Keith's first photo of the day is a species of jelly often called squishy (Cephea cephea). They can grow up to 18 inches in diameter. The species has a wide distribution throughout the Indo-Pacific, including the Red Sea. Here's another shot he sent.



Stay tuned all week for more of Keith's images from Fiji!

Please join Keith Ellenbogen, underwater photographer, and Dr. Stacy Jupiter, Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Fiji Country Program, on an upcoming expedition in Fiji. From June 1 to 8, they will be working with the Pacific Blue Foundation, Wetlands International-Oceania and the Waitt Institute to conduct initial surveys of the Totoya Island reefs. Sections of this remote reef are considered sacred by island villagers and are proposed for formal protection in recognition of World Ocean’s Day. [You and your family can come celebrate World Oceans Day on Sunday, June 5, with free activities, giveaways and seafood tastings at the Aquarium]. Lying in the oceanic waters of the archipelago far from the influence of the central Fijian Islands, the reef holds exceptional value for cultural conservation as well as marine resource conservation. The researchers will also conduct marine and terrestrial resource awareness workshops with local communities.

The expedition will provide a rare insight into a nearly pristine coral region in the eastern Fijian Islands. There is a possibility that unidentified and/or rare marine wildlife will be discovered and photographed. The team will be supported by a high tech research vessel.

Posts and photographs will also appear on National Geographic’s News Watch blog page throughout the expedition.

We’re wrapping up here on Carrie Bow—packing, cleaning, organizing and making lists of items stored.


This past week was an experience I will remember for a very long time. I am so grateful to Randi Rotjan and Pete Gawne—my colleagues at the New England Aquarium—who were so thoughtful to invite me. We worked very hard and I am proud of my contributions helping to establish benchmarks of this reef’s coral and animal health that will be monitored and studied for decades to come.

I will miss Carrie Bow. It’s a beautiful place. In one sense I’m sorry to leave but I look forward to seeing my family, my friends, my co-workers and returning to my real job!

I return with a deeper appreciation of our oceans and the impact it has on our lives, but also for those scientists and researchers that have devoted their lives trying to answer questions that will preserve and improve our oceans. I’m envious of their curiosity. I thank all of them so much.

I’m out of here ---- see you soon on Central Wharf!

-Walter-

P.S. Please stay tuned for more updates from Randi and Pete over the next few days.

I am so excited to have another guest blogger join us! Below you'll hear from Scott Jones, the Program Coordinator of the Smithsonian Caribbean Coral Reef Ecosystems Program, who (along with Zach Foltz, also of SI), have been collaborating on the establishment of a monitoring program for Carrie Bow Caye. Scott is overly kind below - don't let him fool you, he and Zach work just as hard! ;-)

-Randi-

_________________________

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know we are wrapping up a very busy week here at the Carrie Bow Cay Field Station. Looking back on the past few days, I feel excited to be a part of a great partnership between the New England Aquarium and the Smithsonian’s Caribbean Coral Reef Ecosystem Program. We are very glad to be hosting the first official coral monitoring program associated with the newly created South Water Caye Marine Reserve. Environmental and biological monitoring is an important way to support marine reserves. They measure their effectiveness, provide feedback that allows management plans to adapt to changes, and lend support to the creation of more marine protected areas.

As a research program, we are interested in the ecological questions that can be answered by surveying the reef and fishes both inside and outside of the reserve boundary. Coral reefs face many threats, both global and local in scale. Marine protected areas are one of the few immediate changes we can make that may offset the impacts that are affecting coral reefs globally.


On a personal note, I am amazed by how much we were able to accomplish this week, and even more impressed with how hard Randi, Pete, Jay and Walter have worked during their expedition, they just don’t quit! I am very much looking forward to working with them in the future and carrying our new monitoring program forward.

