Hovering low over Tennessee Reef off Long Key earlier this month, Mike Parsons squeezed the trigger of his spear gun and drilled a black grouper.
As tasty as the fish would have been, it was destined not for the grill but for the lab.
Parsons, an FGCU professor of marine sciences, is lead investigator of CiguaHAB, an international team of scientists conducting a five-year project to investigate conditions that lead to outbreaks of ciguatera fish poisoning. The $5 million study is financed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
CiguaHAB researchers will work in the Keys and St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, for the full five years of the project and for two years at oil rigs in the northern Gulf of Mexico, the Flower Gardens National Marine Sanctuary, the Bahamas, and Veracruz, Mexico.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: News-Press
