This past weekend KML staff participated in the 1st Annual Lower Keys Lionfish Derby sponsored by REEF, and placed 2nd out of 18 teams for most lionfish collected with 21!!
The team hit the water bright and early in Long Key and had to be in Key West to have their lionfish counted and measured by sundown.
You can see that Andrew, Bill, and Cindy were glad to do their part to remove the invasive fish from the Florida Keys waters and also enjoyed eating their catch at the banquet.
We found this big ol' manatee slurping the trickle of fresh water as we flushed our engines today! He looked in great shape, with no visible prop scars but lots of barnacles on his back. We don't normally encourage them into such close association with boats by offering them fresh water from a dock hose.
With the end of another sea turtle nesting season the volunteers of Save-A-Turtle look back at the long and busy summer on Long Key beach.
The crack team was made up of Cindy Lewis (KML staff scientist on for her 1st official season), Nancy Godshall (Long Key Condo resident and self-proclaimed "Turtle Nazi"), and The Crowders (KML staff scientist Andrew, FWRI's biologist Whitney, and their son Finlee back for his 2nd season).
As you can see below Finlee is well on his way to following in his parents footsteps of tracking the "turtles", which was one of his first words!
The group walked the beach every morning again from mid-April to the end of October and marked a record high 49 crawls with 13 of those being nests. The first nest was laid May 11th and the last couple of nests weren't laid until July 19th and 29th, which is much later than any other previous few years. This was possibly due to the cold weather event the Keys experienced this winter and the sea water temperatures taking longer to warm up.
The nesting to false crawl ratio of 26.5% was the lowest percentage that had been seen in the last 3 years and far behind last year where the ratio was over 40% (11 nests and 16 false crawls).
Of the 1420 eggs that were surveyed by the team 860 loggerhead sea turtles hatched, which is over a 60% success rate. However that was down over 17% from the year before mostly due to 2 nests being over-washed by extremely high tides and one nest being destroyed by raccoons. Above you can see the nests that were affected by the high tides and were inundated with saltwater.
The group was encouraged by such a high number of crawls (only 25 and 27 the two previous years), and looks forward to next season where hopefully there will be even more nests!
Marine Ecology students from Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Meyers, visited KML to get hands-on experience in a marine environment. Led by their professor, Dr. Micheal Parsons, they participated in KML's Living Laboratory Project (see KML website for more details). Students learned first-hand the challenges of laying out a site grid and doing belt transects and point counts while snorkeling, at 2 of the selected sites.
Actual data collected by the students will be added to the growing data base for the project and can be compared to previous assessments at each site.
Also down from FGCU was Dr. Robert Erdman's Invertebrates class. Students snorkeled various habitats, including seagrassbeds, mangroves, intertidal zones, and patch reefs, collecting and identifying animals for their studies. One of the days' highlights included the thrill of observing an 8' Hammerhead chasing fish near-by!
KML staff scientists were available to answer questions at the Keys Marine Lab display
Nearly 300 researchers and managers converged on Hawk's Cay Resort on Duck Key in October to attend a conference and workshops on the Marine Ecosystems of the Florida Keys, "Linking Science to Management". Celebrated researcher, Jeremy Jackson, was the keynote speaker for the event. Special focus of this first-time-ever conference was on resource issues important to the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and the Dry Tortugas National Park. Topics presented in nearly 50 talks included climate change science, reef restoration and ecology, fish and invertebrate ecology, food web structure, hardbottom and grassbed habitats and ecology, spatial management and marine zoning, oceanography and water quality, regional connectivity, and fisheries management. Two interactive poster sessions, featuring nearly 150 posters, followed the day's talks and provided a stimulating backdrop for scientific networking. The conference was a huge success, judging by the numerous requests for "a next time"!
The FWRI's Finfish group just returned from another successful 10 day trip to the Dry Tortugas National Park aboard KML's R/V Diodon.
The group visited over 60 sites (which included 9 sites at Riley's Hump in the Tortugas South Ecological Reserve over 18 miles from Fort Jefferson) and conducted 65 research dives during the span of 8 days in the field with AVERAGED sustained wind speed just over 20 mph. As you can see below even the fish were impressed with just how very hard the team worked!
The goal of this trip was to again retrieve, download, and replace acoustic receivers (Vemco VR2) at various locations throughout the park that are tracking the movements of tagged fish, mainly snappers and groupers, but are also recording other researchers' animal movements such as sea turtles and sharks.
The early returns of the data have shown that mutton snappers that reside near Fort Jefferson in the newly formed Research Natural Area (RNA) are traveling back and forth between there and the group's sites at Riley's Hump that are known to have spawning aggregations in the summer months.
KML staff was again happy to be involved in this research and looks forward to possible trips with FWRI scientists in the future.
