getting better...

just a quick one... things are definitely looking up. feeling much better today, and had a great chumming trip. at least 12 indentifiable sharks (a couple more that we never got many markings on), a predation, whales mating, an albatross. so, good stuff all in all. the wind is picking up, so we didn't end up tagging any sharks, but we got a couple of stable isotope flesh samples. saw one shark that stef estimated was 4.3 meters (14 feet) and another that was just slightly smaller. james named the huge one big m.f. and we had another wounded shark that he named woundie. (sounds like a name i would pick). i had sharks steal the bait from me three times, which kind of sucks, we eventually had to call it a day because we ran out of bait. so that's about it, just wanted to put up a cheerier entry because today was a really really great day of sharks. i guess they don't hate me, after all.

whale picture

so... i'm not even going to write about cage diving because i'm so annoyed-- i'm the only person who was never in the cage when a shark was nearby. i missed the best one by like 30 seconds (i was putting on a wetsuit) and basically i got nothing, and i'm really bummed about it. and today i am sick so i didn't go out chumming and they had the best day out there they've ever had. so... i'm 0 for 2 for the last couple days. hopefully things will improve soon. anyway, fiona got a cool picture of us with the whale, i'm all the way on the left.

Whale rescue mission

oh my god. i'm like still smiling. today was unreal. so... justin, christine and i were having a hung over breakfast at delfino's when ryan came running into the restaurant. apparently on a decoy-towing trip this morning, fiona (ryan's girlfriend) had gotten a picture of a shark with a tag on it. it was one of our sharks, named roxanne. so ryan comes running up to our table, starts about six different sentences, and finally tells us that we are tracking roxanne and he needs an extra person. and, by the way, there's an entangled whale off the coast, stef is going to try to free it, and might need extra people. so christine goes off with ryan, and justin and i finish lunch and head back to the house. so we're sitting around, watching episodes of the office on my computer, when stef gets the call for the whale rescue. he said we were welcome to come watch and try to help out as much as possible, but we don't have to. for a couple seconds, i considered staying in, since i was a little hung over, but then realized that i was choosing between watching tv on my computer or helping rescue a whale. so... obviously, i went.

we went out with the sea rescue team, which are basically like really hard-core lifeguards. or more like the coast guard, i guess. anyway, three boats went out, one big boat with like a cabin and stuff that most people went on, but adam and i went with 3 sea rescue guys on a smaller dinghy. we should have known what to expect when they made us wear helmets. or when all the guys on our boat were wearing wetsuits. but i was up for an adventure, so we put on life jackets and helmets, signed a paper that no one bothered to read, and jumped in the boat.

adam probably put it best: "i've spent a lot of time on boats, but this is the most... everything boat ride i've ever been on." and he was right. it was everything. the wettest, the coldest, the bumpiest, the scariest, the most fun... everything. we held on for dear life, put our feet into the straps on the bottom of the boat, and zoomed down the coast to find the whale. our boat was rescue 1-5 alpha, which just sounds kind of intense. it seriously felt like we were in a movie: the marine biologists jumping into the boat with the coast guard to go rescue a whale. crazy.

it was a southern right whale, and the rope went around it's head, around it's tail, and then had a buoy dragging along at the end. i am really tired, and writing this one paragraph at a time because there's so much to say, so i might abridge a little bit. so basically, we spent a couple hours spotting the whale, losing the whale, and spotting it again. then, once we spotted it, the smallest boat would race over to it, where stef would try to cut the line off it's tail. the head was just going to be impossible, because the sea was so choppy, by the time we spotted the whale, the head was already gone. so our objective was just to get the buoy off the end of the line, so that it wouldn't drag and hopefully the rest of the rope would then fall off on it's own. after a few hours, we were successful.

