Wednesday, May 13, 2009

#12: Packing Fish All.... Night.... Long....

We pulled an all-nighter last night. Haven't done that since college. The fish had a flight at 7 am this morning, so we started packing them at 11 pm last night and worked straight through until they got dropped off at the airport. The packing of fish was a well oiled machine and everyone was working non-stop.

Susan and Lionel were setting up boxes. Terry was filling bags with water


Chris, Scott and I were catching (or should I say re-catching) the fish from their tanks.



Jeremy was putting fish into the correct sized bags



Sean was running bagged fish over to get sealed off




Sherrie and Captain Lou were adding pure oxygen to the bags and sealing them off

Deb was marking the Styrofoam boxes with the kind of fish packed in them. Don and Russ were cross referencing what fish had been packed with our collecting log. Captain John was stacking the Styrofoam boxes into cardboard boxes and sealing them up.

We finished packing all but four of the fish in about 4 hours. Of course the last four were the biggest fish we had, and the most challenging to pack up.

Remember those two white spotted file fish I was so excited about? And how one of them got close enough that I could see it's teeth? Well those teeth were great at biting through the bag, and it drains the water out. The problem was finally solved by drilling holes in a bucket and submerging it in a bag with water ... after trying a few other things that didn't work. That was another one from yours truly, the Tufts alumni Chris Doller.


The cowfish (above) and the barracuda are big, and can also bite through their bags, but layering cardboard between the layers of bags seemed to work for them.

All the boxes of fish made it safely to the Aquarium and will be in quarantine for at least 6 weeks to watch for any parasites that we wouldn't want to spread to our exhibit. After that you may start to see some of the more obvious fish go on exhibit ... the file fish, the barracuda, the cowfish. But be on the lookout for some of the more under appreciated animals, like the beautiful sponges, feather dusters and tunicates.

The participants on this trip have gone home. For staff the rest of the trip is mostly cleaning the boat and packing away all our gear.

I'm going through a bit of withdrawal from scuba diving and all the participants I've lived with for the past 11 days, so I'm going to ease myself off it a bit by posting some more short stories and great pictures from the trip that haven't made the blog yet over the next few days. So I'm not done yet, keep checking back.

-Bronwyn

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posted by NEAQ at 7:18 PM 1 Comments



Friday, May 8, 2009

#8: "They're SO beautiful!"

We swam with dolphins today.


Photo credit: Lionel Galway

Now, no disrespect to all the other amazing fish and corals and other reef animals we've had the privilege to see (I have a shout out to some awesome fish below) but I'd sound like a bumbling idiot if I tried to explain how amazing it was to be so close to them. But I'll try anyway ...

They were curious, swimming under and around us, and when they were bored with us, which was long before we would have been bored with them, they just took off.

You could hear all the clicking sounds they make to communicate with each other. Maybe they were commenting on how incredibly clumsy we were in the water. I felt like such an awkward doofous next to them.


Photo credit: Lionel Galway

Sherrie was beside herself, and is now enduring the jokes we've been making about her technique of holding her hands behind her back to "look more like them." We can joke all we want, but the dolphins did come the closest to Sherrie.


Photo credit: Lionel Galway

Before anyone gets alarmed by our swim with the dolphins I would like to make a few short statements:

1. We were not looking for dolphins. We noticed them playing on the wake behind our boat, so we stopped and jumped off the back of the boat.

2. We were not chasing the dolphins. Not even Michael Phelps can chase these animals down. You cannot chase a dolphin in a mask, snorkel and fins. Compared to dolphins, we stink at swimming.

3. If they were feeling threatened by us, they would have been long gone before I even had my face down in the water.

4. These are the kinds of experiences that make anyone appreciate these animals more, and want to protect them and their environment.

And that shout out to the fish ... We now have two white spotted file fish. Don and Russ caught the male with the color blocking first, but since these fish bond with their mate we had to catch the female in order to be able to keep them. On our second dive we found the female. Here they are together:



I know it seems odd that we were able to catch them both, but on two separate dives. How do we know we got the right one?

These fish don't travel far within the reef, and we didn't see any other of these species in the area we were. So it was a good find, and lucky that we caught the female on the second dive. If we hadn't we would have had to put the male back. When I was taking this picture the male was being very shy at first, but then kept getting closer and closer to my legs. When it got close enough for me to see his teeth I decided I had enough pictures. I don't know if he was going to bite me, but I think I'd bite me if I were a fish, especially if I was defending my territory and my mate.

I know Deb said something in an earlier blog about a possible Barracuda feeding. What Deb and I are now learning is that the Barracuda are picky eaters, and can go weeks without food. Sooooo ... we'll keep you posted on that. Tomorrow we're planning a night dive so I may not get around to a post. I needed to say that mostly so that my mother doesn't start worrying about my safety when she sees I haven't posted anything for the day.

-Bronwyn

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posted by NEAQ at 11:18 PM 2 Comments



Wednesday, May 6, 2009

#5: In-seine!!

Since Bronwyn won the backgammon tournament against Captain John, I'm giving her the night off and guest blogging for her.

So, did you figure out what Jeremy was doing in that small, boxy, net like thing? That would be the brilliant idea of my fellow Tufts grad, Chris Doller, a Senior Aquarist at the Aquarium.

Each collecting trip we spend one morning seining. Seining? Let me explain. We went out to a location called South Cat Cay with a net approximately 100 feet long by 10 feet wide. Using excellent team work (involving pullers, beaters, and Bronwyn, the only person willing to volunteer to be snorkler to look for snags), we did two seine pulls to collect some of the key species we were looking for on this trip--needlefish and barracuda. (Which was the bonus of being the snorkler, since Bronwyn was the first to see the two barracuda we caught, one of which we released).



So where did that pen come in? This invention was a place for us to keep the fish while we were waiting to transport them back to the boat. While we did note that we probably could have saved ourselves a bunch of construction time by simply buying a playpen, Chris's invention did allow us to provide a safe and healthy environment for the fish prior to transport back to the boat, rather than putting them immediately into coolers. And we were quite lucky to catch an enormous number of needlefish, a barracuda, and grunts. Any other fish that we caught that we were not interested in, we released back into the ocean side and they were free to go.



After we returned from seining, we ate a delicious lunch (we could dedicate an entire blog to the delicious food that Matt has been preparing for us) and headed in for our afternoon dives.

On each trip, Sherrie selects a trip fish--this time, the black durgon. On the first dive of the afternoon, we caught our first one. Of course, there is a little competition over whose was the first--Sherrie and Captain Lou caught two, and Chris and Jeremy got one. We're not entirely sure who caught it first, although Chris and Jeremy got theirs to the barrel first--so you decide.



Ever wonder how we care for the fish on the boat? We're hoping tomorrow to show you how the barracuda eat.

Stay tuned!

-Deb

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posted by NEAQ at 10:27 PM 1 Comments