Best Tug-of-War Ever

Just two more days in South Africa! Today was the last work day for those of us leaving. This month's interns are giving their presentations tomorrow and then I head for home on Saturday.

Today started bright and far too early. I got a final chum trip, although I think I might have enjoyed it slightly more if it hadn't come after getting off the last chum trip only 8 hours before. We're towing the decoys again so yesterday afternoon's trip ran from 13:30 to 20:00 while this morning's trip set out at 04:30. No breaches on the decoys either last night or this morning, but I got to skipper Lamnidae during the evening towing which was fun. Lamnidae, you ask? Oh yes, we're back on Lamnidae. Poseidon, or maybe whoever is in charge of ships, hates us and when the tracking crew tried to leave yesterday morning, Cheetah's engines wouldn't start. 

Anyway, it was a good last couple of trips with a total of about 18 sharks between the two chum shifts. I got several bait heads stolen from me, although I like to think I put up a good fight for the bait. At least they made for some good photos (courtesy of fellow intern, Natalie) and I did manage to put on shark into tonic. (With the bait, of course. Don't worry, Dad, I myself was still a safe distance from the shark). I've been told I can now officially call myself a shark researcher with that accomplishment under my belt. 

The shark going into tonic.

Playing tug-of-war (and losing) with the shark. 

Jason, me, Caitlin, and Dan following one of the fights
(a very splashy battle, as you can see) with a shark. 

Last Few Days

We're down to the last week in South Africa. Actually, we're practically half-way through that last week and I think it's something everyone's trying to avoid thinking about. Beginning of the month seemed like I would be here forever. Ok, not forever, but another month was seeming long. But this month has gone by incredibly quickly. So, savoring the last few encounters with the sharks and trying to figure out which clothes I don't mind throwing away so those can be the ones that get fishy and then left behind. 

We've been trying to find a shark with an acoustic tag so we can track but, so far, we haven't had great success. On Saturday morning, towards the end of our seal survey shift, we stuck the hydrophone in the water and heard signals from two sharks however, in the last two days, the tracking crews haven't been able to find them again. We'll give it one more go tomorrow and will possibly tag a new shark if we can't find one of the old ones. So far, I've been scheduled for middle of the night tracking shifts (which, of course, haven't been happening) so I've been doing normal work routines--chumming, aquarium, fishing, you know the drill by now. 

Chumming!

Yesterday's chum trip. We lost the buoy... A shark bit the rope and we watched our nice yellow buoy float off. Johan and Jackie pulling up the anchor to go fetch the buoy which is somewhere roughly where the arrow's pointing.

African Sunrise

I've decided there is nothing quite like sitting on a boat, on an almost perfectly calm sea, watching the sunrise. Last night, we did a seal survey at Seal Island. Because most of the seal movement on and off the island takes place at night, the survey is an all night deal. One shift of interns went out from 18:00 to midnight and then I went out with the shift from midnight to 06:00. Since there were six people on each shift, we broke the six hour period into three, two hour shifts. That meant when you weren't on survey, you could sleep--a very nice prospect around 2 am. It was actually incredibly comfortable just lying at the front of the boat, rocking back and forth. 

How do you see the seals when it's dark? Listening for splashing as they swim is the first clue. Once you've heard them, you can locate the group fairly easily and get a rough count of how many there are and whether they're heading towards or away from the island. It also began to get light fairly early in Emily and my 4-6 am shift, so that made it even easier. We also got to see the gorgeous sunrise! 

Mossel Bay at night from the water.

Good morning!

Emily bundled up in the crow's nest.

Phenomenal Sabbath sunrise over Mossel Bay.
Counting my blessings every day I'm here!

South African Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! Of course, here, it's just another work day. How was my unique Thanksgiving spent, then? Trapping in the morning and chumming in the afternoon. Trapping didn't catch anything, unfortunately, but the chumming trip was one of the best I've had. We had a total of nine sharks. At several points, we had two to three sharks all circling the boat, taking turns going for the bait. As Emily pointed out, we are probably currently in the only job where having three sharks circling your boat is considered a good thing! We also saw the second largest shark I've seen here. She was easily as large as Fatty, but lost in the size competition because she wasn't quite as fat. 

However, I wasn't entirely without the good ol' American tradition of aiming for an early death due to overeating. Together with some of the interns at White Shark Africa, the cage diving operation here in Mossel Bay, we had a massive Thanksgiving dinner at Kaai 4. Sean, the owner, kindly cooked up a bunch of dishes special for us so after work, we cleaned up and headed over to the restaurant. We feasted on roosterkoek (bread cooked on a grill, a staple of braais), cauliflower in a white cheese sauce, mashed sweet potatoes, and mash with green beans. Everyone who wasn't vegan or vegetarian also enjoyed ox-tail stew and chicken and declared them excellent. 

