Hello!
And welcome to the virtual Get Into Your
Sanctuary celebration.
Where we take a trip to Georgia's coast
to learn what Gray's Reef National
Marine Sanctuary
has for its year-round visitors. My name
is Ben Prueitt,
I'm an Outreach and Social Media
Coordinator at the Gray's Reef National
Marine Sanctuary.
Today, we'll help you make the most out
of your trip to Gray's Reef.
We'll start with an overview of the NOAA
Office of National Marine Sanctuaries,
take you out to Gray's Reef National
Marine Sanctuary, and lastly talk
technology.
And specifically what technologies
marine scientists and scuba divers are
using when they visit Gray's Reef.
If you have any questions throughout the
interview we want to hear them through
our chat feature.
Our sanctuary staff will be keeping an
eye out for questions and comments
throughout the interview.
Don't be shy, Ask away. I'll be joined
shortly by our two panelists to talk the
technologies they use for research and
diving,
but first let's get started with our
celebration of Get Into Your Sanctuary.
Each year, Get Into Your Sanctuary
weekend encourages you to get out
and enjoy the wonders of your oceans and
lakes. Since not everyone is able to make
it out and explore this year, we're
bringing the sanctuaries to you.
Each sanctuary does their Get Into Your
Sanctuaries a little bit differently,
at Gray's Reef we encourage people to
explore the fishing diving
and boating found at our reefs and live
bottoms
the National Marine Sanctuary System is
a network of 14 National Marine
Sanctuaries
and two Marine National Monuments. We
encompass over six-hundred-thousand
square miles of marine waters in the
United States.
These sanctuaries span all the way from
the Northwest and the Pacific,
to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic
Ocean.
I wish I had more time to talk about
each of these incredible sites,
but for now you'll have to visit
sanctuaries.noaa.gov.
As I mentioned, we'll be focusing today
on the Gray's Reef National Marine
Sanctuary,
which was America's fourth Marine
Sanctuary designated in 1981
to preserve the extraordinary beauty of
the area and protect the habitat of its
diverse marine life.
Gray's Reef is located ninteen miles off the
coast of Georgia.
That's east of Sapelo Island,
you'll see here. The total
Sanctuary size is twenty-two square miles.
It's the same as fifty miles south of
Savannah, GA.
So from Savannah to the Sanctuary is fifty
miles. And the average water depth is
about sixty-five feet.
Scientists have documented over
two-hundred species of fish.
Visitors at Gray's Reef regularly swim
with Atlantic Spadefish,
Black Sea Bass, many species of Grouper
and Snapper,
Seaweed Blennies, Sheepshead,
and other colorful inhabitants. Sharks
are also commonly
sighted at the Sanctuary through all
levels of the water column.
And our two panelists today
have many experiences with
with some of these fish and
maybe even some with sharks which we'll
get into. Over nine-hundred species of
invertebrates live at Gray's Reef.
Species like tunicates, commonly known as
"sea squirts",
corals, urchins, and many species of
sponges, make
up the colorful life protected in the
Sanctuary.
The Sanctuary is more than just life
found on the seafloor.
The waters and the air above the bottom
are studied and managed in various ways
to conserve the Sanctuary for
generations to come. The sanctuary plays
a role in supporting recreational
fishing and diving,
scientific research, endangered species -
like the North Atlantic right whale and
the Loggerhead sea turtle.
I'll now introduce my guests for today.
The opinions presented here
are those of the speakers and do not
necessarily represent the opinions of
NOAA
or those of the speakers organizations.
So first I'll bring up
Peter Auster. Hello Peter!
Yeah, good morning. How are you today?
Doing well.
Peter Auster is a marine ecologist and
his research focuses on the ecology
conservation and management of marine
fishes and their habitats.
For over a decade, he has been using
multiple technologies to understand the
behavioral interactions
of predators and prey at Gray's Reef. So
Peter,
what new technologies have you been
using at the Gray's Reef National Marine
Sanctuary?
So as you noted I'm a marine ecologist
and I'm at University of Connecticut and
Mystic Aquarium.
So for about 12 years, I've
been
I've been working at Gray's Reef
National Marine Sanctuary,
principally studying the
predator-prey interactions.
