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.