Hammer Time

If you have MC Hammer's "You Can't Touch This" on your ipod or if you so please, search for it on YouTube because it will definitely get you as pumped up as I am when thinking about what happened this yesterday. From now on when I hear that song, I will instantly think about the boat ride with this song playing over the radio as everyone in the lab drove out to the magic spot to bait in GREAT HAMMERHEADS. Stocked with the barracudas and grouper carcasses from our fishing escapades the day before (next blog) and wahoo carcasses from a tournament on the north island, we were excited about enticing the hammerheads that frequent Bimini this time of year. After about thirty to forty-five minutes of the staff scraping the carcasses with a knife, shaking frozen chum bags, and squirting menhaden oil into the water with no luck we were getting anxious. At that point I took over for Sean, the lab manager, scraping carcases while he went and speared a couple fresh jacks. After about fifteen minutes scraping the heads of a sixty pound wahoo and thirty pound grouper, both Jim, the assistant lab manager, and I look up at about the same time to see a ten-foot Great Hammerhead rushing to the large amber jack head anchored on the bottom. The adrenaline rush I got at that point rivaled any of my big pitching performances in college. I immediately started screaming HAMMERHEAD, HAMMERHEAD, HAMMERHEAD to everyone on the boat as I had someone give me my camera. While everyone else suited up into their wet suits I just marveled at the size, beauty, and strength of the shark. I was able to spend the most time in the water with it and to top that, I was no more than fifteen feet above it just watching it eat the bait on the bottom. The shark ignored us while it swam in and out of the blue taking passes at the bait on the bottom. If this computer will let me I will edit one of my videos down because the pictures do not do justice to how magnificent this animal truly is. If you ever have the opportunity to get in the water with one of these sharks it will honestly leave you speechless. It was truly an experience I will never forget.

New Month, New Faces, Big Excitement

The start of a new month (for us the middle of the month) brings new faces to fill the spaces of those who left. Three new volunteers arrived Monday morning to replace the one who left while bringing a much anticipated shipment of food. Although the volunteer who left had to do so prematurely due to an accident involving popcorn, it was nice to get new faces around the lab. During their second night on Bimini, many stories were shared among all of the volunteers while enjoying a warm bonfire on the beach.

With much anticipation, the adrenaline-rush activities run hand-in-hand with the start of a new month. We will be having a shark dive in the near future and the 24-hour long line starting tomorrow afternoon. With Great Hammer Heads making their way through the Bahamas this time of year I am very excited about the possibility of seeing one and hopefully getting in the water with one. Unfortunately during the last long line I was on the boat that caught the 254cm tiger shark and was unable to swim with it. During this long line I am hoping we catch at least one tiger shark and have the chance to get some good pictures fromthe water.

A Chance To Cook

Before coming to the lab a month ago I was very worried about the food and expected cafeteria style meals. Despite those negative thoughts I am yet to be dissapointed and look forward to supper (for you mid-westerners) everyday. Our meals are all made from scratch and rival the cooking of the great cooks in my life. Needless to say I am learning new recipes and I am very excited to learn to make bread on my next duty day. However, on our days off we have to fend for ourselves by either going out and getting dinner at one of the three restaurants on the island or cooking something from the food available at the lab. The recent schedule and weather allowed us to have basically two days off in a row and I have offered to cook dinner both nights for anyone who wanted it. Last night I cooked a spicy spaghetti sauce from scratch that reminded me of the time I cooked spaghetti for all 35 baseball players in college. It was delicious and had everyone around the table sniffling because of the spice. With food stocks low (we are getting replinished tomorrow with the arrival of new volunteers) I whipped together my new favorite recipe courtesy of Heidi's Mom. I cooked sesame chicken (without sesame seeds) with a sweet and sour sauce over rice for all the volunteers in the lab. It turned out great and it is awesome to cook something other people enjoy. Although cooking is a lot more enjoyable when other people offer to wash the dishes, I have a lot more appreciation for the lab manager who cooks meals for us on a daily basis.

A Little XCTF

In honor of all my football buddies i brought the seriousness of extreme capture the flag (XCTF) from the high school days to Bimini. Armed with only headlamps and faces covered with charcoal the teams were split and the field was set using the land around the lab. Sneaking around using only the light available from the thousands of stars in the sky, the game started off in a stalemate with neither team building a solid attack. After several attempts my team was able to get the flag across the midway point for a victory. Although it was not as intense as the games from high school, I came away without any parasites in my legs (at least I hope) and happy to reminisce in memories from the past while making so many new ones down here.

Shark Puke

First I want to apologize for not keeping this updated as much as I'd hoped and I promise I will do much better these next two months. However, I hope the title grabbed your attention because we have done some pretty cool things this week.

Despite the strong winds (at least it's not snow)we have been able to do a variety of different projects to help the PI (principal investigator) with her project. One of the main focuses of her project is to determine how the destruction of the mangrove forest (construction of Bimini Bay) in the North Sound will effect the juvenile lemon sharks. Not only do the mangroves provide shelter for the sharks, but they also provide food. So thats right.....we wanted to see what was in their stomachs. We used a gill-net to capture several juvenile lemon sharks and then transferred them to a pen where we performed the procedures. The shark is put to sleep using an aesthetic called MS-222 and is then held upside down (my job) and using forceps the PI carefully pulled the sharks stomach lining out through the mouth and dumping the stomach contents into a tray. The stomach is carefully put back into the body cavity and the shark is revived (picture below). Unfortunately I was not able to get a picture of the procedure since I was holding the shark, but I will get one the next time we do it. The stomach contents reveal what the shark has eaten by matching the DNA found in the stomach contents to reference DNA samples from prey in the area.


