That's okay film crew, i didn't really feel like sleeping anyway

Moving a 3.5 foot Nurse shark from the boat to the pen

You ever watch a TV program and wonder how they get the footage to look so good?  I used to, but then I worked first hand with several different film crews and realized it's more complicated than you might expect.  Now, i'm not just talking about the actual process involved in filming a TV program, but rather the entire experience of housing, feeding, and basically babysitting full grown adults.

So, without further introduction, here is my list of fun facts about film crews...

1. They take their sweet ass time - Sure Mr. Director, i'll wake up at 5:30 to get everything set up and ready for your crew to begin filming at sunrise.  What's that?  You'll actually not get here until 7 and then spend thirty minutes making coffee and asking me why it's overcast?  Awesome, I hate getting more than five hours of sleep anyway.  
2. Professionalism varies - While every crew usually brings an assortment of cameras that i'd gladly give a testicle for, they don't always bring the same work ethic.  No, i don't think I feel comfortable holding your $80,000 camera while you snorkel through the mangroves in your speedo to take photos with the new SLR and housing that i am sure was a "business expense".  On the other hand, they don't pay me enough (at all) to watch you swap lenses a gazillion times to ensure that you've captured every angle possible of the host picking up a scalpel.
3. Sound guys are tools - Sweet soul patch bro, how long did it take you to get those six pubic hairs below your lip to grow that long?  That was smart of you to put your microphones in condoms so they stay dry, glad they're getting used for something.    
4. The host always gets their own room - I used to think this was a primadonna thing, but the reality is that, after a long day of being told to repeat yourself a million times by a fat dude with a fanny pack, the talent needs their beauty sleep. 
5. Their budgets are ridiculous - Brand new outfits, camera equipment worth more than Kenya's GDP, catered meals, and full speedo attire are just some of the luxuries i've encountered.
6. They freestyle it - Writers?  Who needs a script when you're entire crew has seen Jaws at least twice. 

For obvious reasons i cannot disclose any specific information about the filming that goes on here at the lab.  To be fair, film crews are very important to us, and everyone works hard on both ends to make the best programs possible.  That being said, I can still poke fun at things, just as i'm sure they're laughing at my bunk bed.

Back in Bimini...

That didn't take very long.

Mmmmm

To be honest, I'm really not sure how to start this first entry.  I've been back in Bimini now for over two weeks and, although the internet is partly to blame, i've been putting off writing this first entry.  It might be the excessive heat, the copious amount of boat paint and fiberglass I've inhaled, or the brain damage incurred from painting a roof with metallic silver roofing paint in the blinding sun, but i've just been at a loss for words.  To be fair, I'm never really at a loss for words, it's just that I'm not sure it's really hit me that I now live in the Bahamas year round working at a shark research lab.

I guess the reason i'm having trouble writing is that before, while I was here as a volunteer, the whole experience was temporary and thus I wanted to share as many of the individual experiences I could.  While i'm still planning on writing about the cool and crazy things we do here, i'm also hoping to write about marine and other environmental issues that I think people should know about.

If you're wondering why I am suddenly back at the lab, after returning home I was called and offered the recently vacated assistant lab manager position.  It took all of five seconds to decide that I would rather spend my time back in Bimini working with sharks than living in Philly serving overpriced salad and pizza to yuppies.

So, here I am back in the same cramped two bunk-bed room, sweating all day in the blazing heat, showering in brackish water, and thanking our wonderful plumbing for the all too often phantom floaters my lab mates leave behind.  Thus far its been both a tiring, and yet smooth, transition back to life at the lab.  We've already done a South Bimini mini PIT where we gillnetted for twelve strait hours three nights in a row.  Not that it's been too long since i last drove the skiffs, but there's nothing like shuttling sharks to the pens in the middle of the night with only a few flashing strobes to guide the way to get your adrenaline going.  Now, as a staff member, reef shark dives get a little  more interesting, as I'm responsible for hanging out behind the line of volunteers and scaring away the sharks that circle around by swimming after them and grabbing their tail.... 

We've had a few days off, gone spearing and freediving, and were treated to a fireworks show only the Bahamas could provide.  I wasn't going to be the one to do it, but someone should've told the guys lighting them that fireworks are not supposed to blow up at ground level or be launched directly toward onlookers.  Regardless, it was a great show, even if I did feel like I was in Nam getting shelled for the majority of it.

Tomorrow is another day off, and i'm hoping to get out on the water to do some more freediving.  Several of us went to the pool the other night to practice breath holds, and i set a new personal best at 3:17 seconds.

Alright, that's all the summary i've got in me today.  I'm planning on blogging fairly often again like i was doing before, so check back soon.

Will this Jaws have a sequel?

Before - pale, brown haired crew cut, and sporting a nice double chin

In the grand scheme of post-college experiences, I've found a diamond in the rough.  It's been no secret that, as of late, the job market for recent graduates is about as penetrable as an abstinent Catholic eskimo girl with a black-belt and a gun.  While the jobs are slowly resurfacing in hilarious, ironic ways (Bret's a laxer), the golden ticket that once was a college degree has seemingly lost some luster.  Grad school was a good option, and, to all of my friends reading this as you near the end of either your first year, or, for those who've finished, your first beer, congrats, you'll be making much more money a lot sooner than me...

However, while web surfing aimlessly during Music 100 lectures senior year, I stumbled across my own answer to that evil fucking question drilled into the ears of every approaching graduate, "What's next?"  

Sharks and the Bahamas, that's what was next.   

It took a long time, seven months, to find out if i'd been accepted, and I would've been crushed if I got rejected.  But I didn't, and the past four months have played out more like a surreal vacation than an "internship".  While I knew I'd see and do some cool things while I was here, my experience has well surpassed even my highest expectations.  

As far as the sharks are concerned, I've been in the water with nine species including, among others, large tigers, bulls, and hammerheads.  I've held juvenile lemon sharks on a daily basis and, like today, held them while surgery was performed to implant a transmitter.  I've even seen and held newborn lemon sharks, still with an umbilical cord and placental sac, only moments after watching their mother give birth to them.  While some people would pay good money to go out fishing for barracuda, i've gone multiple times as part of a day's "work", and can now hold my breath for nearly two-and-a-half minutes after much practice free diving and spear fishing.  

Then there's the people.  It's rare to ever find yourself completely surrounded by people with very similar interests.  It's even more rare to have that situation arise on a small, secluded Bahamian island with little else but your house, an airport, a restaurant, and two bars with sandy floors.  Needless to say, i've made some amazing friends and, living together in a glorified double-wide, we all know each other a little too well.  

 I've had a lot of downtime here and, like this time last year, I find myself wondering what's next.  I'm beginning to acknowledge that I really am wired for science, and I actually think that, if i do choose to pursue biology, I'd like to work with sharks.  However, the realist in me knows nobody's wallet has ever grown very fat researching an animal most of the world loves to hate, and I still struggle with making a commitment.  Having said that, thinking about leaving on saturday is already making me miss sharks in a very personal way, and I'm not sure I will find another path as rewarding as working with these animals that I love. 

