Excuse me – do you have sawfish saws?

Yes, what have I been doing with the sawfish saws and why am I stealing bits of sturgeon from museums? One of the projects I’m working on had me contacting all sorts of museums across the country saying: Excuse me sir, do you have sawfishsaws? May I have part of your sawfishsaw? I’m looking to isolate DNA from sawfishsaws.

Okay, maybe I wasn’t using the term sawfishsaw quite that frequently (the scientific word is rostrum) – but I was getting bits and pieces of sawfishsaws mailed to me. The Smithsonian Museum in DC and a museum in Philly told me that they had quite a few sawfishsaws and that it would be best if I could come by to sample them myself. Go behind the scenes at the Smithsonian (or any museum for that matter)? Yes please!
And so I packed my hacksaw to go saw sawfishsaws (yes this is the new version of she sells seashells at the seashore). As I was packing my bag I thought to myself, Shannon, it’s a good thing you’re not flying anywhere. There’s no way you’d get through security carrying a saw, a bottle of ethanol, vials, a lighter, razorblades and a serrated knife. A couple of people were a bit confused when I told them I was off to get pieces of sawfishsaws (I can’t help it, I like that word) from museums. They envisioned me walking in the front door checking out the museum exhibitions and taking parts of the saws on display. Okay, I might have given them a little bit of incentive to believe that :-)
The ichthyology (Fish) department in the Smithsonian Museum is usually in part of the building that is currently being renovated so I ended up in the attic with big freight boxes (the wooden kind, that kinda make me think if I opened the wrong one some archaic dinosaur would march out) and rows and rows of box-type drawer thingies. You unclip a huge board in the front which then reveals shelves of specimen with little tags on them (some of them a hundred years old or so!) about where they came from and what they are.

I was sawing off part of a rostrum that was probably about a foot long and joking around with the curator about how the fact that the tag said that this fish had been speared implied getting pretty close to it. We discussed whether or not that was a good idea. I quickly made up my mind when the next saw we pulled out was only a bit shorter than I am tall!
In Philly I did get to see the cellar which is where I found the big sturgeon (so no, on that picture I’m not stealing part of a sturgeon on exhibition!). I spent most of my time a few floors up in a room that not only housed (shelved) the dried specimen but also entire fishes crammed into jars (kinda spooky), or larger ones stacked in tanks. The shelves where the ones where they have big “steering” wheels that you can use to move them closer and farther apart so you can get at the shelves in between. As the curator climbed up one of the shelves the entire shelves starting rolling slowly, slowly, slowly closing the gap.
I quickly reached out my hand to stop the movement, but couldn’t help but wonder how many curators go missing every year in shelf rolling incidents…

I like Christmas for lots of reasons...

while I enjoy hot chocolate, gingerbread and Christmas Carols, the main reason I like Christmas is because it's Christmas.

Christmas Bells 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till, ringing, singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The Carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said;
‘For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!’
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
‘God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!’

the issue of (un)locked doors...

The “AllHands” email in our department is constant source of entertainment. Lately there’s been a whole series of emails, forwarded emails, crossed-emails and email parts going around regarding unlocked doors at night.
It started with a forwarded email from the Chemistry department reminding everyone there to make sure they properly locked the lab doors. Apparently they caught a couple of students trying to repeat an experiment they had seen on Youtube.
The email was forwarded to our department with an added comment that we need to remember to lock OUR buildings at night – which started a whole controversy of who found what building unlocked at what time, who should be making sure they are locked, who is unlocking them and so forth. Oh, stuff got blown so out of proportion, people were offended, people were accused, names were named and general name-calling ensued.
Real drama, about real life issues – seriously, who needs reality TV? Oh, my favorite part was one of the email which mentioned certain “ingredients” available that people could “use” for “experiment”. If we’re really that obsessed with terrorists –they’ve kinda already won.

Gone Fishin'

okay... actually this is me taking a sample from a museum specimen and the sturgeon I usually "deal" with a subadults and smaller... but still. This is me in a Philadelphia museum cellar with a very large fish!