it was probably one of the most physically challenging things i've ever done. it was so cold, and i was holding on so tightly for so long that justin had to undo the clips on my life jacket when we got back because i had no dexterity. that said, given the choice, i would not have switched to the big (dry) boat. it was such an experience, adam and i just looked at each other and laughed the whole time. i don't have any pictures, but justin and fiona took some, so hopefully i can get some of those for you. sorry this was so poorly written, i'm sure it didn't come across as impressive as it should have. but... i helped rescue a whale today!

update: so... justin's pictures kind of sucked. hopefully fiona (who is a professional photographer) got something better. but for now... i'm the one with the black sleeves.

this week has flown by! i can't believe it's friday again. the week hasn't been all that eventful, to be honest. i realized i forgot to mention something kind of cool. so for those of you that have seen the documentary Sharkville, remember that it's all about ryan's quest to film sharks attacking a decoy at night. this is the only place that has ever been observed. so on our last overnight seal survey, we decided to move the boat, since our anchor had been dragging a little. a few minutes after midnight, i started to pull in the decoy, and got completely startled as a shark attacked the decoy! it wasn't a full breach, but definitely a predation attempt. so that's a big deal, i guess, considering they made a whole documentary about trying to see that. speaking of which, i gather the producers of deadliest catch and ice road truckers have been in touch with ryan about doing a shark lab series. i think it would be pretty boring, but as ryan said, if they can make a whole series about crab fishing, they could make one about shark research.

and... oh yeah. so yesterday we went out for a chumming trip. christine and i had both gone out the night before, although i was actually feeling decent, but she was a disaster. the sea was very rough, and we took the boat to grootbrak, which is one of our farthest sites. on top of that, the weather was awful-- cold and rainy. add to that the fact that cheetah, our bigger, more comfortable boat is out of the water for repairs at the moment, leaving us on lamnidae, which doesn't really have many places to sit and is a little unstable (like when one person walks to one side, someone else has to walk to the other side to balance it out). so... bad conditions. we stayed out chumming for a few hours, got a genetic sample of one of the sharks, which i hadn't seen before so that was cool. then we decided enough was enough, we were all cold and wet, so we headed in. about halfway back, ryan stopped and asked me to switch over the fuel tanks. i did, because we had an extra half-tank or so of gas (there are two outboard motors on lamnidae). so we went a little further, then he stopped again, and started looking at the fuel. i guess even though we went out with three tanks, none of them were full, and we were running low, since we had gone all the way to grootbrak. it was a photo finish: we kept switching fuel tanks, running one engine at a time, going really slowly (keep in mind that it is rough, cold, and pouring)... but we did make it back to the harbor eventually. so... an exciting day. i guess that's the stuff the tv producers would go for.

so... that's all i've got for today. i don't really have any new shark pictures, since i was taking pictures with the official SAMPLA camera yesterday (which was a challenge, in the rain). so... here's a picture of a couple of hyraxes. they live on the cliffs near our house.

Busy busy busy

Sorry it’s been so long! And it’s not that nothing has happened here, just that we had a super-busy week last week followed by a super-fun weekend, and I just really haven’t had any time. So… highlights. Last week we saw a natural predation that was seriously about ten meters off the boat. This one was pretty graphic, actually, with a giant bubble of blood coming up around the seal. We were all shouting, because it was really dramatic (and pretty cool, to be honest) as the shark went after the seal again and again. I was holding the bait rope (the ball of fish attacked to a rope that we attempt to keep away from the sharks) but was watching the seal. All of a sudden, the shark abandoned the seal, grabbed my bait, and started swimming straight downwards. I attempted to hold the line, but obviously the shark had the advantage, so I let go to avoid losing fingers. The shark kept swimming down, and the rope, which was tied to the boat, began to pull the starboard side of the boat down into the water. It was very Jaws. Eventually, the shark let go to return to its seal, but it was a pretty intense experience.

