Cruise Report for 2011 -- nf1102 - DOS F2010-122

FINAL CRUISE REPORT

NOAA CRUISE ID:NF-11-02

US STATE DEPARTMENT CRUISE ID:DOS F2010-122

SHIP NAME: NOAA Ship Nancy Foster

OPERATING AGENCY: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

PROJECT TITLE: Coral Reef Ecosystem Research

CRUISE DATES: 19 April 2011 through 7 May 2011

CHIEF SCIENTIST:

Ryan H. Smith

NOAA/AOML/PhOD

4301 Rickenbacker Causeway

Miami, FL 33149 USA

305-361-4328 (tel)

305-361-4392 (fax)

ryan.smith@noaa.gov

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/people/smith

CLEARANCE COUNTRIES:

The Bahamas (MAF/FIS/13 of 17 January 2011)

Dominican Republic (MRE reply to U.S. Embassy Dip. Note 4, undated)

United Kingdom (FCO Dip. Note 022/2011 of 15 April 2011),

for Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, and Turks and Caicos Islands

PORT OF EMBARKATION: San Juan, Puerto Rico (USA), 19 April 2011

PORT OF DISEMBARKATION: Miami, Florida (USA), 7 May 2011

To gain the information necessary to develop more specific hypotheses, the fifth research cruise of this project was conducted between April 19, 2011 and May 7, 2011 aboard the NOAA Ship Nancy Foster. This survey sampled water properties, currents, and dispersal and transport of settlement-stage larvae in the VI and neighboring regions. It helped to provide an understanding of regional spatial variation in the supply of settlement-stage fishes, and also insights into the relative importance of Grammanik Bank and its MPAs as a source of juvenile fishes recruiting to the waters of the VI.

Specifically, the cruise provided a data collection platform to help us address the following questions: (1) How do the abundance and composition of ichthyoplankton around Grammanik Bank and other similar banks change with space and time? (2) How much of this variation in abundance and composition can be explained by the oceanographic setting? (3) How do the oceanography and ichthyoplankton assemblages interface with the boundary areas of seasonally or permanently closed MPAs?

Additional sampling took place between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and at selected sites in the Bahamas. Plankton sampling in these areas was designed to focus on tuna and billfish larvae. Previous surveys of gonadosomatic indices in adult fish captured from longline vessels in the eastern Caribbean have suggested that the region may be an important spawning ground for these species, especially swordfish (Xiphias gladius).

Larval sampling in the region has been historically extremely sparse, but scattered catches of the larvae of swordfish, marlin and several tunas have been recorded previously in the northeastern Caribbean and Bahamas. In addition, we investigated the possibility of bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) spawning outside of the documented Gulf of Mexico spawning ground. Although adult bluefin tuna have been captured on longline vessels between the Bahamas and Puerto Rico, there is no evidence thus far that they are spawning in the Caribbean, even though water temperatures are theoretically suitable. By completing plankton sampling concurrent with physical oceanographic sampling, we aim to better define the environmental conditions associated with tuna and billfish spawning in the Caribbean and tropical Atlantic. This will improve understanding of the biology of highly migratory and commercially important fish species, and contribute to the development of informed management practices.

To determine how are the unprotected VI banks, MPAs such as the Hind Bank Marine Conservation District, seasonally closed areas such as Grammanik Bank, inshore areas and adjacent islands ecologically linked via regional reef fish larval dispersal, transport, and lifehistory patterns?