So we've been looking at
predator-prey interactions.
How predators and prey vary over
space and time
within the Sanctuary and the
role that reefs play in mediating these
types of
of predator prey roles. And so over the
course of time, you know we've used the
human eye as the principle
sampling tool, augmented by
handheld still and video cameras. We've
used split beam acoustics
which is a fancy fish finder - scientific
fish finder -
for looking at how we can actually
count animals
over space running surveys from the
ship. We've done acoustic
tagging of fishes. We've used time lapse
videos using GoPros.
But now we can use these small virtual
reality video cameras
uh that are in the old days they used to
be - the old days maybe being only a few
years prior - used to be forty to fifty
thousand dollars.
Now you can buy these cameras that are
commercial off the shelf
five hundred plus dollars that
we can use to over almost a 100 feet
of depth and they're very low profile. We
can place them on the reef just like
this.
Here's one of the cameras. It's got
lenses on both sides
so it takes a spherical view of its
surroundings
in continuous video and
it essentially stitches both sides,
both the images from both lenses
together.
And like I said, they're low profile so
they're relatively low interference.
Divers, we don't need to swim it
around. Divers don't need to be there.
We can put it on a small tripod
and collect samples of
behavior and species composition without
the interference of divers being present.
Now it's important to note, too, that
this doesn't replace diving
and the surveys we do underwater. 0:06:43.600,0:06:47.199 So when we're underwater we can
run these long transects
along reefs and on a long live bottom
but by leaving these video virtual
reality video cameras on the bottom
we can get a picture of what goes on
in individual places
on reefs over the course of time. And
again without the potential
interference
of of divers. So we see a wide range of
species
like that previously just a large Red
Snapper, Loggerhead turtle.
We see large barracuda. There's a large
school of of Spadefish.
Here's maybe a real
useful demonstration
of the kinds of things we can see.
There's clouds of forage fish,
these are small Tomtates, and Cigar
Minnows.
I forgot the common name for these
beyond Cigar minnows. In any case,
these are small
there's a species related to
Barracuda.
There's a large, might be a
Sandbar Shark.
And Spanish Mackerel so these all
interact
along the front edges
of these reefs
We can see Black Sea Bass
following Almaco Jacks as they search
for prey
and hunt for fish. We can see
relatively rare
occurrences at reefs of species
like this Atlantic
Guitarfish, which is threatened, on the
Southeast
U.S. coast. And we can see the behavior of
small
what are usually cryptic fishes like
this uh White Spotted Soap Fish,
kind of mugging for the camera
probably looking at his reflection.
I'm gonna switch now over to to show
you what the video actually looks like.
Yeah, that sounds that sounds really cool!
And so this is what you can see
from one of the two
lenses
on the camera. I can zoom in, zoom out
slow this down
within the software. But you know if you
look at this
through VR glasses,
a VR headset, like oculus or similar
kinds of visualizing technologies,
you can use these video files
right out of the camera
and look around, up and down,
right to left, and look at the entire
sphere around the point where the camera
rests.
We don't analyze the video that way
from a science perspective. See there was
just a strike by one of those
Almaco Jacks. We don't
analyze the video that way we actually
look at it on a
screen and sample at one
minute intervals. What's the maximum
number
of individuals of each species? What are
the species interactions? And we look at
each hemisphere separately.
Then the nice thing is we
can collect many more hours
of video underwater than we can
possibly stay
by ourselves as as divers. At least as a
team of two or four people working
underwater. So those are the kinds of
interactions that we can
see at particular points on
the reefs. So it's a
very neat way of being able to collect
information.
That's amazing! That's really cool
that the technology has come
this far over the past few years to
allow for underwater videos like that to
be taken at such a
such a cheap price.
And it's 4k. It's very high resolution
video as well. Back when I
first started,
doing this kind of stuff in the late
1970s, you know we were --
(I don't know if you want to switch back
to your screen, Ben.)
-- you know we were still
shooting video with
big, big cameras
with the VHS tapes in them. And big
bulky housings and things. So now being
able to...
And thirty-five millimeter cameras with
housings
that are that big. And now you know, again,
this is what
the camera looks
like in air with
the two lenses. The camera
itself,
(if I can take it out of the tripod) you
know that that shoots all this stuff,
which is what I still find
pretty amazing.
