So it’s our penultimate day here in the states, tomorrow we’re homeward bound.
Today myself and Tom spent the day with Mahmood Shivji, filming and photographing his projects at the Guy Harvey Research institute.
By all accounts today could very easily have been a complete disaster. I’ll explain why. Upon arriving in Fort Lauderdale yesterday evening, I found that not all of our luggage had made it onto the flight. More specifically, one essential piece of equipment had not arrived; my tripod. Its was a small aircraft that bought us to the states from Eleuthra, and apparently our gear didn’t fit into the cargo hold. What would have been nice is the airline had told about this at the time, so we could say which boxes we needed and which we didn’t. Unfortunatly, we didn’t find out until we landed.
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It generally seems to happen that just as you’re getting comfortable in a place, and really getting to know the people you’re working with, its time to move on again.
I’m very lucky in that I get to travel to a lot of amazing places around the world, visiting and documenting interesting projects. Its amazing diving in such a diversity of locations and with so many fascinating animals. The best thing about traveling to these places, is however, the people. I’ve met so many great people on this trip to the Cape Eleuthra Instituteand The Island School that if felt very sad to leave. This really is a special place, where fantastic work in being done.
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MARINE & COASTAL EDUCATORS’ WORKSHOP
The education team, Verona Smith and Michael Carnegie, started the new year on the 11 January 2009 by attending the MARINE & COASTAL EDUCATORS’ WORKSHOP in Mossel Bay. This was an opportunity to network with other conservation educators and to learn from them. This was tremendously inspiring and Verona and Michael returned filled with enthusiasm and new ideas for the year. To put the experience in Michael’s own words: “What an awesome experience!”
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I am delighted that Lesley, a raggedtooth shark, named after me, who was caught on the 15 March 2006 and satellite tagged and released, was recently re-captured. She was one of many sharks tagged as part of the Save Our Seas Foundation M-Sea Programme, a unique shark conservation programme initiated by AfriOceans Conservation Alliance (AOCA), in collaboration with the Two Oceans Aquarium, sponsored by the Save Our Seas Foundation.
Normally after the satellite tag has released and surfaced, which it is programmed to do after 4 months, providing data of the animal’s movements, there’s a good chance we will never hear from the shark again. The sharks are also wearing ultrasonic tags, but the signal of these will only be detected if the shark passes within 300m of a base station positioned on the ocean floor. But Lesley is back, she was caught by an angler in Struisbaai who removed her spaghetti tag, a small tag with a unique number, and reported the details. The last time we heard from her was when her satellite tag surfaced and provided the information that she had travelled 970km in 120 days from her date of capture. Since then Lesley had grown just over 17cm and gained about 35 kg. Lesley was caught the same day Dee was released from the Two Oceans Aquarium after 14 years in captivity. Dee’s tag showed that she had travelled 700km in 118 days.
We are very grateful to the angler for reporting the information but unfortunately he removed her spaghetti tag, which means the chance to identify her, if she is ever caught again, is lost. We therefore request that should an angler catch an animal with a tag, if they do not have a tag to replace it, to rather record the number and leave the tag on the shark.
Till later, Lesley
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No, its not the name for an x-rated movie as it might sound (actually, it probably is somewhere in the world), but rather a description of the marine life we spent our morning with.
We’re running short on days here in Eleuthera, and we need images and video of sharks swimming around the BRUV’s to edit together with the footage that the BRUV camera itself will be recording. As a surefire bet we decided to head to the local fishing marina (yes, crime scene for the bull shark killing that took place a couple of days ago). Nurse sharks are seen here most days, attracted by off-cuts of fish that are thrown into the water by sport fishermen.
The shot to the right is of a tawny nurse shark, and was taken in the Seychelles. The sharks we were diving with today were unfortunately not as brave as the one pictured, as you can see, he’s almost bumping into the camera.
There are a few different species of nurse shark. The one pictured is called the tawny, or Indo-Pacific nurse shark (Nebrius ferrugineus), and the ones we were trying to film today are simply called nurse sharks (Ginglymostoms cirratum).
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So it’s our penultimate day here in the states, tomorrow we’re homeward bound.
