We recently added a few new fish to the exhibit, including needlefish. These fish were collected during our spring expedition to the Bahamas and have undergone a routine quarantine in the meantime. But they look spectacular schooling at the surface. Here's the school from our perspective.



Visitors can climb to the top of the Giant Ocean Tank to take a look at these fish, too. It's not a stretch to see why they're called needlefish! These are some of the fish that we've collected eggs from before. See what larval needlefish look like.

Skinny little needlefish stick to the top of the tank.

Come by and see them sometime!

Genevieve is a former intern from the dive department. She joined Aquarium divers in the Bahamas to help collect fish, under special permits, so that visitors in Boston can appreciate the splendor of a healthy Caribbean reef.  After a top-to-bottom transformation, the Giant Ocean Tank is expected to reopen in early summer with more than twice the number of fish than last fall. 

Needlefish | Photo: Mark Rosenstein

Needlefish are one of the most inquired-about fish in the GOT. They reside in schools directly on the surface. These fragile fish have long, pointed beaks, hence the name needlefish. These fish are too sensitive to be handled in the vinyl nets and live closer to the shore, so instead of diving to catch the desired fifty needles, the group does a beach seine.

Needlefish | Photo: Mark Rosenstein

In the afternoon, the group dove the Sapona, a shipwreck off the coast of Bimini. This shallow dive sight is home to countless species and individuals, making it a prime spot for the Aquarium collecting trips. Highlights of the Sapona include hogfish and varied species of parrotfish.

Hogfish | Photo: Mark Rosenstein

Hogfish are massive wrasses, that create a harem on the reef. This means that there is always a large “super male”, who mates with all of the females. If the super male dies, a female actually changes gender to take his role.

Queen parrotfish | Photo: Mark Rosenstein

Parrotfish vary in size and the different color schemes and patterns of each species make them a key target on the collecting trips since they're easy to spot in the Giant Ocean Tank.


By showing visitors the beauty of a healthy Caribbean reef, we hope to inspire people to do what they can to protect these reefs and marine habitats around the world. Thanks to Mark Rosenstein for sharing his beautiful pictures!

Step one: Get a good group of people. About 16 people or so.

Step two: Assign positions- Lead line holders, buoy line holders, master/mistress snorkler (me), north beaters and south beaters.

Step three: Get your people in position. One set of buoy/lead line holders will go out to the snorkle master and then walk to the right of the snorkle master so that he or she is in the middle of the net. Use a big net (roughly 50 ft X 8 ft).

Step Four: Have the beaters line up (evenly) along the sides of the lead line/buoy line holders and tell them to "START BEATING" the water and have Captain John yell "Here fishy fishy fishy!".

Step Five: Lead line/buoy line holders, start walking towards the beach making sure that the lead line is just a little bit ahead under the buoy line and keeping it close to the bottom of the water. Beaters, keep beating!

Step Six: Once your close enough to the beach, bring the lead line up and hold the bouy line and lead line together as you walk out into deeper water.

Step Seven: Shake the net into a little pool like shape in the water and have someone recored what species you find and how many of them you find! Yesterday, we got to do a beach seine which is a popular way to collect fish that live a little closer to shore. On every trip that the R/V Coral Reef II takes, there is a beach seine. However, on the Aquarium's collecting trips, they will use 100 ft long net. After doing three beach seines, we found 23 different species of fish. Most of them were juvenile fish that live in the sand and turtle grass. My favorite ones were the band-tailed puffer, sharp-nosed puffer, red-banded parrot, queen conch, orange-spotted filefish, and juvenile trunkfish! For the second and third seine, we got some help from a family from Boston and New York!

For us, it was a great experience. Being able to see how our very own collecting staff gets to do there beach seines. Even after doing just three seines, we still got a whole lot of different species. We got to also learn about what the different purposes are for doing a beach seine. For example, people might do many beach seins to do research about what the different organisms are that live in that particular area. Another reason is for education/entertainment. We got to do ours for education and learn mostly how a beach seine works. The entertainment part of it, would be sort of like what the Aquarium does during collecting trips. They collect fish to bring back to the Giant Ocean Tank so that people who normally wouldn't be able to see these types of fish, could see them. Overall, it was a great learning experience. I wouldn't mind doing it again!

-Lulu

[This process is described in this previous post from the 2011 collecting expedition, this post from 2010, as well as this post from the 2010 teen diving expedition and this 2009 post.]

Today was an exciting day. We started the day by heading to shore in the Zodiac so we could conduct a beach seine. First, we loaded a 50’ seine net into the boat and then we headed to shore in two groups.







-Sarah