Madelyn In TCI: Black Spot Parasites

December 9, 2019

Time to talk about my research project here! There were many options of directed research, and I requested the one with my favorite professor here, even though it didn’t have a SCUBA component, only snorkel. Our project is analyzing how the presence and severity of a certain parasite that causes black spots on the body of its host might affect the Ocean Surgeonfish.

Field Work

The Ocean Surgeonfish eats a lot of algae on the coral reefs, which keeps the ecosystem healthy and allows the coral to grow further. But this parasite is one of those creepy ones that changes the behavior of its host. It basically hijacks the brain of the fish and makes it act very different. Our research is observing the Surgeonfish behavior and trying to determine a trend in the behavior changes of infected fish. We hypothesize that this parasite is causing the fish to behave more erratically and suppressing its anti-predator instincts, which would increase the likelihood of the fish getting eaten by an osprey, which is the next host of the parasite’s life cycle.

So, what does our actual field work look like? We go out every afternoon snorkeling for two hours and split up into buddy pairs. One of us videos the fish, while the other one records what the fish is doing exactly every 30 seconds when our timer goes off, and also records the number of bites every 30 seconds. We follow each fish for 10 minutes and record the number of black spots it has.

Recording Data

I really enjoy this type of field work because it forces me to focus on things that I typically wouldn’t notice. We are now well-acquainted with the typical behavior of the fish and notice when they do strange things. Then it’s easy to notice when the highly infected fish act strangely. We joke that they appear to be drunk, swimming erratically and running into rocks. We snorkel for about two hours each day collecting data, and usually by the end of it we’re all freezing cold and our hands are too numb to keep writing.

One day, after collecting behavioral data on many fish, we began to swim back to the boat. I dived down to swim along the sea grass upside down, looking up at the water surface. The change of perspective from doing this is always interesting- gazing at the waves distorting the sun rays that manage to filter through, I feel more as if I belong in this underwater reality. As I swam in this strange manner, I tilted my head back just a bit farther  to see where I was going, and realized that an eagle ray and I were swimming right towards each other!

A cute squid

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A Deep Dive

November 21, 2019

This morning I had a deep dive with just one other girl and a waterfront staff. It was lovely to dive with only two people, especially because we were all friends. Communication underwater is sometimes very difficult, since words can’t be used and it can be hard to get somebody’s attention without the ability to yell out their name. For small groups though, it gets much easier to understand everybody and know where all dive members are throughout the dive. Quite shortly after descent, I grabbed my dive buddy and excitedly put the side of my hand against my forehead to sign “Shark!” Sometimes I get a little too excited with this signal and end up wacking my head repeatedly with my hand. A black tip reef shark was swimming along the drop-off in front of us.

We watched as it swam away, and then looked at each other and danced underwater. Seeing sharks never seems to get old. Then we descended along the wall of the drop-off. Seeing the corals at these depths was absolutely amazing. At shallower depths, corals tend to form in mounds or boulders, but at deeper depths, they grow in flat plates to maximize the light they receive from the surface. As we were swimming along the wall, the distinct line of difference was so fascinating! The wall turned into a slight overhang and corals of various fluorescent colors covered the surface in strange patterns. Bright purple sponges hung down like alien stalactites, and a lionfish was tucked inside one of the corners of the rocks, its black and white striped fins drifting slowly with the current. Looking down, I saw two humongous orange and black crabs, at least two feet across! I wanted to swim down to look at them closer, but remembered to check my depth. The perfectly clear water of the Caribbean makes it difficult to remember just how deep we actually are, and I was shocked to realize I was already at 100 feet, the maximum depth for recreational diving.

Diving

As we swam along further, we noticed a nurse shark swimming along the wall towards us. I always enjoy seeing nurse sharks – they seem so sweet and harmless. Sharks really get a bad reputation in general. Here, we are a bunch of environmental nerds and seeing a shark usually makes our day!

Being relaxed for the dive made it a lot easier, and my air consumption was very low: I still had a third of a tank left when we ascended! Having such a good dive always puts me in a great mood for the rest of the day, and I feel very fortunate to be able to get in the water every day here.

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Madelyn In TCI: Hunting Lionfish

October 23, 2019

Today was a rather busy day for me but it’s difficult to complain when I enjoy everything that I’m doing! In the morning I went with my professor to help clean up Sargassum from one of the beaches on South Caicos. We drove in Big Red to a spot near the other side of the island; it was a beautiful drive! All of the rain in the past weeks has transformed the entire island, bringing up lush grasses and turning the leaves a vibrant green. Compared to the brown, straggly shrubbery that dominated the island when we first arrived, the island seemed to me nearly a rain forest (with just as many mosquitoes). Unfortunately, the dirt road to our destination was flooded for a significant portion, so we had to turn around and hope to try again the following week.

