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.