Curasub collecting specimens. Photo by Barry Brown
In August 2012, Carole Baldwin
(Division of Fishes) and her team continued their exploration of Curacao’s deep
reefs with the
Curasub. The five-person
submersible, based in Curacao in the Southern Caribbean, allows researchers to
collect reef species to a depth of 1,000 ft (ca. 305 m.). In the second year of fieldwork for the Deep
Reef Observation Project (DROP), Carole, Ross Robertson (
Smithsonian Tropical
Research Institute, Panama), and Lee Weigt, Amy Driskell and Cristina Castillo
(LAB) collected, photographed, sampled tissues and preserved fish specimens
from deep-reef depths in a small, ca. 50-hectare area adjacent to the Curacao
Sea Aquarium.
Top left: Paedomorphic sea bass, Jeboehlkia gladifer, 950 ft., photo by Ross Robertson and Carole Baldwin. Top right: Spanish Flag, Gonioplectrus hispanus, 511 ft., photo by Ross Robertson and Carole Baldwin. Bottom left: Sharktooth moray, Gymnothorax maderensis, 782 ft., photo by Ross Robertson. Bottom right: Sea Toad, Chaunax pictus, 830 ft., photo by Barry Brown, Substation Curacao.
Nearly every dive yielded species new
to collection efforts, and it is clear more exploratory work is needed to fully
document local diversity. To date, the team has collected
over 90 species of fishes, up to 25% of which appear to be new to science! DROP
adds CO1 sequences (DNA barcodes) to the Barcode of Life Database (BOLD) and
preserved voucher specimens to the NMNH Fish Collection of new and rare
Caribbean shorefishes. Photographs of
freshly caught specimens are providing the first color information for many
species.
This fall, members of the DROP team
will travel aboard a research vessel renovated recently to carry the sub to
explore waters off the uninhabited island of Klein Curacao. This will initiate an effort to study
diversity and genetic connectivity among geographically separate deep reefs,
which ultimately will enable researchers to address questions of biogeography
and evolution on a broad scale.
