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Andros, Bahamas

Red hind and Common octopus
Red hind and Common octopus
Nurse shark
Nurse shark
Local hurricane damage
Local hurricane damage

During October to December 2001 and again from January to March 2002 I joined the Greenforce coral reef biodiversity survey expedition on the Bahamian island of Andros.

Andros is the largest, although least densely populated island, of the Bahamas.  The Bahamian National Trust is planning of turning parts of the marine area on the east coast of Andros into a reserve, and the purpose of the project is to perform baseline surveys of the biodiversity of the area.

I decided to join the first two phases of this expedition as it was a new project and I wanted to participate in the setup phase, as well as a normally running phase.

The first phase proved to be quite exciting as I experienced my first hurricane!

After spending a few weeks setting up the research centre, we had to quickly dismantle it all and go into shelter when hurricane Michelle came heading for Andros.

Just as well, for as it turned out Michelle came right through the site. The wind, gusting 130mph (210km/h), toppled all but a couple of trees and left us with a mess that took a lot of effort to tidy up.

The second phase went more normally, although there was still quite a bit of camp building -- I mostly involved myself with constructing seating -- and also a lot of preliminary science work, the project as a whole having been put back a bit by the events of the first phase.

The team surveyed a considerable area in order to help the scientists decide where permanent monitoring sites should be.  We did three different types of surveys in accordance with Caribbean wide protocols.

One type of survey noted specific species of fish spotted along a set of 30metre transects, while another examined the habitat, corals being recorded down to species.  A third survey involved recording all fish species observed in a given area.

Personally I logged 110 species of fish and also saw some of the other reef inhabitants such as spiny lobster and octopus.  I saw a couple of Nurse sharks, both of them lying on the bottom under ledges and, on my final dive, a Green turtle, which must have been quite old as it had encrustations on its shell.

Banded butterflyfish
Banded butterflyfish
Trumpetfish
Trumpetfish
Four-eye butterflyfish
Four-eye butterflyfish
Queen triggerfish
Queen triggerfish
Great barracuda
Great barracuda
Hogfish
Hogfish
Indigo hamlet
Indigo hamlet
Nassau grouper
Nassau grouper
Southern stingray
Southern stingray
Porkfish
Porkfish

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