I Miss Bob Ross

Here's a question.  What's the most ridiculous thing you've ever done for money?  It's a question where the potential answers can say a lot about a person's character, while simultaneously convincing everyone else that the respondent may likely share half their gene's with a urinal cake.  It's also a question where the answer changes over time, unless of course you're a pornstar or midget tosser, there's no coming back from that.

Yum, argyle.

Recently, I updated my own answer to "getting baby sharks to bite the shit out of horribly metro-sexual uber-Italian polo shirts which are sold to raise awareness for reckless driving". 

Yup, I don't get it either. 

Apparently in Italy, public safety messages are entrusted to the fashion industry, who in turn solve them by spending absurd amounts of money shipping t-shirts halfway across the world so they can have holes torn in them and develop a fish smell that will definitely never disappear.

To be honest, I am not sure how I feel about it.  On one hand, it's for a good cause and helps me stay afloat financially.  On the other hand, it seems fairly exploitative and it's probably not the best idea to train sharks to bite polo shirts.  Then again, the only people likely to wear the shirts are Italian hipsters...

On another note, at night, when the day's work is over, i am starting to surpass boredom. The past two nights I have laid in bed staring at the wall with literally no desire or inspiration to do anything.  I'm not sure if there's a word for that feeling, but if not, the word should involve Bob Ross. 

Talk about an American icon.  For those of you wondering who Bob Ross is, do yourself a favor and look him up on Youtube.  Why Bob Ross you ask?  Because that soft spoken, afro-headed, "happy tree" painting hippie was the cure for boredom.  One moment you're counting the stitching pattern of the blanket on your couch, the next your watching a glacial river surge through the Alaskan tundra in the shadow of an epic snow-capped mountain.  As you laid there, with near zero brain activity, Bob would mix paint on his palette and create new colors, all while his commentary lulled you toward that afternoon nap your boredom was preventing.  Then, just when you thought he was done, boom!  Beaver dam.  Bob kept you on your toes like that.

  

It's a new year, but there's a crumb in my keyboard

So, here I sit exactly one year to the day from when I first arrived in Bimini.  Initially, I had grand plans for this anniversary and the first new entry in my blog.  However, those plans are likely to become slightly spoiled by the terribly annoying crumb in my keyboard that is shifting around and making certain keys impossible to press.  With that in mind, I'll give it my best.

257 cm female Bull shark

I've never really been one for resolutions, but after my epic fail at continuing my blog upon returning to the Sharklab, I've decided that this year I'll test my worthlessness.  You might think I sound a bit harsh on myself, but I promise you it's an adequate description.  If you're not convinced, look at my first entry upon returning as staff, the one where I describe my grand (bullshit) plans to essentially become an environmental journalist blogging about all that is wrong in our polluted world...Long story short, I followed that claim up with a single post complaining about brain dead film crews, which, in all fairness, are about as enjoyable as kidney stones.

To be honest, the real reason I stopped blogging was because my daily routine here at the lab changed a lot.  Before, as a volunteer, I was out in the field every day and there were a ton of new experiences each week such as sharkdives, hammerheads, and raging dolphin hippies.  *On a brief side note, dolphin hippies never get old.  Just last week Emily and I overheard a woman explaining how dolphins altered her DNA.  One World, One Pod! 

Read the shirt...

After returning as an assistant manager, however, I spend a lot of days around the lab working on fixing and maintaining this glorified double-wide trailer.  I guess I just didn't think anyone wanted to hear about my struggles with PVC plumbing, outboard engines, and pet dogs with chronic cases of the shits.  I lost the inspiration and found it impossible to sit down and write; for those of you who know me well, if you thought my stories take a long time to tell, just imagine when I have to write them down.

Anyway, I realized that it's not simply the field work that makes this place fun and interesting to read about, and that most of you would actually probably enjoy me describing my epic battle with a 20 year old boat ramp.  That may be slightly egotistical, but then again you probably don't know how much fun it is to play with a crowbar.  The past seven months have been a whirlwind of sharks, fiberglass, fuel filters, and Bahamians who I'm still not convinced are actually speaking English.



So, while I can't promise this won't be the first of two posts in 2011, I can say that I'm going to do my best to keep it going.  While it might not always be an episode of Sharkweek, i'll try to make it enjoyable and representative of the incredible experience that is the Bimini Shark Lab.

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...