Flooded Road

When we got back to the research center, I went to elementary school for community outreach. Today I was in the kindergarten classroom and showed them about Australian animals; I found the best way to occupy the young children’s attention is by showing them pictures of animals and acting them out. I might actually be getting the hang of how to interact with kids! 

Hanging with Kids

After lunch, I had a lionfish hunting dive. Lionfish are a terribly successful invasive species. They’re very beautiful looking and were traded as exotic aquarium fish. They first appeared in the ocean off the coast of Florida in 1985, and since then have spread all throughout the Caribbean Sea and up the east coast of the U.S. Their venomous spines protect them from any potential natural predators, and they eat an absurd amount of all fish species, decimating local populations. Lionfish have a very fascinating method of hunting: they fan out their fins and spines to corral their prey into a corner, then unhinge their jaw and quickly suction their prey into their mouths.

Lionfish

For our dive, I laid out a 100 meter transect while the rest of the group followed slightly behind me and looked around the rocks and in crevices for lionfish. Although it took a little while, one of our group members finally spotted a small lionfish and pointed it out to our professor, who had a spear. The lionfish’s invulnerability was rather evident in its behavior; it hovered in front of a rock, seemingly unperturbed by the approach of a human. The spear went right through the lionfish and crunched on the rocks behind it, a very abrupt sound underwater. As the lionfish was put into the bin carried by our waterfront assistant, we recorded the time, depth, habitat, and other useful information about the capture.

When we got back to the research center, we dissected the lionfish. First, we had to cut off all the spines to avoid getting pricked; they’re still dangerous after death. Our professor dug through the fat and found the stomach, which had 2 fish inside of it; one of them was missing its head. Both fish were surprisingly large in comparison to the size of the lionfish. Once we had collected all of the necessary information, we added it to a large spreadsheet with all of the information about lionfish captures in the area. Since the lionfish have no natural predators and are very destructive to the ecosystem, there has been a lot of research and effort to control their numbers and spread. That’s one of the projects that School for Field Studies in South Caicos is working on. The staff go out every Sunday for these lionfish hunts, which appear to be fairly successful when done this often. It was very interesting to help out with the project, although I honestly felt a little bit morally unsound with taking part in killing another creature. It’s an odd dilemma: on one hand, the lionfish are extremely harmful to the environment and the other organisms that live there. On the other hand, a lionfish is still a living creature that is just very well-adapted and was born in the wrong place. I suppose this is a common dilemma when dealing with invasive species, and I’ll just have to figure out how to excuse it. So much for science always being black and white!

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Madelyn In TCI: Class in the Field

October 4, 2019

This morning was a relaxed one; after a simple breakfast we had a morning debriefing for the day, and then I was free for the rest of the morning while another group went out to do the field exercise. I laid in the hammock garden and did some of the readings for our classes; it’s mostly scientific papers on fishery management, which I actually enjoy. Tropical storm Jerry is coming towards us and rain is forecasted for the next week and a half, so I enjoyed the bit of sunshine while it lasted. Lunch was delicious and healthy, as always. I was on kitchen crew today, so we cleaned up the food after lunch and washed all the dishes together. After lunch, my group and I grabbed our snorkel stuff and piled into the two trucks with our professor and teaching assistants. I sat in the bed of the truck because I love the breeze and the views, despite the mosquitoes and dust. On the way to East Bay Beach we passed the salt flats and saw numerous flamingos, which never seems to get old! As soon as the truck stopped by the beach, the mosquitoes began to swarm. It’s been raining more here, which means there is standing water on the island and hordes of mosquitoes. At least we can have freshwater showers now though (we collect and filter our freshwater from the rainwater). There’s always a silver lining 🙂

At the beach we split into groups of three with our underwater slates, a 100m transect line, and a ½ meter square made out of PVC pipe. One student in each group swam directly out from the coast laying down the transect line and sat out in the water alone until joined by the other members of his or her group. Meanwhile, the other two snorkeled along the transect line and dropped the PVC quadrat at 5 random distances, and on their underwater slates recorded the percentage of different seagrass coverage within the quadrant. Once they reached the third group member, they swam back all together and recorded all of the invertebrates they saw.

Seagrass meadows are homes for the juveniles of lots of different aquatic species; there are plenty of places for them to hide from predators until they grow up a bit. They also help keep the sediment in place and take excess nutrients out of the water, making the water more clear.

It was so much fun to do class exercises while snorkeling, and also very exciting to have a research purpose while snorkeling. It also provided a new perspective on the ecosystem; I was rather surprised at the count of live conch we found! We also found a lobster hiding in an old conch shell, several Giant Caribbean Sea Anemone, and a beautiful sand dollar.

