Our October 2021 Fish of the Month is here to get your in the mood for Halloween. Meet the Dracula Shrimpgoby (Stonogobiops dracula)!
Survey Regions: The Dracula Shrimpgoby is resticted to the Western Indian Ocean including the Maldives, part of REEF's Indian Ocean and Red Sea (IORS) survey region. Click here to see the distribution report for this species in the REEF database.
September was an exciting month for members of the Pacific Northwest REEF Advanced Assessment Team (AAT). Expert Level surveyors (Levels 4 and 5) assisted with the annual Salish Sea monitoring project. This year’s effort was focused in the southern Salish Sea - South Puget Sound in Washington. The project, now in its 8th year, is conducted in partnership with UC Davis’ SeaDoc Society, and also includes sites in the San Juan Islands and islands off Vancouver, British Columbia.
Welcome to the Citizen Science Corner, our quarterly feature to acknowledge those who recently reached a milestone in our Volunteer Fish Survey Project. We are celebrating those who moved up an Experience Level or who achieved the 2021 Super Surveyor Challenge in July, August, or September 2021.
The impacts of invasive lionfish (Pterois volitans/miles) on native coral reef populations in the Western Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea can be enormous.
We are excited to welcome Hilary Penner to the REEF Team. As the new Education and Conservation Programs Manager, Hilary will develop community partnerships, create new youth learning opportunities, and engage REEF members to support our ocean conservation mission. While she's new to the staff, she not new to the organization; Hilary comes from a family of multi-generational REEF members and she herself has been involved with REEF for over two decades as a volunteer. Her first experience with REEF was on a Field Survey Trip to Bimini in 1996.
12th annual event a stunning success thanks to derby teams, festival attendees, and event volunteers
It's that time again: our biggest REEF Lionfish Derby of the year, the Florida Keys Lionfish Derby & Festival, is taking place next weekend, on Sept. 9-12. This is our 12th annual REEF Lionfish Derby hosted in the Florida Keys. With two full days of lionfish hunting and more than $6,000 in cash prizes up for grabs, plus a family-friendly festival, this is a great way for everyone to take a bite out of lionfish!
We are very excited to introduce the newest member of the REEF Team, Dr. Dan Greenberg. Dan will be working with REEF as a Research Associate for the next several months. He started work earlier this year to leverage REEF’s extensive Volunteer Fish Survey Project dataset, to estimate population trajectories and trends in abundance over space and time for various fish and invertebrate species. Prior to joining the REEF team, Dan was doing similar work as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.
There are still a few spaces available on the REEF Field Survey Trip to Gardens of the Queen marine park in Cuba, coming up on December 11-18, 2021. The Gardens of the Queen park is known as one of the best-preserved marine environments in the Caribbean, with frequent sightings of large predators like snapper, grouper, and sharks. It's also one of the few places where the rare Golden Fairy Basslet has been reported. Trip attendees will conduct fish surveys in this unique location and contribute valuable survey information to REEF's online database.
