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...