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Day 1, August 1, 2005 TER daily cruise report
After getting under way from Key West and running to the eastern side of the Tortugas Banks we completed two of our permanent stations within the Ft. Jefferson National Park.
Divers surveyed the sites and completed censuses of reef and shelf (nearby sand areas) fishes and the attached benthic flora and fauna. Notably we encountered two Goliath grouper one a 5 feet in length that came to see what all the commotion was about. At this size these guys are not shy and we got some good photographs.
In the evening we collected video tape records of the bottom habitat at 2 beam trawl sites with our drop video camera . These sites are on the shelf north of the banks located in prime pink shrimp fishing grounds; we are comparing benthic assemblages of the areas open and closed to fishing. After dark we collected beam trawl samples at two of our permanent sites. We caught a wide variety of crabs and shrimp including some pink shrimp over 8 inches in total length and a variety of benthic fishes; flounders, cusk eels, small sea basses and file fish; we will have to tease out the effects of community complexity to determine the effect of fishing closure. Operations were completed by 1130 PM.