Thanksgiving trapping. Emily and Natalie pulling up a trap.

Thanksgiving chumming. Emily and I in the crow's nest
on lookout.

The big shark.

L to R: Caitlin, Noah's nose, Brian, Kasandra, Jason,
and Natasha at Kaai 4.

Thanksgiving dinner at Kaai 4.

Just another average day...

Another day in South Africa. I can't believe I'm already in my eighth week here and only have a week and a half before I head for home!! This morning was spent editing a video of a release of some of the baby sharks from the aquarium. The afternoon was a chum trip which also involved towing the orca and seal decoys. We were out late (the sharks are most active and so more likely to breach at dawn and dusk) and got to see a gorgeous sunset over seal island. 

Cheetah's back, all shiny and pretty!

I match the bait rope buoy

Crow's nest also makes a great dance floor

Sunset over Seal Island

Animal Encounters

Had land dolphin survey this morning and aquarium in the afternoon. However, you've heard about both of those before. The excitement of this morning was the non-aquatic animals we saw. At the first survey site, a cat and her four kittens were hanging about. Emily managed to lure one close enough to grab it, only to have it bite her. Yup, came to study sharks and the only animal related injury we've had is a bite from a kitten mad at being picked up. At the second site, the lighthouse on the Point, we found a dassie sitting on the deck eyeing us. Dassie is the South African name for a Rock Hyrax. We see them fairly regularly on the rocks at the Point near the aquarium, but I haven't managed to get a good picture of one before. 

Emily luring in a kitten.

Gorgeous view from the Point today.

A Rock Hyrax, aka dassie, hanging out at the lighthouse.

Clown Car

This afternoon, we added two new roles on the chum boat. Today, interns filled the roles of bait roper, data collector, photographer, chummer, DJ, and tourist. Two of these things are not like the other...  

The lookouts in their personally reassigned roles
as tourist and DJ.

Following chum, we pulled both Pixel and Lamnidae out of the water. Pixel is returning to storage and Lamnidae will be out of the water over the weekend for maintenance. The chumming and trapping crews then helped pull everything off the two boats and load them into the van for transportation back to campus. In the end, we had lots of rope, buckets, lifejackets, gas canisters, and 12 people inside the vehicle and Pixel on a trailer behind. The stares we got were probably justified. 

The portion of the vehicle in front of me...

The portion of the vehicle behind me...
(yes, those are my boots)

And towing Pixel behind!

Oh, what a beautiful morning...

This morning was absolutely gorgeous for being out on the water. I was trapping and this time, we actually caught a shark! In other news, although Cheetah's not back just yet (she should be in the water again tomorrow if things remain on schedule), we're no longer using Pixel. According to the harbor police, an entirely deflated front pontoon equals a vessel that is unseaworthy. One of these days all the holes will be found and patched!

Welcome to Lake Mossel! The bay has been perfectly
flat for the last week.

Recording data about the trapping location and shark.

Tagging the Puff Adder before release.

Open Water Free-diving

Uneventful weekend overall. Most people were gone on various trips so it was quiet on campus. We did have a slight mishap of a Spiny Dogfish that arrived at the aquarium on Wednesday disappearing from its tank (it got into a pipe, unfortunately) which added some excitement to my Saturday morning (I was recruited to make the emergency trip to the aquarium to look around the tank for it). 

Today, Johan, Jason, and I went to Santos Beach with Dylan to get some practice using our free-diving skills in open water. There's really not much difference between dynamic apnea in a pool and in open water except that, since you're moving vertically instead of horizontally in the ocean, you have to bother with equalizing. However, that proved to be a simple technique to add for all of us so we spent most our afternoon swimming around the coral reefs where we fish. Didn't see any of the benthic sharks but we did pull up a lot of fishing line, sinkers, and hooks. 

Another gorgeous day in South Africa.

Breathing up on a line so we don't drift off.

Me during one of the first dynamic apnea runs.

Getting ready to hop into the water near the reef at Santos.

Not Course Day

Fridays are no longer course day. That is, it's still course day for the new interns but not for those who have already been here a month. That way, the same cycle of presentations can be done each month and each group of interns gets to learn the material. Instead, it was a normal work day for us, albeit with smaller numbers and, consequently, fewer running activities. Today, the only things going on were aquarium and chumming. I was at the aquarium in the morning and chumming in the afternoon. 

