Sunday, June 26, 2011

Dominica Expedition: Sea turtle tagging

What would you get up at 4:30 AM for?

I do like my sleep but one of the answers to that question for me would be hawksbill sea turtle tagging! We have been so busy down here running research cruises with Dominican school children and planning our time that 5 AM became the only time to make it happen.

We made sure to obtain the proper permits and even had a few officials on board with us to make sure that we were handling the sea turtle properly. And after we had gone over our game plan we dove in the water in search of hawksbill sea turtles. Thanks to the dive site being a marine protected area, the sea turtles have nothing to fear and you can swim very close to them. And that is how we found this little one:


This is a small hawksbill and because it is young it is hard to tell whether it is male or female (at an older age the males have a much larger tail) Photo: Jake Levenson

Once on board the carapace (top shell) has to dry so that the epoxy will adhere to the shell. The whole process of gluing the satellite tag on takes only 20 minutes. And then we swipe the top of the tag with a magnet to activate it. The battery on the tag will last around 245 days and over time as the turtle grows the glue will break up and the tag will fall off. Here is what it looks like:


The turtle rests on a horseshoe shaped towel and has a wet towel over its head to keep it calm. Photo: Jake Levenson

Once the epoxy dries we set the turtle free and what an exciting time that is.


I'm the one in the water helping the turtle back in. Photo: Jake Levenson


Their front flippers are so powerful that with one flipper push they're off! Photo: Jake Levenson

The two turtles we tagged were both fairly small so it will be interesting to see if they stick around the reef. The tags will let us know where they go and when. Sea turtles are tagged at the New England Aquarium as part of the Marine Animal Rescue Team. Learn more about that program here. You can track the sea turtles that the Aquarium has released here.

Go turtles go!
Posted by Megan at 1:16 PM 1 comments
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Saturday, June 25, 2011

Dominica Expedition: The Beauty From Below

I promised more pictures (in the last post) and here they are. These pictures are of Dominica below the waterline.

This was a hermit crab I found while diving. I'm not sure what species it is--but I do know that there are around 800 different species of hermit crabs in the world!

This was a large male hawksbill turtle. He swam by us and then settled down in a little coral cave for a nap. 
[This species has also been photographed for this blog in Fiji.]

While on a night dive we found these creatures:

This organism was about the size of a grain of rice. When we looked right in front of our flashlights we saw a whole world of plankton. Tiny (almost microscopic) larval fishes would dart and dance about in the light beam. 

But the animal that stole the show was this:

REEF SQUID!!!!!! This little cephalopod hung around for quite a while. To my fascination it did not jet away when I presented my finger. Instead, it touched my finger and then hung around my dive mask. 

We watched it change patterns and colors and floated along with the squid for a long amount of time. I would like to be more specific but while marveling at the little guy we lost track of time as well as location. 

When we finally left the squid and surfaced we were about 200 feet away from where we thought we were! But no worries, we had plenty of air left to return safely to shore.


-Megan
Posted by Megan at 11:23 AM 2 comments
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Monday, June 20, 2011

Dominica Expedition: The Beauty of Dominica

For the past week I have been traveling the roads around Dominica. At this point I don't think a straight road exists. Luckily there are so many animals and sights to look at to keep my mind (and stomach) off of how serpentine the road is. Here are a few photos of some of the sites around Dominica.


This is a part of the primary school in Grand Bay.


One of the many animals you see on the side of the road (or in the road).


This sign does not do the roads justice. Every drive we take is like a roller coaster ride--but without the safety bar.

The island is beautiful from any point. And if it looks familiar it may be some of the scenes from the Pirates of the Caribbean were filmed here. Stay tuned for more pictures.

-Megan

Posted by Megan at 7:19 PM 0 comments
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Saturday, June 18, 2011

Dominica Expedition: Plastic and the three R's

Plastic is everywhere. Have you ever kept a journal of how much plastic you use in a day? An hour? We buy liquids and snacks wrapped in plastic and then wrap it in plastic once more before leaving the store.

Then we throw away our plastic into a plastic garbage bag within a bin usually made out of plastic. It could end up in a landfill or it could make its way to the ocean and end up swirling in one of the many giant gyres of plastic that exist in the ocean. Here in Dominica, while scouting for marine life, you find plastic bottles floating the the ocean. New England Aquarium explorers have found plastic waste in Indonesia, the Bahamas and Fiji. It's a powerful reminder of the importance of action.

