Evolutionary Legends By: Marissa Jane Peone

What does one tropical storm, meeting the one and only Samuel Gruber, doing my first work up on a reef and nurse shark, my first shark dive, and learning how to fish for barracuda all have in common? Everything I have experienced during my first month living and working at the Bimini Biological Field Station (but believe me it doesn’t stop there).  The hardest part is verbally encompassing all these amazing events and letting you in on the magic that the shark lab offers. So where do we start?  

            Well it begins with thinking you and your coworkers might be slightly insane. You’re there in the middle of the sea, it seems that all you notice are your fins slowly dangling back and forth underneath you and our heart rate beginning to increase. But cautiousness doesn’t slip to far from consciousness.  You hold the line, prepare yourself, take notice of everyone else in the water, and wait for the bait to get thrown. And one by one they begin to arrive…

Five reef sharks showed up during my first shark dive. That was the first time I was in open water with a shark and it would take me .01 seconds to do it again. They swim around, agile, might come close enough to caress your fin but at the same time you just got close enough to touch theirs as well. Sure, I called my mom later in the week and told her I had been on a shark dive and it was entertaining to listen to her reaction, “What, are you guys insane?!” Yea maybe, but how can you do this job if you aren’t (at least partially)? But mainly it was about that sheer humbling feeling you get, the anxiety rush, and the amazement of being in the water with an animal that’s close to 430 million years old. To look at a living fossil, an evolutionary legend.  It’s not about the bragging rights.

Caribbean Reef Sharks © Nick Luz

                                  

Tiger Sharks, by Nick Luz

            I’ve been at the station for about two and a half days. It’s 3:30 in the morning and my alarm is going off. I attempt to quietly crawl out of my top bunk and gather my things that I’ve already packed up and left by my bedroom door. Why am I up at this absurd hour you ask? It’s that special time of the month where we set our long lines, and I’m on the 4am crew to go check them. I had a mix of different feelings as our boat was pulling away from the dock: excitement, tiredness, nervousness, hopefulness, did I already mention tiredness?

I must admit, I actually wasn’t that confident we were going to get anything on our long line check, and I’ll tell you why. When I told someone at the lab with a slight twinge of excitement in my voice that I was on the 4am check, he just looked at me and said “Dude that’s the worst check…the last time I was on that we didn’t catch anything and you can’t even go back to sleep once you get back from your check.”  I tried to just brush that comment off and ignore it, but obviously it was still implanted in the back of my head as we were pulling away and out in to the field.

After a short 15 minute ride full of anticipation to our long line sites, we finally arrived. Finally! My first time out in the field at the renowned Bimini Shark Lab, this is what I have been waiting for ever since I found out I earned the opportunity to volunteer! All that was left to do was actually have a shark on the line and get the chance to be a part of the workup. As we cruised along the first couple lines checking and counting the floats, it wasn’t looking so good. The baits had remained untouched since the previous check at midnight. I wasn’t feeling defeated yet, we still had three more lines to check. Sure enough, on the third line, a float was down! We quickly turned the boat back around and collected the line and started pulling it up closer to the boat. The person hauling the line in to the boat said “We got a tiger on the line!”

A tiger shark! A real life tiger shark! Tiger sharks have always intrigued me, and were definitely the species I was looking forward to seeing most here during my time at the lab. I found it kind of unbelievable that my first work up in the field was going to get to be with a tiger! I’ve been a SCUBA diver for more than 10 years and have been immersed in the ocean for much longer than that. I have seen a lot of sharks throughout my diving career, including thresher sharks, white tips, black tips, gray reefs and even whale sharks to name a few. However, in more than 10 years in the ocean, I have never seen a tiger shark, so you can imagine my excitement! As it came up to the side of the boat and we were getting prepared to work it up, I was assigned the task of holding the dorsal fin.

What no one told me about tiger sharks is that they actually have some of the roughest skin out of any shark species. Naturally, as I went to try and grab the dorsal fin, it kind of gave a little thrash and roll while my forearm was still pressed against its body, resulting in a little thing we like to call shark burn. Imagine rug burn, but now imagine that rug was secreting urea mixed with salt water. Yeah, it’s not exactly the most pleasant of sensations, but I honestly didn’t even realize that it had happened until after we had completed the work up and released the shark.

