Great water visibility today!
This shark was pretty feisty, despite having a damaged right pectoral fin
The past
couple of days have been pretty busy here at White Shark Projects! The past two
days have each had three trips out to sea, and each day I’ve gone on two of
them. I didn’t update yesterday because we were busy with the three trips, and
because we got a new volunteer here, who was put in this house with me and
Lindsay, the vol that came two days ago. So yesterday I was in the garage at
5:15 in the morning and went on the first two trips, staying busy with that
until about 12:30, then got a break since I wasn’t on the final trip. When the
last trip came back in at about 2:30, I went back out to the harbor to help
unpack the boat, then up to the garage to wash the wetsuits. When I came back
to the house after that I met Lucy, the new volunteer. She’s from the UK- it
seems like I meet so many British people when I travel! So, with most of my day
filled up with work here, followed by spending some time getting to know my new housemates, then with it being my turn to cook dinner, I just didn’t have a lot
of free time to make a blog post.
This morning
was another early start- 5:15 in the garage again! Tom sent me a message last
night saying that, at the time, there wasn’t space for any vols on the first
trip, but Lindsay, Lucy and I got up anyway to help set everything up. We’d
gone up to the other house last night to hang out with the guys, and we told
them that they didn’t have to get up early if they didn’t want to, so this
morning in the garage it was the crew and the three girls! There were still no
spots available on the first trip, but I didn’t really mind. We were done
setting up the boat by shortly after six, at which point the three of us came
back home and rested some more, getting up again a couple hours later to be
ready by the time the boat came back at about nine. It didn’t take very long to
get all the used stuff replaced, and the second trip launched at 9:30, with all
the vols on it. That was a very small group of guests- there were only eight of
them! Since the boat can have as many as twenty passengers and five crew
members per trip, only eight guests felt like a really small group. The
visibility in the water today was pretty much the best it ever is here, and the
sharks were really active, so it was a good trip. I hadn’t brought my camera on
that trip, but since the water visibility was so good, I decided to bring it
along on the final trip to see if I could get some good shots. Thankfully the
sharks stuck around for that third trip, which launched at 12:30, and I got
some nice pictures and video of those beautiful animals. The weather has been
really great the past few days- cool in the mornings when we first get up, then
warming up as the sun comes up. Even when the day is at its warmest time, it
always feels cooler here because we’re right by the ocean. It was nearly four
o’clock by the time we were totally done with work for the day, but thankfully
I still made time to go do a beach clean for about an hour. I really wanted to
get one in since I didn’t have time to do one yesterday.
Tomorrow
there are two trips scheduled rather than three, so I should have more free
time for another blog post. This one’s just a basic recap of the past couple of
days. It’s only a little after eight o’clock here, but it feels later, I guess
because I got up so early. Tomorrow is another bright and early start- garage
at 5:15 again! That being said, I’ll probably turn in soon to be up and ready
tomorrow- both of my housemates have already retired to their room. I have a
couple of ideas for future blog posts that will take some more work. Today I
finally got a good picture of Tom on the boat, so I think I now have good
pictures of all the crew. I’ve been wanting to make a post dedicated solely to
the crew, so hopefully that’ll be coming up soon! This post’s food for thought:
“If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit home and think about it. Go out and get
busy.”- Dale Carnegie
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