Expedition Log: BIOT – Day 9 Blacksaddled Groupers (Plectropomus laevis) are aggregating in Chagos. Groupers are usually solitary fish, except when it comes to spawning, when small groups or larger aggregations form to release large quantities of eggs and sperm
Expedition Log: BIOT – Day 7 Before starting our research in Chagos, I read several reports stating how many fish we could expect to see during the mission. Chagos is supposed to have more fish than anywhere else in the
Expedition Log: BIOT – Day 6 A species is said to be endemic if it is confined to a defined region like an island, country or geographical zone. As we move our research from the West Pacific to the Indian
Expedition Log: BIOT – Day 5 Today we hear from Konrad Hughen, Senior Scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, about the process of coral coring and how it is being used to measure changes in climate in this remote
Expedition Log: BIOT – Day 3 School is definitely in session here in Chagos! The fish team has had our hands full trying to identify, count, and size all the fish we’ve been seeing in our surveys. The reefs here
Expedition Log: BIOT – Day 2 For our first mission to the British Indian Ocean Territories (BIOT), our research is concentrated on the southern banks of the Chagos Archipelago. This area includes a number of small islands and atolls. Our
Expedition Log: Palau – Day 21 Today is the last day the Global Reef Expedition’s mission to Palau. Over the last five weeks our team of scientists surveyed 85 different coral reefs, stretching from Angaur in the south, through the
Expedition Log: Palau – Day 20 While doing coral reef surveys in Palau we select sites to get a variety of different habitats while trying to cover as many reef systems as possible. Many of the dives we do are
Expedition Log: Palau – Day 19 Algae, often referred to as “seaweed,” are underwater “plants” that, unlike land plants, lack a vascular system. Algae live underwater and obtain water, nutrients, and sunlight directly from the environment. Because algae don’t need
Expedition Log – Day 12 One of the largest challenges for our coral surveys is the proper identification of the corals. When measuring and counting corals along transects we rarely identify them to species, mainly because there are some 450
