and Simone.
  


• DVIT volunteer (Dive Volunteer In Training) Don converted to a full blown Dive Volunteer in 2009 (Congrats Don!).


• A testament to how much they enjoyed working in the GOT, we had eleven former co-ops and interns return to volunteer their services in 2009.


• Finally, though we are all extremely busy with our jobs, the dive staff is a rather diverse and energetic bunch, and we all manage to pursue unique interests outside of the GOT. By way of example, here are two activities that were blogged about during 2009:


• Chris and his wife Emily (who also works for the Aquarium!) hiked over 2,600 miles from Mexico to Canada along the Pacific Crest Trail.
  


• I finally fulfilled a life-long dream (well, a very long-standing one anyway) and dove the wreck of the Andrea Doria in July.
  



Well, since there's always something interesting happening when it comes to the GOT, I know I've missed a bunch, but it was fun looking back on the exciting year 2009 turned out to be. And I've no doubt 2010 will be anything but boring. As a matter of fact, right now I have to get ready to help pull one of our turtles for a veterinary procedure, and it's not good to keep the vets waiting. So 'til next time...



Safe diving.

- John

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