A short summary blurb on an exotic seagrass species in the Caribbean – it mentions some potential ecological pros and cons if it continues to spread. Seems to be primarily in the Virgin Islands and south Caribbean now, but something to keep an eye out for. Will be tough to identify however – looks quite similar to a couple of green […]
Three new papers from former lab members. A quick summary of each to follow….
Upside-down jellyfish paper – Betsy Stoner, now a post-doc at the University of Miami, conducted an expansive experiment to see if the upside-down jellyfish (Cassiopea spp.) affect seagrass habitat and the animals that live in it. This is important because she previously demonstrated that these jellyfish thrive […]
FIU graduate student Elizabeth Whitman asked me to post this. I am really interested as there are SO many green turtles these days. I predict we will much taller seagrass in the turtle exclosures after only months.
If you’ve ever explored the tidal creek systems of Abaco, you probably noticed that’s is a preferred hangout for juvenile green sea turtles. Abundant […]
Twenty-three reefs total, just short of 2,000 cinder blocks (not that my lower back has been counting or anything). These reefs were constructed across huge gradients in fish density, ambient nutrient availability, proximity to human activity, water depth, substrate, etc. With such gradients, we hope to be able to […]
This video was taken just 3 hours after we built one of our artificial reefs on West Andros. This site is the extreme (and I mean very extreme) endpoint opposite Haiti. This was the crux of the project plan – construct reefs at sites across broad gradients in fish density and nutrient availability. West Andros has perhaps the lowest fishing pressure in […]
We have written much about the role of nutrients in fueling seagrass productivity (see here for instance), and we have also linked to recent papers on why the form of a nutrient matters for corals (see here and here). A recent paper from our lab looks at fish excretion from another angle: what is the ratio […]
One of activities on this trip was to change out the nutrients diffusers
for our long term enrichment experiment (more information in previous
post here). The experiment has been running for almost 3 years –
the longest seagrass enrichment experiment ever, as far as we know.
In the lab, my indefatigable lab […]
The second day in the field was pretty uneventful. We checked all of our
artificial reef habitats and today’s observations were consistent with
two previous thoughts we have shared…..
-Juvenile Nassau Grouper, like the one above, are everywhere (previous
post on this here). On our 40 cinder lock reefs, I […]
The Haitian government has just declared boundaries of the first marine
protected area in the country!! This stemmed from The Nature Conservancy’s
concerted efforts with many collaborating partners. Information from our
surveys (see here and here) fed into the site selection. Also exciting, we
have preliminary support from the Haitian government […]