Oh, the thinks you can think!

Frequently, when I meet people and they ask me what I do and I reply that I'm a budding Marine Biologist their first reply is (especially if they're female): "I totally wanted to do that when I was a kid -" I generally finish their sentence with "because you wanted to work with the dolphins?" and generally am right in that assumption.
Speaking of dolphins, I came across an interesting website today advertising a symposium to take place in Hawaii next summer. From what I can tell these people are perfectly serious and this an actual even to take place (once you've taken a look at the website you'll understand why I'm assuring you of this!).
It's a symposium on teleportation and apparently dolphins do this all the time so that if you swim with them you can experience it as well. There will be several experts there to guide you through these experiences.
Check it out: http://www.joanocean.com/SYMP011/index.html

Bless You update

The other day I walked into my office. I had barely set foot in the room when my office mate spun around and said: “Shay-non, I have question for you”, I expectantly held my breath, since as we’ve already established these questions could take us anywhere, “today in class I sneeze and somebody say bless – is this okay?”
We followed up our previous sneezing/blessing/thanking conversation by running through this case study. Apparently he sneezed in class and was quite surprised that somebody said bless you. After our previous lengthy discussion of that convention I was a bit surprised at his surprise until I realized that he thought that this breaks the other convention of not talking during class (though how strictly that one needs to be laid out is debatable). We agreed upon the fact, that with somebody sneezing, class had already been more or less disrupted so that a friendly “blessing” is not adding insult upon insult.
Then we got back into the whole issue of saying “Thank you” after somebody saying “bless you”. This one had been quite confusing for him in our previous exploration of the subject because I couldn’t give him an exact protocol on when to say thanks and when not, though I assured him that it wasn’t offensive not to say anything.
At one point, during the Thanking-non-Thanking part of our conversation I realized that he probably didn’t know what bless you really meant. “Do you know what ‘bless you’ means?”, “yes, when somebody sneeze –“, “No, the word blessing, do you know what a blessing is?”.
Turns out he didn’t. So I tried to explain it to him as simple but accurately as possible: “A blessing is a good thing you get from somebody that you didn’t earn for yourself and maybe don’t even deserve. When blesses you, they are giving you something good. And if somebody is giving you something good you didn’t deserve or wishing a good thing upon you – we should thank them, shouldn’t we?”
Shouldn’t we?

Happy Thanksgiving

There’s a tall, good looking guy looking for me

I walked into my office the other day and was greeted by a “Shay-non. You here. There was a man looking for you”.
Ha. Thought I. Who? Said I.
“Uh, I don’t know. Tall. Tall man.”
Ha. Thought I. Well, what did he look like? Was it Pete? Tall guy, glasses, red hair? Said I (Pete being tall and having red hair he’s quite distinct – even people who don’t know who he is, generally know who he is.)
“No, no red hair. Tall man, Tall good looking man.”
Ha. Thought I. Thanks. Said I.
I checked with all the usual suspects (in this case, any male I could possibly think of who might have been looking for me), none of them came by.
Well, good news is, there’s a tall, good-looking guy out there looking for me… he also matches the description of “my boyfriend” in a friends dream a while back (she only saw him from the back – she didn’t want to be nosy, and figured I would let her know I was seeing somebody when I was ready, but from what she could tell he was tall and good-looking) –
Now if only I could figure out who he is…