And there are three R's are often mentioned in passing but they hold so much value to this global epidemic:

Reduce
Use less. Do you really need a straw? Can you buy your items in bulk? Can you purchase items that do not contain several layers of plastic between you and the item you wish to eat? Check out the isles of a grocery store in Dominica - I was impressed with the reduction in packaging for most of their items:



Reuse
Buying something once and not disposing of it. Have you ever washed a plastic fork? It works pretty well the second time, and the third time too! Dominica has some innovate ways to reuse their plastic bottles:



Recycle
When you haven't reduced and cannot reuse then perhaps you can recycle. Have you ever supported the companies that make products from recycled plastic? Unfortunately Dominica does not have a recycling program in place. All the more reason we shouldn't take our recycling program for granted.

Good luck with your three R's!

-Megan

Posted by Megan at 10:35 AM 2 comments
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Dominica Expedition: Ocean through different eyes

I last blogged about how I was reminded that the ocean here is the same body of water that touches the coastline of where I'm from. But--at night--the ocean becomes a different place. At night, parrotfish build mucus cocoons around themselves to sleep, wrasses bed down under the sand and eels snake their way out of their burrows in search of a meal. It's my favorite time to dive! Thanks to some excellent photos by Jake Levenson, I am able to show you some creatures that I spotted:



Arrow crabs - usually I only find one (I wonder what these two were doing...)
(Photo: Jake Levenson)


Lesser electric ray - as the name implies you should make sure not to touch this fish! (Photo: Jake Levenson)

During in the dive we put on special glasses and used a special light to view the animals in the ocean that fluoresce! And again we found another world. Some animals naturally see the world this way. For an hour I was able to pretend I was one of those animals. At first everything was dark. I couldn't see anything with the special glasses on. But when my light hit an animal that contained fluorescent protein--the animal glowed bright neon colors. I'm having trouble explaining how impressive this was--hopefully a few pictures will help.


Look for the red fluorescence in this photo (Photo: Jake Levenson)

And out of the darkness comes green fluorescence! (Photo: Jake Levenson)

Brain coral appearing like ghosts (Photo: Jake Levenson)

It's an incredible world(s).

-Megan

[Check out more fluorescence photos in this post.]
Posted by Megan at 8:50 AM 0 comments
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Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Dominica Expedition: Different world, same ocean

New England Aquarium Visitor Programs Specialist Megan Moore is reporting from Dominica. The Aquarium participated in this expedition in 2010 as well, you can read those posts here. 

Greetings from Dominica! It took me two days and three flights to get to this small Caribbean island. Being new to this place I was eager to find new and unusual wildlife. So far I've heard tales of bats that eat fish and bananaquit birds that join you for breakfast. But, despite being in a different world, when I went down to the beach I recognized some of my old friends--nerite snails!

Nerita sp. - They are a herbivorous snail found throughout the Caribbean Sea as well as the Pacific Ocean.



It gained a little courage and explored my thumb

Me and my new friend

And seeing the nerite here reminded me that despite the distance travelled it's still all one ocean. One body of water, occasionally interrupted by small islands like Dominica and large islands like North America. It's a great reminder that our small impacts on the ocean--wherever we are--can quickly become global impacts.

-Megan
Posted by Megan at 11:11 AM 2 comments
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Thursday, June 9, 2011

Daily Fiji Photos: Blue green chromis and a farewell to Totoya Island

This is the eighth post in a series of daily photographs from an expedition to Totoya Island in Fiji by Keith Ellenbogen, an underwater photographer and frequent contributor to the Global Explorers Blog. 


Blue-green chromis (Chromis viridis) and one Damselfish (Dascyllus reticulatus) darting in and out
of hard coral (Acropora grandulosa) (Photo: Keith Ellenbogen)

An aerial view of the village and the coral reef of Totoya Island (Photo: Keith Ellenbogen)

Get the background on Keith's expedition to Totoya Island, Fiji in his first photo post. Catch up on the latest events in the expedition on National Geographic's News Watch blog.
Posted by NEAQ at 9:36 AM 0 comments
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Monday, June 6, 2011

Daily Fiji Photos: Seeing a coral reef from below and above

This is the seventh post in a series of daily photographs from an expedition to Totoya Island in Fiji by Keith Ellenbogen, an underwater photographer and frequent contributor to the Global Explorers Blog. 


A partially submerged view of the reef around Totoya Island, Fiji (Photo: Keith Ellenbogen)


 Aerial view of the reef around Totoya Island (Photo: Keith Ellenbogen)

Get the background on Keith's expedition to Totoya Island, Fiji in his first photo post. Catch up on the latest events in the expedition on National Geographic's News Watch blog.
Posted by NEAQ at 4:16 PM 0 comments
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Sunday, June 5, 2011

Daily Fiji Photos: Fluorescent Corals

This is the sixth post in a series of daily photographs from an expedition to Totoya Island in Fiji by Keith Ellenbogen, an underwater photographer and frequent contributor to the Global Explorers Blog.

