{"id":122,"date":"2013-11-01T19:24:04","date_gmt":"2013-11-01T19:24:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/?p=122"},"modified":"2013-11-08T18:04:54","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T18:04:54","slug":"fun-fact-lionfish-create-jets-of-water-to-orient-their-prey-for-headfirst-consumption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/2013\/11\/01\/fun-fact-lionfish-create-jets-of-water-to-orient-their-prey-for-headfirst-consumption\/","title":{"rendered":"Fun fact: lionfish create jets of water to orient their prey for headfirst consumption."},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in September,\u00a0we were taken to a site called Admiral\u2019s Aquarium for our first snorkel of the semester.\u00a0 There wasn’t much of a current, but there was more than we were used to, and the swell was pretty big \u2013 as in every time you lifted your head to try and listen to the intern showing you around, you got a face full of water.\u00a0 My first night snorkel here was at a site called Shark Alley, which is really quite spectacular, except that we had no idea what we were doing and ended up on a shallow shelf of coral, turning it into a mind game that went along the lines of \u201cif I suck my stomach in enough I won\u2019t hit those corals.\u201d\u00a0 My bazillionth snorkel here had both big swells and shallow reef \u2013 and I was carrying a laboratory.<\/p>\n

\"This<\/a><\/p>\n

Okay, not quite, but it was our second time collecting data for directed research and we hadn’t gotten used to\u00a0the equipment yet.\u00a0 Directed research projects started last week, and the resource management professor and three other students and I are studying the proliferation of the invasive lionfish, Pterois volitans<\/i>, at various sites near South Caicos.\u00a0 When we go out for a research dives or snorkels, we carry underwater slates, pencils, transect tapes, clip weights for the end of the transect tapes, and plastic T-bars with centimeter increments.<\/p>\n

Besides the fact that it means I get to dive between four and eleven times a week, this is a fascinating and relevant research project because it involves the world\u2019s most ecologically-harmful marine invasion ever.\u00a0 You know the stereotypical look-at-this-reef-and-all-the-pretty-fish-isn’t-nature-amazing type of picture?\u00a0 A lionfish will\u00a0eat pretty much every single fish in that picture as long as it can open its mouth wide enough.\u00a0 They eat up to 6% of their body weight per day (even as a rower, I can\u2019t eat nine pounds of food a day); not only that, but native reef fishes haven\u2019t figured out an effective defense mechanism to avoid their predation, and the only fish that eat them are the hugely-overfished grouper.\u00a0 Also, they\u2019re venomous.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

The environmental morals of the story: don\u2019t let your cool aquarium fish out into the ocean because they will take over everything, and use reusable water bottles instead of buying those single-use plastic ones.\u00a0 That latter part was absolutely unrelated to\u00a0lionfish, just something I thought I\u2019d throw in there after a recent lecture on pollution and marine debris (remember that campaign on campus last spring with the plastic jellyfish hanging in\u00a0the SUB?).\u00a0 I\u2019ll get down from my soapbox now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in September,\u00a0we were taken to a site called Admiral\u2019s Aquarium for our first snorkel of the semester.\u00a0 There wasn’t much of a current, but there was more than we were used to, and the swell was pretty big \u2013 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":386,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[24,25,19],"class_list":["post-122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","hentry","category-leah-shamlian-14","tag-research","tag-scuba-diving","tag-study-abroad","post_format-post-format-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/386"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":156,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions\/156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}