Mike G Ruther­ford

For the fourth year in a row, a team of en­thu­si­as­tic na­ture lovers gath­ered to see how many species they could find in 24 hours. The Char­lot­teville Bioblitz 2015 took place from Oc­to­ber 24 to 25, and rep­re­sent­ed the first time that a Bioblitz had tak­en place in To­ba­go.

The event was or­gan­ised by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) De­part­ment of Life Sci­ences and the T&T Field Nat­u­ral­ists' Club (TTFNC) with help this year from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Re­search In­sti­tute Char­lot­teville (Er­ic). The base camp for the Bioblitz was the Er­ic head­quar­ters where the ground floor of the build­ing was trans­formed in­to a dis­play area/lab­o­ra­to­ry/ equip­ment store/cafe­te­ria for the du­ra­tion of the event and looked af­ter by Lanya Fanovich from Er­ic and Eileen Ruther­ford.

Dis­plays of pre­served spec­i­mens and in­for­ma­tion ban­ners were put up by the UWI Zo­ol­o­gy Mu­se­um and the TTFNC. These were sup­ple­ment­ed dur­ing the event by spec­i­mens of an­i­mals and plants col­lect­ed from all over the sur­round­ing area. There were al­so two aquar­i­ums, one con­tain­ing fresh­wa­ter species such as gi­ant prawns, fish and snails, and one salt­wa­ter tank with zoan­thids, brit­tle stars, her­mit crabs and many more small crea­tures.

On Sat­ur­day 24, over 120 peo­ple as­sem­bled at 11 am for a brief­ing be­fore break­ing in­to their re­spec­tive groups to plan their sur­vey­ing. At noon, a horn was sound­ed and the Bioblitz be­gan. The par­tic­i­pants were a mix of un­der­grad­u­ate and post­grad­u­ate stu­dents and staff from UWI and am­a­teur nat­u­ral­ists and wildlife en­thu­si­asts from all over T&T. Mem­bers of En­vi­ron­ment To­ba­go and North East Sea Tur­tles al­so at­tend­ed the event, bring­ing in some lo­cal knowl­edge.

A team of sev­en divers, led by Neil Cook from Er­ic and in­clud­ing mem­bers of the T&T Eco Divers Club, went out by boat to sev­er­al dive sites around the coast. They found a huge va­ri­ety of corals and fish and they were al­so lucky enough to spot sev­er­al dol­phins. A sec­ond boat, this time full of bird­ers, went along the coast as far away as the St Giles is­lands to watch for seabirds.

An­oth­er team of bird­ers, led by Dar­shan Narang, set up mist nets near the Flagstaff Hill Road to catch, iden­ti­fy, band and re­lease birds. At night this be­came the site for the bat team, led by Luke Ros­tant of Trini­bats, to see what bat species were out there. By the end of the event they had caught and re­leased 129 bats.

The plant team, led by Mike Oatham and guid­ed by Dan Jag­ger­nauth, head­ed up Pi­geon Peak, the high­est point in the sur­vey area at 572 me­tres, to look for plants with oth­er mem­bers of the plant group search­ing the low­er forests. Sev­er­al oth­er teams al­so took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to sur­vey the steep mud­dy trail for their species groups.

The fresh­wa­ter group led by Ryan Mo­hammed drove down to the Her­mitage Riv­er and searched many of the small streams and ditch­es in the area whilst an­oth­er aquat­ic team head­ed by Amy Dea­con hit the beach­es to snorkel and sam­ple along the coast.

A team from the Ser­pen­tar­i­um, brought over from Trinidad by Saiyaad Ali, and a team of vis­it­ing re­searchers from the USA, led by John Mur­phy, spread out in­to the forests to look for rep­tiles and am­phib­ians. They found many rare and un­ex­pect­ed frogs, lizards and snakes.

Sev­er­al small­er teams sur­veyed for ter­res­tri­al in­ver­te­brates in­clud­ing: Chris Starr look­ing for so­cial in­sects; Kris Sookdeo and his team do­ing the but­ter­flies and moths; Avion Phillips and mem­bers of the UWI Bi­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety search­ing for in­sects; Ray Mar­tinez and his group from the UWI Par­a­sitol­ogy Lab caught mos­qui­toes; Shane Man­chouck col­lect­ed cen­tipedes and mil­li­pedes and a fi­nal group led by Rakesh Bhukal did arach­nids. Cam­era traps were set up along for­est trails to record mam­mals at night and these pro­vid­ed some great re­sults cap­tur­ing im­ages of a pair of crab-eat­ing rac­coons.