These images showcase a method of photography that demonstrate the fluorescent properties of organisms. It uses special blue flashlights that excite fluorescent wavelengths, and uses a yellow filter so that only the fluorescence can be seen.

Fungid coral appears yellow in fluorescent light (Photo: Keith Ellenbogen)

A fluorescent fungid coral (above) looks yellow; in regular daylight, it would look pinkish-brown. Fluorescence was first isolated in jellies (Aequorea victoria); but is also really common in corals.

Many coral reef scientists are exploring the properties of fluorescence in the oceans; others are using fluorescence as a tool. An interesting paper by the Matz Lab was just published suggesting that fluorescence of some coral larvae may predict settlement. It is now very common for scientists to use fluorescent indicators or proteins to illustrate interesting biological pathways or impacts; for this reason, the discovery of fluorescence won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2008. Whether for science or art, fluorescence offers a whole new view of marine organisms.

GFP - green fluorescent protein - is common in many corals (Photo: Keith Ellenbogen)

Get the background on Keith's expedition to Totoya Island, Fiji in his first photo post. Catch up on the latest events in the expedition on National Geographic's News Watch blog.

This fluorescence technology invented by Charlie Mazel and marketed by his company Nightsea. Keith started using this method during the 2010 Joint Aquarium Fiji Expedition. These images are from that previous expedition.


Coral in fluorescence (Photo: Keith Ellenbogen)

Fluorescence comes in many colors - and is not restricted to just corals! (Photo: Keith Ellenbogen)

Coral polyps displaying GFP (Photo: Keith Ellenbogen)

Dr. Les Kaufman and Keith Ellenbogen with fluorescence equipment
Posted by NEAQ at 6:17 PM 0 comments
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Saturday, June 4, 2011

Daily Fiji Photos: Up Close in a Coral Habitat

This is the fifth post in a series of daily photographs from an expedition to Totoya Island in Fiji by Keith Ellenbogen, an underwater photographer and frequent contributor to the Global Explorers Blog. 



Get the background on Keith's expedition to Totoya Island, Fiji in his first photo post. Catch up on the latest events in the expedition on National Geographic's News Watch blog.
Posted by NEAQ at 8:27 PM 0 comments
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Friday, June 3, 2011

Daily Fiji Photos: The Sacred Reef of Totoya Island

This is the fourth post in a series of daily photographs from an expedition to Totoya Island in Fiji by Keith Ellenbogen, an underwater photographer and frequent contributor to the Global Explorers Blog. 


Wide shot of Totoya Island with the surrounding reef visible beneath the waves (Photo: Keith Ellenbogen)

 Waves break over the coral reef off Totoya Island. (Photo: Keith Ellenbogen)

Get the background on Keith's expedition to Totoya Island, Fiji in his first photo post. Catch up on the latest events in the expedition on National Geographic's News Watch blog.
Posted by NEAQ at 4:24 PM 1 comments
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Thursday, June 2, 2011

Daily Fiji Photos: Crab and Coral

This is the third post in a series of daily photographs from an expedition to Totoya Island in Fiji by Keith Ellenbogen, an underwater photographer and frequent contributor to the Global Explorers Blog.

 
Crab in hard coral (Pocillopora sp.) (Photo: Keith Ellenbogen)

The painterly texture of a hard coral (Diaseris sp.)

Get the background on Keith's expedition to Totoya Island, Fiji in his first photo post. Catch up on the latest events in the expedition on National Geographic's News Watch blog.
Posted by NEAQ at 4:33 PM 1 comments
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Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Daily Fiji Photos: Juvenile wrasses and sea cucumber

This is the second post in a series of daily photographs from an expedition to Totoya Island in Fiji by Keith Ellenbogen, an underwater photographer and frequent contributor to the Global Explorers Blog.

Two juveniles frolicking on the reef. At left is a juvenile leopard wrasse (Macropharyngodon meleagris) 
and at right is a juvenile clown wrasse (Coris gaimard).

A camouflaged worm on the underbelly of sea cucumber

Get the background on Keith's expedition to Totoya Island, Fiji in his first photo post. Catch up on the latest events in the expedition on National Geographic's News Watch blog.
Posted by NEAQ at 3:07 PM 1 comments
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