Finally, I'd like to thank everyone who's been reading this blog the past few months.  Although I admittedly did lose a little steam with the blog, i've really enjoyed writing about my experience down here and honestly hope that it's been interesting to read.  I'm considering continuing to write about environmental issues I find interesting, and so I would really like to hear what you've though about my blog and if you would honestly continue to read what I write.  So, if you're reading this, please don't hesitate to write a comment and let me know what you think.

-Tyler

After...

                   

When life gives you lemons...

Me holding a juvenile Lemon shark in tonic while Jon performs surgery to implant a transmitter

I'm pretty amazed it's taken me nearly four months to think of the pun that titles this entry, however, in light of the story I am about to tell, it's quite fitting.  As promised, I'll now explain the natural spectacle I witnessed that made me feel more privileged than a shoe salesmen with a foot fetish.

It was last friday, the final day of the UNB shark course, and I was driving one of five skiffs for chasedowns in the lagoon.  A chasedown is a method of catching larger sharks in shallow water and, big surprise here, it involves chasing the shark using multiple boats to corral it until it tires out.  Once the shark is tired out, the main chase boat gets alongside the shark and pokes it repeatedly with a dip-net wrapped in rope.  Once the shark bites the net, it is pulled alongside the boat while a tail rope with an attached float is put on.  The shark is then released to give it time to recover before the workup.

Going into the chasedown, there were several things I was worried about.  First, the lagoon is very shallow (0-1 meters) and, even at high tide, you need to keep the boat going fast so as to stay high on the water and not bottom out in certain areas.  Secondly, early May is prime time for pregnant Lemon sharks entering the lagoon to give birth, and all of the staff wanted to avoid chasing a pregnant Lemon because of the risk of inducing birth.

Needless to say, Doc spotted a large Lemon, and from that point on we were chasing her like divorce lawyers after Tiger Wood's wife.  After catching her and attaching the tail float, we released the shark and waited for her to recover.  However, instead of swimming around slowly, she proceeded to sit on the bottom and not move, prompting Emily to get in the water and try to get her swimming.  It's one thing to see a person walking down the street with a monster dog on a leash, but it's quite another thing to watch a friend take a ten foot Lemon shark for a stroll.  It became pretty apparent that the shark was pretty exhausted and likely very stressed, at which point we began to become a bit nervous.  After about twenty minutes of stop-go swimming, when the shark had finally begun to swim constantly, suddenly Emily yelled out.

"Baby shark!"

Sure enough, I looked a few feet behind the mother and could see a baby lemon shark thrashing in the water like a drunk toddler.  At this point chaos erupted.  Of the 23 people on the boats, only seven of us were sharklab staff and the rest were students who didn't have the slightest clue what to do, let alone how to drive the boats they suddenly found themselves abandoned on as the seven of us scrambled to collect the babies.

Sharks are fish and many give birth to litters of live pups.  As a result, the one baby shark Emily spotted was surely not to be the last.  As a result, for the next hour, a good part of which I spent running through waist-deep water, we raced to follow the shark and collect the 50-60 centimeter pups that the mother intermittently popped out like excess baggage.   We shuttled the vulnerable pups closer to the shelter of the mangroves where the mother likely would've given birth under normal conditions.

Twice during the ordeal, I caught and held in my hands a newborn Lemon shark with the umbilical cord still attached, only moments after it's mother had given birth to it.  Standing there, not only witnessing a wild shark giving birth, but holding it's newborn baby in my hands, was my own version of a religious experience and hopefully the closest i'll come to feeling like a father for a long time. While shark skin is normally rough and easy to grip, the newborns were covered in a film that made them extremely slippery and hard to hold.  All said and done, we collected, ID'd, and took DNA from twelve baby lemon sharks by the time the mother was finished and we watched her swim away.  It is important to know that, despite having likely induced the birthing, the shark was almost certainly going to give birth later that day or night and the baby sharks were not born prematurely.  Despite the stressful and chaotic nature of the whole thing, the experience was incredible and, for someone who loves sharks, about as cool as it gets.

UNB Course, Bulls, and Babies

230 cm Cuban Night Shark

Not sure i've ever posted this statistic before, but it is estimated that nearly 70 million sharks are killed each year.  What's worse, these sharks are killed simply for their fins, and the vast majority are simply rolled back into the ocean, often times still alive.  Now, if you consider that it takes many years for most sharks to reach sexual maturity (approximately twelve years for lemon sharks), it's not hard to grasp the dire circumstances facing sharks.  Finally, and most depressingly, all this is occurring due to the demand of a billion Chinese for the status-bolstering soup for which the tasteless shark fin adds texture...

If you don't believe me I'm not surprised, as killing sharks flies well under the radar of most people, and, even when people do hear about it, they're not too bothered because, lets face it, sharks eat people right? It's bullshit and truly painful to think about the downfall of one the oldest and most highly evolved animals on the planet at the hands of soup slurping minions and redneck "I'm a real man!" fishermen with brains twice the size yet a third as intelligent as the fish they slaughter. 

Alright, I got a little carried away there, but, needless to say, you can understand why it feels so good to see that, at least in Bimini, sharks still appear to be doing alright.  Another shark biology course, this time from the University of New Brunswick (random i know), came to the lab and stayed from April 26 to May 1st.  This time around the weather cooperated and the students got to have a lot of different shark experiences.  The highlights included a hammerhead dive that I was able to tag along for, hand feeding wild lemon sharks at Aye's spot, a vertical longline in the Gulf Stream, and a chaotic chasedown that led to easily the most incredible, albeit somewhat unfortunate, natural event i've ever experienced...

As with the last course, we caught two sharks on the vertical longline.  This time, instead of two tigers, we caught a 270 cm tiger and a 230 cm Cuban Night Shark.  The Cuban was first and, while while the students decided to remain on the pontoon boat, all the volunteers practically jumped off the boat to see the new shark specie.  After a quick workup, we released the shark and Kristine swam it down a few meters to get it moving.  The tiger was hooked on the last line and everyone got in the water to watch the workup and take pictures.  At this point, unbeknownst to all but a few of the volunteers and staff in the water, a large free-swimming tiger was circling about 60 feet below by the cinder block and chum bag at the end of the line.  I dove down to about thirty feet and watched it swim around for a bit before it disappeared into the blue.  Then, only about five minutes later, I saw what I thought to be the tiger reappearing and swimming towards me, only to realize that it was a large new shark, and that it was swimming towards me.  Had it been the tiger I probably would've simultaneously swallowed my snorkel and shit it out my board-shorts.  However, it wasn't a tiger and it stayed about twenty feet away from me as it circled behind me and continued past and disappeared.  When I got back to the lab I did a little research, and I'm about 90% sure it was a large Silky shark drawn in by the bait and chum still on the line.  I didn't get a picture of the mystery shark, however I did get it on video so I do have proof.

Alright, it's late and i'm too tired to describe what happened on the chasedown.  I didn't intend to leave it as a cliffhanger, but, like Stallone, just hang on and it'll be worth it...

Nothing but net...and twelve sharks

If there's one thing i've learned while working here at the shark lab, it's that doing a PhD is hard, especially when extensive field research is involved.  Even when things are running smoothly, it appears as if Kristine will never emerge from the endless onslaught of writing grant proposals, reading papers, writing emails, learning new computer programs, and data entry.