Absolutely! What were some of
the more
memorable video that you've
caught? I saw there were sharks that you
saw and turtles. For you
as a researcher, what have been
some really
mind-boggling things that you've gotten
from these videos?
Well, I mean, those continue to
boggle my mind
because there's, you know - a
friend of mine kind of
describes me as like a little kid still
looking
for the first
time underwater. I mean all these things
are pretty amazing!
And I'm still always impressed by the -
well especially at Gray's -
but for all the diversity and the
wide range of species and big animals.
I'm really not keen on
advertising that but, you know, the big
animals that that you can see underwater
are just this incredible
aggregation of marine wildlife. When I
first came to Gray's,
the former research coordinator -
who I'd known
since he was a grad student -
invited me to come after I had just had
a project looking
at coral reef predator-prey interactions
on coral reefs
all around the tropics (Pacific, Indian
Ocean, Atlantic)
and I was talking about the results he
was a marine biologist and
and he invited me to Gray's to take a
look at all that stuff happens here.
And the first time I get jumped in the
water I can see more
actual predation events than I could
anywhere else other than the northern
Great Barrier Reef.
Now, you know, different communities,
different ecological setting,
but it was like this is just down the
coast from me
as opposed to having to fly to the other
side of the world.
And so Gray's just
continues to
to amaze me when in terms of the
abundance
of animals and the the
whole trophic
food web is still present
there.
It's a great place to work!
That's incredible! So getting back
to more
of the research side. How does this
research help inform sanctuary managers
about Gray's Reef?
Sure. So I mean what we're doing -
- there's two sides to this. One is
real fundamental ecology:
'how does the world work?', 'how do
these kinds of reef systems
operate?'. Especially those that still have
these higher
trophic level predators
present.
Because that's relatively
rare in
many places. But on the
applied side,
from on the manager's side -
management and policy -
is that, you know, one of the goals is to
conserve biological diversity.
But biodiversity is not simply a list of
species.
You know, as we
get to the smaller molecular details
it's about conserving genetic diversity,
and when we get to the ecosystem details
which is what this addresses
it gets to understanding what
the web of behaviors the web of
interactions
of species are within a community and
within an ecosystem
it produces a metric,
a goal that can be reached from the
management perspective.
Just having that information doesn't
necessarily mean we're going to do that,
but it allows us to understand what the
choices are
from a management perspective.
Very interesting. Very important to
moving forward and protecting our
reefs and sanctuaries
for generations to
come.
The last question I had for you
was 'what do you think is next in line
for these technologies?'
Any predictions for the future?
About
what we might see in the next five to
ten years? Well, I mean, what I'd like to
see, you know, and everything depends on
money.
Unfortunately.
So this work with
small VR cameras
was essentially a proof-of-concept
kind of project. We just did this in 2018
analyze the
data through
2019. And I was hoping to get out this
year, but the
cruise was unfortunately
canceled due to the COVID
issues. But what I'd like to be able to
do is get many be able to put
out many more cameras
at the same time to be able to sample
frequently.
And I would hope that because of
their
the economy of scale, we could
actually
instrument study reefs at Gray's, like
multiple reefs,
and be able to either record
all this stuff to a buoy
or broadcast it back where it can be
recorded and
reviewed. So we could get a much more
continuous
time series, a more complete time
series
of species behaviors and
interactions and diversity
at multiple reefs. I think
that would be -
not that I don't like diving - but
I am getting older, the hair is
turning white.
And maybe someday I might
just
sit at home with
a beverage
(this is coffee). And
to do some more research.
In addition to going to do the field
work but that would
that would be ideal and I
think - again - we would get
new insights into what those resource
are that we want to protect
and manage in the sanctuary. That's
great! Well, Peter, thank you for your time.
Hang out for a little bit.
I'm going to switch over to our next
presenter.
There we go. I'd like to introduce
Joseph Glenn.
Joseph Glenn is the owner of the
Southern Dive Center in Statesboro,
Georgia.
He has logged over seven-hundredrecorded dives
from ocean diving,
to technical cave diving. So lots of
experience when it comes to actually
getting in the water
and seeing what's going on at
Gray's Reef. Joseph,
Hello, how's it going? Good. How
are you Ben?