-Scott Jones, Smithsonian Caribbean Coral Reef Ecosystems Program

One of my favorite things about Carrie Bow is the opportunity to overlap on-island with other scientists. Last week, we had the pleasure of overlapping with an old friend of mine (Dr. Keryn Gedan) who is now a postdoc at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, MD. She was here with her adviser, Dr. Denise Breitburg, and her labmate, Rebecca Burrell. These 3 scientists were on Carrie Bow to research mangrove ponds on nearby Twin Cays. I'm delighted that they've written a guest blog to share their experience; totally different from ours!

Their work with mangroves is particularly relevant to the Aquarium, since visitor can come experience a mangrove habitat at The Trust Family Foundation Shark and Ray Touch Tank. But even though you will see upside-down jellies, you won't have to trudge through floc, I promise. :-)
-Randi-

Bud - I’ve just read your question on the previous blog entry. Let me try to give you what I’ve learned in the few days I’ve been here.

First, the corals I’ve seen are beautiful and I’m not even close to being able to identify their species nor am I capable of making an assessment of their health. Honestly, sometimes I feel like I’m in a foreign country as everyone else here is speaking a language I don’t know.

Anyway, what I do now know is that coral reefs are healthy when there is diversity in species, they are in abundance and, of course, alive--and you don’t see a lot of disease. In my opinion, I’ve seen very healthy coral here in Belize but the scientists seem to be concerned. Of course I’m seeing it for the first time--and it is beautiful--but those that have been here before have seen a decline in their health. One of the purposes of the work being done here is to determine whether corals around Carrie Bow will benefit from the protected area established just a few years ago. We’ll see. I hope it does.

Did you ever think I’d be answering a question like that? Strange things happen. -Walter

[Note: Dr. Randi Rotjan discussed this issue of shifting baselines in this 2009 post from the Phoenix Islands.]

From Jay Dimond:
One of our primary tasks on this trip is to begin a long-term monitoring project on the local barrier reef system. This monitoring project is designed to ask a fairly simple question: How do coral reefs change over time?

Caribbean coral reefs have changed considerably over the past few decades. Elkhorn and staghorn corals were once among the dominant reef corals in the Caribbean, but now they are rare. A series of events brought on their demise, starting with an increase in coral diseases and some severe hurricanes in the early 1980s. Subsequently, herbivore populations (primarily sea urchins and fish) were reduced by overfishing and disease, which allowed fast-growing algae to overgrow areas that were once dominated by coral. Today, many Caribbean reefs are still covered in algae, and the pace of coral recovery is very slow. [Read more about coral recovery in different parts of the world in this post by Dr. Randi Rotjan about the Phoenix Islands and in this post from Fiji by Dr. Steve Webster ]

Has this sort of scenario happened before? The fossil record suggests that it has not. Cores from Belizean reefs not far from here on Carrie Bow have shown that this recent loss of elkhorn and staghorn coral was unprecedented for at least 3000 years. The cores showed a nearly continuous record of staghorn coral, until it was replaced by algae or lettuce coral within the past thirty years.




On this and in the previous four trips I have made to Carrie Bow, I am constantly reminded of the past, etched in the rubble of corals that once lived and left behind their stony framework. Meanwhile, small juvenile corals growing among this rubble are harbingers of the future potential of the reef. We can only hope that our new monitoring program will document coral recovery rather than decline.

-Jay

From Walter:

Belize Expedition, 2011

Even on a tiny island in the middle of the barrier reef, we manage to get some world news (mostly by radio). We know that there is a small chance of thunderstorms here. We know the major goings-on in Belize City. And yes, we know about Bin Laden.

Yesterday, we had to snorkel out in the lagoon to collect some algae for some nutritional ecology experiments. Along the way, we stopped to admire the beauty of the underwater flowers. Thalassia testudinum is a common tropical seagrass (commonly known as turtlegrass), and it is a true vascular plant (not an alga). It forms thick and beautiful meadows in the shallow waters surrounding Carrie Bow.