Thursday, March 4, 2010

Hanging Out With a Legend



There should have been a small-craft advisory in the north sound this week with a two to three foot chop caused by the gale-forced winds blowing from the south. There truly is a difference in the temperature of the wind when the wind is blowing from the south compared to the cold wind blown in from the northwest. Ready for the next season of Deadliest Catch, I suited up in high-visibility foul-weather gear courtesy of PIP and was brighter the ball in times square. Despite looking ridiculous walking around the lab and blinding people with my glow, I like to think that someone could see me from space. After a soggy ride to the north sound, tracking was nearly impossible with the strong wind and constant chop on the water. The hydrophone popped out of the water with each swell as the tracker sitting on the bow nearly slid off with the roll of each wave. Needless to say neither team collected much tracking data this week.

The weather broke on our day off and although it was not as exciting as the staff's day off (baited in five hammerheads) it was a memorable day. We called upon the Bimini fishing legend Bonefish Ebbie to drive us around and see more of Bimini from the water. We started the day off on the northwest side of the island looking for dolphins to swim with. After about an hour or so of cruising around with no signs of any large pods of dolphins we decided to snorkel one of the historic sites on Bimini. We moored up at a site called the Bimini Road which is thought to be the road to Atlantis. The road is a mile long stretch of rock that was formed in a north/south direction along the coast. It was a really nice snorkel and we saw eels, nurse sharks, lobsters, and a wide variety of fish.

After about an hour in the water we packed up and headed to the marina to pick up a box of squid to feed to the stingrays at Honeymoon Harbor. I have fed the stingrays at SeaWorld, but feeding stingrays in the wild is a lot more fun and some of them get a little up close and personal swimming all over you in search of the squid. While the feeding frenzy is going on, bonefish start swimming around as the eat the small pieces of squid floating around. Before I realized why Ebbie had asked for a squid, he was reeling a 3-4 pound bonefish by hand. There were no rods on the boat that day, but he had managed to use what he had laying around the boat to do what he does best and catch bonefish. He brought in at least three fish in the twenty minutes we fed the stingrays and had so much fun hooting and hollering as he caught each fish. Ebbie has been fishing in Bimini for bonefish since the 1970's and charters his boat daily hooking people into the one of the bahamas most prized game fish. He is a genuinely nice guy and shared his love for gospel music by singing to us all afternoon.

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