Doing well. Talking technology. What
are the new technologies you've been
using at the Gray's Reef National Marine
Sanctuary?
So we've been using a lot of different
technologies that came across our board
and came across the
basically the
list of things when it comes to new gear.
Right now,
we've been using certain kind of
different computers.
So the majority of what we've been using
are basic,
simple computers that now read your no
decompression limits. And
even when it comes into diving, there's
so much that
people just don't think about. A lot of
people think that you can strap on a
tank go down
sit the bottom of the ocean for as long
as you want until your air runs out and
that's
technically not true. There are things
that you have to take into effect:
No decompression limits, 'how you're going
to get up and down safely?'.
So we've just been using basic computers
for that for that reason.
As we know the depths at Gray's Reef are
relatively shallow
for what we do. You know, it's a max
depth of around sixty feet, sixty-six
sixty-eight, somewhere in there.
I only think I've hit one place at
Gray's Reef that was
really over seventy feet. So Gray's Reef
is
relatively a shallow reef in that aspect.
Some of the main computers that we've
been using are
something like this. So it's a wrist
computer. It's actually - if you wear a
watch - it's a lot like a watch.
But what it does is it tracks all of the
information that you need.
What the water temperature is. What
the depth that you're at
currently. How long you've been in the
water. And it shows that very important
number of what we call a no
decompression limit
or an N.D.L. What an N.D.L. is
is basically means of how long you can
stay at that certain depth.
So giving a gist of things your body is
taking on nitrogen when you breathe
compressed air at depth.
What that basically does is
on the land and on the surface it's fine,
but,
at depth and breathing compressed gas it
becomes an issue
so a basic simple computer will tell you
exactly how much
time you have left in certainty. And
these computers range, they are
big pucks like this, you've got smaller
ones,
there's something along like this and
they all are basically wrist models.
Some of them are actually can go on the
console
of like your pressure gauge. There's just
so many different kinds.
We've been trying to use as many
computers out there as possible just to
kind of
see the difference between N.D.Ls and see
the difference of what Gray's offers when
it comes to depth
comes to that somewhat. We've really been
diving a lot -
in the non-research area of course -
but we've been on the recreational area,
we've really been trying to dive a lot
of
many different places as we can just for
that reason.
Finding out different ledges,
seeing the different animal life that's
out there,
just trying to get that standpoint. One
of the
major new features that have kind of
came out in the last couple years
has actually been something very simple
as a tank pot.
Now, what this does is this actually
connects to your first gauge on the
regulator and it can actually wirelessly
transmit
your air pressure from one tank or from
your tank to the next so you don't
really need a pressure gauge.
Now a lot of people including myself are
a little old school, so we still use a
gauge.
I would like to see a needle, but you
don't have to.
We've carried a lot of divers out there
that have used these
and they love them. Again, it's just a
wireless everything nowadays. It's
bluetooth,
and this is basically what it does is it
wirelessly transmits your air pressure
from the tank to the computer to where
you don't have to actually have a
pressure gauge.
We have seen drastic changes in the
actual
technology. The way that we've seen
changes,
it actually comes from something like
this that we used to use. A lot of the old
school divers will know exactly what
this
is. This is basically your old school
computer.
You had a depth gauge which showed you
exactly what depth you were at,
and then you had a compass. That's
exactly what you need out at a Gray's Reef
because everything in Gray's
is perfect for that area.
Gray's has a lot of live bottom, it has a
lot of ledges,
and without a compass you can actually
get turned around a little bit easier at
Gray's Reef than you can anywhere else. Just
because
everything looks amazing, so it's like
you're kind of all over the place.
Especially in different spots where you
go. So, the technology that we use out
there is
really mainly with the computers on the
diving side of it. Obviously, with the
boat side of it you know you've got
radar, you've got
charts that we have, you have just so
many different things that you can
take into effect, especially when it
comes to the technology side of it.
So how long is your average dive time at
Gray's Reef?
So on average, we normally like to do a
two tank dive out at Gray's or possibly a
three tank dive out at Gray's.
The average time out there is normally
anywhere between
thirty to forty-five minutes. Just because
the depth is normally shallow enough,
that's obviously going to
depend on the diver itself and the
conditions that we have.