I could not believe that the first shark I got to work with was a tiger shark! I honestly could not have asked for a better start to my work in the field. Obviously, I had to get a picture with my very first tiger, but remember it was also around 4:45 in the morning…so the lighting isn’t the best, but hey at least I know what it is!

Whenever I think back to this first long line check I got to participate in, I always forget that we also caught a blacktip on this check, which is also super cool for the research going on at the lab right now. Rachael, the lab surgeon, got to implant an acoustic transmitter inside this blacktip, which is important because we are trying to get around 20 transmitters out in this specific species for one of the PhD projects going on right now.

After we got done working up the blacktip, it was time to return back to base. Even with two shark workups, we got back to the lab with enough time for me to squeeze in an hour-long nap before our actual workday started! In that volunteers face! Two awesome sharks on the “worst check” AND we got back with enough time for a little snooze! The awesome part about the rest of the day is that we got another two tiger sharks on the next couple checks! One got released fairly quickly due to some stress, but the other was doing well so I was able to get in the water with it and take a couple pictures.

It’s rather humbling being next to an animal I’ve admired for such a long time, especially since this particular one was bigger than me! It’s safe to say I’m looking forward to working with the tiger sharks over the next 4 months, and I’m really excited to start working with the hammerheads once they start to come along also!

Still Counting by: Marissa Jane Peone

Previous to coming here, I had seen one shark, a black tip reef shark. My shark count now? It’s only been two weeks and I’ve already held a juvenile lemon and nurse shark and helped tag a black tip and tiger shark. Shark infested waters wouldn’t be incorrect to say, but that comment isn’t meant to put the media distorted picture in your head and send shivers down your spine (thanks a lot Spielberg). It’s supposed to give you an idea of the diversity and the unique ecosystems that flood the waters around this happy little island.  That’s not to say that my first encounter with a shark didn’t send goose bumps through my whole body. A tiny little nurse shark gets passed to you and their power resonates down your whole arm.  I was anxious, the fish was beautiful, and the whole meet is one to never be forgotten.

Land, water, or cosmos alike it’s safe to say the Shark Lab and Mother Nature have created a pretty good dynamic. Some days you’ll find yourself on a night check with the stars of the Milky Way beaming directly overhead, realizing that when that boat slows down, at worst, you get to interact with one of the most majestic animals on earth and you got a really good star show. Sounds pretty great, huh? Each shark experience will be their own special and the most whimsical may be yet to come. Did I mention December is hammerhead season?

                                 

PIT 2015, by Alex Aines

When life gives you lemons, you should probably assess their mating characteristics, growth, and survival.

At the beginning of April I arrived at Bimini Biological Field Station in the Bahamas for a 3 month stay. I am currently working at the Shark Lab and assisting with various research projects. I exited the airport and was whisked right onto a boat to tag hammerheads, and since then it’s been a whirlwind of coming into contact with seven different species of sharks, learning the ins and outs of the lab and all of its research, and being part of an amazing and very international crew. Since I arrived, one thing has stayed constant: the perpetual preparation for the biggest research project of the year, PIT.

  

May 24^th was a day we had heard about for months: we had built countless pens, inventoried pen mesh, scavenged cinder blocks, checked all of our equipment, repaired gillnets, and boats, and readied ourselves for a total of 12 days actively in the field where we would tag and collect data on juvenile lemon sharks in North Bimini.

We are a group 20-30 year olds from all over the world, including Brazil, England, the U.S., Canada, Australia, and France. We call this annual project, PIT, which stands for Passive Integrated Transponder, the type of tags we implant in these juvenile lemon sharks. This type of tag is about the size of a grain of rice and when scanned, it provides a unique “barcode” for each individual. We use this string of numbers to identify each shark. This is the same type of tag that you might have implanted in your pet. It has a low shed rate and no harmful effects on the sharks. We inject these tiny tags into the area around the base of the dorsal fin and that is where they remain for life. 