M. faveolata colonies tented in anticipation of the annual mass coral spawning event
Once again, Dr. Mary Alice Coffroth, from the State University of New York at Buffalo, staged her coral spawning research out of KML. Coordinating an army of 30 AAUS divers and snorkelers from multiple institutions, researchers assembled out at Looe Key Reef for the anticipated Acropora palmatta (elkhorn) spawning after the August full moon (Aug 25-28). But no luck this year!
Divers placing mesh nets over coral heads prior to spawning
Meanwhile, another team of divers traveled each evening to Cheeca Rocks on KML's R/V Diodon to capture the Montastrea faveolata (mountainous star coral) spawning event Aug 27- Sept 1. Success! The spawn was brought back to KML's Wet Lab and reared in special chambers of circulating filtered seawater, until ready to settle on ceramic tiles.
First coral rearing Kreisel is up and running!
Coral rearing activities in KML's Wet Lab
The new coral recruits will be used in various experiments to study algal symbiont uptake and selectivity both in the field and at the University of Miami coral nursery.
Divers setting out tiles with newly-settled coral recruits and
This summer KML has been glad to again be a part of Dr. Neil Hammerschlag's shark research.
Dr. Hammerschlag is from the University of Miami's R.J. Dunlap Marine Conservation Program and his work focuses on examining shark biology, population dynamics, and habitat utilization which are all needed to ensure their conservation and improve their management.
The group has gone out 10 times with KML on the R/V Diodon to locations off the reef near Long Key, in Hawk Channel, bayside near Conch Key, and in the Everglades. All trips have been very successful and they have been able to collect data on over 60 sharks and even satellite tag 3 of them (2 Hammerheads and a Bull). Follow the link below to see where Chad, Rose, and Sandy are heading...
Last month a news crew from CNN accompanied Hammerschlag's group along with a troop of high school volunteers that are always eager to learn more about the ocean's top predators. CNN's story is about how the sharks are responding to the oil spill and the implications it may have. Follow the link below to see the story...
The tiger flatworm, Maritigrella crozieri on the ascidian Ecteinascidia turbinata.
A team of researchers from University College London (Professor Max Telford, Dr Kate Rawlinson, Fraser Simpson), University of North Florida (Kevin Olsen) and Cambridge University (Dr Andrew Gillis) are staying at KML for a month. They are collecting embryos and hatchlings of the tiger flatworm Maritigrella crozieri. This beautiful worm is abundant in the Florida Keys, and is commonly found in association with its favorite food item – the mangrove ascidian Ecteinascidia turbinata.
Andrew examining Ecteinascidia turbinata on the mangrove roots.
Fieldwork involves the collection of sexually mature worms from clumps of Ecteinascidia by snorkeling and kayaking in mangrove creeks. These worms are then brought back to the lab, where their eggs and larval stages are preserved for future genetic analysis.
Kevin diligently cleaning an aquarium of Maritigrella crozieri in KML's Common Dry Lab.
This material will be used as part of a long-term study to better understand how different marine invertebrates develop from a single cell to an adult, often via a series of seemingly very different developmental stages.The team, pictured here enjoying cold drinks from the Midway Café after a hot morning in the mangroves of Tavernier Key. From left to right; Kevin Olsen, Fraser Simpson, Kate Rawlinson and Andrew Gillis.
Earlier this month Professor Isidro Bosch from SUNY Geneseo in New York and KML staff took a trip out to the Gulf Stream between Alligator Reef and Tennessee Reef to collect and isolate sea star larvae using plankton trawls.
The trip was a great success and they were able to isolate over thirty larvae which will make for work that will last over the next month or two.
These larvae are very important to Bosch's research, and normally very difficult to collect.In the past they have been collected from the Sargasso Sea or from the Gulf Stream off Ft. Pierce, well north of the Florida Keys.This is the first time they've been collected this far south, so learning a bit more about their geographic distribution was an added bonus to the large number of specimens collected.
The larvae are of considerable scientific interest to the professor for two reasons...
First, they are able to clone themselves, which is a very unusual strategy among larvae of non-parasitic animals.The cloning process involves many interesting developmental changes in tissues and cell lines, including the action of a group of cells that are akin to stem cells found in many other animals.
Second, the larvae seem to benefit from what might be a mutualistic association with large numbers of bacteria that live under the larval cuticle.
Bosch's immediate goal is to identify the type of bacteria living with the larvae and characterize its physiology.Ultimately the goal is to better understand what if anything the larvae get from the association and whether the bacteria are needed in order for the larvae to clone themselves.
Since the trip Bosch has been able to establish bacterial cultures from the samples collected.The next steps are to extract, amplify, and eventually sequence DNA from the bacteria to help determine what group of microbes they belong to.He has also preserved larvae for genetic work and for studies of clonal development.
For any further details or questions contact Professor Bosch at (bosch@geneseo.edu).
This past weekend KML staff participated in the 1st Annual Lower Keys Lionfish Derby sponsored by REEF, and placed 2nd out of 18 teams for most lionfish collected with 21!!
Follow the link below to see the complete results...
The team hit the water bright and early in Long Key and had to be in Key West to have their lionfish counted and measured by sundown.
