2018 Summer Fieldwork

 

A view from the Mote Marine Lab on Summerland Key

Summer fieldwork took place in two locations this year. The bulk of the fieldwork took place in the Keys, Florida. The station I stayed at, with my field assistant, overlooked the beautiful seagrass beds off of Summerland Key. It's not a bad view to wake up to. We took a kayak out to close by mangroves and sampled the nearshore habitat. On our first day, I speared a lionfish within a mile of the station!

Earlier in the season, I went down to Ft. Lauderdale. REEF, an organization dedicated to Caribbean coral reefs, was holding a lionfish derby. In these derbies, participants hunt as many lionfish individuals as they can, and bring them back to a check-in point. There, the fish are counted, weighed. The teams get prizes for collecting the most fish, the biggest fish, the smallest fish, etc. The derbies are a great way to census lionfish populations, reduce populations, and involve the community in conservation. It also gives researchers, like myself, an opportunity to sample the collected fish. So, I went down to do my first round of sampling!

 

Ft. Lauderdale is ground zero for the lionfish invasion. Individuals were actually released near this beach in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

 

My friend Jes (left) and I (right) smiling after a day of dissecting lionfish heads in Ft. Lauderdale