(The rice grain sized PIT tag)

So why do we do PIT and what kind of data do we collect? The 12 days we spend in the field are split between two separate locations, Sharkland and the North Sound. These two areas are nurseries for juvenile lemon sharks. Bimini is unique in that it has some of the only viable nursery grounds for quite a few miles. Because of this, these baby sharks cannot migrate out of this area for at least 3 years for fear of getting preyed upon. The lemons usually stay in the mangroves for 4-5 years and do very well in semi-captivity. We use gillnets (normally illegal in Bimini, but we have a research permit) to capture the sharks; there are 3 different nets set up in each area, and we do checks on these nets every 15 minutes. If we capture a shark, we quickly transport it to a nearby pen, where the tagging team works it up. This team weighs, measures, sexes, takes a DNA and isotope sample, and tags the shark. The sharks are then moved into holding pens based on their precaudal length. Some of the sharks are then selected to be part of behavioral trials run by the PhD students that we have here.

(Holding pens with trials pens in the background of North Sound nursery)

This is our 21^st year of PIT, and in those 21 years we have collected around 4,000 genetic samples. We are specifically looking at survival. mating characteristics, and growth. On average, we catch about 200 sharks each year between both nurseries. The first two days are usually the most hectic (our first day brought in 64 little lemons), and then numbers tend to decrease. In our first 6 days, we caught a total of 107 sharks! (numbers of recap and new sharks). On average, we catch 99% of the juvenile lemon sharks in these nurseries. 

(Liam our Masters project student removes a shark from the gillnet)

                                              

If one of us briefly described the PIT experience to you, it is probable that you would think we are out of our minds. We definitely are, but that makes it all the more enjoyable. We usually are out to set our nets around 6pm and we haul around 6am. We spend 12 glorious hours on the water combatting rain, bugs, and boats that spontaneously decide to not function properly. We live for the midnight food runs where we get dinner (the joys of being on a nocturnal schedule), snacks, and hot beverages. We spend the majority of the night being rather damp, but I have never met a group of people that do a better job of making what could be a relatively uncomfortable situation incredibly fun. We had dazzling sunsets, and our radio chatter was pretty hilarious if I do say so myself. We often blasted “pump up” songs over the radio to set our nets and keep the morale high. We had many a dance party complete with our favorite Brazilian doing a drive-by as he was thrusting the air, and I have never laughed as much as I did in these first 6 days of PIT.

(The food run/tagging boat, delivering dinner to nets at about midnight)

There are 3-4 people per boat, and this is your team. Your team remains the same for 3 days and then we change everything up. We rotate jobs, including driving the boat, lighting up the net, and doing walk checks if necessary. There were also plenty of chances to get competitive with your team. We had trivia competitions for brownies in our snack boxes (I challenge you to come up with a more sought after prize), we played a Shark Lab version of Cards Against Humanity, we had an auction for a mysterious dry bag filled with goodies, and we played a game where we listened to backwards songs over the radio and we had to guess what they were (surprisingly difficult and pretty creepy sounding). Some people napped between checks while others went through multiple ipods worth of music and podcasts, stargazed once the moon set, and chatted with their boat members. We went through moments of craziness (my boat made friends with and named a resident crab who hung out on our net) and by the end of 6 days everyone looked a little insane. We are currently finishing up a weeklong hiatus between nurseries which we use to fix everything, do behavioral trials, release sharks, and prepare for the 6 days in the North Sound. June 7^th will mark the beginning of our next round of six nocturnal days!

So far it has been a pleasure to be part of such an enthusiastic team and one so passionate about shark research and conservation. We are all extremely lucky to be a part of such important work, and if you want to learn more about the lab and its research, visit:  

http://www.biminisharklab.com/ 

Guy Harvey Interview

Here at the Sharklab, we were recently contacted to see if we would be interested in sharing this interview with Dr Guy Harvey on our pages.

The answer, evidently, was yes! In the interview, he talks about his artwork, career, and inspirations, and it is worth a read if you're interested in marine conservation and art.



 I've just had a read though it, and would like to highlight my own favourite quotes:

"Once you know where the wildlife is then you have to be ready to literally dive in with them."


"It is amazing that there is still so much that we do not know about the deep sea. We know more about outer space than this area of our own planet!"


 "The GHOF is expanding our ongoing tagging program. We had tremendous results from our tiger shark study and are now focusing on mako and oceanic whitetip sharks"


Sounds interesting?

Check out the full interview here:
http://www.gainesvillecoins.com/article/guy-harvey-interview