REEF Staff Dr. Christy Pattengill-Semmens (Director of Science) and Lad Akins (Director of Special Projects), joined over 300 scientists, resource managers, and fishers at the Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute (GCFI) meeting last week in Corpus Christi, Texas. All three of REEF's major programs were represented.
Christy presented a research poster on an analysis of patterns of rarity in fishes in the Caribbean basin using the REEF Volunteer Fish Survey Project database. Over 90,000 surveys from our citizen science program were used to explore where the rare things are, and why some places seem to have so many more of them than others.
Lad co-chaired a session on Invasive Lionfish, featuring 21 talks on the current state of lionfish research and control efforts in the Atlantic. During this session, REEF Affiliate Scientist, Dr. Stephanie Green, presented her findings on the efficacy of lionfish derbies. Her research shows that one-day derby events like the ones REEF coordinates in Florida and the Bahamas can result in a significant reduction of lionfish densities, up to 70%, over 180 square km, all the result of volunteer teams. Lad and Nova Southeastern University graduate student and upcoming REEF Intern, Adam Nardelli, also presented a research poster on the demographics of participants in the 2013 Key Largo Lionfish Derby.
And finally, REEF Grouper Moon Project collaborators, Dr. Brice Semmens (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) and Dr. Scott Heppell (Oregon State University) both presented talks during the fish spawning aggregation session, and we were also joined by collegues from the Cayman Islands Department of Environment (CIDOE). Brice presented findings from our research using Passive Acoustic Monitoring on a multi-species spawning aggregation on Little Cayman, and Scott presented a theory for why spawning aggregations have collapsed around the world and how our Grouper Moon research can be used to help inform future protection efforts.