What else? We did another 24-hour seal survey, which was cold, but always kind of fun. It also meant that I got very little sleep Thursday night, which I followed up with very little sleep Friday, and Saturday nights. The weekend was nuts, we had a barbecue on Friday because Sophie was leaving us, which means we ate around 10:30-11 pm. After that, we hit the bars. We ended up clubbing until about 4:30 in the morning, and I might have had more to drink than I have since college, or at least Australia. The next morning was beach volleyball with the whole intern crew. I was pretty hung over, but managed to be on the winning team for three out of four games. We learned that English people are absolutely miserable volleyball players, which was pretty hilarious. Adam managed to fall over into the sand on seriously every hit, whether or not he actually had to dive. He also wore short running shorts and Converse sneakers, and got soaking wet by running into the water over and over again, even when he didn’t have to.

Saturday night everyone ended up being pretty tired, so we watched a couple of movies and hung out. At about 3 in the morning, Justin and I decided that we were tired of just sitting around, so Justin, Adam and I headed back over to Vibrations, the dance club. On the way there, we realized that our stamps from the previous night had not entirely faded, so we got to use the same stamp and avoid paying 20 rand cover. Which is less than three dollars, but still. We were proud. After the bar shut down, we all hung out, and got to bed around six am.

So Sunday we were all wrecked, but I still managed to get in a six-plus mile run in the morning, then we had presentations on sharks for several hours. After that, we hit the bar to watch soccer. We returned home, and Stef started cooking dinner. I fell asleep on the couch, and decided to go to bed at 8 pm. So… that’s why I haven’t written.

Other than that, things are good. Chumming yesterday, we had fun throwing fish eyes at the small fish that come around the boat. Had one shark sort of around all day, which eventually ripped one of our chum bags off the boat, but nothing too crazy. They just decided on a surprise chum trip today, so we’re about to head out. They like messing with the schedule at the last minute, it’s actually really annoying.

One other really exciting thing—I’m going to be working on writing up a scientific paper that I can hopefully get published. I met with Ryan this morning to talk about ideas, and we will be working together to get this paper written. He’ll be guiding me, but I’ll be doing the bulk of the work on it. In return, I will get to be the second author on the paper. So not only will it be a great learning experience, but I also have the opportunity to get a publication, which is a big deal. So that’s awesome, the paper is on sharks that we have observed resting (basically sleeping) in the shallows during our tracking periods. I will keep y’all posted.

If you just can’t get enough of what I’m doing, you can always check out SAMPLA’s blog. I actually wrote the update on tagging/tracking (it hasn’t been posted yet) and will probably write another this week. I think writing for that is why I’m in full-sentence mode today. Sorry about that. So… yeah. Off to chum!

ps- CHOMP.

pictures

it's been a long day of tagging/tracking (7 am-5 pm), at the end of which, the other group lost the shark (yeah.) i'm not feeling very articulate, so have some pictures instead.


we went on a beautiful hike along the cliffs on sunday. that's a lighthouse which is just up the hill from our house. you can also see our favorite bar in this picture. the hike had a very edge-of-the-world feeling.


i was driving the boat when i took this.



this is our seal decoy. check out the bite marks. it's been through a lot.



the southern right whales say hi! (this is what we do when we can't find sharks.)



the shark that we tagged says hi too! (it was about a 2 meter male. we're going to try to find it again tomorrow.)


...and so do i!

24 hour seal watch

Had a great night out on Cheetah. Given the number of questions: the night vision binoculars were not all that useful. I mean they worked well, but the seals just pop up for a second, and then dive again and you're not sure where they will be next. And the binoculars have a pretty narrow field of vision, so it's hard to find stuff with them. I think they would be more useful for tracking and stuff, but at least for my shift, we barely used them.

So I did the last shift with Ryan, which was nice for a number of reasons. First of all, I got to sleep for several hours: our group decided to do three two-hour shifts. (Ryan was late picking us up, so we only covered 1am-7am... sucks for the other group who had to wait for us to get there before they could leave.) So two people were on each shift, and we only had to do one shift each. I curled up in the "cabin" (cabinet, pretty much) with my ipod and fell asleep. I wore running shoes, two pairs of socks, leggings, jeans, a beater, a long sleeve shirt, two hoodies and a jacket, plus a scarf, a hat, and gloves. I was decently warm at first, but ended up half-covering myself with a sleeping bag, which helped. Once I was moving around watching seals, it wasn't bad.

