My name is Stacey Williams, I'm a co-founder of a non-profit organization called the Institute for Socioecological Research.
And I'm a benthic ecologist and I've been studying the marine communities, shallow water reef systems, and deepwater reef systems around Puerto Rico and throughout the Caribbean.
Right now, I'm on the Okeanos Explorer and we are going around the U.S. Caribbean and Puerto Rico with multiple objectives.
Mapping and surveying and exploring the deep-sea habitats in this region and
also to characterize some of these benthic communities like deep-sea corals and sponges and also dimersal fishes, especially the commercially important fish.
We have a couple of commercial fish species in Puerto Rico that reside in some of these deep-sea habitats.
And one of the goals of this expedition is to survey and characterize these habitats and actually try to locate
and video some of these commercial species.
So we're hoping to see two species of snappers.
One is the silk snapper. It kind of resides in shallower depths.
The other one is the queen snapper.
And we're also hoping to observe the misty grouper, which is a deepwater grouper.
And not much is known of their habitat and what they eat, how they reproduce.
So this expedition is very important.
So what we have learned about this fish during this expedition is that many thought that the depth distribution of
queen snapper was actually down to 400 meters, or some fishermen said that it was down to 450 meters,
but just the other day, we actually were able to observe the queen snapper down to 539 meters.
So their depth distribution is actually much greater than what we thought.
Ah, I think this is a queen snapper. Yeah, this would be a new record depth for queen snapper if this is the case.
There we go. That would be a fortuitous dive site first.
And this has really important management implications for these deepwater habitats and for this species.
So the local Puerto Rican fishermen, they're playing an immense role on this expedition.
They have helped us before the expedition, to during the expedition.
They've been participating in calls and chats.
They also before the expedition recommended some of the sites to where we should visit because those are the sites where they target some of these queen snappers.
So their role on this expedition has been monumental.
Good morning, this is Ricardo Lugo.
There is a reef out there just south of that area which is very good for fishing.
But it's very good, the quality of the water is good mainly because there is no major river discharging into the area.
So the fishermen, with their help and their knowledge, we were able to actually go to some of these sites and survey some of these sites for queen snappers.
So the information collected during this expedition will help the local fishermen.
I can think of one way.
The local fishermen have mentioned to me before this expedition that they loose a lot of their gear
when fishing for these deepwater silk snappers and queen snappers because they use vertical longlines,
and a lot of times their lines get caught up in these corals and sponges and they lose their fishing gear.
So this expedition can help them possibly not target these areas, where there is a high diversity or a high abundance of corals and sponges.
So it could save them money in the long run.
By the way, this is incredible information for the fishermen because the bottom contour clearly explains to understand,
you know, why so many lines get stuck there.
So throughout this expedition, there's been a pretty terrific partnership.
We've been collaborating with scientists from all over the world and also some of the local fishermen from Puerto Rico,
and also even collaborating with representatives from the Caribbean Fishery Management Council
as well as from NOAA's Office of Ocean Exploration and Research.
And we been all coming together to explore some of these deep waters around Puerto Rico.