Now imagine five important elements of your field work mysteriously escaping out of the back pen and swimming away with $800 worth of surgically inserted acoustic transmitters.  Oh yea, and you've just discovered that the tracking gear, upon which the accuracy of a vast majority of your data hinges, is going haywire.

So, everyday for the past week, we've been gillnetting in the North Sound with the hope of re-catching the escaped transmitter sharks, which might as well be swimming wads of cash.  Over the past few days, we've been catching about four sharks a day, however, today things got crazy and we caught twelve sharks.  For a good two hour period it seemed as if every time we checked the net there was at least one or two new sharks.  Quite inconveniently, this rush happened to coincide with dead low tide, and the best way to describe our shark shuttling runs to the holding pen further down the North Sound is probably "short bus".

While we've only caught one escapee this far, that in itself is pretty remarkable if you reference a map of Bimini and consider that that shark escaped from our pen on the south coast of South Bimini, and proceeded to find its way around the east coast of the island, through the lagoon, and up into the North Sound.

In other news, Andrew left a few days ago and Marc, Sherri, and Rachel are all leaving in the next few days.  Two new volunteers are arriving on the 15th with Doc, who is returning for a few days to oversee chasedowns in the lagoon.  April is the time of the year when pregnant lemon sharks return to Bimini and give birth to the new batch of neonates, and Doc likes to chase down, capture, and work-up at least one of these large mothers.

Should be fun.

Eckerd shark course, boat ejection, and some big ol' Tigers

Well, it's been a while since my last post and, as a result, a lot has happened.  On Saturday, Kristine, Jill, and all the volunteers moved out of the lab and into an apartment down the road.  We stayed there till today in order to make room for the 15 Eckerd College students who came to the lab for a Shark Biology  course.   With so many people, not all the volunteers were needed each day so we were split into two groups and alternated days working.  I had the first day off and Andrew, Jon, and I went spearfishing.  I didn't spear any large fish, but we found two lionfish, which are an invasive species in the bahamas, and I speared both of them.  Normally, I would never kill such a cool and exciting fish, however, lionfish recently invaded Bahamian waters and are reeking havoc on the native species.  

On Monday, Andrew and I went with Doc to a special location in the northern mangroves known as Aya's spot, where we chummed the water and gathered in about fifteen juvenile lemon sharks for the course students to hand feed.  Needless to say, the ten minute boat ride with the seventy-three (that's right, 73!)  year-old at the helm was, well, ree-donkulous.  It's rare when a man in his seventies scares the shit out of two 23 year old guys, but Doc drove that skiff at full speed and with a reckless abandonment that could only be matched by an asian Drivers Ed course.  Anyway, the shark feed went great, and afterwards we drove to the east cost and managed to bait in 18 blacktip sharks for everyone to swim around with.  Blacktips are relatively small sharks but they're real fast and easy to find with a shallow sandy bottom.  

For the ride home, after switching to the Proline motorboat Jill was driving, tragedy struck.  With winds above 20 knots, the conditions were really rough all day, and the drive home was long and, to put it lightly, a bit on the bumpy side.  About a quarter mile out from our channel, while my hands were both momentarily occupied with a radio and jills glasses, we got hit by a rogue wave and I was launched off the side off the boat.  Regardless of what most of you might think, the boats are far more dangerous than any of sharks we swim with, but luckily I was unhurt, at least physically.  Mentally, however, I was crushed to realize several minutes later that my beloved Smith sunglasses had been ripped of my head and now lay on the bottom of the ocean.

Finally, on Wednesday, the final day of the course, the weather cooperated and we set a deep water longline in the Gulf Stream to try and catch some large sharks.  Unfortunately, before the fun part, Andrew, Jim, Sean, and I had to haul up 1800 feet of line by hand to pull the hooked sharks off the bottom. 

Karma, which i think is becoming a theme with me, was on our side as we had not one, but two big tiger sharks on the line.  The first one is the shark in the above two photos and was a 3.28 meter long male.  It was the second large Tiger i've helped work up and once again I found myself holding its dorsal and pec fins in order to keep it straight and calm alongside the boat.  While we were working up and getting in the water with the first shark, the second tiger, another male about 2.7 meters in length, could be seen struggling against the line about fifty feet below.  When we were finished, the shark was released and Sean rode it down for several meters before letting it swim off into the blue.  After the first one was gone, everyone got out of the water and we worked up the second shark relatively quick, with Sean once again riding it down for the release.  

All in all the past week with the course here was pretty great.  Despite the long work days, we did a lot of cool things, saw some amazing sharks, and got to sleep in real beds.  We're all exhausted now and this blog entry has taken me a couple hours, so it's time now to pass out and dream longingly of a wonderful pair of polarized sunglasses lying somewhere nearby on the bottom of the ocean, rusting away...

If Karma were an animal it would be a Hammerhead, or six.

Look at that smile

I'm not very religious and I doubt I ever will be, however, I do believe in karma and yesterday was the perfect example.

After the three day freeze-fest that was Mini Pit, it was time once again for the monthly shark dive and, without trying to sound like a douche, we wanted something a little more badass than the Caribbean Reef sharks of the normal shark dive.  So, like last month, we went baiting for hammerheads.  This time, for lack of a better expression, shit got crazy.

We arrived at the spot known as the grate (same spot as last time), set anchor, and began scraping the bait.  Sean managed to spear a large barracuda that swam by and had to swim after it so it didn't get away with his spear, with Andrew putting a second spear through it to slow it down.  Meanwhile, I managed to spear a lobster hiding under the grate (which I just made for dinner along with some fried conch) and patrolled around the boat looking for more fish to spear.  

The whole baiting aspect is a pretty strange thing to watch.  Fish (mostly barracuda and jacks) recently caught fishing or spearing are attached to ropes off the back of the boat and someone uses a knife to scrape apart the carcass, sending the shards and chum into the current and off into the blue horizon. To me, the whole thing resembles a bizarre offering; we essentially sacrifice lesser fish to be rewarded with the presence of these ocean gods.  Like last time, it took well over an hour before we got a shark to show up.  He was smaller (about 9 feet) than the one last month, but much less timid and it became apparent pretty quick that he was going to stick around for awhile.  Then suddenly, after about fifteen minutes, a second one showed up and before I really knew what was going on there were three of them circling around and going after the bait.  Once emily gave us the OK, I began diving down and resting on the sand to get closer to them and could barely contain myself.  Like I said last time, swimming with large sharks, especially ones as graceful and elusive as hammerheads, is a drug and I almost OD'd yesterday.  While the whole thing was incredible, the highlight for me was when I hovered just above the sand and had one swim directly at me before slowly and casually turning just enough to pass within a few feet of me.

  Furthermore, needless to say, I about shit myself when I looked out at one point and could see five hammerheads.  Sean, the lab director, has done this many times and was clearly not afraid to "play" with the sharks, hand feeding one a large piece of barracuda and taking a ride on another one's tail fin.  He's the one in this picture on the right.

All in all, we swam with the hammerheads for about two hours.  We estimated that we saw six or seven individual hammerheads and, at one point, had five at the same time.

Had one of those sharks decided to go crazy and carry me off in his jaws, I probably would've had a smile on my face bigger than his...

