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.