Aquarium was routine except that we got done with all our work really quickly. Advantage and disadvantage to knowing what we're doing, all in one. It doesn't take us long, but it also leaves us with a lot of free time until we get picked up at the end of the morning. 

Chumming was awesome. It was clear and sunny day again but there was enough wind that we had a nice swell and riding the swell on Lamnidae is always fun. We saw nine sharks total and most of them were fairly interested in the bait. I may never live down breaking the week-old chum ladle, though... 

So, that's the end of another week in South Africa. Happy Sabbath!

I don't think we're in school anymore...

This morning, I had dissection. As part of our data collection, there are a bunch of measurements we take externally. All of these have three letter abbreviations so that we don't have to say, "pre-first dorsal-fin length." "PD1" is just a little shorter. Some of these abbreviations, though, I've used before in other contexts and it always makes me laugh, say, when I ask someone for "PSP" but I'm not talking to my little brother about some new game system (prespiracular length vs. Playstation Portable, for those who are lost). So here's the rest of the abbreviations which I've learned new meanings to: 

-GS3 does not mean my pay grade for my job with US Fish and Wildlife Service anymore. Now it means "third gill slit height." 

-CPU, normally used in referring to computers ("central processing unit" and yes, I had to look up the exact meaning of the acronym), is now "upper postventral caudal-fin margin."

-LLA is no longer Loma Linda Academy. It has been redefined to mean "lower labial-furrow length."

-ESL doesn't mean "English as a second language," instead, it means "eye spiracle space."

-And possibly my favorite: D2L, or Desire 2 Learn (though no one on campus except a few teachers ever calls it by its full name), is a website my school uses to keep everyone notified about classes and as a place where people can upload papers or teachers can post syllabi and whatnot. Here, though, it means "second dorsal-fin length." Nope, definitely not in school anymore. 

Photos of dissection from a couple weeks ago.
Katelyn and Emily measuring Spiny Dogfish.

Emily and Sarah examining the internal anatomy of
their Spiny Dogfish. 

Sea/Land Dolphin

Today I was assigned to cetacean survey. It was supposed to be a sea based survey. We've got an inflatable duck that's serving as a second boat until Cheetah is back in the water. The only problem is that we've been having issues getting it to stay inflated. Sea dolphin is an activity that is supposed to run from 8am till 5 pm. Yesterday's dolphin survey came back around 2pm, though, because Pixel, the "duck", had deflated. We were hopeful that after patching, we'd be good to go today. Nope. After only an hour and a half on the water, the front pontoon was so deflated that we called it quits and headed back to shore. The rest of the day was spent doing dolphin survey from land. We ended up seeing five or six Humpback Whales, a small pod of Humpback Dolphins, and a few Bottlenose Dolphins so we called the rest of the day a success.  

Pixel, the inflatable "duck" that's standing in for Cheetah.

Land dolphin survey at Kleinbrak

Gone Fishin'

This morning's assignment was land collect, aka, fishing. Fishing for sharks, specifically. We fished off some rocky tidepools at Santos, a beach near the harbor. The sharks we catch are sometimes kept to bring back to the aquarium, other sharks are simply tagged, measurements taken, and released again. Braham and Sarah both caught sharks but both were already tagged so we simply recorded the tag numbers and let the sharks go. 

Sarah, Braham, and Johan at Santos.

Sarah with the Pajama Jacket she caught.

Last Month's Interns

Start of month two in South Africa. In retrospect, I can't believe how quickly the first month went. There are seven new interns this month, and about the same number left, so we have roughly the same number this month. What's really weird to think of is that we're now last month's interns--we're the ones who know what's going on, how to do the jobs we're assigned. It doesn't sound like much, but we were the newbies all last month and suddenly we're not. 

The new interns arrived on Thursday and had orientation all day yesterday so we really haven't worked with them yet. Monday should start the schedule as normal, including all the new interns. For the rest of us, the last couple days have been work as normal although we haven't been able to go out on chum trips due to bad weather. The weather landside has been fantastic--sunny and warm--but it's been very windy which creates huge swell, too large for Lamnidae to handle. Yesterday morning's chum trip came back after being gone barely an hour and a half with stories of nearly losing Sarah overboard. My morning at the aquarium was much less eventful, although I did give a spur of the moment tour to three visitors. The aquarium is just beginning to offer these tours and I had finished reading through the packet of information barely 15 minutes before Braham came back and told me I'd be giving the unexpected visitors a tour. Thank you years of learning random marine facts and Conservation Corps training! 