Mini PIT: Nights 2 & 3...Rubbermaid my day

There are certain experiences in life everyone is glad they've had but wouldn't really want to do again; puberty, dentist appointments, and physicals (cough, cough) are notable examples.  While this wasn't quite the case with nights two and three of mini PIT, it was pretty close.  If night one seemed long, it was nothing compared to the two nights that followed, where a vast majority of time was spent as a human hermit crab nestled under Rubbermaid plastic tubs in order to avoid the wind and sporadic rain.  That being said, forget about Gore-Tex because Rubbermaid is the way to go.  Rarely has such a retarded piece of neglected, Wal-Mart supplied crap ever been more valued.  

Night two was definitely the hardest.  With the winds well over 20 mph it was too difficulty to safely drive the boats along the net, so, as a result, we had to walk check the net the entire night.  This meant a nice, leisurely stroll through waist deep  cold water every 15 minutes in an area where sub-adult lemon sharks were known to occasionally venture...great.  To make things a little easier, we decided to each do two checks in a row so that we would then each have over an hour to stay dry and "warm" on the boat before it was our turn to check the nets again.  

Nights two and three both had their fair share of ridiculous radio chatter and we all went a little bit crazy from cold and sleep deprivation.  The final night, Kristine, Marc, and I spent about two hours writing a song called "Lesbian Check" about how great it was to not find boners (bonefish) tangled in the net during a check...

The hardest part about the final two nights was the utter lack of sharks.  While my net caught seven sharks the first night, we only caught one shark each of the following nights.  However, as bad as the weather was and as miserable as we felt at certain points, it was still a great experience and I had a great time.  

The final night provided a little stellar reprieve as I saw the biggest shooting star i've ever seen (literally the thing went across the entire sky and actually had me scared it was going to slam into the earth Armageddon style) and the sunrise was pretty great.  

Mini PIT: Night 1

It's been a long time coming but Mini PIT finally started today.  After waking up at 8 am we worked a half day and then all rested after lunch for a few hours.  At 5 pm, we all woke up and had a not-at-all random snack of lasagna, ham and cheese sandwiches, and rice crispy treats before packing up the boats and heading to the North Sound.

In a nutshell, Mini PIT is three long and glorious nights of gillnetting to catch juvenile lemon sharks in order to get an idea of the population just prior to when the pregnant adult females return and give birth.  There are three gillnets set at different locations around the North Sound, with each net being monitored by a boat team of three people.  A fourth tagging boat stays at the main pen and works up the sharks that are caught and delivered by the gillnet crews.  This nocturnal shark hunt lasts for uhmm, hmm, oh right, TWELVE hours!  Needless to say, a midnight dinner is delivered and by around 2 am all radio chatter has devolved into a mindless and usually X-rated jumble.

Night one is nearly always the most active and tonight we caught 19 sharks, with my net catching seven of them.  Everyone put two dollars into a pot for whoever could guess the correct number of sharks without going over.  Nineteen was the winning number.  I guessed twenty.  Of course.

Its now 10 am and I'm about to pass out till 5:30 when we wake up and do it all again.  A bed hasn't felt this good in a long time, even if it is a tiny, decade old, shit pad that smells like farts and is elegantly covered in prison sheets.

C'est la vie, mais le Pelican est mort

I'll begin with the bad, albeit expected, news; the pelican died.  Considering how badly broken it's wing was, I think we did everything we could for it by resetting the wing, feeding it, and having a vacationing German vet examine it.  In retrospect, I think the lattermost move was a mistake, either that or we mistranslated and "wrap the pelican in towels and keep it closed in a small box in the back shed for 24 hours" wasn't what the vet actually had in mind.  Oh well, in any event this seems to add credibility to my earlier post about the dangers of being a pelican.

In other news, a French film crew came to the lab today to film a promotional video that the Bahamian tourism department hopes to use to attract more of those beret wearing wine & cheese lovers from across the pond.  While two teams of volunteers went out tracking for the day, Marc and I were assigned to helping out with the filming out back.  The first thing I noticed when I went out back was that their camera equipment was probably worth more than the GDP of most African nations (Jim estimated their topside camera was worth close to $80,000 and the underwater camera's resolution was over 8x HD quality).  I haven't really taken any time to explain the incredible micromanager and character that is 73 year-old "Doc" Gruber, but lets just say that, along with being an esteemed shark biologist, he considers himself a professional director, producer, and cameraman, and watching three confused french filmmakers trying to cope with him was pretty entertaining.
The crew filmed several scenes, all staged, of driving the boats, catching, tagging, and releasing juvenile lemon sharks.  Then we set a large net around a section of mangroves and allowed two lemon sharks to swim around so they could get some "natural" action shots.  The crew were nice guys and had stories of filming underwater spectacles that I would gladly sacrifice a small child to witness.

Oh yea, wednesday night is once again karaoke night at the bar and the crew is coming to film us and they've been told i'll sing........shit.  Whiskey.

SHIT PIT!

What dreams are made of

Ever wonder what a 5 month floater looks like?  Well, if you're a lucky volunteer here at the Bimini Biological Field Station, you get to find out twice a year.  Located on a small island and being mostly self-sustaining, the shark lab's septic system thus consists of a 5x5 underground concrete pit which, about every five months, is emptied.  The half-day spectacle that ensued, complete with the Top Gun soundtrack, cross dressing, and an almost entire bottle of bleach, is aptly dubbed "Shit Pit" and, I can promise, did not disappoint. 

Needless to say, I had the last choice of charity clothes to wear

The septic pit is located just behind the lab under a concrete lid and a foot of sand.  Once the concrete lid was removed and the dinner table-sized floater that closely resembled corny meatloaf was revealed, the fun really started.  Using buckets, we manually hauled the loads over to the massive pit dug the previous day and emptied the contents, careful to avoid potentially fatal splashes.  After the fecal raft was removed, an industrial water pump with a fifty-foot hose was used to remove the liquid leftovers as we all prayed that a rogue tampon wouldn't clog the intake and, literally, make our day even shittier.  Luckily everything went smoothly (pun intended) and, after a few final buckets at the bottom, we filled the pit in and recovered the now empty septic tank.

After a lunch that contained neither corn nor anything brown, we were given the rest of the day off.  However, before we could even get up from the table, two locals came by and dropped off a pelican they had found with a completely broken wing.  Despite being a lab dedicated to working with sharks and without anyone trained as a vet, locals tend to bring us any injured animals they find, including dead ones that, for some reason, they think we'll enjoy.  As a result, after locating a visiting german vet staying on the island, the next hour was spent bandaging and caring for the battered pelican, which is currently sitting in a small box in one of our sheds "healing"; apparently that's how they do it in Germany.

Despite wanting to save the pelican, I kept thinking of that eventful day years ago when Matt, Adam and I were told to humanely put down a badly injured seagull at the suggestion of animal control.  On that occasion, however, and without a gun, "humanely put down" turned unfortunately into "decapitate with a machete on the neighbors lawn in front of two little girls".  In our defense, we didn't know how else to kill it and had no idea the girls were there until it was too late.  Plus, as Adam announced, it was attacking...