Yes, the forklift and why I’m hauling so much cement

I ran into a few friends I hadn’t seen in a while on campus the other day and as we were having a quick catch up she said, you know, we’ve been wondering about the forklift that is popping up in your facebook status. Are you referring to driving around an actual forklift or is this some sort of analogy/inside joke that I don’t know about?
Well, I’ll my jokes about driving around in my forklift and hauling cement are centered around the fact that lately I’ve been spending a lot of time driving around a forklift and hauling a lot of cement. And yes, I probably would have been just as good at this before I decided it was time to become part of the highly educated elite of the marine science community but then again yes, my new found passion for lugging around cement sacks more than half my own body weight is, in a way it is very relevant to my making it into that distinguished group.
For the sturgeon project I’m currently working on, acoustic tracking plays a central role. We catch the fish and pop a tag into them and toss them back into the water. The way we track them, is that we deploy receivers in NY Bight and when they swim past them the receiver picks up the tag signal we know which fish is swimming were.
Now, getting those receivers placed onto the bottom of the ocean is a bit more difficult that it sounds and imvolves huge cement blocks that hold them. And somebody, somebody you see has to make those cement blocks, and it happens to be me!
We’ve got to huge metal molds with a hole in the bottom. To get set up, I line them with a cut open garbage bag (yeah, as I continue this description you’ll soon notice how highly sophisticated the whole process is!), then take a PVC tube with a reed bar inserted in one end and wedge it into that hole. The PVC tube is the center piece of our little work of art – this is what will later hold the receiver. Then I start prepping a couple of red plastic cups with reed bars that will later make various anchor points for ropes and straps.
Once I’ve got everything set up, I start setting up to mix cement. Each mooring is filled with seven 80 pound cement sacks. I lug them to the boathouse door where I’ve already set up the cement mixer (at least I’m not mixing all this by hand!) and start mixing cement to sacks at a time. I fill the finished cement into a wheelbarrow to shovel into the molds. Mixing cement involves a lot of deadlifting cement bags. I’m too short to lift them cement bags into the mixer, so I use a cinder block as a stepping stone. Once I’ve filled the molds I make sure we’ve got a nice flat surface which I engrave and then let the whole thing dry for a day.
I’m usually covered in cement but the time I finish so I head home for a long hot shower. Getting cement off is not an easy task. All the cement dust settles in my hair, and it usually doesn’t come out properly – actually I’m fairly sure that it turns to cement which is making my hair do even weirder things than usual.
The next day I go to get the moorings out of the molds. This is the tricky part and also the part that involves the forklift. I maneuver it around in the boathouse until I can slip a strap looped through a reed bar in the mooring over the forks. Theoretically, I should be able to lift I straight out, pull out the strap, but it through another loop, flip over the mooring and store it outside next to the parking lot.
In practice, that rarely happens. Instead I have developed a new method, in which I take the entire mold out into the parking lot, flip the whole thing over (at this point the mooring will usually still insist on staying in the mold instead of giving into gravity) and then continue lifting and dropping it onto the curb until it drops out.
I have learned not to use that method during “rush hour” when everyone is leaving school because people give me really, really odd looks… my friends are convinced that I’m having withdrawal from rugby now that the season is over and are suggesting alternate forms of anger management.

COLD and WET

Ah, yes. Summer is over. Just like that – from one day to the next. One day sunshine and beautiful weather – the next day sunshine and beautiful weather and I stayed out past sundown, and on the ride home became nearly convinces that my fingers where going to freezer right off.
Things went downhill from there. Two days later, not only had the temperature dropped a good 20 degrees or more, the floodgates of heaven had opened and we had our first major fall storm. I was kinda miserable. I guess I was prepared for the cold, and prepared for the wet but the combination of the two is just not a happy thing for somebody who gets places on their bike.
But the weather to a change for the better and I am currently enjoying a beautiful Indian Summer falling into Autumn. The foliage is breath-taking, I’m doing my best to stay out of the rain when it does come and to get out on long bike rides and walks when the sun is out.
I got a pocket, got a pocket full of sunshine,…

Well, bless you!

My office mate is from Taiwan. My office mate asks me the most random questions at the most random times – even when I am using the international signal for “I am extremely focused on my work” (i.e. wearing headphones while frantically typing into my laptop with several open books/stacks of papers on the table).

