By Dr. S.R. Smith
Curator, Natural History Museum

The sailing research vessel Sea Dragon headed out to sea on Friday, June 5th to gather data on the Sargassum community around Bermuda, sponsored by the BAMZ support charities, the Atlantic Conservation Partnership and the Bermuda Zoological Society.

Dr. Robbie Smith, Curator of the Natural History Museum, led the team of Bermudian and US scientists and students for a three day expedition south of Bermuda. The crew consisted of Amy Harvey of the Bermuda College and two of her students, Joshua Stevens and Gary Taylor, Abbie Caldas of Greenrock, Kyla Smith from BIOS, Hannah Frith, a Bermudian undergraduate from Oberlin College, graduate student Pearce Cooper from the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama, graduate student Leslie Acton from Duke University and her professor Dr. Lisa Campbell.

The team collected Sargassum and described the diverse community within the seaweed. Pearce hoped to collect many fishes for comparison to his work in the Gulf of Mexico. Leslie is a marine policy student, and she and Lisa wanted a close-up look at Bermuda’s EEZ, as part of their study on Bermuda’s approach to ocean governance. Other work included surface tows to estimate floating plastic marine debris, night-time plankton tows to catch small vertically migrating deepwater fishes and also the deployment of a vertical longline to catch deepwater fishes and squids. Dr. Smith also kept an eye out for seabirds.