REEF staff, board members, and project collaborators recently joined over 300 scientists, resource managers, and fishers at the Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute (GCFI) meeting in San Andres, Colombia. GCFI aims to apply fisheries and marine science to solve problems by bringing multiple users of ocean resources together to make informed and coordinated decisions for sustainable use of these resources. REEF staff regularly attend GCFI to share findings and perspectives from our various programs. This year, REEF's Director of Science, Dr. Christy Pattengill-Semmens, and REEF's Invasive Species Program Coordinator, Dr. Alli Candelmo, both attended the conference, along with REEF Board of Trustee members, Ned and Anna DeLoach. REEF Grouper Moon Project lead scientist, Dr. Brice Semmens (from Scripps Institution of Oceanography), presented findings from research conducted on the multi-species spawning aggregation on Little Cayman in the Cayman Islands. Following a similar approach to what our Grouper Moon team has used to study the endangered Nassau Grouper, the research is the first to document home ranges and behavior of spawning Tiger Grouper using passive acoustic monitoring. Another Grouper Moon collaborator, Jack Egerton, presented findings from cutting-edge work to use hydroacoustics to locate and quantify spawning aggregations.