The two of us have the desks at the window and there’s a huge bookshelf between us. Yes it’s possible to have a conversation “through” it, but due to my office mate’s limited English (it’s getting better though!) he usually does this thing where he pushes his chair backwards, and says: “Shay-non, I have question”. This question can be anything ranging from some announcement our department has made (not so random you think,… but wait!) to “Shay-non, I hear German and English very similar language” (I made the mistake digging back into my knowledge of the development and history of various European languages which has encouraged him to use me as an Encyclopedia) to “Shay-non, I hear in German (he never says Germany) students don’t pay for lense” (it took me a while to figure out he has an odd obsession with the fact that Germans make the best lenses for glasses), he also tried to rope me into discussions about the German welfare system, the fact that I play rugby not football etc.

One day, he asked me a question that apparently has been sitting on this chest for a long time and had come up again at a recent event, where he sneezed in the library and somebody said “bless you”. It turns out that he has noticed this before and was a bit confused of how it actually “works”. I spent about 20 minutes explaining the convention and answering his many questions. Like do you only say it to people you know, if there are other people in the room who says bless you, etc. Just goes to show you how complicated small every day things like that can be for an outsider.

Ironically, this happened on a day when I was having really, really bad allergies. I had spent the first half of the morning working from our kitchen table with a roll of toilette paper at hand and had only come into school because I needed to get at the internal network. Even as I was explaining the whole “issue” I was thinking to myself… this is not going to go well!

Sure enough, not even two minutes after our conversation, my nose started itching and I sniffled a bit. I heard and excited: “Shay-non! I say BLESS now?” which resulted in another 10 minutes of explaining how you only use it for people who sneeze. Then my allergies kicked in again for real. The kind where I sneeze so much and in so rapid succession that I’m sore the next day.

And every time I sneezed there’d be a super excited: “BLESS! BLESS! Shay-non, I say it right now?”

Needless to say I left early that day…

God is Green - and so am I

I was the kid who got into heated arguments with their biology teacher whenever the subject turned to Evolution. I was the kid who graduated from high school to travel to the ends of the world to share their faith. In an alternate universe I would be married with two kids living in an African hut preaching to the natives. But I’m not – you see, I also was the kid who excelled in every science class, graduated at the top of their class, studied Molecular Biology and Ecology and was one of the first of my high school class to pursue a PhD in a natural science.
Moving to the States for graduate studies, I discovered that here, being a Christian Conservationist or an Evangelical Ecologist is considered as much of an oxymoron as Military Intelligence and Microsoft Works. When it comes to subjects such as Global Warming, the need for conservation and going green, my fellow scientists put Christians in a box labeled “ignorant, unwilling to face facts & blinded by faith” and my fellow Christians seem to think people advocating these things are automatically either left-wing liberals and/or atheists bent on destroying the church.
I beg to differ. I dare say, God is green – and so am I.
Because I have never felt like I was bridging a gap desperately trying to keep a foot in each camp. Being a Biologist and a Christian never was mutually exclusive to me and neither does my passion for my faith diminish the passion I have t o conserve and responsibly manage the earth and the resources we have been entrusted with. On the contrary, the more I discover about the world we live in, the more I understand about the beauty of nature, the more I stand in awe and call it creation (debating the whos and whats and wheres of evolution put aside). And at the same time, the more I marvel at creation, the more I am driven to study it, understand it and attempt to grasp the fullness of the complexity of how everything fits together. And the more I am exposed to scientific facts of how the world around is changing and hurting - the more I passionate I become about the necessity to take action before it is too late and we have destroyed our planet.
Because the world was not given to us to mess it up. For me, conservation goes back to the Garden of Eden, when God gives mankind dominion over his creation. While dominion does mean “to rule” or “to put under the authority” of, it does not mean “to exploit”. Rather, it implies stewardship, a responsibility to make the most out of what we where entrusted with. It does not mean we need to preserve everything as it is and dare not touch anything lest we mess something up. But it does mean that we need to understand how the world works and come up with a scientifically founded management plan which would enable us to use natural resources in a sustainable responsible way.
Because our own backyard is a good place to start if we want to change the world. If we as Christians want to be taken seriously as a force toward changing the world for the better, we need to become a part of both actively participating in conservation and resource management, as well as speaking up and being an advocate for God’s creation. This could start with small things, such as throwing away paper plates for a ceramic set. Only heating the building when there is somebody in it. Properly isolating windows, making the building more energy efficient. Turning the lights off, adding power switches, asking “what would Jesus drive”– a lot of small things that should also translate into our personal lives, too. It could also mean that this year’s youth outreach doesn’t go to South American for a children’s program but strives to clean up the local forest. Using church buildings a venue for educational programs. Planting trees on church property. Supporting efforts in third world countries that are bringing water, resources and jobs to people in a sustainable way. Yes, it also means being open to work together with scientists, listening to them and using their knowledge and understanding to provide a foundation for our efforts.
There is an entire list of ways to become active. But for earth’s sake, as the church we need to get up off of the pews and do something.