Snake Lab

With the weather continuing to be problematic, the daily routine here at the lab has been altered quite a bit and the recent highlight was yesterday's "snake hunt".  Bimini is home to the endangered endemic snake specie known as the Bimini Boa.  While at first glance this snake appears to have rather plain black and silver scales, upon further inspection these same scales radiate a rainbow spectrum when properly lighted by the sun.

For as long as the Sharklab has been operating, keeping tabs on the Bimini Boa population has been a side priority.  With winds strong enough to prevent our field teams from going out on the boats, we instead went searching the woods of South Bimini for this elusive snake.  With three teams spread across the island, we were able to find three boas; two large females and one younger female.  My team, which searched the area around Bimini's "Fountain of Youth", consisted of Marc, Andrew, and me. After thouroughly searching the surrounding woods, we found a large female nestled inside a small stone wall.  After reaching my hand in and getting a hold of the snake's lower half, I pulled the snake out carefully as Andrew removed the necessary wall segments.  Needless to say, the snake wasn't exactly happy and found my hand a convenient place to shit and musk all over ("musking" is essentially the snake equivalent of being skunked; they shit out a liquid stench that  can best be described as rotten bodily mayonnaise.  

Back at the lab, each snake was carefully worked up, which consisted of two length measurements (head to cloaca, and cloaca to the end of the tail) and PIT tagging.  As with lemon sharks, the Bimini Boa's that we catch are given PIT tags so they can identified and analyzed to determine their growth and range.  During the work ups, I was assigned the glamorous "shit duty", and was responsible for controlling the final third of the snake while catching the glorious shit and musk they all-too-gladly spewed when scared.

Continuing on the topic of cleaning shit, the infamous "Shit Pit" has been confirmed for tomorrow...this should be interesting.

An attempted summary of a couple slow days

It's been almost a week since my last post so, even though it's late and I'll potentially pass out while I type this, I wanted to give anyone still listening to me a brief update.  The past few days have been on the slower side due to high winds which have prevented us from going out into the field too much.  When this happens our daily work takes an unfortunate turn toward the boring and mindless, with tasks such as repairing gillnets for hours, checking and fixing longlines, and data entry...exhilarating.  Sometimes, as was the case two days ago when we hauled massive cinderblocks out of the lagoon and dumped them in the channel to get them out of harms way, certain jobs can posses a strangely satisfying quality.  However, for the most part, high winds mean high levels of labor intensive and shark free fun for everyone.  With winds in excess of 25 knots (the speed), tomorrow figures to be one such day and has me feeling grateful that I will be on duty and thus able to avoid the inevitable gillnet repair requiring what always seems like 25,000 knots (the kind you tie).

On a completely unrelated note, we have a lot of free time here at the end of the day and between multi-lingual pictionary games, bonfires, rock band nights, and watching movies, i've been doing a decent amount of reading.  Currently, mom you'll be happy to know, I'm reading and really enjoying a book called The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon.  The book takes place in New York City in the late 1930's and early 40's during the golden age of comic book.  The plot revolves around two cousins, Sammy Clay and Joe Kavalier, who create several widely popular comic book heroes and explore WWII era Americana with the monetary and social proceeds or their work.  While it may sound a little lame, the book won the Pulitzer prize and is extremely engaging and well written.  Plus, if you have or are planning on taking the GRE, SAT, or any other relatively useless standardized test with a verbal section, Michael Chabon employs a vocabulary which is guaranteed to both educate and make you feel retarded.

Shit pit is looming in the next few days...bet you're curious what I mean by that.

Sometimes, as Bret would say, you just need to grab a rod.

Today, Jim, Elena, Sheri, and I went fishing for sub-adult lemon sharks around the flats off the east side of North Bimini.  As good as that sounds, it sounds even better when you hear the other groups will be hauling a huge net all day to catch and measure bajillions of tiny silverside fish.  Because of their size and range, larger sharks can't easily be caught with a gillnet and so catching them with a traditional rod and reel can be a good option, plus it's fun as hell.  What's better still, is that before we could shark fish we had to go trolling for barracuda to use as bait.

I caught a barracuda literally as we trolled out of our channel, so we decided to jet up to east wells to troll for a bit longer before anchoring and going after sharks.  After Elena and Sheri both quickly added their own barracuda to our bait supply, we went a bit further north and dropped anchor on the edge of the sand flats and geared up.

Elena was the first to go and, almost immediately, hooked into a small 125cm blacktip that she successfully got to the boat in about five minutes.  The shark was released after a quick work-up (measurements, DNA sample, sexed) and Sheri got ready next.  Landing a second shark proved much more troublesome, with two sharks managing to spit the hook and two others snapping the line, but Sheri eventually landed another blacktip of about equal size.

I was last and, trying not to sound like a douche, hooked into the largest shark of the day.  I spent the next fifteen minutes battling that bastard as he insisted on making lap after lap around the boat, repeatedly forcing me to pass the rod under the anchor line.  After thoroughly tiring himself out, we got the shark (another blacktip, 156cm) secured to the boat and did the work-up.

Now, because the water was relatively shallow and we were over sand, we could see any sharks that were within a hundred feet of the boat.  As a result, a bit of that "fun" fishing feeling of waiting unknowingly for the action was somewhat replaced with an equally exciting and frustrating feeling of watching the shark dance around the bait without biting.  Actually, the previous description works pretty well for my concluding comment; I've finally realized that, unlike the talented troubadour I imagined, I will always tell long and frustratingly detailed stories.  To my high school friends, I was always suspicious that you just liked to give me a hard time.  This was hampered a bit after my college friends managed to come to the same conclusion independently and pretty damn fast.  Now everyone here at the sharklab, arguably the third large new group of friends i've made, has figured it out too.  Well shit.  This has lead me to the conclusion that, not only are my stories long, but they're only getting longer and more unnecessarily and arbitrarily detailed.

Having said that, anyone who does not enjoy my stories speak now......................didn't think so.

HAMMERHEAD

Sunday was, in the words of an illustrious MC, Hammertime.

With several volunteers newly arrived, the regular sharkdive was modified and we found ourselves anchored approximately a quarter of a mile west off South Bimini on the edge of the Gulf Stream.  Using several freshly caught barracuda, the wahoo carcasses scavenged from the fishing tournament, and a potpourri of fish heads from the bait freezer back at the lab, Emily, Jim, and Sean began scraping fish and shaking chum bags while holding onto ropes off the back of the boat.

After an hour or so waiting on the boat, I began to get anxious and decided to suit up and try spearing some fish for fresh bait.  I had been in the water only five minutes when, after surfacing, I saw everyone still on the boat quietly suiting up.  Taking this as a good sign, I quickly swapped my spear for my camera and made my way to one of the ropes off the back of the other boat.

Almost immediately after grabbing the rope, I watched, giddy and awestruck, as a large Great Hammerhead swam towards me and made a pass at the bait directly below me.  With the bait sitting on the bottom, barely twenty feet below the surface, I spent the next thirty minutes with a front row seat to a marine display of sheer evolutionary perfection.  The shark made numerous circles and passes at the bait, occasionally disappearing into the blue of our underwater horizon only to return a minute later as an ominous shadow growing steadily into that streamlined, iconic shape that I feel so fortunate to have witnessed.  I put a video I took on Youtube under the name "Baiting in a hammerhead 2/21/2010"  and put a link to it on the blog at the top right, but let me know if you have trouble finding it.

