Tag Archives: gobies

Cape Eleuthera Institute, News, research

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?

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Cape Eleuthera Institute, Uncategorized

Congratulations…it’s a cobia!

Augie and Lea checking out the gobies

by: Team Acult Research- Augie Cummings and Lea Luniewicz

Gian Paul happily transfers baby cobia

 

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!