so...

yes, I'm still around.
I'm currently piddling around with a lot of different stuff: Hounding museums for access to their sawfish-saws, reading, hauling cement, figuring out statistical analysis programs for population genetics, prepping and giving lectures, driving a forklift around, as well as this that and the other thing.
I'm determined to start writing up some of my late adventures - at some point or the other :-)
I'm posting an "Op-Ed" I wrote for a class a while back... Several people asked me if I would post it here so they could actually read (and not just hear) about it!
So - for some insight into the inner workings (and thinkings) of my brain....

just so you know...

I've added a few pictures from my time in the Gulf to previous posts.

in retrospect...

We arrived in Pascagoula, Mississippi early Wednesday morning. By 10am we had successfully unloaded the boat - everybody was hyper and happy as their family and friends arrived to pick them up. Those who still had to work unloading and storing all the equipment were being very quick and efficient about it, eager to get home.

Several of us had flights out later that afternoon and so rather than hang out on an empty ship on of the girls who works for NOAA took us all to the bar, where we decompressed drinking beer and playing shuffleboard to the tunes of country/rock being played from a jukebox.

I suddenly felt sufficiently exposed to the South.

The flight home was rather uneventful. After collecting my luggage I stepped out of the airport onto a clearly marked crosswalk with a green light for pedestrians. A yellow taxi honked its horn at me.

So good to be home!

The final haul...

A few hours before the end of our last shift we went out on the back deck to bait for one last time then an hour later we headed towards the bow of the ship for a final haul. For the past few days most people were starting to get antsy and very anxious to get off the boat and finally see their families again - you could tell how the mood on the ship was changing. Still positive - but ready to finish and finish well.
By our final haul (and long before) my shift was working like a well-oiled machine. And it's a good thing we were. After we had pulled in the first 10 hooks with sharpnose on the line all I could say was "you've got to be kidding me". But hook 50 we had caught 40 sharks - mostly sharpnose but apparently some of the larger sharks had caught on (pardon the pun) that there was a bunch of free food lying on the ocean floor in the form of smaller sharks which had gotten hooked. Quite a few hooks had a sharknose head plus a blacktip or tigershark attached to it.

We hauled in 69 sharks, which put us six sharks shy of the all time record.
Not bad for a last try.

back in the day when we played with Legos....

When I played Legos with my brothers we frequently built "space stations". The reason why we (or at least I) did this because then we could make cool but odd looking "cars"/flying saucers, platforms because in outer space, normal rules just don't apply.

You can imagine my surprise, when I saw my first oil platform up close and discovered that our Lego-designs weren't so outlandish after all.

Especially while we were off the coast of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi there constantly were oil rigs on the distant horizon or close enough for us to see helicopters landing and taking off.

I'm used to the ocean being a dark place by night the only sources of light being the moon and the stars (and there are SO MANY when there isn't so much light pollution) and whatever lights the ship has on. Here, in the Gulf I was constantly surrounded by illuminated platforms, rigs and crew boats. In some places there were so many of them I felt like they were closing and trying to take over.

On the other hand, looking at the amount of off-shore drilling going on in the Gulf and all the leases Florida has already given out even though currently nothing is actually being built... maybe that is exactly what is going on!