The new interns getting an introduction to the aquarium.

15 pages of notes to learn about our little
tiny aquarium!

Presentations and Halloween

Presentation on my work in Honduras while dressed as a pirate.

Not my last day, but a lot of people are taking off for home tomorrow. All the photo interns are leaving and not quite half the research interns. Today we didn't have our regular work schedule but, instead, gave presentations on topics of our choice. This meant that topics ranged from projects people have done in school to "How To Survive the Zombie Apocalypse" (Conclusion: Get Chuck Norris). Many people also dressed up since it's Halloween. We had a few pirates, a trio from Up! (snipe, boy, and house), the Terminator, and a zombie apocalypse survivor (appropriately giving the "How To" presentation). 

The new group of interns should be arriving over the next few days. Usually they'd all arrive tomorrow but it seems some may have been delayed by Hurricane Sandy. For the rest of us, it's back to work like normal tomorrow! 

"Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse"

Vegemite is recommended repellant from dropbears
(an Australian threat)

"The Crazy Swedes: A Presentation Verfying the Myth"
presented by The Crazy Swede, himself

Chumming and Wrangling

This video is from the chum trip yesterday morning. It was amazing. We had six sharks show up around the boat and they were all interested in playing (going for the bait, in other words). They were all being really sneaky about it, too. Nick was the first one on the bait rope and he lost two bait heads to sharks coming up unexpectedly. I was the next to try and, as well, lost two bait heads to sharks--one when one of the smaller sharks did a sort of half breach on the buoy on the bait line, the other when the massive shark just came straight for the bait. After that, Dan, the field specialist skippering that day, took over the bait line. He, too, lost bait heads. At one point, the massive shark we'd been dealing with all morning came straight up at the bait. Dan froze, just watching the huge shark and, voila, there goes the bait. 

Poor quality because it's a photo of a screen shot from a video Nick took.
That shark is probably 3-4 feet away from Dan in the photo.

She must have been a good 4.2 meters long and seemed even bigger because we were on Lamnidae. Usually, we chum off Cheetah but Cheetah's out of the water for repairs for the next couple weeks. Not that Cheetah would have made the shark seem much smaller but  Lamnidae's less then twice the length of this shark. 

This morning was dubbed Shark Wranglers: Intern Edition (after a documentary series Ryan did for NatGeo). I was at the aquarium and the duty for this morning was to get all the benthic sharks out of their tank so they could be weighed, measured, and tagged. They aren't being released just yet but the tags will give us a way to identify the individuals in the tanks, especially during feeding (to ensure any shark doesn't get overfed). We also took the opportunity to remove all the rocks in the tank, clean out the accumulation of sand from the bottom, and rebuild the rock caves the sharks hide in. Let me just say, from experience, that it is tough to hold onto a thrashing three foot long pajama jacket!

Nick, Tammy, and Catherine working to siphon sand out of
the tank after the sharks and rocks have been removed.

New Plans for the Week

We're heading to Cape Town for some diving (among other things)--tomorrow! We found out at noon today that we'll be leaving at 5 am tomorrow morning. We had originally been told we'd leave either Thursday or Friday but it looks like the best weather for diving will be Thursday and Friday so, tomorrow it is! The abrupt change in departure time added some nice scrambling for packing, mall runs for necessities, and laundry but, other than that, the day was fairly normal. 

This morning I had dissection. We dissected a spiny dogfish, as we had last time, and this time I was the one actually doing the cutting. In the afternoon, I had another chum trip. The time was, like yesterday, split between chumming and towing the decoy. The sea state made things quite interesting (lots of wind so the sea was nice and choppy) but, otherwise, it was a fairly dull trip. We only saw one shark the entire 2.5 or so hours and that one was nearly underneath our boat while we were driving out to Seal Island. 

Double Chum Day

Today I ended up with two chum trips. I was scheduled for one in the afternoon already and then traded morning assignments with another intern who wasn't feeling well. Unfortunately, there is nothing exciting to report from either trip. In the morning, it rained on and off (fortunately more off than on) and we had continual 2m swell. We were also checking an "exploratory site," so called because it's a site where we don't expect to find sharks this time of year. In the afternoon, we chummed for a short while and then picked up two visiting researchers. They're doing experiments involving Great Whites and Killer Whales so we spent a couple hours towing dummy orcas behind the boat to see in any sharks would breach on them (no such luck). 

The morning chum trip.

The afternoon chum trip.

Rigging up the dummy orcas for towing.