So I slept until 5, and then got up to watch seals until seven. I was glad to be doing the watch with Ryan (obviously this is shark Ryan, not my Ryan) because I got to pick his brain a little bit about shark research, what is being done, how he gets his ideas, how much opportunity there is in the field, where their money comes from, et cetera. He can be pretty quiet, and I know he gets sick of talking about sharks, but he was really helpful. So we sat and listened for groups of seals, tracked their movement, and chatted. The other nice thing about the final watch is that the sun started coming up. Just as the sky was starting to lighten, James woke up and the three of us were talking about American politics (Ryan was on the O'Reilly Factor promoting Sharkville, and was telling me how now all these super-conservative republicans are asking him to be their friend on facebook). Once again, I was into the conversation and facing totally the wrong way, and a shark breached on our seal decoy about 10 meters behind the boat. We had left it out over night just in case, but weren't chumming or anything. So I heard a giant splash, but saw nothing. Again.

Luckily, six minutes later, it happened again, and for the first time ever, I saw a shark launch its entire body out of the water. It was awesome, a pretty small breach (the shark was mostly horizontal), and a pretty small (2m) shark, but still totally amazing, and right behind the boat. (In case you don't watch shark week as much as I do, breaches are where the shark-- or whale or whatever-- jumps completely out of the water. As far as I know, only white sharks breach, and maybe only in South Africa. I know it was first documented here, and relatively recently. It seems like an unnecessary waste of energy, because they could probably get the seals without launching their enormous bodies entirely out of the water. But they do, and it's unreal.)

By then it was 6:53, so we watched for seals for a few more minutes, then towed the decoy behind the boat for a lap of Seal Island to see if we could get another one. Just as Ryan began to turn the boat to head home, a larger shark did a huge vertical breach, tearing our decoy from the tether and leaving it behind. No one wanted to volunteer to reach in and pull the decoy out from the water, but eventually we got it up using the boat hook and then pulling it into the boat once it was out of the water. There were huge gashes in it, in addition to the perfect row of perforations from the previous breach. This shark really attacked the hell out of our decoy.

We headed in to shore, where two of the other interns met up with us, and we drove up the hill for a big, delicious breakfast where we recapped the events of the morning-- I definitely got the best shift, because the sharks like to feed at dawn. All in all, it was a very long, cold night, but my first shark breach (not to mention my omelet) made it totally worth it.

Good morning. Or something.

I feel like I'm in a time warp. We are getting ready for the second shift of the overnight seal survey, so I just slept from 7pm-10pm, then got up so I would be totally awake for the survey, which starts at midnight. Apparently I'm the only one with this idea, because the house is completely empty. I assume everyone else is asleep, although I suppose I can only be sure of Christine, who is my roommate. Anyway, it's kind of eerie, and it feels like 4 or 5 am, not 10 pm. Whatever.

So first of all, here's a link to a picture (that I clearly didn't take) of the half-seal. Let me know if you can't see it. Also, be warned that it's kind of graphic. It is, after all, half a seal.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1576246&id=681720545

(Okay mom just told me that this picture is also on the SAMPLA website, and you can also read Justin's account of the attack and also what we're doing at the aquarium, which I worked on yesterday: http://samplablog.blogspot.com/)

Ryan's girlfriend was taking pictures on the boat for National Geographic, which were pretty much all of Ryan (I got asked to move when I ended up in one). But I did make it into this one, which sort of gives you an idea of the boat and stuff:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1576248&id=681720545

Okay. So... I haven't written, not because it hasn't been interesting, but because it's kind of been more of the same. I did a really pleasant seal survey yesterday; just listened to my ipod and watched the sun come up. I'm not really supposed to upload pictures (we have limited internet) but as I haven't sent any, I figured I could get away with one if I made it small enough. Therefore, I apologize for the low resolution.