Eeeek! Eels…

People seem to equate Shannon with Fearless. This is not necessarily true – I do have my fair share of things that make my knees shake and my heart pound. I am not, however, squeamish and generally up to poke and prod and hold things – be it slimy, slimy fish, slimy, slimy fish gonads, stinky, stinky whale guts, and so forth.
At this point would like to admit, that these huge eels that we occasionally pull out kinda freak me out. Some of them are almost 2m long, their wiggle and squirm, and as we pull them up to either bring them on board or just cut the line, they stare into your eyes and give you the “I’m going to bite your head off in just a sec”-expression. They don’t actually make a sound by I always envision (enaudio?) them making a hissing, dragon-style I’m-about-to-breath-fire-type sound.
Yes, eels are freaky!

[once I get a better internet connection you'll be able to view the Shannon-holding-eel-picture]

it's me - plus the a kingsnake eel

Cut the line!

I few of you have asked what happens if the line breaks. Well, if the line snaps for whatever reason we usually maneuver around to the other high flyer and start from there. We have had this happen before, but it’s not too big of a problem because we have a second chance.
We did though at one point snap the line, then try to haul it in from the other side to discover that the line must have gotten snagged by something on the seafloor because the same things happened again. This IS a problem. Apart from the fact that we spent the next hour or two making new gangions (the short lines with the hook that we then attach to the actually longline) and sorting out tag numbers to have another complete set to clip onto the hooks, “ghost lines” and “ghost nets, i.e. any fishing gear that has been lost or cut loose by fishermen can be a big problem and cause high mortality of dolphins, turtles and other creatures.
Last night we were happily hauling in our line when all of the sudden gales started up, then the rain. We continued reeling in the line as fast as we could, but at the point where hard hats blew across the deck and one of the hook barrels tried to make a quick getaway we got the call from the bridge to cut the line. Which we did, then packed everything down in a hurry and hurried inside.
By the time things had calmed down enough to haul the rest of the line in, our shift had ended and we were cuddled up in the crew lounge watching a movie while the night shift did all the work….

Sword Fish!

Sometimes we really don’t catch anything. We just pull in hook after hook “bait damaged”, “no bait” and some more hooks “no bait”, “no bait”. The other day we were on the front deck reeling in the line, enjoying the sunshine, lulled by the constant zzzzzzzzzz of the winch. When suddenly “Fish On! What the…??”
We all peered overboard and discovered that we had captured a huge swordfish! I managed to whip out my camera and even get some decent shots:

[you'll have to come back for pictures of the awesome swordfish - our internet connection is too slow]

here it is!!

Ship life

Well here it is, I haven’t seen land in over 10 days and I really don’t miss it. Yes, I’m kinda bummed about missing out on the beginning of the Fall Season’s rugby craziness, and I could do with a nice long bike ride, and I haven’t had the chance to hang out with my gang of class mates and house mates and one of the first things I’ll probably do when I get back will be some cooking and baking in the kitchen. But all in all, it comes down to the fact that I love being out on the ocean. I missed it. I quickly re-adjusted to the constant humming of the AC, the vibrations of the engine and learned to “read” the ship… when my shift isn’t working I can tell by the movement and sounds of the ship whether we’re underway or about to/in the middle of setting in or hauling back.
After spending two years on the Doulos I’m accustomed to ship’s life but of course every ship’s got it’s own culture. I’m having a lot of fun with the crew and the other scientists. Long-lining involves a lot of downtime as we let the line soak and sail to the next station (and sometimes when we spend 45minutes pulling in a line with nothing on it) so there’s a lot of messing around, cracking jokes and random conversations.
I’ve also been learning a lot about football – Saturday’s is college football, Sunday is the NFL and then Monday night there’s more. Oh, and everyday there’s big guys in suits and important looking headsets (I’m still trying to figure out why they don’t just use a lapel mic while inside the studio… maybe it gives them the feeling of being an important part of a coaching team?) talking about football. I’ve also discovered I probably would have made an excellent cheerleader had I gone to school in the States!
Actually, I’ve got a suggestion for my rugby team whose been trying to recruit new players. Somebody suggested that we should talk to the girls that were cut from the soccer, lacrosse and field hockey teams. I think we should start recruiting cheerleaders because they’d make excellent jumpers in the linouts! As opposed to merely lifting them we could toss them…
We’ve been pitching and rolling for most of our cruise – even the captain told me the other day over dinner that it’s kinda rough. It takes a bit if re-adjusting and I remembered why I never liked showering on the Doulos during a voyage (shaving your legs can get quite challenging!). I’ve got a mean looking bruise on my knee – let’s just say I learned my lesson about going to the bathroom in the dark without my glasses on while the ship is moving that much.
Between the crew and scientists we’ve got a marvelous cast of characters and things never get dull. To recount a short conversation on evening in the galley (dining room): “If y’all finished my Earl Grey, I’m gonna kick that persons ass”, “Wow. I don’t think anyone has ever used the words ‘y’all’, ‘Earl Grey’ and ‘ass’ in one sentence”.