While some of you might be reading this thinking we're crazy, all I can say is that the feeling of being in the water with sharks, especially one as elegant and powerful as a hammerhead, is a drug; an adrenaline rush-filled wave of excitement that leaves you wanting more.  I think it was this mutual feeling that, once the hammerhead had disappeared for good, compelled us to speed off to the usual sharkdive ground for a quick reef shark encounter.  This time around the reef sharks were definitely bolder and I had to kick probably seven of them to get them to stop swimming between us on the line.

After a late dinner of freshly caught grouper, the epic day ended with celebratory beers down at the bar and left me anxiously awaiting the next time we get the chance to go baiting...

Skunks and Mullets...Wahoo!

The 24 hour longline is over and I got skunked.

When we longline, the line is set at 2 pm and then checked every four hours by a five person team.  This results in a rather sleepless and anxious night as teams come and go and everyone tosses in their attempted sleep awaiting that elusive call from the checking team to say they've found a large tiger shark on the line.  In the event that a tiger is caught, everyone remaining at the lab piles into the boats to go check it out, swim around, and take pictures.  No tigers were caught during this longline and I didn't get to work up any other sharks because none were caught during my checks, although we did see a couple of massive eagle rays.  Finally, to top it off, Elena and I lost a team bet over which longlines would have the most sharks, and so on wednesday night (karaoke night) I'll be the classy dude at the bar in a full wetsuit, mask, and fins drinking beers through a snorkel...

The day was rescued slightly by the scene that unfolded before me later that afternoon.  Bimini Bay was holding a fishing tournament for Wahoo and, after taking numerous photos used for monitoring development in the north sound, Kristine, Steve, Emily, and I stopped at their marina to try and get the carcasses to use for shark bait.  What we found was one of the most bro-tastic and homoerotic displays of Americana i've ever witnessed.  About five high-tech fishing boats, each with more horsepower than a glue factory, were docked and unloading their catch for the tournament weigh-in.  It became clear right away that prerequisites for this crowd included a beer gut, neon slicker suspenders, and an affinity for ponytails and bad facial hair.  Furthermore, and this is saying a lot, I'm not sure i've ever heard the word "Bro" used more frequently than during the weigh in.  I was transfixed.  Feeling like Hunter S. Thompson at the narcotics convention, I watched as the personification of about a dozen American stereotypes hauled dozens of dead Wahoos the size of snowboards on to the docks, with the largest weighing in at 85 pounds and easily over six feet in length.  When the weighing was finished, the fishermen spent a solid half-hour lounging on manly white bean bags scattered across the boats and docks while drinking top-shelf liquor and listening to terrible remixes of already regrettable 90's dance hits.

We're doing something cool tomorrow but they haven't told us what yet...

I Guess Pelicans Never Took Swim Class

When you're young, what's the first rule you learn about swimming?  The rule that, if broken enough times, is likely to really to ruin your day?

Don't dive headfirst into shallow water.

Q - What did the one pelican say to the other?

A - You're fucked.

Pelicans clearly couldn't give two shits about this dogma.  In fact, as I spent a lazy day out tracking in South Bimini, I watched pelicans repeatedly dive-bomb into essentially knee-deep water.  This got me thinking; how many overzealous pelicans do you think paralyze themselves by diving after an all-to-shallow nemo?  Furthermore, how could such a risky hunting strategy have evolved?  This led me to two conclusions

1.) It would be fun to be a pelican
2.) As said pelican, you are ugly as shit

My reasoning is simple and can be explained with only a slight stretch of my imagination, be it a tired, hungry, and farmer-tanned imagination.  Pelicans enjoy lounging in tree tops, I enjoy lounging on couches (especially if they were up in trees).  When they're hungry, pelicans go flying and then dive into the water like an avian kamikazee when they spot food.  If someone told you that, next time you were hungry, you could go flying around in search of submerged cheeseburgers (forgetting for a moment that soggy cheeseburgers are probably pretty bad) you can't tell me you wouldn't be excited.

In other news, i've also realized that the principle of social altruism can really comeback to fuck you when concerning karaoke.  As I mentioned a few days ago, after several karaoke nights without any shark lab singers, I sang a song last week hoping that, if one person sang, others would start singing this week.  Wrong.  Instead, I was kindly and unknowingly volunteered to sing "Like a Virgin"....it got ugly quick and started what is sure to become a war of terrible renditions of pop hits from America's sluttiest female stars.

Tomorrow we're going long lining and it should therefore be an awesome day.  Hopefully we'll be lucky like last time and get some good size tiger, lemon, and black tip sharks on the lines.  Then, on Sunday, we're doing a shark dive and then getting ready for mini PIT which starts next week.  Basically, the next week or so should be a lot of fun and involve a lot of sharks.

dolphins are gay sharks.

Everyone loves a bonfire

It's no secret that there are certain things in life, let's call them inevitable truths, which everyone comes to understand in their life.  Some examples are that girls love chocolate, foreign ketchup sucks, Bret's gay, and bonfires.

The universal appeal of the bonfire was reaffirmed a couple nights ago when we built one on the back beach from dried palm leaves and an endless supply of dry driftwood that sits right next to the washed up old and rusty barge that Steph claims she's never seen before.  I'm guessing the appeal stems from somewhere deep in our genome that arose when our primitive ancestors learned bonfires were a great way to both stay warm and roast giant sloths, dinosaurs, and unruly women.  Whatever the reason, I challenge anyone to gather some friends, find a good spot, build a fire, and not have a good time (girls nagging that it's taking too long to build or that it's not warm enough doesn't count, girls will always nag).

Anyway, it's been a mellow past couple days down here due to high winds making it difficult for us to get out in the field.  We spent one morning picking up trash along the main road of south bimini and then i spent the afternoon cutting up the barracudas we caught last week to use for bait in the upcoming shark dive and long lining.  Back to the inevitable truth thing for a moment, I realized that it's a pretty tough life  for a sharklab barracuda.  As such a fish, after being hooked (or speared multiple times) and hauled into a boat, you get your head crushed with a small aluminum bat before being tossed in a deep freezer.  After chilling out for a bit, you're hacked into slices with a hatchet like a loaf of bread and then finally, as if that wasn't enough, fed to sharks.

Three new volunteers arrive tomorrow, one of which is a poor girl who is going to be living in room 2 with Elena, Steph, and Amanda.  This means that the girl is almost certainly missing three pieces of luggage which should've been included on her list; earplugs, a nose plug, and Prozac.

Alright I'm tired, time for my last inevitable truth, everyone loves sleeping.  

Roger That

There's something that i've seriously overlooked in my shark lab description thus far...I fucking love radios.

There is simply no better way to bring out my inner G.I. Joe than to give me a walkie talkie and let me say "ten four", "roger that", "no copy", and "red team go".  I mean shit, with the last job i had the person on the other line usually told me they wanted their pizza crust crispy or their salad dressing tossed; now I'm told to relay GPS coordinates and record our current sector...hell yes.