On the Sat­ur­day night par­tic­i­pants were still go­ing strong, some were at base­camp sort­ing through soil and sand sam­ples and us­ing mi­cro­scopes to iden­ti­fy what they had found un­til 4 am. Oth­ers were still out in the dark­ness; div­ing and snor­kel­ing in Man of War Bay and hav­ing close en­coun­ters with elec­tric tor­pe­do rays and oc­to­pus or walk­ing the for­est trails look­ing for noc­tur­nal crea­tures such as spi­ders, scor­pi­ons, in­sects and rep­tiles un­til 3 am.

Sun­day morn­ing ar­rived and the bird­ers were the first up wait­ing for the dawn cho­rus, fol­lowed by the dive team head­ing out for their last un­der­wa­ter for­ay. Un­for­tu­nate­ly around 8 am the weath­er took a turn for the worse and very heavy rain­fall ac­com­pa­nied by thun­der and light­ning slowed every­thing down and al­so re­sult­ed in the pub­lic stay­ing away from the guid­ed walks and snor­kel­ing tours that were on of­fer.

How­ev­er, by 10 am the weath­er had im­proved and some vis­i­tors start­ed to ap­pear at the base­camp, fam­i­lies with young chil­dren as well as tourists cu­ri­ous about all that was go­ing on. They were treat­ed to a va­ri­ety of crea­tures on dis­play with many lizards, snakes, frogs, in­sects, spi­ders and mil­li­pedes all crawl­ing around in plas­tic tanks and bot­tles. Af­ter the event the larg­er an­i­mals were re­leased whilst the in­ver­te­brates were tak­en back to the UWIZM for fur­ther iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Bioblitzers were count­ing and iden­ti­fy­ing right up to the last sec­ond and when sur­vey­ing stopped at noon on Sun­day it still took an­oth­er half an hour be­fore the fi­nal tal­ly was ready. Mike Ruther­ford read out the re­sults on the steps of the ER­IC build­ing to a large crowd of ea­ger par­tic­i­pants and vis­i­tors with his daugh­ter Zoe Ruther­ford writ­ing up the num­bers. The count was as fol­lows: 367 plants (in­clud­ing 23 al­gae), 30 fun­gus, 252 ver­te­brates (in­clud­ing 17 mam­mals, 75 birds, 27 rep­tiles, 13 am­phib­ians and 120 fish), 319 in­ver­te­brates (in­clud­ing 32 crus­taceans, ten echin­o­derms, 53 corals, four sponges, 109 in­sects, 12 arach­nids and 12 myr­i­apods) and four oth­ers (bac­te­ria) for a grand to­tal of 972 species! This was the high­est count yet for a T&T Bioblitz.

Amy Dea­con then pre­sent­ed prizes to the win­ners of the chil­drens colour­ing com­pe­ti­tion and Dan Jag­ger­nauth thanked the or­gan­siers, and then it was all over for an­oth­er year.

The Bioblitz team gave thanks to all the peo­ple and or­gan­i­sa­tions that took part. In par­tic­u­lar to the ma­jor spon­sor of the event, First Cit­i­zens, who have sup­port­ed the Bioblitz every year. Al­so to At­lantic for help­ing to cov­er the costs of the ma­rine sur­vey­ing and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly De­part­ment of Nat­ur­al Re­sources and the En­vi­ron­ment for the per­mit and use of the Rest House. Fi­nal­ly, thanks to Pat Turpin at Man of War Bay Cot­tages for ac­com­mo­dat­ing many of the par­tic­i­pants.

Next year the Bioblitz will be head­ing to one of the wildest sites yet–Port-of-Spain! The aim is to see how ur­ban wildlife com­pares to the rest of the coun­try and al­so to share the re­sults of the pre­vi­ous four Bioblitzes with as many mem­bers of the pub­lic as pos­si­ble.

For more in­for­ma­tion, please see the T&T Bioblitz, ER­IC, TTFNC and UWIZM Face­book pages. Or vis­it the Bioblitz web­site at sta.uwi.edu/fst/life­sciences/BioBlitzHome.asp