One of the main objectives is to look at connectivity of
these species throughout more than just the gulf. So we're
looking at connectivity over the entire Pulley Ridge, and
then how connected these populations say in the Dry
Tortugas or those shallow populations in the Keys. It's
becoming a bigger issue for management especially to
understand how a population actually functions. And to be
able to manage it effectively. A typical day after we get up
and have our breakfast, is to go out and make sure their
sampling bags are ready to go, we have these clamshell mesh
bags inside of which I put individual ziplock bags that
are on zip ties that are all labeled so we know where we
got all those samples from. After I get their bags ready
to go, I start setting up my workstation-which is a big
plastic tub with a cutting board in it. It allows me to
frag out the corals, to cut samples off of the fish.
Preserves anything, keeps all my tubes right next door to
all my preservatives. Makes sure everything gets done
quickly and without messing up all boat. So were out here on
Pulley Ridge for a big project that the University of Miami
got a couple of years ago. The dives themselves have been in
about 220, averaging about 225 feet of water. Our bottom
times are anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes, which puts us in
the water somewhere between 90 and 115 minutes. The sampling
itself has gone pretty well, a lot of what we are doing is
being opportunistic. We get what we find. When we get on
the bottom, we have to do a very quick assessment of the
bottom-and then we collect we have. If we see a lot of fish,
we collect as many fish as we can. If we see a lot of
corals, were collecting corals. If we see sponge and
algae-we're going after those. We've done pretty well on this
trip, we've been able to collect as many fish as we
can, so that's a good thing. We're still working on some
coral, we're still working on some algae. Another thing
we've been able to accomplish on this trip is physical
oceanography moorings. We were able to find, first of all,
the three moorings. But then also recover the instruments
that were on there, and replace those instruments with
new updated instruments. We're diving off of the M/V Spree,
which is a great platform for this type of diving. And we're
able to do this type of project because of the
assistance of the Florida Aquarium and University of
Puerto Rico divers. Our profiles are pretty much a 20
minute bottom time on average. So what happens is we'll hit
the surface of the water, we'll drop down about 20
feet-each person will get with their buddy and do a bubble
check to make sure that their rebreathers are working. Once
everybody is checked out and everything is working, then
we'll do an ascent down to the bottom. It usually takes us
about 3 minutes to get to the bottom, at which point we
start working. We do a very quick assessment, once we
start-once we understand what the bottom is like, then we
start collecting. We stay on the bottom for about 17
minutes at which point we get together. 17 minutes we put
all the samples in one bag and we send that bag to the
surface. Once that bag has left our hands then we start
our ascent. Our ascent moves up to 150 feet, where a couple
of us shoot whats called a SMB a surface marker buoy. This
allows the boat to see where we are. Then we work our way
along that surface marker buoy up to the surface.
Decompression phase of the dive takes anywhere from 60 to
90 minutes depending on how long we've actually been on
the bottom. So this cruise is all about adding more samples
to the ones we collected last year. We're hitting a lot of
the same sites as last year-the ones that we knew
were going to produce a lot of different species. So know we
are just bulking up those sample sizes, especially for
these molecular analysis. The larger the sample size-the
better. You are going to get a much stronger analysis,
especially when you are looking at something like
connectivity of these populations to other areas.