Underwater 'door bell' helps scientists to catch coral food fish in Florida | Florida

MArine scientist in Florida, who work to reverse a disaster for decades of decline in coral reefs, catch an innovative surveillance camera in the underwater and doorbell fishing “veranda pirates” in the act.

The film material showed that three coral livelo species -rotary papage fish, Foreye -butterfly fish and papagrotis papgrotes -were responsible for eating more than 97% of the corals that were laid by the researchers of an offshore reef near Miami as bait.

As you say, the results can help to inform the efforts to repopulate coral reefs after a decline in Florida's coral coverage since the 1970s after unprecedented blade events caused by climate protection, in particular the octopus heat in the last two summer.

“Intensive fish predation on newly exhibited corals has turned out to be a large restoring property. The main goal was to cope with our lack of knowledge of the fish species that aim at corals after the trip, ”said Diego Lirman, a leading worldwide provider in coral recovery research. He is a project manager and extraordinary professor at the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science of the University of Miami (UM).

“The identification of the fish species that are responsible for the coral predation would enable practitioners to avoid reef or areas within locations with high species and, in a similar way, to select the right coral species for the correct planting site,” said Lirman.

“The underwater cameras with coral heads give an insight into the behavior and preferences of Corallivore and enable the documentation of predators at different points quickly and without the costs of the planting.”

Lirman's team, financed by a scholarship from the Fish & Wildlife Foundation in Florida, designed and built a number of recording devices with GoPro cameras in waterproof housing, which are attached to a PVC frame, and with lead weights for stability. After shaky preliminary results, the divers secured later models for the sea floor in the paradise riff, near the most important Biscayne in the Miami-Dade district using masonry nails and cable ties.

The so-called C-BRUVS (coral bait sub-water video system) was set in such a way that a time-lapse video was recorded, and the film material was collected after the use of 24 and 48-hour periods and then weekly for the duration of the six-week project.

Lirman said that the team has overcome the first setbacks, including overheating of external batteries and leaks that cause flooding in the camera housing, while research was also not immune to small pirate style pilfery that were familiar to the homeowners above the ground that the thefts recorded on the front door.

“One of the C-Bruvs with a surface buoy was stolen from the reef,” he said.

Overall, however, the researchers viewed their experiment as a success. After the analysis of the pictures, they found that rotary papage fish, which are productive in the Caribbean and in water in front of Florida, were the most insatious predators and turned 56.3% of the bite on the nine coral species that were broadcast in fragments as bait.

Next came Fourreye Butterflyfish with 36.9%and Stoplight Papagrotfish with 4%. The three species, said Lirman: “showed clear preferences” for two or three certain coral species, which received more than 65% of all recorded bite.

The graduate of the UM -Marine scientist and the graduate of the master master, Erin Weisman, presented the results of the Reef Florida Symposium of Conservation Leaders at the Museum of Science of Miami and Patricia Frost in November.

“By determining the main fish predator and their preferred nutrition, reef reaction practitioners can select locations and species that minimize the effects of the predate and maximize the recovery success before implementing costly, costly planting,” said Lirman.

Future similar research could introduce elements of artificial intelligence.

“The analyzes of the videos were extremely time -consuming and require a constant return voltage and stop of the film material in order to absorb and comment on the interactions between corals and fishing,” he said.

“It will be an advantage to examine AI software that can be trained in order to identify fish and your behavior to automate the analysis process.”