OUR PROJECTS
The New Edition
A new edition is in preparation of the seminal book
The Fishes of the Galápagos Islands
by Jack Stein Grove and Robert J. Lavenberg
first published in 1997 by the Stanford University Press
but now long out of print and difficult to find...
Under the sponsorship of the EPCA, Jack Grove, Douglas Long & Benjamin Victor are co-authoring the new expanded modern volume with lots of new data and species, and extending deepwater coverage to the seamounts and ridges within the EEZ of Ecuador, including the vast new Reserva Marina Hermandad
Fishes of the Galápagos Islands: Natural History and DNA, From the Shore to the Abyss
publication is anticipated in 2025
promoting open access for the 21st century,
it will be available as a free digital download
Tarpon Conservation Research Program
The EPCA is working with Panama Tarpon Conservation to research important questions about the status of tarpon populations in the Panama Canal and along the surrounding shores on both sides of the isthmus. The species recently crossed from its native Atlantic range and now has colonized the Pacific coast. Little is known about Pacific populations and movements in the Canal. The goal is to involve the sportsfishing community in scientific research and significantly also with education on the preservation of this iconic species in places where it is being artisanally fished and threatened, and to promote protection of the species with catch-and-release programs.
Sportsfishermen are instrumental in our plans to monitor the population size, movements, and genetics of tarpon in the region. We will be following movements of adults with satellite tagging, assessing larval transport in the Canal using surveys and environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling (the latest technology that detects DNA sequences in water samples), and taking DNA samples from sportsfishing catches to reveal the genetics of tarpon in Panama, assessing population sizes and the connectivity of Atlantic, Canal, and Pacific populations. These efforts are critical to developing conservation plans for this fascinating fish.
Art Saves Sharks
This EPCA project, created by Bill Farnsworth with "Art Saves Sharks" as its goal, is a program to educate the public, and especially K-12 students in Panama, about the critical threat to shark populations. The aim is to use art projects to stimulate interest in sharks and their ocean ecosystem with a conservation emphasis. Making the next generation in Panama aware of marine conservation is profoundly important for policy in the region. Art has a unique power to attract, influence, and focus attention, transcending age and language, and sharks themselves are exceptionally charismatic subjects. The program will work with the Biodiversity Museum of Panama and the Panama City school system
An initial project is to harness students' artistic skills to design the artwork for T-shirts on the subject of the shark-finning crisis. The creations will be part of organized art shows, and winners from separate age-groups (elementary, middle, and high school) will receive T-shirts printed with their winning design for them and their class, and made available to the public via museums and schools.
2024 Galápagos Archipelago Photo-expedition
The EPCA sponsored an intensive photo-expedition this last May which succeeded in a systematic photographic inventory of the shorefishes of the Galápagos. The well known cadre of superb underwater photographers who have recently documented almost all of the shallow water fishes in the Caribbean for the Smithsonian combined efforts with marine biologists from the EPCA, collecting DNA samples, and scientists from the Charles Darwin Foundation and Parque Nacional Galápagos who monitored their standard transects and collected environmental DNA samples. Everyone joined forces with the set of experienced fish taxonomists working with the EPCA to resolve the status of many fish species in the "grey area"- those that are undiscovered or uncollected, one-of-a-kind or uncertain records, or poorly known, rare, or deep taxa. We are now collating a comprehensive digital database of photographs and processing tissue samples to fill in missing species in the DNA-barcode inventory for the ichthyofauna of the archipelago, a critical data source for future eDNA surveys, environmental monitoring, and stock assessments.
for more details
Results of the Revillagigedo Expedition supported by the EPCA in 2022
We undertook an international collaborative expedition to do an extensive photographic survey a DNA-sequence the fish fauna of the Revillagigedo Archipelago, a remote group of rocky volcanic islands hundreds of km off the tip of the Baja Peninsula on Mexico's Pacific coast. Arranged by the Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mexico in Baja California Sur, in collaboration with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the Smithsonian, and the Ocean Science Foundation, the expedition to these relatively unknown and rarely visited islands was very successful, resulting in 5,500 diagnostic underwater fish photographs of more than 152 species and the discovery of several new species, with the first publication from the expedition documenting the DNA barcode sequence and describing the new species the Tailspot Wrasse, Halichoeres sanchezi.