The plight of Tasmania’s handfish

The cold waters of Tasmania might seem like a far cry from Indonesia’s treasured critter-dive locations, but for those willing to brave the cold, they hold some amazing treasures. Put on your drysuit, grab your camera, take the plunge, and you just might discover some of the rarest fish on the planet.

Tasmanian dive sites are home to seadragons, multiple seahorse species, but the critters that will convince me to shiver my ass off are the handfishes. Handfish are relatives of the better-known frogfishes, which means to have a similar fishing lure (adapted dorsal fin spines) on top of their head. As the name implies, they also have adapted pectoral fins which resemble hands. Like their frogfish cousins, handfish spend most of their life on the seafloor, waiting for unsuspecting prey to swim by and gobble up.

There are 14 known handfish species, all of which are found only in southern Australia. Unfortunately, 8 out of the 14 species are endangered. One species, the Smooth handfish (Sympterichthys unipennis) even has the unfortunate distinction of being the first marine fish to have gone extinct.

What a fish! The red Handfish (Thymichthys politus) is critically endangered. Photo credit: Tyson Bessell

Other handfish species are not doing much better and might follow in the Smooth Handfish’s unfortunate footsteps all too soon. The Red Handfish (Thymichthys politus), Spotted Handfish (Brachionichthys hirsutus), and Ziebell’s Handfish (Brachiopsilus ziebelli) are all considered to be Critically Endangered. The fate of the Ziebell’s handfish in particular is looking very grim since no confirmed sightings have been reported in 14 years 😦

The sad state of handfish is ironic as, not unlike other endangered or extinct species, they used to be very common. So common in fact, that less than 50 years ago, the local university used them as a model animal for dissections in zoology classes! Early Tasmanian settlers and convicts even considered eating them because they were found everywhere and were easy to collect, but decided against it because they were too small (less than 10cm).

So what went so wrong that we now fear they might go extinct? The main reason for their issues is habitat destruction and degradation. The combined effects of destructive fishing pressures, coastal development, increased pollution and silt runoff means that much of the places they used to thrive are no longer suitable. To add insult to injury, the waters home to handfish have been invaded by the Northern Pacific Seastar (Asterias amurensis). There are now millions of them in prime handfish habitat, and they love to eat handfish eggs and the stalked ascidians the Spotted handfish lay their eggs on. Without a proper place to attach their eggs, the handfish can’t reproduce anymore, with a crashing population as a result.

The critically endangered Spotted Handfish (Brachionichthys hirsutus). Photo credit: Rick Stuart-Smith

Luckily for the handfish, a dedicated group of people are trying their very best to turn its fortunes around. The Handfish Conservation Project is a team of researchers and conservationists that is working hard to save these amazing species. The project has mapped out recovery plans, does research on handfish to better understand how we can help them, and has a citizen science portal to report handfish sightings. In a very cool recent project, science and art were combined successfully to make ceramic egg habitats that are unpalatable for the invasive seastars, but acceptable for handfish to lay eggs on.

If, like me, you want to help conserve these fantastic critters, there’s a few things you can do. If you see Red or Ziebell’s handfish, please report it here, ideally accompanied by pictures. If you can and want to, you can donate to the project here. If you are really keen, you can even name an endangered handfish! For more general info on handfish conservation, the Handfish Conservation Project website is a good place to start.

The Red Handfish (Thymichthys politus) has good reasons to look grumpy. Photo credit: Tyson Bessell

TEDx talk: Small critters and ocean health

Last September I had the pleasure of doing a TEDx talk in Stuttgart. The video is online now so you can check it out on TED or just watch below. The talk combines aspects of my research on small critters, biofluorescence and environmental DNA. I hope you enjoy watching it as I enjoyed doing the talk 🙂

Ambon and Halmahera fieldwork: Mini-blog 2 – Logistics

I have made my way to Ambon since the last blog, where I have been preparing the last logistics with my local colleagues from Pattimura University before the actual fieldwork begins. In the last 3 days, the other team members have also started arriving, with the final team member (and master fish counter) landing tomorrow morning. The main things that had to happen before our boat leaves port (besides recovering from jetlag), was organising a detailed plan, training new team members, and preparing all the gear. 

