PIT, EAT, SLEEP, REPEAT by Carolina de la Hoz Schilling
Do you ever
experience those peculiar moments when you realize you are at a certain place
doing a certain thing that you never thought you would actually get to do?
That’s exactly
how last night felt to me.
It seems so
unreal. 3 years ago, when I first googled “shark internships” and came across
the Bimini Biological Field Stations website I thought to myself: “That’s it.
That’s love at first sight.” I am a firm believer in intuition and like to
believe that the choices I make should first go through my gut before they are
being rationalized. Therefore, it didn’t take me long to send in an application
as well as closely follow the Sharklab's every move on their facebook group.
That was when I first came across a post
on PIT. Obviously, that word meant absolutely nothing to me, but I still took a
silent guess on how many sharks the teams might catch, just for fun. Shortly
after, my first application got rejected, but I kept taking PIT guesses on the
two successive years, just because it appeared to be such a big deal. I
reapplied as a volunteer two years later and, despite of almost choking on my
own tongue during the interview, I got accepted.
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| Carolina holding the incoming Net boat as they drop off sharks to be tagged. |
And now, here I
am. Ready for being part of a very real/surreal PIT experience and thinking to
myself: “I just can’t believe I’m actually here doing this.”
As part of the
tagging boat team, we set out to anchor between the three holding pens that we
had built for the purpose of PIT, set up our baby shark work up station on the
boat and established each team members’ role for the night while playing “Eye
of the tiger” over the radio as net boats were setting gillnets by the
mangroves. Motivation is key! For us, who held little more than a scalpel and a
measuring tape, it was a waiting game... for a “long” 5 minutes before the
first capture of the day. Soon, radio calls were just pouring in from all ends,
making for a very promising night. Obviously, we had placed a few personal bets
ourselves on how many baby lemon sharks we would catch on the first night, so
there was a lot at stake, (beer), and all we could do, was cheer for our net
teams. As the night advanced and the sky provided us with a magnificent sunset,
baby sharks kept arriving at our boat and kept us on our toes. You don’t really
understand the meaning of “cute” until you have seen a tiny, newborn lemon
shark whose umbilical scar isn’t even closed yet and that, far from looking
like a scary, intimidating creature, reminds you of the innocence and fragility
of life itself.
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| Tagging boat at work by the light of their head-torches |
After a few
tries, we had a system down among our team members that worked really well.
Two people on data, three on shark handling. Altogether, the whole procedure
would never exceed 90 seconds and everybody was in sync, which made the night
relatively stress free (of course, there is and should always be a minimal
amount of stress when handling the delicate life of a baby shark). We’d
periodically get radio calls in informing us of more captures and someone would
drive the sharks over to our site. At around 11pm a bright, almost fluorescent
red light breached the sea surface on the horizon, soon revealing itself to be
the most massive moon I had ever
witnessed. The scenery was truly extraordinary with an almost full, gigantic
moon rising, a clear, star – riddled night sky and a far away lightning
spectacle illuminating the horizon every few seconds. I spaced out for only a
few minutes before another radio call brought me back to reality.
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| Dropping off a shark to the tagging boat, North Bimini lights in the background. |
Another
highlight of the night was the arrival of dinner. Clearly, the overall success
of PIT is not only determined by our field crews and their skills, but could
not take place at all without the incredible efforts of the home crew to take
care of us and our needs. That being said, it’s not everyday that you get a
delicious dinner delivered by two beautiful drag queens in the middle of the
sea with about 50 baby sharks surrounding your boat (it’s a Sharklab tradition
having the people delivering the food dress up). What a once in a lifetime
experience!
With our energy
replenished and 7 more hours to go, the night still seemed young and while
conversations started becoming very giggly over the course of the next few
hours, shark after shark was measured, weighed, tagged and released healthy
into one corresponding pens. You know you’re having a great time when you look at your
watch and realize 6 hours have gone by without you noticing or even feeling the
fatigue of a 13 hour shift.
One of the perks
of working on the tagging boat is that you are also responsible for playing a
net hauling song in the morning, that will hopefully accomplish to shake out
all the sleepiness out of our team mates minds and bodies and will get
everybody motivated for the final push. And who better than Justin Bieber to
get the job done? It was indeed way “too late to say sorry” when we blasted the
song into our radio. One incredible sunrise later, we headed home, feeling
drained in the best way possible, more excited than ever for a warm, cozy bed.
Now I’m back at
the lab looking at that the drawing of a majestic great hammerhead on the wall,
thinking to myself: “I can’t believe I’m actually here”.
For more PIT 2016 updates visit our social pages here:
For volunteering/interning information, visit our website here: http://biminisharklab.com/
And I'm so glad you're there!
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