That is the view of Mossel Bay from the hotel where we do the seal watches. Our house is pretty much all the way at the end of that point. While I'm at it, here's a chumming picture.


Notice that my feet are in a bucket of fish soup. The process was described to me as making wine, but with dead fish instead of grapes. One person pretty much spends the day mixing up the fish in sea water with their feet, then uses a bucket to pour out small amounts of the concoction to attract the sharks, then gets more water and starts again. It was a little uncomfortable to have a hang over hit me (we went out Thursday night, it wasn't a bad hang over, but I could feel it) as I'm half-way up to my knees in dead fish and anchored downwind of Seal Island, which is home to like 4000 seals and seriously smells like the worst zoo I've ever smelled times three. Not to mention, being on a boat hung over is not that pleasant. Luckily, it was not that bad, and a really nice day out there.

PS for the seal survey tonight, we will also be right by Seal Island. The smell is weird, you don't notice it 80% of the time, then it hits you like a wall as the boat moves or the wind changes. We'll see how it goes. So we're supposed to have sleeping shifts, which will be inside what is pretty much a large cabinet on the boat. (Ryan got all offended when I said I was used to working on bigger boats. I told him his boat was perfectly adequate.) I tend to have no problem sleeping on boats, so hopefully it won't be a bad night. I intend to wear every article of clothing I own, including the hat I just finished and high socks and gloves (I know, Mom) that I bought today. I think other than the cold, it should be pretty low-key. As far as I know, we're basically just using night-vision goggles to watch for seals coming to or leaving from the island. Shouldn't be hard, especially since you can hear them splashing as well. And I'll be crossing my fingers for some predation.

So what else? Had fun chumming today, I was on bait rope, which basically means playing keep-away with big sharks. We have a ball of fish heads and small sharks on a rope, which I have to watch all day in case a shark comes up, and use it to get the shark into position to take pictures of it's dorsal fin. But we try not to feed the sharks, for both ecological and economic reasons, so there's sort of an art to it. No sharks got my bait, but they also didn't try very hard.

I guess I can write about life in Mossel Bay, since everyone is still asleep or on the boat. It's pretty nice here, they definitely treat the interns very well, unlike some other companies for which I have been an intern (*cough cough* Broadreach). This week apparently has been much busier than most, but I still have a decent amount of free time, although it is usually at weird times of day. Like today, when I worked from 7am-noon, then was free until midnight. But it's not bad. We have all of our food provided, a woman cooks us dinner, and then we have sandwich stuff and things like that around the house for breakfast and lunch. She also cleans and makes our beds, which I think is sort of a waste of time, but nice I guess. We send out all our laundry once a week, which we pay for, but it's pretty cheap. Everything around here is actually pretty cheap-- I was amazed when a round of five beers and a mixed drink cost like 60 rand, which is less than 10 dollars (it's about 7.5 rand to a dollar at the moment). The town is pretty small, but there are some fun bars, and a decent grocery store and stuff. A few of us belong to the gym in town, which is pretty nice, and something to do during our off hours. I've also been running, which is tough because the town is very hilly, but it is also mostly very pretty. What else... everyone gets along very well, sometimes the house is full of people and loud and fun, sometimes it is dead quiet, just depending on what's going on. But there's usually at least someone around to go to the gym with or into town.

Okay I think this is getting boring now. Amy is up now, anyway, and Ryan and James will probably get here in a few minutes. Time to start layering up!

Warning: a seal gets DESTROYED.

Well today’s chum trip was a lot more eventful than yesterday’s! We left the house about 6:30, leaving the dock before 7 (still totally dark, by the way) and headed over to seal island. We anchored and were watching a cloudy sunrise when several people saw a shark breach (jump totally out of the water) in the distance. Which is a totally amazing thing to see, even on tv. Umm... I was looking at Justin, who was talking about women’s soccer. Yep.