A sand dollar in the bay

Seagrass meadows

When it was my turn to take the transect out and wait alone in the water, it was beautifully unsettling. The seagrass waved gently in unison in the surge and an occasional fish rushed by. Coming towards me from the distance I recognized a distinct, elongated shadow. Barracuda don’t actually attack humans, but they show a disturbing lack of fear around us and they simply look very mean, a perception that doesn’t improve when they allow their sharp teeth to show. They also have a very radical display when they’re hunting or aggressive: they flash black. This particular barracuda was pitch black, easily half a foot in diameter, and longer than my leg. It came up so close to me that I nervously kept my fins between us, unsure of how it might act. When my group members arrived and we swam back together, this barracuda followed us so close I was afraid I might touch it. Our data may have been a little bit skewed on the return because we were so distracted and somewhat terrified.

Laying out quadrats for seagrass coverage

When we finished our underwater surveys, my braid was entirely intertwined with a bushel of sargassum, which is a type of seaweed that has a particular affinity to my hair. It took me approximately 30 minutes under the saltwater shower to get it entirely out. The purpose of our field exercise was to collect and later analyze data on the effects of high quantities of sargassum on seagrass coverage. Sargassum is currently the highest algal bloom in all of the world of all time, and it’s causing a lot of problems all over the Caribbean, mainly with the tourism industry. Tourists don’t want to go to beaches that are clogged with rotting sargassum; it really ruins the aesthetic appeal. Researchers are still attempting to determine what is causing this massive algal bloom, but the most probable cause is from excess nutrients in the ocean due to deforestation of the Brazilian rain forest. One of our projects this semester is to help our professor determine the extent of damage that this excess alga causes on the ecosystem. It’s truly amazing to be a part of the worldwide effort to understand reverse climate change before it’s too late.

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Madelyn In TCI: Diving with a Dolphin

September 23, 2019

We’ve finished Week 2 on the island, and I can’t believe it; so much happens every day! This Saturday was so unbelievably incredible. In the morning I went for a run along the salt flats of the island. The salt industry used to be huge on the island, but died off around the 60’s. Now the Salinas are a historical protected area that provide habitat for the island’s flamingos. It’s still very exciting to see their bright pink bodies apparently floating on a few feet above the water (their legs are too narrow to see from a distance). It was the full moon, which was still in the sky on the horizon as the sun rose.

Moonset over the beach.

After a quick breakfast I went on a morning dive, and the most incredible thing happened. I wore leggings and a rash guard instead of a wet-suit, which made me significantly more comfortable for the dive. The water is 85 degrees Fahrenheit, which is extremely comfortable even without a wet-suit. We dove below to the boat and there was so much coral and all sorts of fish swimming around it: Yellow Jacks, Parrotfish, Trumpet fish, Blue Tangs, and so many others that I haven’t yet learned the names to. The surf was very high, so a lot of the more flexible coral and algae swayed rhythmically as we swam along. About 20 minutes into the dive, I turned around and saw a huge shadow coming towards me. As it came closer, I wondered if it was a shark, but it wasn’t quite the right shape. After a few more seconds I realized: it was a dolphin!! It was much bigger than any of us, but I didn’t feel afraid. It swam right up to me, close enough that I could have reached out and touched it quite easily. Looking into my eyes, it swam right past me, and then circled around our group of divers, weaving between us and getting incredibly close to everybody. It also swam over top of us and I got the feeling that it was enjoying the tickling sensation of our bubbles as we exhaled under water. I was smiling so much that my mask kept flooding with water during the entire interaction, but I didn’t mind! Fortunately, somebody in my group had a camera on them and was able to film a good portion of it.

The whole interaction lasted about 2 minutes, but it felt like an eternity. It was truly the most amazing experience I’ve had. There are very few, random dolphins around Turks and Caicos, and I wasn’t expecting to see one this semester. Our dive master told us that he had been here for 25 years and had never had a dolphin interaction to that extent. I felt so blessed to be here and to have such an incredible opportunity. When we came back to land and I called my mom to tell her about it, I saw two eagle rays in the water just off the edge of the shore. It wasn’t even noon yet!

In the afternoon, we had our weekly outreach time, which is when children from the community come to our campus for games, swimming or snorkel lessons, and an all-around good time! The kids were so excited they were waiting outside over an hour before we opened the gates. This week I went out with a small group of children to the local beach with gloves and bags to pick up trash, as it was Environment Awareness Day. It wasn’t exactly fun, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself. There was a very simple but profound satisfaction with every piece of trash we picked up, and especially looking at the collective result at the end of the hour.

Picking up trash on the beach.

All cleaned up!

 We are working on a project to decorate and set up large trash bins at this beach because litter is a regular problem here. To be completely honest, I would really enjoy doing this more in my free time here. There’s so much plastic waste and I know that I can’t clean it all up. Even so, I stayed hopeful by imagining that every bottle I picked up was one less fish that would get sick or killed from pollution. Every bit counts!

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