Showing posts with label yellow stingray. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yellow stingray. Show all posts

6/29/13

20: Bahamas 2013 | Last Dives

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.

As today will be our last day of diving, this will be my last blog for this trip. We will be waking up around 4:00 tomorrow morning to package all of our critters (over 400 of them just on this trip) and get them ready to be shipped up to Boston!

The first dive that we did today was at Dollar Harbor. This is the same site that we did our drift dive on last night, but it was so productive that we decided to dive it again this morning. On our first drift dive of the day we collected all different kinds of beautiful tropical fish to bring back to our Giant Ocean Tank for its grand re-opening on July 1. A  couple of the fish that were collected, by a few other divers and myself, included queen triggerfish, French and gray angelfish, and reef and spotfin butterflyfish.

Angelfish
On this same dive we also saw a lot of other interesting things. We saw some more beautiful sea stars...



Two really cool flying gurnards...



A small juvenile yellow stingray buried under the sand...

Can you see the stingray in the center of the picture? His tail is poking out to the left.
A juvenile Spanish hogfish hanging out near a sea anemone...



and we even saw a box of mac and cheese :(

Even in the ocean, you can't escape trash. Check out these posts about the Pacific Garbage Patch and Indonesia.

The second dive of the day was at Bimini Road. At this site we saw a large ocean triggerfish, a large great barracuda and an awesome little sea slug (aka nudibranch)


I am excited to say that the last dive of our trip was probably one of the best. On this dive we collected a few juvenile seargent majors, and we saw all kinds of really amazing things. First, the best part of the dive for me was seeing a large school of bioluminescent squid! Usually these guys are nocturnal, so we really lucked out seeing them during the day.






We also saw some really large schools of fish



We saw a few huge midnight parrotfish and a beautiful rainbow parrotfish. [Aquarium researcher Randi Rotjan, PhD, spotted these fish in Belize, too!]



Some dusky squirrelfish hiding in elkhorn coral



Some kind of brittle star (he moved a little too quickly to get a positive ID or a picture), and even a highly camouflaged and venomous spotted scorpionfish!



It has been a lot of fun blogging here from Bimini, Bahamas, but I have to go get a few hours of sleep before Pack Day, where we will be packing up all of our new friends for their shipment to Boston!  Please come and see all of our new critters now that the Giant Ocean Tank is once again teeming with animals. More and more are being added every day! The New Aquarium Experience starts July 1.

Posted by NEAQ at 8:42 AM 0 comments
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4/30/10

Yellow stingray and remora footage

Here are two of the animals we encountered on our last dive of the trip, Bimini Road. A little yellow stingray quickly buried itself in the sand after it saw me (see video). We also saw countless southern stingrays and an eagle ray during the trip.

Here's the yellow stingray:



This remora showed up when the second group of divers got in the water at Bimini Road. It hung around with us for about a half an hour. Remoras will attach themselves to larger animals by using a modified sucking disk on their heads. They will slide backwards along an animal's body to create suction and then release themselves by swimming forward. We actually saw two of them hanging out on the back of a loggerhead sea turtle when we dove the Hesperus wreck the previous day. Luckily this one didn't feel like attaching to any of us! (Which doesn't hurt, I've had one stick on me before.)

Here's the remora:


- Sarah
Posted by Anonymous at 3:44 PM 1 comments
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5/12/08

Blog #7: The Catch

11:15 AM: Seacrest Marina, Bimini Harbor. We've spent the last two hours clearing the decks of the Coral Reef II in preparation for our seven-hour voyage back to Miami. All hands are rather quiet, as Capt. John has warned of a rough passage home with small craft warnings and 25 knots of wind dead in our face. We've been cautioned to tie down all our belongings, and you can hear the gulping of dramamine throughout the cabin.

The four main fish wells, each about 3x3x10 feet, have been secured as well, along with the six other tanks carrying our precious cargo. A pumping system will circulate sea water through all of the tanks until we get within an hour or so of Miami. From that point on, the water quality begins to deteriorate (Nice to be back home, huh?) and cannot be used. About ten 50-gallon barrels have been filled with fresh seawater as well. That water will be used to fill the plastic bags within which the animals will be shipped back to Boston.

So, how did we do? 377 fishes, 58 different species; 153 invertebrates, 44 species. We feel pretty darn good about this collection. In fact, everyone is extremely pleased! Among the wonderful animals we'll be loading on to airplanes for shipment back to Boston tomorrow are:

  • 4 indigo hamlets (Hypoplectrus indigo at right) These fish have not been exhibited for several years at the Aquarium. Somewhat rare in the Bahamas, the fish we caught were first spotted by Captain John on a morning dive at Whale Cay, then retrieved later the same day. We all believe, of course, that the four fish were precisely the same fish that the Captain had seen four hours earlier.

  • Two moray eels: a goldentail (Gymnothorax milaris at right) and a purplemouth (Gymnothorax vicinus). Both are about 12-14 inches in length. The purplemouth moray will be new to the Giant Ocean Tank in Boston. It was caught by our soon-to-be-married couple from the Netherlands, Marcelle and Bas. If they are as determined in their relationship as they were chasing fish, we have no doubt they will have a long happy life together.

  • Three trumpetfish (Aulostomus maculates), which will complement the one trumpet now on exhibit in the GOT. The NEAq aquarists on board say this new quartet will hang well together--literally straight up and down -- delighting visitors with their ability to respond to visual targets (a small plastic green cup) during feeding time (shown at right).

  • One cowfish, a juvenile, that we can't yet identify definitively. He's got horns, so we know he's belongs to the genus Lactophyrs. He's about the size of a quarter, now, and ultimately will grow to about a foot. He's destined for one of our smaller tanks in the Tropical Gallery until he's man enough for the GOT.

  • One yellow stingray (Urobatis jamaicensis shown at right) headed for the new temporary "shark and ray touch tank" we'll be installing on the east side of the Aquarium this summer. There, he will be joined by coral catsharks and cownose rays already in holding tanks back in Boston. We were careful not to take a female also seen off Bimini because she was pregnant with pups. Kids visiting the Aquarium will love this new touchtank.

  • Two basket stars (Astrophyton muricatum), fascinating invertebrates with intricate branching arms that fold up during the day and open at night, when they are used to filter plankton. This species can often be found on fan coral. We're not sure yet where they will be found in our galleries in Boston, you will have to come on down to find out!

  • Five red snapping shrimp (Alpheus armatus), each about an inch long (how the other divers found these on the bottom beats me! As a new diver, I could barely find the bottom sometimes.) This species makes a unique clicking sound. Like the other creatures mentioned above, you can find them in the ocean in the Bahamas or the beautiful exhibits at the New England Aquarium in Boston.

4:00 PM. Hey, land ho! There's the Miami skyline in the distance. And did I mention the rough seas? The passage actually turned out to be rather tranquil, with long and peaceful naps enjoyed by all. See you in Boston!

Posted by NEAQ at 9:57 PM 0 comments
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