Anyway, there was lots of obvious thrashing going on after the breach, which was probably a little more than a quarter-mile away from us. So what was super-cool about this is that we were witnessing natural predation, as in the shark was eating as they do in the wild, as opposed to attacking something we set out for it. People were really, really excited about it, I guess we don’t see natural predation all that often. So we found it by following all the birds that were checking out the seal carcass. And what a carcass. It was basically the second quarter of a seal—the head was bitten clean off, and then the back half was missing, with intestines and stuff trailing. I got some great pictures, but my job today was to take pictures of the dorsals, so my pictures are all on the SAMPLA camera. I will try to get hold of them. So anyway, we hung out by the carcass for a while, and the shark came back. It was huge for Mossel Bay; Ryan estimated about 3.8 meters, which is about 12.5 feet. So a big shark. It attacked the carcass a little more, then left. A smaller shark (more like 2.5 m) came around and messed with the carcass as well (we call that secondary predation), and eventually took it underwater. So that was awesome, and then we returned to seal island.

We watched the seals swim to the island, holding our breath for another attack. (I realize this sounds cruel. But it’s nature, and it’s what we’re here to do.) But nothing happened, so we reanchored by seal island, and set out our chum bags, decoy, and bait rope. Like I said, I was on photography duty. We had a few passes from the sharks, but nothing really to speak of. We all sort of chilled out, and started chatting and watching the whales that had come to hang out around the boat. They were there for a while, just flipping their tails and puffing clouds of steam. I did get a number of pictures, nothing spectacular. As we were all watching the whales, a shark zoomed past and stole the bait off our rope. We re-baited, and were more vigilant for another hour or so. We decided nothing else would happen, so Ryan said to give it another minute and a half, then we would pack up and go home. Right as he turned around, the same shark came and sniped the bait again. We waited a bit longer, and then headed home.

As I was driving the boat back in, we also saw a pod of dolphins, rounding out the day with seals, sharks, whales and dophins. Not bad. It’s not always exciting work (four sharks in five hours), but we have a good time chatting on the boat, it’s always nice to be out at sea, and the whales were seriously around all day. On the radio today—okay well first they were talking about which Olympic sport would be worst to do naked. I picked wrestling, although Ryan had a great point with synchronized swimming. So anyway, my point was that later, they were having people call in and talk about their dream jobs. The interns all looked at each other and were like, wow, we’re doing it. So that's pretty cool. Now I just have to find a way to get paid for it.

The British are chumming! The British are chumming!

Okay so I think I'm funny. Because it was me plus Team UK (Amy, Adam, James, and Ed) out on the boat today. I told my joke to Ed, but he didn't get it. I guess Paul Revere is not as major a figure in British history as in American history. Whatever. I bet Mom laughed, at least.

So I went out chumming today, with the Brits and Ryan. We were the second shift, apparently the first shift tends to see more action. We sat at anchor down at Hartenbos, which is north-ish of here, for a few hours. We use shark livers in bags to get oil into the water, and sardines on a rope to attract the sharks. (BTW my hands still smell like shark liver, and I already showered. The house sort of always smells like fish. You get used to it.) We also pour out chum water, which is basically made by one person stomping on a bunch of sardines in a bucket of water. We also had a seal decoy out, which is made out of foam and carpet, actually, and cut in the shape of a seal. It floats on the top and attracts the sharks. So I was on data collection today, which basically means writing down when we see sharks, any distinctive markings or tags that are on them, environmental observations, etc. One person holds the bait rope and throws it out to the sharks, then has to pull it away to make sure they don't get all the fish from it. Another person takes pictures, since we are trying to identify the sharks by their dorsal fins. I actually did this with dolphin fins at UCLA, too. All the dorsals have different patterns of notches along the edge, and each is unique and can be used to identify the individual.

