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.

Cow Shark Dive

Cow shark dive in the kelp forest! That was Friday's activity. The group of divers was much smaller this time; everyone else opted to do land based tourism activities. We headed out to the dive site (only a 10 minute drive this time) under overcast skies but otherwise good weather. The water was slightly colder than the day before but we weren't chilled from a long boat ride so the temperature seemed much more tolerable. Our dive lasted about 45 minutes, cruising around through the kelp looking for the sharks. Cow sharks about as different as you can get from the personalities of the Blue Sharks. These sharks could care less that you've come to take a look at you--they'll simply keep meandering along their way looking like smiley old men. After the shark dive, we drove a little further in the bay to reach a small island where Cape Fur Seals hang out. We dropped into the water nearby and did a quarter hour long dive with them. The seals love checking out divers in the water and will cluster around just watching, occasionally swooping in for a closer look. 

Back: Elayna, me, Derek, Braham, Noah, Johan
Front: Carlie, Sam

I love diving in kelp forests!

Cow Shark, a species of 7-gill shark

Curious Cape Fur Seal

The local seal population come to check us out.

Blue Shark Pelagic Dive

Back from Cape Town and survived without being eaten by a shark. We did two dives out of Simon's Town (about 40 minutes from Cape Town) and made other stops to see sights around Cape Point and Cape Town. Lots of pictures, so I'll put them up in bits and pieces. 

First off, the blue shark dive! We took a three hour boat ride from Simon's Town to our dive site--The Middle Of Nowhere, The Ocean. It was a long, cold boat ride. I was riding on a 9m boat with inflatable pontoons on the side so it was a comfortable ride (bounces over swells don't hurt as much), but much less sheltered than the other, larger boat. About 20 minutes into the ride, I was as wet as if I'd already jumped in the ocean. The dive site really was in the middle of nowhere. There was no land in site and we were sitting over an area of ocean that was about 700m deep. Once at the site, chumming started and, after attracting a few sharks to the area, we hopped in for the dive. The dive itself was about 40 minutes long, max depth of 25 feet, and water temperature 58 degrees F. 

Blue Sharks are amazingly curious. They'll come right up to a diver and actually get so close that you need to give them a little shove. They're absolutely beautiful little sharks. The largest we saw was just over a couple meters and the smallest was about a meter. It's easy to see how they got their name--their dorsal surface is a gorgeous shade of blue. Photos from the Cow Shark dive in a kelp forrest, penguins at Boulder's Beach, and a seal dive are coming soon!

Gearing up on the dock.

On board the "duck"

Rounding Cape Point and heading for the open ocean!

The view from the dive site.

Blue Shark

Just a shark coming in for a little closer look.

Well... got half of me and the shark!

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.