Gray's Reef does have what we like to
call a
moderate to high current, or it can be. I've
been out at Gray's and had
literally no current at all, and I've
been out at Gray's where it was so nice
and peaceful and then you drop below thirty
feet and it's almost like a hurricane.
So it varies greatly, so it really
depends on
the diver itself. I can average
anywhere between
forty-five minutes to an hour out at Gray's, and
then
just say a new diver can stay out there
for twenty to thirty minutes.
So it just kind of depends on where
you're at, what the depth is, and what the
conditions are, really.
So with that dive time and
some challenges at Gray's Reef, how is
this technology
helping make the most of people's trips
out to Gray's?
With air integrated computers and
things like that. How
can that help improve a trip out to
Gray's Reef?
It definitely helps just by
understanding your air pressure,
it definitely helps by understanding
where you're at in the water. What
we mean by that is
in the water column, Gray's Reef's
visibility is not as great as what
we all hoped it would be, but it is very
good.
It is kind of like a hidden gem off
of our coast that
is just so full of
interaction.
---
The biggest thing that we see that
normal people, especially students,
what we like to use is I want
to know where you are in the water
column. I want to know because once you
get off of the bottom and you head to
the surface,
you literally can only see nothing but
blue. So there's no real way into
tracking
of where you are in the water. So what I
mean by that is where you are in the
water column.
Where you are, what depth you're at,
doing a safety stop.
You have to do a safety stop at
certain
depths that are greater, and Gray's Reef
is definitely one of those that you want
to do a safety stop on. All the
safety stop is, is just you have to stop
at twn to twenty feet
for around three to five minutes. Having a
computer that tells you that
is huge. It basically will beep at you
and tell you that
you need to stop for three minutes,
three to five minutes, at fifteen to
twenty,
ten to twenty feet. Having that
technology that does that
greatly reduces any risk that you have of
decompression sickness,
or lung expansion injuries, or anything
like that.
The technology that we use out there is
greatly helping out with the safety side for sure.
Well that's good to hear that people are
much more safe. I assume that the new
technologies, as great as they can be,
don't
replace good training and that's
still important, right?
Absolutely the training, you can have
all the greatest,
you can look like a Christmas tree out on the
boat all you want, but it doesn't matter.
---
Once you get in the water, that's where you
prove that
you are the diver that you say, and
where your training came from.
You can clearly tell. All right,
one last question I had. What do you
think is next for
diving technologies and these sorts of
things? Any predictions for the
future?
Really, with the manufacturers, the
sky is the limit. There's
no telling what they have. I would not
be surprised if you see
a little bit more on the air integrated
side, maybe a smaller tank pod or
multiple tank pods, you can actually see
--
scooters, you can see different types
of B.C.Ds that are coming up.
Just a lot easier but everything's
kind of really going through the safety
side of it.
Now obviously with COVID-19, things
are kind of slowing down a little bit
with that,
but I do see a lot of expansion
in the actual gear aspect of it,
especially when you get into the boat
side.
You get into the boat side and you're
getting into new radar, new nautical
charts,
new depth finders, new gauges,
new sonar,
literally the sky's the limit. Well it's
exciting, it's exciting times to go out
and
get to dive, to get to start diving at
Gray's Reef.
Absolutely. It is definitely a hidden gem,
Gray's Reef. We're running charters
out there
every weekend just about and
everybody wants to go to Gray's.
It is definitely a hidden gem right off
of our back door.
Well Joseph, thank you for that. I'm going
to bring
Peter back in just to sign off,
once we get him on.
There we are. All right gentlemen, I want
to thank you very much for talking tech
at Gray's Reef.
For those audience members out there,
if you're interested
in learning more you can visit us at
graysreef.noaa.gov.
You can read more about Peter's work, you
can read more about Joseph Glenn's
diving, you can also follow us on Twitter
@GraysReefNMS, or we have a Facebook
page as well at GraysReefSanctuary.
So with that, I wanted to encourage
everyone when you have a chance to get
into your sanctuary
either virtually or actually going
out fishing and diving
and enjoy the wonders of our
protected oceans around the country.
Joseph, Peter, any last words?
Thank you for your interest. Thank you
very much.
[END]