A few of the dogs I walked today
I made a rather interesting find on a beach clean this afternoon
Today was a
dreary-weather day here in Gansbaai, but that didn’t stop us from having a good
time! This morning, since it was a no sea day, Lucy and I slept in a little- I
got up at about eight. As we were eating breakfast, Tom popped his head in and
said that he’d be leading a lecture up at the other house for us at about 9:30.
Even though there’s no one currently living up at the top vol house, there’s a
lecture room in there with a screen for his presentations, so we always do
lectures in there. Lucy and I headed out into the cloudy day to head up to the
other house and, after quickly popping into the garage to say hi to Benz and
Mandla, we went to listen to Tom’s presentation.
He has
several different lecture topics and presentations that he gives to the
volunteers. So far I’d already heard the biology and behavior ones, so today’s
topic was on shark evolution. Evolution of sharks is a tricky topic to
research. Even though they’re just about the oldest animals on the planet,
their skeletons are composed completely of cartilage, so there are very few
fossils of them found. The main part of a shark’s body that does fossilize is
their teeth, and you can’t exactly find out everything about prehistoric sharks
just by looking at their teeth. That being said, a lot of information about the
evolution of sharks is speculative. It’s still really interesting to look at
evolution just among modern day sharks. It’s pretty cool to be able point out
differences in the oldest, least evolved shark species, like cowsharks and
frilled sharks, versus the most evolved species, like hammerheads. After his
lecture, we watched a documentary that focused on researchers trying to find
deep-sea sharks off the coast of Japan, like goblin sharks (one of my
favorites!) and megamouth sharks.
By the time
both of those were over it was nearly noon, so Tom said we could head back home
for lunch, then go out for the afternoon. We’d decided to spend the afternoon
visiting Barc, a local animal rescue center here in Gansbaai, to help walk and
play with the dogs. It was a pretty small facility- I think they had about
twelve dogs, and a few cats. Some of the recent arrivals were pretty skinny,
but it looked like the center was taking good care of them- they were all clean
and had food and water in their kennels. In the couple of hours that we were
there, Lucy and I walked every single dog! We’d take them out, one or two at a
time, and take them on about a 20-30 minute walk through the local
neighborhood. After we’d walked all of them, we had a little bit of time left
over until Grant picked us up, so I just hung out in the kennels playing with
them for a little longer. It was a little sad to see them in their kennels,
especially the really skinny ones, but at the same time it was so nice to take
each of them for a walk around- they all were clearly very happy to get out of
their kennels!
It was a
little before three when we got back home from Barc. Since it looked like it
was going to rain soon, I grabbed a trash bag and went out to do a beach clean
almost as soon as we came home. I was only able to stay out for about half an
hour before it started raining, but still collected a good amount of junk. It
amazes me that I go out and do a beach clean almost every day, yet every day
there’s new stuff that washes up to be collected. On one of my first days here,
Tom told me that every minute, enough plastic to fill a garbage truck gets
dumped into the ocean- and that’s just talking plastic. Sad indeed, but it’s
still satisfying when I finish a beach clean and see the place looking a little
cleaner than before I started.
This evening
has been pretty chill and quiet here at the vol house. Tomorrow we’re back out
on the boat- there’s a seven o’clock launch, and so far it looks like there’s
space for both of us. Tomorrow is also the day that we’re getting a bunch of
new vols- I think either seven or eight. I don’t yet know anything about them,
but it’ll be interesting to have that many vols around again! This post’s food
for thought is a quote I thought of when I was playing with the dogs at Barc
this afternoon: “Animals are such agreeable friends- they ask no questions,
they pass no criticisms.”- George Eliot
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