Schrieken, N.

The ANEMOON Foundation is a Dutch volunteer organization of citizen scientists who are interested in sea life. The Foundation has started a project to make an inventory of the underwater life of St. Eustatius, using citizen scientists as recorders. In 2015, an excellent start was made by the St. Eustatius Marine Biodiversity Expedition 2015. During this expedition, the ANEMOON Foundation, together with Naturalis Biodiversity Center (of Leiden in the Netherlands), and some local partners on St. Eustatius, surveyed the underwater life of the Marine Park. In three weeks, over 1,150 different species of plants and animals were observed.

This news article was published in BioNews 2-2017.

BioNews is produced by the Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance and funded by the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

This guide is intended to give an overview of the diversity of the marine life of St. Eustatus. But to show and describe all the species living in the waters around Statiaa is impossible; in 2016, the known total was already over a thousand, and many more species remain to be observed and recorded. It is even likely that there are several species left to be discovered which are as yet unknown to science.

In this guide we have listed many of the island’s common and characteristic marine animals and plants. To showcase the uniqueness of the marine life of the island, we have included some species that are found nowhere else, or are found only in this part of the Lesser Antilles. In addition, some species are included which are easily found around St. Eusta us, but which are rarely seen elsewhere in the West Indies.

Together these beautiful and strange creatures illustrate the surprising diversity of Statia’s surrounding waters, hidden treasures that await anyone who wishes to search for them.

We hope this field guide will encouraged you to explore the amazing marine life of St. Eusta us. 

In September, a report on the preliminary results of the Statia Marine Biodiversity Expedition (from June 2015) was published. This expedition served as the rst extensive baseline study to explore the marine biota of St. Eustatius, a small island belonging to the Caribbean Netherlands on the boundary between the eastern Caribbean Sea and the West Atlantic. Various undescribed species were discovered during the expedition. In addition, already described species were reported that previously were not known to occur in the Caribbean or even in the Atlantic Ocean. 

This news article was published in BioNews 29

BioNews is produced by the Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance and funded by the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

Tunicates belong to the subphylum Tunicata in the phylum Chordata, which includes all animals with dorsal nerve cords and notocords. Some tunicates live as solitary individuals, but others become colonies, each unit being known as a zooid. They are marine filter feeders with a water-filled, sac-like body structure and two tubular openings, known as siphons, through which they draw in and expel water. Most adult tunicates are sessile as encrusting or stalked ascidians, which are permanently attached to rocks or other hard surfaces on the ocean floor; whereas others are salps, which swim in the pelagic zone of the sea as adults.

About 3000 described species of tunicates occur in the world's oceans (Appeltans et al. 2012), mostly living in shallow water. The most numerous group is the ascidians, and fewer than 100 species of these are found at depths greater than 200 m. They are found in a range of solid or translucent colours and may resemble seeds, grapes, peaches, barrels, or bottles.

One of the goals of the Statia Marine Expedition 2015, was to contribute to expanding the understanding of the tunicate fauna of the Dutch Caribbean island of St. Eustatius by a base line inventory. Another major goal of the investigation was to obtain DNA subsamples of soft tissue from live individuals of a number of tunicate species for molecular analysis and DNA barcoding. The tunicate fauna of St. Eustatius had been poorly investigated before the expedition. Rocha et al. (2005) reported on tunicates from some islands within 200 km range from St. Eustatius, two species from Saba (30 km) to 96 species from Guadeloupe (200 km). Cole (2012) reported on 32 species in collections from Tobago, which is located 700 km south of Statia. 

This article was published in the following report:

MARINE BIODIVERSITY SURVEY OF ST. EUSTATIUS, DUTCH CARIBBEAN 2015 by Naturalis Biodiversity Center and the Netherlands ANEMOON Foundation

In June 2015, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, in collaboration with “Anemoon Foundation”, launched a new initiative in the Dutch Caribbean with the organization of a marine expedition to St. Eustatius. The expedition was hosted by the Caribbean Netherlands Science Institute (CNSI), diving was kindly supplied by Scubaqua Dive Centre and STENAPA St Eustatius acted as a local counterpart. The expedition team consisted of a multidisciplinary team of national and international researchers, citizen scientists, as well as university students from St. Eustatius, the Netherlands, Italy, Japan, Russia and the USA, each focusing on a particular group of organsms including corals, fishes, sponges, seaweeds, etc. 

This news article was published in BioNews 19

BioNews is produced by the Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance and funded by the Ministry of Economic Affairs.