Blue Heron Bridge is located past Fort Lauderdale and is a beautiful little boat channel.  Most people know it as just a fun little place to swim or fish, but some of us know it as the best place to find critters! Blue Heron is not your typical Florida reef dive; it is actually nothing like it.  It is a very shallow dive, with the max depth at around 12 feet, and it is all sand with giant pillars from the bridge forming structure for critters to hide.  When I was first told about this dive we talked about how there was an active boat channel right next to where we would be diving, and about how it is a muck dive and the current can sometimes pick up so the viability will go way down.  So I must admit that I was a little apprehensive about the dive.  Fortunately, I was in great hands and all the things we talked about were just for safety and to prepare us for what to do.  After driving three hours to get to Blue Heron, we finally entered the water around 11.  We had to time the dive right so we would be there for slack tide and the current didn’t wash us out to the boat channel.  After going over our dive plan, we headed out.  I was told that there were a lot of things dumped in the water like shopping carts or old sunken boats, and I questioned why people would want to make the three hour dive to stare at some trash, but after I got out there I began to understand.  All the big structures that were thrown into the water provided habitat to tons of animals I had never seen before.  When we began our dive we had talked about what we wanted to see the most and of course I knew exactly what mine was; a seahorse!  I had never seen a seahorse before, and was beginning to think that they were a myth, but sure enough half way through our dive I hear someone tapping on their tank to get my attention.  I quickly swim over and see a tiny pink seahorse holding on to a piece of algae with its tail.  Needless to say I did my little underwater happy dance and had everyone laughing.  Not only did we see this little guy but we also found another on our way back in!  I am so excited to cross that off my critters to see bucket list (nerd alert).  Some other critters that I was equally excited to see on my dive were two octopi, a few sea robins, and a flying gurnard.  The dive was two hours long and while it wasn’t the prettiest dives I have been on, it offered a chance to see some amazing rare species and I hope to go back soon to find more. 

My first sea horse!

Hiding octopus

Another sea horse!

The Great Annual Fish Count is an event that takes place across the world every year during the month of July.  It is organized by REEF to help get people in the water and counting fish.  This year another intern and I took the lead on this project for the Florida Keys and coordinated a fish ID talk and dive.  REEF cannot do what we do best and preserve the oceans without the help of citizen scientists.  This is why we try to spread the idea of doing fish surveys to as many people we can.  As I mentioned in one of my other blogs, volunteer fish surveys are one of the main projects at REEF.  It is actually pretty easy and anyone interested can partake with the right training.  We use a roving diver technique, which means that the diver does a regular dive and while they are swimming around they write down all the fish they see and their abundance.  For the Great Annual Fish Count, we hosted a fish ID class where we taught the public about the most common fish here in Key Largo, Florida.  REEF is a worldwide organization and we do surveys in every ocean.  For Florida, however, we are grouped into the Tropical Western Atlantic or TWA.  After we taught everyone about their fish, we set up a day to go out on a dive boat where we provided underwater paper, slates and pencils to anyone interested in doing a survey. We had a great turn out, with many people interest in doing a survey and learning about REEF.  I loved being able to see people getting as excited about fish ID as I am.  There was a father out diving with his two sons and it made my day watching them point to a fish and swim over to me and ask me what it was.  After I told them their eyes would light up and they would quickly check it off their list. I am glad that so many people were interested in going out and preserving our reefs.

Just doing my surveys

Chromis

Chromis

Eel

Angelfish

Hamlet

Lionfish derbies are one of the big ways that REEF helps with controlling lionfish abundance.  During the summer REEF hosts a series of derbies all around Florida and in the Caribbean that are open to the public.  Lionfish derbies consist of many different teams that go out for the day and bring back as many lionfish as they can.  This year I was lucky enough to help run the Green Turtle Cay Derby in the Bahamas!  Green Turtle Cay was actually the first place to host a lionfish derby and we are excited that they have held one every year since.  Along with the derby, REEF has been doing some monitoring research to see the effectiveness of derbies.  For the whole week prior to the derby our REEF team surveyed around 80 sites looking for lionfish and doing predator/prey surveys as well as fish counts.  This research is being done to see how much impact derbies have on the control of lionfish. The research was very interesting and I look forward to seeing the results after we analyze the data.

Lionfish on the reef

Lionfish on a wreck

A ton of lionfish on a wreck

Out on the water doing research

After a long day of research we get to enjoy the sunset!

As for the actual derby, we have tons of teams going out throughout the week to scope out their best lionfish sites, but the real fun starts on Friday.  Each team must have a member present at the Captains Meeting on Friday night to hear all the rules and regulations.  The captains’ meeting is where teams that are not preregistered sign up and tons of people walking around buying raffle tickets or REEF merchandise.  I love all the competition in the air as each team tries to talk up how many fish they will be catching the next day.  After the captains meeting, the teams go home to hopefully get a good night’s rest before the start of the derby at sunrise. Teams go out all day in hopes to collect the most lionfish and win any of the cash prizes.  There are prizes first through third in the categories; most, biggest and smallest.  All the teams must be back at the dock by 4:00 sharp.  This is when they bring all their fish up and we size them and count them.  It’s always crazy with the amount of fish being brought in and everyone running around checking the score board to see whose winning.  This year we had  907 lionfish come in, a great improvement over the previous years!  Something interesting that we noticed was that more of the fish were on the small size, this could mean that the derbies are really effective in keeping the population down and that we are only finding the new juveniles of the year.   Hopefully all our research will show how much derbies are helping control the population of lionfish and how the hard work of all our participants is really helping the reefs.

The REEF Crew at the derby

Me recording data

In front of the score board

At the banquet all dressed up