This morning I had an assignment new to me: trapping. This is part of a tag-and-release project to get a better idea of the population of benthic sharks in the area. While the Great Whites, of course, have been studied here for years, no one really has a good idea of what the population of smaller sharks looks like. We deployed traps with a small baggie of bait in the middle and pulled them up about half an hour later to check them. The first three that we pulled up had nothing but the fourth had something in it. We trapped an octopus! Currently, she's been installed at the aquarium, but she might actually be large enough that she'll be released fairly soon.
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| Setting up the traps on the dock (Natalie, one of the field specialists, left; Emily, another intern, tying the bait to the trap.) |
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| Emily and I getting ready to drop a trap |
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| The octopus we caught |
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| MacGyver-ing a carrying container for the escape artist octopus |
This afternoon was another chum trip. This time, my job was to actually chum. Even standing up to my ankles in fish guts all afternoon, I can't really think of a much nicer way to be spending a Thursday in October. I mean, the alternatives like Biochem tests and studying for World Music just don't really compare. We saw a total of 6 individual sharks, though only two gave any decent attempt at going for the bait. At the end, however, we tried towing a dummy seal (2D seal shaped piece of carpet) behind the boat. It's not the season in which Great Whites are usually breaching but the field specialist who was skippering indulged us interns. We got one! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get a picture. One of the two photo interns on board, though, did!
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| Heading towards our chum site at Seal Island with two photo interns on board |
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| Good game while chumming: send the fish racing back and forth by dropping the chum at different spots in the water. |
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| Looks yummy, right? |
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| Dragging the dummy seal behind the boat. |
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| Quite literally, moments after I took this photo, the shark did a full breach. |
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| Just another average day |
I don't understand, why do you have to stand in it?
ReplyDeleteThe chum is a block of frozen sardines. You add water and then step on it to mash it all up and release all the blood and fish oil. The liquid part is then what you repeatedly dump into the ocean (adding more water and more stepping throughout the trip) to attract the sharks.
DeleteMore queries: there is a season for breaching? And were you implying a causal connection between the dummy seal and breaching?
ReplyDeleteThere is a season for breaching, though I'm not precisely sure what time of year that is. No, I'm stating a direct connection between the dummy seal and breaching. The sharks go for the dummy just as they would a real seal.
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