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Cloudy Ambon days

One of the things we will be doing, is collecting environmental DNA (eDNA) to study biodiversity on coral reefs. If you want to know more about eDNA, I have written more about it here or here. In short: eDNA are tiny fragments of DNA in the water column that come from poop, mucus, etc. By filtering and analysing a scoop of water, we can tell what lives in the area we took water from. Because eDNA is such a new method, most people have not used it before. So in a great mutual benefit arrangement, our Pattimura University colleagues took us (my colleague Dom and me) out for a dive and in return we showed them how to collect water 😉

We obviously did more than just collecting seawater, we also went back to the lab to teach them the protocols on how to filter samples while avoiding contamination. Since eDNA analysis is so good at picking up the tiniest fragments of DNA, a careless brush of a fingertip can render the entire sample useless. We are collecting data from a boat instead of a high-tech lab, so being aware of how things can go wrong is absolutely crucial to get reliable data.

Tomorrow morning we set sail (start engine?) for 10 days of research around Ambon. So today we had make sure all the equipment got to the boat, for us to leave at first light in the morning. Between dive gear (including compressors, tanks, etc), survey tools, eDNA equipment, and other random practical bits and pieces, it took multiple returns trips with the pickup to get everything to the boat. Science is of course hungry work and feeding 16 people takes a lot of grocery shopping, which was luckily taken care of by our local team. Gino (our Ambon trip leader) has assured me we have an excellent chef on board, so be aware that there is a decent chance that the rest of these fieldwork blogs will mostly be about tasty Indonesian food!

As we will be on a boat for quite a while in the next weeks, I am not sure yet if I will be able to post blogs until we are back on the mainland. If I can snatch up some 4G signal along the way, you’ll be able to read an update on the fieldwork in a couple of days. Otherwise, the next blog will be online around the 11th of October.

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Sunny Ambon days

Musings on the 4th Asia-Pacific Coral Reef Symposium

downloadI am writing this blog while in transit in Kuala Lumpur, traveling from Cebu (the Philippines) to Perth. I was in Cebu to attend the Asia-Pacific Coral Reef Symposium (APCRS 2018). In the past I have written about the reasons why as a scientist I like visiting conferences, such as IPFC or ICRS. Those reasons have not changed: hearing about new research, meeting up with colleagues and friends, discussing new collaborations, and sharing my own research with people working on similar topics.

What was different atthis conference, is that it was my first international conference after submitting my PhD thesis. This was also the first time that I was invited as a  keynote speaker (for a mini-symposium that was part of the bigger conference). The conference had a strong regional focus, so many of the people attending conduct their research in the same region as I do. So there were a lot more opportunities for developing new collaborative projects than on larger conferences.

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Presenting my first keynote on the Sustainable Coral Reef mini-Symposium parallel to APCRS 2018 (Photo credit: Sugbu Turismo)

Here are some of my impressions while the last days are still fresh in mind….kind of fresh at least, the conference organisation was very generous in the amount of free San Miguel beer provided at the dinner last night 😉

More than other conferences I attended, APCRS 2018 had a strong management and practical feel to it. Many conversations I had and most of the presentations I heard had a strong underlying theme of developing solutions that could actually be used for managing reefs. What really made it interesting was that not only scientists, but also some managers and conservation organisations were presenting their work. I might be a bit too optimistic, but I feel that in the last years, many of the idealistic, but completely unrealistic ideas are being replaced by a more realistic approach that does not turn a blind eye to the real problems.

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Presenters of the Sustainable Coral Reef Tourism session (Photo credit: Sugbu Turismo)

Talking about how to use research results for management with the people working for organisations like Reefcheck, GreenFins, or CMAS was sometimes confronting, but also a great way to start having an impact beyond mere suggestions in scientific papers. Besides discussing future projects that will result in helping management, I also had some very inspiring talks with other researchers. If all goes well, the end of 2018 could become even more fun than I already expected. Hopefully more on that later!

There was another interesting theme that kept on coming back through many of the conversation I had: “What are we trying to achieve as scientists?” Or even more fundamental: “Why are we REALLY doing what we do”? It might seem obvious; most scientific papers will state that one way or another they want to understand the world better, and usually that they want to make a positive difference. But it can be interesting to ask if that’s what we are really doing? To what extent are we actually making a difference, or just following our curiosity? Are we willing to do the extra effort that is needed to truly have a positive impact? Or are we sometimes forgetting about the world beyond academia and writing papers because that is what you do when you want a career in science?

There is no judgement in any of these motivations, most of the scenarios are equally valuable. But realising why you do the research that you do, might help you to be more focused and get the results you aim for. At least it does for me…

This conference was probably one of the most productive and inspirational conferences I have attended since I started my PhD in 2014. I am very much looking forward to the next one in Singapore in 2022, and the new projects that I’ll be working on in between!

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Audience at the sustainable tourism session – APCRS 2018 (Photo credit: Sugbu Turismo)