So, how do you get 377 fishes from Miami to Boston? It's a process that our trip leaders have honed to the finest detail. Each fish is carefully packed in plastic bags filled with oxygenated water. The plastic bags are sealed and placed in styrofoam liners which fit into a larger cardboard box.

In the end, it looks like this:


Back in Boston, there's a rush of activity when the fishes arrive. Each box is carefully unpacked, and each species is labeled and placed in holding tanks:



These fishes go through a quarantine that can last over a month. During this time, the fishes are carefully screened for parasites and are receive treatment accordingly. Since that process is done in waves, it may be several months until all of the fish we collected are placed in Aquarium exhibits.

In the meantime, each fish has time to acclimate to their new home. The Aquarists aren't just looking out for them physically, they're careful not to shock each fish mentally by introducing them to tanks too fast. You can see that the parrotfish is still shy because it takes advantage of the hiding places in its tank.



Meanwhile, the schooling fish are given larger tanks to move around in. The copper sweepers that Captain Lou chased out of the dark cave in the Bahamas are looking right at home in their temporary tank:



As are the Bahamian grunts, the first fish I helped collect:




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Labels: Bud Ris, copper sweepers, grunts, May 2008, parrot fish, return, shipping

Some Secrets of the Sea

7:00 PM. Just pulled into Dollar Harbor at South Cat Cay, Bimini. Not really a "harbor" in the traditional sense, but a wonderfully tranquil stretch of turquoise-colored water bordering a narrow strip of sand. We're the only boat.

Before I get started on today's "catch," a brief word on our chef, Chef Matt, who is just now singing along with Jack Jones in the galley behind me while preparing a Bahamian specialty of yellow tail snapper heavily laden with garlic. This is his first full time job. He graduated from Johnson & Whales Culinary Institute in Miami last year and has now been on the Coral Reef II for ten months. At 21, his talent for cooking is extraordinary, as is his ability to hold his breadth while snorkelling 20-30 feet below the surface of the sea, as are his vocal chords. We are lucky to have him on board.

We spent the afternoon diving at a large wreck called the Sapona, one of Henry Ford's attempts to make something other than cars during World War I. The Sapona along with 11 other experimental ships was made of concrete. By the looks of it, he should have stuck to cars. But his efforts were not for nothing, as the Sapona provides a wonderful artificial reef for thousands of fish and invertebrates.

My wife, Margaret, and I spent most of the dive on the ocean floor watching John Dayton and Barbara Bailey (two of the Aquarium's most experienced collectors), fearlessly probing the underside of one of the concrete panels looking for a small Moray eel, called a goldentail (Gymnothorax miliaris). Wow was he elusive. He bolted back and forth, ultimately escaping altogether after about twenty minutes! The moray have an uncanny ability to burrow deep in a hole or crevice, and I had a feeling that this one had more than earned the right to stay home.

A diver feeds fish at the Aquarium, the future home of our catch today.

Speaking of uncanny "abilities, here's another one. The parrot fish (we now have a princess Scarus taeniopterus, shown top right), a stoplight (Sparisoma viride), a redband (Sparisoma aurofrenatum), and a striped (Scarus iserti) on board our burgeoning Noah's Ark. It blows a mucous bubble (sort of like a cocoon) around itself every night to mask its scent. This provides safety against nocturnal predators such as moray eels or nurse sharks. At day break the parrot breaks out of the bubble and lets it float away it (we see the remains of the mucous bubbles floating on the surface in our fish wells each morning)

Here's another: The hogfish (Lachnolaimus maximus) and many other members of the wrasse family also now in our holding tanks on the Coral Reef II have the ability to change their sex. Typically, a harem of females is led by one super male. The male is larger and visually quite different from the females. If he gets eaten or dies, the dominant female in the group morphs into a male, and takes the original super male's slot.

One last note that will make our aquarists back in Boston really happy. We collected four indigo hamlets (Hypoplectrus indigo shown at right) on one of today's dives. It's a huge find, a fish that hasn't been exhibited in Boston for quite some time. Come on down to Central wharf and see this really beautiful species!

Coming up tomorrow : Dive with the sharks!

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Labels: Bud Ris, Chef Matt, goldentail, May 2008, parrot fish