Research & Sponsored Programs Report ResearchAnnual201819-electronic | Page 19

Above: An underwater camera rig is one of the methods used to catalog reef fish communities. Photo by Dr. Matt Campbell
Below: A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ship is used for research cruises to study and catolog reef fish
communities. Photo by Dr. Matt Campbell
students collected 500 surface and benthic
water samples in early 2018 from about 90 dif-
ferent reef sites from Pensacola to the Flower
Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary near
Galveston, Texas.
“After we take a sample from a water column,
we extract the DNA from it. And we’re extracting
everything, from bacteria to algae, to hopefully
find fish DNA,” Janosik said. “We basically spent
the whole summer extracting DNA around the
clock.”
A fish’s DNA can be found from anything it
leaves behind, including scales, slime, gametes
and urine, so researchers can identify fish in the
environment without actually finding the fish
itself.
One of Janosik’s most groundbreaking uses of
environmental DNA was to find traces of the
Alabama sturgeon, a species that some thought
had become extinct. Before Janosik’s discovery,
only seven specimens had been collected since
1997, and the last documented capture of the
freshwater fish was on April 3, 2007, on the
Alabama River by biologists with the Alabama
Department of Conservation and Natural
Resources.
The use of environmental DNA in the NOAA
project will be compared to other methods
employed to detect reef fish in the Gulf.
Environmental DNA, combined with the other
detecting methods, can determine what types
2018-2019 Research Annual Report
of fish species are near reefs, but it cannot deter-
mine their exact population.
Janosik hopes to expand her work with envi-
ronmental DNA to evaluate fish communities in
other bodies of water.
“We are working on other proposals to try to
continue work like this and expand it beyond
the Gulf and maybe into the (Florida) Keys and
the Atlantic (Ocean), potentially,” Janosik said.
“We’re hoping to get some more money to do
some projects similar to this to expand our in-
ventory of fish communities and see how stock
structures are changing over time.”
19