James Morris ‘09 PHD spends his time plotting defenses for invasions. No, he doesn’t work for the Department for Homeland Security, and he’s not in the military. Morris, who did his doctoral work at NC State’s Center for Marine Sciences and Technology (CMAST), is an ecologist at the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science’s Center [...]
Resource managers are faced with environmental changes that threaten the health and vitality of coral reef ecosystems as a result of expanding coastal development, tourism and new industries in many Caribbean nations. To assist coral reef resource managers in their mitigation and conservation efforts, NCCOS, through the Coral Disease and Health Consortium with funding support [...]
NCCOS and Carleton University (CU) scientists joined forces to map potentially toxic fishing grounds in the Caribbean by tracking the movement of ciguatoxic fish over an extended period of time. Analysis of the blood of 38 great barracuda live-captured by the CU team off the coast of Cape Eleuthera, Bahamas revealed that about 60% of [...]
On May 7-18, scientists from NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science and Southeast Fisheries Science Center led a multiagency field mission to conduct the most comprehensive visual fishery-independent characterization of fish and benthic communities around the island of St. Croix USVI to date. The mission was funded by NOAA’s Coral Reef Conservation Program and [...]
Researchers from the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science developed effective, inexpensive molecular lab tests for field samples to detect algae responsible for a widespread seafood-borne illness. In this month’s Journal of Phycology, the scientists describe assays to detect and quantify six species of Gambierdiscus that cause ciguatera fish poisoning in the Atlantic, Caribbean, and [...]
In June of this year, scientists from the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) will begin the second phase of research aimed at characterizing impacts of land-based sources of pollution on diverse habitats of the St. Thomas East End Reserve (STEER) in the US Virgin Islands. The first phase of the research took place in June of [...]
The University of Puerto Rico research cruise, April 25-May 10, sponsored by the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, used high-resolution bathymetric mapping to further detail the distribution of MCEs within the U.S. Caribbean, which will aid in quantifying, understanding and eventually predicting their occurrence. Because MCEs serve as essential habitat and refugia for threatened [...]
Underwater acoustics for mapping the water column Underwater acoustics (ie. fisheries sonars) uses sound to detect and map the presence of fish and other organisms in the water column. An acoustic signal or ping is sent into the water column from an transducer. The strength of the return signal is measured and is correlated to [...]