BIG one

I have been asked where the live action picture of me wrestling with sharks is. I will tell you where it is – there isn’t one. It’s not like you can pause in mid-measuring/tagging, whip out your cell phone and tell the shark: “Say cheese” and snap a picture of yourself and the shark. Yes, possibly if there’s not that many sharks on the line there may be some time for pictures but usually when we’re pulling them up we’re doing so in rapid succession.
We’ve had a few hauls now that were full of big sharks. Last night, we had about 15 that were too big to pull on board, they had eaten half of the small sharpnose that took the bait – so we ended up with a bunch of half-eaten sharks and shark heads. Currently, the swell is so high that the boat is rocking so much that we aren’t using the cradle. Either the crew can pull it on deck or we peer over the side of the boat as the shark (usually around 2m give or take) thrashes and flips around trying to get an ID on the species, determine its gender, as well as estimate its size. The crew swaps shifts half hour before we do and one night we realized that the night crew like to pull much larger sharks on deck than the day crew that usually works with us. We were pulling them up like there was no tomorrow and I was busily trying to take down all the data that three people were throwing at me simultaneously I felt something staring at me and discovered a 1,6m (5’2”) shark lying on the deck behind me inching its way closer to my shoe.
While for the larger sharks you need two or even three people to hold them down while you’re measuring, the smaller sharks are most easily handled be grabbing them right behind its head and letting it whip its tail around all it wants until it calms down a bit and you can remove the hook (which is none too easy) and measure and weigh it..
Do not hold a small shark by its tail most of them are able to bit themselves in the tail (and whatever is holding it there). No Daddy, I didn’t learn this the hard way. I’m taking peoples word for it.

Just like a big, big goldfish

Obviously, sharks aren’t the only fish in the sea. And they aren’t the only fish interested in “free food” on the bottom of the sea. Various other scientists have put in requests for samples for certain species of fish should we pull them up. When we get Red Snapper, Tile fish and various Grouper species we take them to the back deck and once we’re done with the haul the fun begins.
We dissect them to get at and keep certain parts. We check their gonads to see if they’re male or female (a lot of these species turn male once they reach a certain size), and then cut them out and pop them into little plastic bags with formaldehyde so they can be analyzed later, we keep part of the muscle to test for mercury, we keep part of the fin to possible later genetics. Yes, it’s all very gooey and slimy and rather smelly. The things we do in the name of science! We also upon up the gill cavity and go digging for the otholiths – part of the bony structure that can be used to age the fish.

Once we’re done collecting samples, the fish gets filed and there is fresh fish on the menu the next day. The first night we spent working on Red Snapper I was helping with all the dissection stuff and the longer I was looking at the fish the more I realized that it really does look like a 15-20lbs goldfish