I think this is going to be a pretty short post for several reasons.  First, tonight is happy hour/karaoke night at the bar and usually the only other night we go out other than our days off.  I sang Ramblin' Man (and yes mom I'm being serious) but only after several Kaliks (Bahamian beer).

Walsh, I know you said you wanted more details but tonight i'm tired/drunk and this is all i've got.  It's O.K, though since you still have a bunch of time at Bucknell...oh wait, you graduate soon.

T-squad standing by

Map of Bimini

Matt pointed out that I've been talking about places around Bimini but haven't added a map or anything.  So, here's a map of Bimini courtesy of the lab table top which I took a picture of.  The shark lab is located on South Bimini just to the left of the little cove on the south side.  We do the majority of our work in the north sound, which is the teardrop shaped area at the tip of the two sides to north bimini.  Bimini Bay Resort is currently clear-cutting the mangroves that line the western shore of the North Sound, causing serious habitat loss for the many species that rely on the north sound as nursery grounds. We go spear fishing mostly off the north or west coast of south bimini and set the longlines in the shallow banks a little ways off Bimini's eastern coast.  

Thats about as much of a geography lesson that i've got in me at the moment.  From now on, if i refer to some place you're unfamiliar with just check this map (it should enlarge if you click on it).

The Superbowl, a day off, and Gill-netting

It's been a couple days since the last post so I apologize to anyone actually following this (mom and dad you don't count).  This whole wake up at 8 am, spend 7 hours on a boat, and then stay up till midnight routine isn't exactly on par with my normal sleep schedule, and i say "sleep schedule" because there definitely used to be more sleep involved than scheduled activities.  Nonetheless, I'm starting to understand that whole "carpe diem" thing and can acknowledge that I am now hopelessly addicted to coffee (currently drinking my 4th cup today at 8 PM).

Despite the unfortunate absence of the Giants, I enjoyed the Superbowl and think the Saints deserved to win.  Don't get me wrong I like the Colts, but once the possibility of a Bret Favre Superbowl meltdown/sob-fest disappeared I was rooting for the Saints.  The beach club bar here was a good time, especially because they screwed up and never charged me for my prime rib sandwich.

Elena and Steph were drunk by kickoff and, for some unknown reason, were given whistles and rattles.  As a result, today the two of them were having difficulty catching much of anything besides themselves.  Luckily, monday was a day off and I spent the post-hangover day spear fishing around South Bimini.

Today we went gill-netting in the North Sound with the hope of catching several juvenile lemon sharks to perform stomach eversions on.  The gill nets we use are about 175 yards long and 5 feet deep.  We tied one end to the mangroves and stretched the net westward into the sound.  Over the next five hours we managed to catch six sharks and decided to perform eversions on the three least stressed sharks.  For an eversion, a shark is placed in a tub containing a general anesthetic until it goes to sleep.  Once asleep, the shark is held slightly upside-down while forceps are used to gently pull its stomach out its mouth.  The contents of the stomach are later analyzed to determine the sharks diet.  The shark is then held upright while the stomach is gently replaced.  Finally, a bilge pump is used to force water across the sharks gills until it regains consciousness and is able to swim freely again.

Essentially, the whole process is similar to getting wisdom teeth pulled; you pass out peacefully, someone does some really invasive work on you, and when you regain consciousness you're loopy as fuck and have no idea what the hell just happened.






  

Martha Stewart ain't got shit on me

Today I played housewife.

Everyday one lucky volunteer is "on duty" and does not go out into the field.  Instead, starting with the breakfast dishes, that person does essentially every chore around the lab that no one else wants to do.  Highlights include bleaching the toilet, refilling condiments, endless dishes, and, if you're lucky, feeding the duck when it comes by.  Today was my second time on duty, however, last time I went to help refill the gas tanks and got away with not doing half the shit on the list.  Even still i can't complain, the three girls who i would've been working with had a pretty miserable day measuring shark pen mesh and repairing gill nets.  Actually, in hindsight, the whole situation was pretty funny/ironic; I was inside doing dishes and folding laundry while the girls were outside doing manual labor.

After an early dinner i went for my second 5k run in three days and then went and had a few beers at the Beach Club.  We're working through sunday and then having our day off on monday so that we (me) can celebrate (drink heavily) while watching the Superbowl.  Now that a Favre vs. Manning showdown is no longer in the cards, I'm just hoping to see a good game.  Hopefully the weather on monday is good and we can either go baiting to try and swim with hammerheads or go spearfishing again off South Bimini.

Just saw that Tiger Woods has completed and checked out of sex addict rehab, but still can't get over the fact that such a program exists.

Just another day at the...Oh wait, I don't work in an office

You know you've got a good gig going when your work day consists of trolling for barracuda to use as shark bait.  Needless to say, today was a pretty epic day. The reasoning behind this "work day" was because in the next week or so we are likely going to be doing another shark dive and long line survey, both of which require a large amount of fresh bait.

Jim drove one of the 16-foot Pro Lines around the reefs and cays off South Bimini as Amanda, Steph, and I took turns trolling.  In the beginning there was no action and I began to wonder if today was going to be one of those days that give the sport the name "fishing" and not "catching".  Sure enough though, after about twenty minutes, Steph got a huge hit on her line.  It was pretty funny to watch a rather unsuspecting girl battle a massive barracuda but, after a good fight, she landed the first fish of the day.  Then, ten minutes later it was my turn.

I've done a decent bit of fishing sporadically over the years but it's been mostly freshwater fishing and shouldn't really be described as overly productive.  Nonetheless, when that first barracuda hit my line I remembered how much fun it is to fight a big fish, especially one that strong.  I managed to land the first one (bigger one on the right), but then lost a second one right when it got to the boat and Jim was getting ready with the net.  I got a glimpse of it and she looked big, but then again they always do.  About an hour later i got the second one on a different lure.  Damn that was fun.

When we finally reeled in the lines and headed back to the lab for lunch we had caught five barracuda and one houndfish, making the day a definite success.  Then, after lunch, we packed up a boat and headed up to the North Sound with Emily and built a new tagging/holding pen for juvenile lemon sharks we plan to catch next week.  Back at the lab, Jim returned from a walk tonight with a 3 foot Bimini Boa and tomorrow we're going to feed it the two rats we've caught in our sheds.

On a final note; Mim, I know you're watching over me and, although i couldn't be there today, your family gave you a wonderful funeral and we all will miss you deeply.

Lab tour

I figured it was probably time to give a tour of the lab and show you what exactly it's like down here.  As i said before, the lab is located on South Bimini and, at the moment, the fourteen people living here probably account for 1/5 of all people on the island.

The lab (right) is small but comfortably functional with five small dorm rooms, a kitchen/dining room, two bathrooms, and a science lab/gear room.  There's also a nice deck that you can see in the picture.  Four sheds are located outside the lab and they hold most of the larger equipment such as large gill nets, long lines, and fish seines.

We wake up every morning at 8 am to eat breakfast, although i usually don't stumble in till about 8:15 or so; no real surprise there. After breakfast most of the volunteers usually go back to bed for a bit until the staff finish the morning meeting, at which point there's a short briefing where we're split into teams for the day and assigned various tasks (tracking, gill-netting, GPS mapping, etc). Most days we're out on the boats all day so we pack lunch and gather the gear in the lab and then load up the boats. Generally speaking we work until dinner, which is usually around 6 or 6:30. 