In order to determine what prey is available for the sharks we use a very long net with small holes called a seine. The net has floats on the top and lead weight on the bottom. A seine team consists of at least 5 people: 2 people that pull the net and 3 that "scare" fish and other animals into the net. Once the net is stretched, the people pulling the net start a very tight circle and come towards one another as the "scarers" splash water and push the fish back towards the net. Once the two ends of the net come together everything is trapped inside and the net is then pulled tighter and tighter until all the contents are within a small circle. The top and the bottom of the nets are tightened together and then lifted onto a boat where it is a mad dash to sort the contents into buckets filled with water. All the fish inside are measured and weighed to get a sample of the prey availability in a given area. The majority of the fish we catch are small barracuda, needle fish, snappers, and a ton of small minnows called silversides. This week we caught a honeycomb cowfish (look it up it's awesome looking) and a DNA sample was taken to add to the reference collection. This then allows the researcher to determine what the sharks are eating compared to what is available to them. Hopefully these descriptions illustrated a good picture of what we have recently been doing at the lab.

History and the Future

Before coming to Bimini two weeks ago I began to read Hemingway's Islands in the Stream in anticipation of my trip. I finished the book last night after many twists and turns and finally ending in a complete different direction than where it started.....Bimini. This small island has not only been home to artists, authors, and world class sportsman, but also a pivotal place for smugglers throughout American history. During prohibition smugglers used the island to rum run, during the 80's and 90's they smuggled drugs, and currently the big business is the smuggling of aliens into the United States. During one of our assignments this week we utilized one of the small creeks on the east side of the North Island called smugglers pass. During the drug heyday, the channel was used as a drop off and pick up spot for drugs asthe platforms can still be seen today. Bimini is changing drastically because of the development of a huge resort and casino on the northern part of the north island. The nurseries of the lemon shark and other fish are being disturbed significantly because of the destruction of large amounts of mangroves in the North Sound. I will talk more about this at a later, but it is a very large issue encompassing which the future of the island.

During the week I was on a crew that utilized gill nets in hope of catching juvenile lemon sharks that would be used this week by a visiting researcher. However, the one shark we caught over a 7 hour period was too large for safe handling and to be honest no one at the lab could correctly identify the species of shark it was and the photos are being sent to a professor at FSU. Despite an unproductive day catching sharks I found three very large conch and caught a lobster....so the day wasn't ruined. One day my group put SURs (Submersible Ultrasonic Receiver) back into their housings around the research areas. These work by passively recording the identifications of the sharks that swim past to get a general location of where the sharks are swimming.

Our nights are spent either playing tennis, playing pictionary (which is hilarious to watch foreigners play), or watching movies. We recently watched SharkWater, a documentary about shark finning and the devastating effects these practices have not only on sharks but also on entire ecosystems. These wasteful practices where the shark is caught, fins are cut off while alive, and then rolled back into the water to sink to the bottom is driven by a greedy oriental market for shark fin soup. Shark fin soup is merely a status symbol and ironically the shark fin itself has very little taste. However, these are the same ruthless markets that are ruining other fish stocks around the world- but if I talk about that this blog would turn into a novel. However, I really suggest watching the movie. All 9 segments of it can be found on YouTube or it can be easily rented. Here's a statistic to end with........ every year on average 5 people are killed by sharks............more people are killed by vending machines than sharks. So long for now.....

Cracked Conch and Days on the Water

Beep Beep Beep.......Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep......Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep.................Beep Beep Beep......Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep......Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep. These are the noises that I am going to learn to love as we recently had our first day in the field tracking juvenile lemon sharks in the north sound. The sequence above is transmitted by a small radio transmitter about the size of your pinky finger implanted inside the body cavity of the shark. From the sequence above we are able to identify this shark as shark 378 and we tracked this shark for about 4 hours while he swam through the mangroves. Tracking these sharks helps identify their home-range and determine if the construction of a large resort and the consequential destruction of almost half the mangrove shoreline is having an impact on the lemon shark nursery. I have no complaints about spending my entire "work day" on the water.

My second check of the long line was a success as we found a 258cm tiger shark on the line. I took the DNA sample of the large shark and have some good pictures of it. Trying to hold onto the dorsal fin of the beautiful shark was extremely tough because of the immense strength of the shark. The group that hauled the lines had the luck of catching two more tiger sharks that I was not able to see. However, I got to watch two surgeries for the removal of the radio transmitters from previously tracked sharks. It was really cool being able to watch the shark put into tonic (hypnosis) while they performed the surgery. The following days were filled with class after class, but thankfully they are done and I am ready to spend every possible day on the water. For now the adrenaline filled activities are over, but I am sure they will be here again before I know it. We had the day off today and spent the day exploring the North Island which was very interesting and had my first cracked conch which was delicious. We finished the day with a snorkel on a rock formation called three sisters. It was a very pretty snorkel but was a long swim to get out there and to get back. So long for now......