Slip slip slidin’ away

Of course, sharks aren’t the only fish in the ocean. And they aren’t the only fish interested in our bait. Depending on which depth we’re fishing at we’ll not only haul in a different shark species – we’ll pull up all kinds of other fish as well!
One of the PhD students on board is researching tilefish. These fish live on the seafloor in deeper habitats (200-300m). So she was quite excited about us fishing at some deeper stations today and potentially pulling up some tilefish. Interesting side note – because they live at such great depths and we pull them out pretty fast their eyes bulge out and look like they’re about to explode from their heads.
And pull the up we did. At our first deep station we hauled in about eight – one of them weighed 11kg (25lbs)! Yes, that’s a big fish. Another side note – with a few minor exceptions all tilefish are born female and those that grow past a certain size will turn male. Tilefish are quite beautiful. They’ve got yellow markings on the side as well as their fins.
We pulled out a few the second deep haul as well, as well as some kingsnake eels, sharks and Hakes. It was going so quick and we were “down” one person because the tilefish person had decided to take one of the large eels on board to see if it had any tiny tilefish in its stomach and apparently it put up quite the fight. So somebody decided to place all the fish were pulling in right behind me.
Now most of you know that I’m not particularly squeamish, but being trapped between a table trying to take down data with fish flopping behind me (remember we’re talking 2-3 feet), sloshing their slime on my back legs was not a happy moment: “Could somebody get these fish out from behind me?!” The tile person rushed back explaining how the eel hadn’t been to happy, almost escaped but she managed to kill it and put it in the tub. She happily took the remaining tilefish to the back where she slits the gills so they don’t slowly suffocate.
After the haul I was the first to walk back to bring the datasheet into the dry lab. As I was walking past the tub one of the not-so-dead-fish violently flopped, hitting the back of my leg causing me to jump. I landed in the eel slime covering the deck and slide about a meter on one foot before I could balance (all those years of sliding around polished floors in my socks finally paid off!). By the time everyone else made it to the back deck I was busily scrubbing and hosing down the deck.
Where’s the video camera when you really need it?
(PS: Yes Daddy, I was wearing a life jacket)

Hauling back...

While puncturing fish eyeballs, slinging bait and tossing high fliers overboard can be quite exhilarating and fulfilling (or not) hauling back probably is the more exciting process (or not - when you've pulled up a hundred hooks and got nada).
After an hour or so of soaking time we throw on our personal flotation devices (you wouldn't want to get caught in the line and dragged overboard. But if you do you'd want to have a vest on) and head to the front of the ship. We spot the high flier, the bridge navigates us right next to it and we nab it and haul it on board. The line gets fastened to the winch and we begin the process of hauling back, i.e. pulling every hook on board, checking whether or not we've caught anything.
Everything is tediously documented. We have one person at a laptop (yes Charly, the indestructible mission-impossible-esque toughbooks) who logs each hook - this laptop is interfaced with the ship's navigation system so it logs the exact position real time. The person removing the hooks calls out what we've got: 1 - no bait... 2 - no bait... 3 damaged... 4- no bait... etc (we usually get 'no bait) and then 23 - FISH ON.
Now things get exciting. We pull the (hopefully it's a) shark on board and the data recorder takes down all the details: "Number 23 Atlantic sharpnose (they're like the rabbits of the ocean, we usually pull them up), alive, male, immature, fork length 8-4-7 (mm so make that just under 3 feet), total length 9-7-0, weight (there's usually a bit of a pause as the person handling the shark removes the hook) 4 point 2 (kg - so about 9 pounds).
Then we toss the fish overboard. If it's not a sharpnose we'll take fin clippings for DNA-stuff and tag it before it goes overboard.
We generally only pull sharks up to about 4-5 feet on board. Anything bigger than that turns into a more complicated procedure involving a crane and "the craddle" - which is a metal basket. While one person is holding the line attached to the hook the shark swallowed (yes this isn't as easy as it sounds - the shark is usually thrashing and putting on a good show) the crew members leap into action attaching the basket to the crane, lowering it overboard and scooping up the shark. We get the measuring stick, measure it, weigh it, tag it and then either remove the hook or more likely decide that it's a better idea to let the shark have the hook and just clip the line.

Hauling back can be an exciting process of getting 20 or so sharks (I think the most we had on our shift so far was 30), a more relaxing process of 3-8 or the disappointing process of nothing.
But then there's always the next haul....