Before arriving here I was basically expecting to eat like a refugee for the next couple months, but i was gratefully mistaken.  Emily, one of the lab managers, happens to be a pretty badass cook and i have yet to have a repeat dinner (chix parm, lasagna, enchilada's, conch fritters, chili, etc).

After dinner we're free to do whatever.  Besides the lab, there's really not much to do on the island after dinner except go to the bar and drink, so when we're not there we hang around the lab and watch movies, play cards, and have conversations about really random shit.  Today, Sean brought back a large stone crab and we got it to crack a bunch of ice cubes with its massive claw.  Sean then proceeded to rip its claw off to eat tomorrow (it's legal to harvest stone crab claws, they grow back), which was pretty funny because he did it right in front of quiet little British Louise, who we then found out did her Masters on the fighting behaviors of crabs.  Playing Pictionary with foreigners (not sure if that's PC) is pretty damn funny but probably a really good way for them to practice english.  

One last note, its only been two weeks and already the girls are routinely burping and talking about farting and periods...I'm probably going to kill myself before this is over. 

I Got Shafted

What's the best way to end a seven hour day spent on a boat using a massive net to trap, measure, and weigh bait fish?

I'm not sure, because my day ended with (or should i say "on") a small submerged pipe shaft randomly sitting at the bottom of the lagoon.  Nothing like the abrupt sound of high-speed metal on metal to put a smile on your face.  Actually, I did smile because it brought back the memory of when my dads old Civic rolled down the driveway and crashed on the large rock at the bottom.  This time, however, i wasn't a 7th grader who'd forgotten his soccer cleats at home, and the only one swearing at me was myself.  Oh well, who doesn't enjoy a forty-five minute tow ride back to the dock on a rainy day?

So, to quote the ironic motto clearly visible in the back windshield of the Civic that fateful day years ago, "Safety is no accident"...

Two Weeks in a Nutshell

As of tomorrow I will have been at the shark lab for two weeks.  Already i've learned and done so many things that, to describe them all, would likely bore the shit out of most of you.  That being said, I'm about to try something that I have never been very good at (understatement?), which is to condense a large story into a brief and concise summary...bear with me.

After a quick puddle jumper flight from Ft. Lauderdale to Bimini, the rest of the volunteers and I were given a tour of the lab and got settled in.  The following day began with a shark dive (see large pic at top of page) where we snorkeled around with about 12 caribbean reef sharks as bait was thrown from the boat.  That might sound sketchy, but they are not very aggressive and i just kicked them if they got too close and they would back off.  We will do a shark dive every month when new volunteers arrive so I'm hoping one month we'll get lucky and attract a hammerhead.

After the shark dive we set up four longlines, each with 15 hooks, for the monthly long-lining survey.  Once set, the lines were checked every four hours by teams of five for a twenty-four hour period.  We got skunked on my first check but on my second check we found a 2.58 meter tiger shark on the line!  When we get a shark we first secure it to the side of the boat and then take length measurements, collect a DNA sample, and tag the shark so it can be identified if caught again.  Leaning over the side of the boat and holding that shark by the dorsal fin to keep it steady was an awesome experience, sharks really are a tribute to the power of evolution.

I know I'm not off to the best start on my "summary", but those first thirty-six hours were really exciting and needed their space.  Things slowed down for the next several days as we underwent a lot of classes and training for the work ahead.  Most of the daily work we do here at the lab involves catching, tagging, and tracking juvenile lemon sharks such as the one in the picture to the right.  Every year around april, pregnant lemon sharks come to Bimini and give birth in the lagoon.  The juvenile sharks will then spend three or so years  living in the well protected shallow waters surrounding Bimini.  Every year the lab spends a month rounding up and tagging all the new lemon sharks in order to maintain an ongoing census of their population and behavior.  As a result, the lab is home to the world's largest and longest running database of an individual shark population.  The current research, led by the badass cello playing, guitar hero slaying, shark wrangling Kristine Stump, focuses on the impacts of lemon shark nursery habitat loss that is resulting from the development of the new Bimini Bay luxury resort (more to come later on that pastel-colored, ecological time-bomb cluster fuck)

So there you have it, a literary Tyler story about my first two weeks here at the sharklab.  Successful?  Anyway, from here on out I'm going to write about individual days/events and likely won't drone on forever like i did with this post...

...even i'm not sure i believe that last sentence. 

Jeanette Clavelle 10/26/1922 - 1/30/2010

My grandmother once asked me if i wanted a sandwich.  When i told her i wasn't hungry, she replied "ham or turkey?"

It was with this unfaltering desire to provide for those she loved that Jeanette Clavelle lived her entire life.  I cannot thank her enough for the values and memories she gave me.  Mim touched the lives of so many people and, most likely, warned every one of them that they would catch cold if they didn't bundle up.

Sitting here in the wake of her passing i am finding it difficult to come up with the words to describe such an honest and caring women.  Instead, i've decided to include my favorite picture that I took of Mim a few years ago.  This photo says everything i can't right now, except for one thing...I love you Mim and I will always miss you.

A belated intro to the Bimini Sharklab (BBFS)

**Disclaimer** -- After waiting nearly two 
weeks for my computer charger to arrive

(don't pack after drinking, you will forget 
things), I now have internet access. Most of you probably expected it to take a while forme to get this together and, quite frankly, idon't blame you. Having said that, I have 
successfully begun my attempt at blogging 
and hope those of you who read this will 
continue to check it out, even if it is just so you can make fun of me (Bret, Walsh, Andy)

or call me emo (Kasey).

I guess i'll start with a little background info about Bimini and the shark lab. Bimini is a

small island chain in the Bahamas located just 53 miles east of Miami. The two main 
Islands of Bimini are called North Bimini and (shocker) South Bimini. Bimini is the 
westernmost tip of the Bahamas and is the closest point to the United States. Bimini lies 
in the Gulf Stream and, as a result, is (was) considered one of the best big game fishing 
destinations in the world. Ernest Hemmingway loved Bimini and spent two years living at the iconic Complete Angler hotel and spending his days fishing, with Bimini providing the inspiration behind The Old Man and the Sea and Island in the Stream. Interestingly, 
Bimini is also where Ponce de Leon believed the Fountain of Youth to be hidden and has
several spots where upwelling minerals in the water are said to have healing qualities.

The Bimini Shark lab, officially known as the Bimini Biological Field Station (BBFS) is a
field lab dedicated to shark research. It was created in 1990 on South Bimini by shark 
biologist Samuel H. Gruber as a place for elasmobranch research to be conducted 
full-time. The lab is very well respected and has appeared on many TV programs including Myth Busters, Dirty Jobs, and of course Sharkweek.

Long story short, I'm living in a converted double wide with 13 other people on an 
Island with an airstrip, liquor store, tiny convenience store, and two bars...maybe i didn't survive college and somehow wound up in scientific post-grad paradise. As far as the
"work" i'm doing here, i'll explain that later tonight because it's our day off and right now were going to the bar for pizza and pints.