Our 350.org event for Moving Planet Day got posted on the official site! Check it out here and let us know what YOU are doing to “move beyond fossil fuels” on this Saturday, September 24.
Category Archives: Cape Eleuthera Institute
Fish Silage: Turning Fish into Fertilizer
Island School students, Aldis, Brett, and Sara are doing a human ecology project that utilizes the cobia harvesting waste into livestock feed and fertilizer, trying to further close the loop in our sustainable model here at CEI/IS. The fish silage will be used to feed the pigs and tilapia, as well as a fertilizer at the farm. Continue reading
Cobia for Parents Weekend Dinner
The Island School parents arrived for the weekend’s festivities full of excitement and overjoyed to see their children and their life for the past 3 months.
After 7 months of raising cobia, CEI’s aquaculture program decided to conduct the first harvest of 2011, just in time for parents weekend. A total of 150 cobia were harvested and filleted by CEI staff and IS students Brett, Sara, and Aldis. All fillets were prepared on the grill by Geoff and our lovely kitchen staff. The grilled cobia fillets were presented at dinner and cobia ceviche as an art show appetizer wednesday evening. After so much hard work and various obstacles, the aquaculturalist’s at CEI were overwhelmed with joy and tasted the success of cobia at dinner! There is more to come!
Where does all the cobia carcass waste go?
Stay tuned for our next update… “Fish Silage”
It is official, Gobies clean brood stock cobia!
What an exciting Monday morning for aquaculture! We now have 3 goby breeding pairs that have all laid eggs this week. Our most recent pair needed to be separated from the two other resident gobies, so we decided to experiment. It has been relayed by word of mouth that gobies will clean parasites off the cobia. Nothing is ever that easy at CEI, so we needed to see it to believe it.
Nine thirty this morning, Marie and I decided to take the leap of faith and place the 2 gobies into the brood stock cobia tank. No one knew what to expect. Would the gobies like their new home? Would the cobia know to stay still so the gobies could clean them? How long would it take until we would observe the gobies actually cleaning the cobia?
Summer and Fall Opportunities
Shark Week
Students are invited to join the shark research team to learn about the biology and ecology of Bahamian sharks. This course will be split equally between classes on shark conservation, biology and ecology, and time in the field gathering data for ongoing shark program projects. This course is physically demanding and involves time spent on boats, in all weather conditions, but will allow you to get up close and personal with some of the seas most incredible animals
Dates August 8-15, 2011 Age 16+ Cost $1,750
More information http://beta.islandschool.org/summer-term.aspx
Flats Research and Discovery
Students are invited to join the flats ecology research team to learn about the biology and ecology of bonefish. The course will include seine netting in creeks, tagging bonefish as a part of a nation-wide tagging program, transporting fish to the wet lab for future experiments, dissections, lectures, attending workshops on casting and fly tying, and preparing a research presentation. This course is physically demanding and involves time spent on boats and wading through creeks in all weather conditions.
Dates August 8-15, 2011 Age 16+ Cost $1,750
More information http://beta.islandschool.org/summer-term.aspx
Gap Year Program
The Gap Year Program at the Cape Eleuthera Institute is an intensive 8-week program focused on leadership, ecology, research, and sustainable development. This opportunity is for high school graduates or enrolled college students taking a semester or year off before continuing their academic career. Gap year students will earn PADI Open Water SCUBA certification and will have opportunity to acquire Advanced and Rescue diving certification as well. Who should apply? Students looking for hands-on involvement with innovative projects that teach people to live more responsibly.
Dates September 12 – November 7, 2011 Application deadline July 1, 2011
More information http://www.ceibahamas.org/gap-year.aspx
Second day of Flats Research Class
After an hour and a half of extensive reading and analyzing of the many Flats scientific papers; our focus was diminishing rapidly. Aaron decided to let us emerge from the fourth vault and expose ourselves to the Pufferfish. It started out as a break from our weekly routine, but we quickly found out that Alexis would send us on an adventure to visit our friends: Dusty, Lucky, and Ned (the fish tanks). We would soon be familiarized with the creatures submerged below the surface. They swam all about at first, but the Puffers soon realized that we would do them no harm and calmed down. The smell of the salty water greeted us along with the hiss of air stones as we took the tank conditions for the day (dissolved oxygen, salinity, temperature, ammonia, and pH). The Puffers darted about as we used the course brushes to scrub off the algae and siphon the bottom of the tanks. Our enthusiasm grew as the team came together to chop six sardines with scissors. As we fed the Pufferfish, the chopped remains floated to the bottom and we all watch the cute puffers nibbled on their diner.
Shark research
In the new year of 2011 the Shark Research and Conservation program at the Cape Eleuthera Institute has observed changes in juvenile lemon shark capture rates during tidal creek sampling surveys. Since the month of November, there has been a marked decrease in the number of sharks caught in creeks around South Eleuthera. We hypothesize that due to cooler water temperatures during the winter months, the shark’s metabolic rates have decreased requiring them to feed less frequently and therefore, take the bait on our survey line less. The lemon sharks may also be using a smaller amount of habitat and traveling in and out of creek mouths less, where survey lines are set, in effort to conserve energy. This additionally would cause them to be less prone to come into contact with the baited survey line, and be caught. Continue reading
Introducing: Aquaponics Research
by Apon students: Brandon, Garneisha, Ashlie, Sasha, George, and Perry.
Adventurers of sustainable fish farming
Quest to understand why tilapia have a musty flavor
Understand how to rid tilapia of this flavor
Amazed by results
Pondering how to make tilapia taste better than wild tilapia
Opened our mind to aquaponics
Necessary to sustain our current population
Interesting
Clever
SUSTAINABLE
This semester in Aquaponics our research team investigated the impact of finishing our tiliapia in different conditions before harvest. We purged our tilapia, which is when they go without food in order to rid them of funky tasting fat deposits, for two weeks while also finishing them in different salinities. We thought, because people tend to prefer salt water fish, that fish finished in saltier water would improve the overall flavor of fish. Tilapia often has a muddy or musty flavor. Since over fishing is a problem in South Eleuthera it is much more beneficial to eat farmed fish that actually taste better. We are excited for our parents to understand more about the aquaponics research in a few weeks!
AQUAPONICS: Conquering the funky taste of tilapia is our goal.
Congratulations…it’s a cobia!
by: Team Acult Research- Augie Cummings and Lea Luniewicz
Although we were down 3 scientist, Lea and Augie continued the research on the almighty sharknose goby. Earlier in the week we were on track to dive the cage, but despite Tyler’s heroic effort to save the day, we were without a boat. We recently received a small batch of 400,000 cobia eggs and spent all of Friday’s class separating out 8,500 cobia into a different tank.
The gobies are living it up in the pairing tank while some of those sly sharknoses have found their mates, and have moved on to better, more private real estate. They all seem to be getting to know each other better and some on more levels than others. All the color of the gobies have seemingly returned so physically they are looking pretty too. We believe that the guys indoors have been doing better because of the much more pleasurable environment. Until next time, stay classy South Eleuthera!