Unfortunately, we didn't see much today. We did see one white shark, about 2.5 m long, which is pretty small. It checked out the decoy, checked out the bait rope, and buggered off (as they say). So after like three hours of chumming, we decided it was a lost cause. Ryan wanted to show me some sharks on my first day, though, so we towed the decoy behind the boat as we drove laps around Seal Island. If you've watched Sharkville, you've seen this process before. Anyway, we all stood on the back of the boat, cameras poised, for about 45 minutes. I got some great shots of Seal Island, but unfortunately that's about it. Everyone told me this is about as uneventful a day as we get chumming, so it's all uphill from here. At least I saw one shark! And we're doing an extra-early chum trip tomorrow, so I should see some more action in the morning.

Finally here!

Hi! I made it to Mossel Bay! I made it yesterday, actually, but it's been busy! So I flew into George, and just because my travel wasn't difficult enough, they lost my bag. Like my big one. Like the important one. So... that happened, and they didn't even have any record of it. They kept calling for a description and all, which is terrifying. Anyway, decided not to worry about it. Ryan came to pick me up (Ryan Johnson is the head researcher here, not to be confused with my Ryan) and we came back to the house. The house is great, in a really nice part of town, and is really big. There are four bedrooms-- two for girls, one for the boys, and then Stefan, one of the scientists, lives upstairs part time. I haven't met him yet; he's in Cape Town this week. So there are 10 interns total, 4 Americans, 4 British, and 2 Italians. Everyone is probably in their 20s, maybe a little older. We can see the ocean from upstairs, which is cool, and there's a big balcony. I have one roommate, also an American. Let's see, what else. So today we were supposed to be doing a 24 hour seal survey (like the one on the SAMPLA blog at www.sampla.org) but the wind picked up tonight so we're waiting until Friday. I was supposed to be out from midnight until seven on the boat, so I'm not too sad about missing it tonight. Although the night part of the survey apparently involves night-vision goggles, which is pretty sweet. We did do a few hours of daytime seal watch today, where we sat on a balcony on the top floor of a hotel and watched seals coming to and leaving from an island for a couple hours. Sorry, we're watching a movie, so I'm a little distracted. So what else. Tomorrow we are going out chumming, which means I should actually get to see the sharks! I kind of have an idea of what happens, but I'll save the details until I can tell you first hand. I'm pretty excited. The weather here is pretty cold, not too bad but definitely sweatshirts and stuff. It's crazy that the cold southern breezes are coming up pretty much straight from Antarctica. Then again, the hole in the ozone layer makes the sun stronger, too, which I guess makes it warmer. What else... we had a barbecue last night (which is apparently called a braai in Afrikaans), then six of us went out last night to a bar, which was fun. Everyone seems really great. Oh, and my bag came today while I was on seal watch! So that was very exciting. I'm all unpacked and settled in. It feels like I've been here way more than a day and a half. Okay, totally distracted, so I'm going to watch the movie. I will definitely let you guys know all about the sharks tomorrow! I can't wait.

19 hours later...

Well, that worked better the second time around. My passport made it back to Atlanta by seven on Friday morning. By the way, if you're ever in a passport/visa-related pinch, I definitely recommend Texas Tower. Seriously, it was about a thirty-six hour turnover (Wednesday afternoon to Friday morning) to get the extra pages in my passport. It wasn't cheap, but it was amazingly fast, and they totally put up with Mom and me asking them to call when they got it, call again when they sent it, etc. I was impressed.

So I flew from Atlanta to Dakar, Senegal (didn't even get off the plane) to Johannesburg. The flight was as easy as it could have been, I had my own TV with on-demand, so that was cool. 27 Dresses was better than I thought, Horton Hears a Who was pretty awful. I did some knitting (I'm making a hat) and slept for a good chunk of the flight (yay for Ambien). Now I'm at my hotel, which was like 2 minutes from the airport and is pretty nice. I worked out, took a shower, and now I'm watching Discovery Channel (sadly, I don't think it's shark week here). All in all, it went as well as it could have. And I should be in Mossel Bay tomorrow afternoon!