Up on the fly deck- my favorite place on the boat
I got another white eye shot!
Yesterday
was a pretty chill no sea day, so I didn’t update the blog. I spent part of the
afternoon and evening working on a rather elaborate informative post, but it’ll
take some more writing and editing before it’s ready to publish. I spent most
of yesterday morning up in the other vol house listening to one of Tom’s
lectures on shark behavior and meeting the new volunteer that we got yesterday.
His name is Mike, he’s from Switzerland, and I think he said that he’ll be here
for three weeks. He was put in the other house with Mayke and Dax, which is
fine with me. Even having my own room is a luxury I very rarely get when
traveling, so having my own entire house for the past couple of days has been
weird, but nice. Okay, technically, what I live in is kind of like a duplex-
Tom lives on one side, volunteers (right now just me) on the other.
Yesterday
afternoon was pretty uneventful- I spent a couple hours out doing a little solo
beach clean up, which I do nearly every afternoon. Other than that, I mainly stayed
in and wrote. That evening I heard that there were two trips planned for this
morning- the first one had space for two vols, the second had room for all four
of us. I said that I’d get up for the 5:45 start in the garage to help get the
boat all packed up and ready, but that I didn’t mind staying in for the first
trip if some of the others wanted to go. Tom said he definitely wanted Mike to
go on the first one so he could get used to the routine, and Dax said he’d also
like to go. So this morning I got up before sunrise to head up to the garage,
packed up all the wetsuits, life jackets, chum and everything else, then loaded
it all up onto the boat before returning home to hang out until trip one got
back. At about 9:30 I headed back out to the harbor to meet the boat as it
returned from its first trip out. After helping the guests off the boat,
replacing the used wetsuits and towels and refilling the snacks, I had a little
while to just chill down there at the harbor with the other volunteers and the crew
while we waited for the second group of guests to head down. By about 10:30, we
were on the water again. I heard from Dax and the crew that they’d seen four
sharks on the first trip, which has been about average lately. Gerald, one of
the other crew members, just got back from about three weeks off, so the crew
consisted of him, Tom, Benz, Bee, and Grant.
When we
dropped anchor and had gone through the briefing for the guests, I grabbed the
data sheets and, as usual, hopped up on the fly deck to get the best view of
the sharks. White Shark Projects is an organization that focuses on research as
well as ecotourism. Meaning, every trip out to sea, one of us is assigned the
job of taking data on the sharks that we see. The data sheets say things like:
time shark arrived at boat, size, sex, does it have any scars/defining marks,
is it a shark we’ve seen before, etc. The data sheets also have a section to
describe the shark’s behavior- was it calm, cautious, inquisitive, feisty, was
it spy hopping, how many bait attempts it made, was it seen with other sharks,
that sort of thing. We like to keep a good record of what the population of
great whites is like in this area. We’re really lucky to be in one of the best
places in the world to see these animals, and every day I remind myself how
lucky I am to be able to go out on the boat and see these animals nearly every
day. Great whites are one of the top ten species that are expected to be
extinct by 2050, and some people predict that by even as soon as 2030, there
could be none left (but more on that in a later blog post).
We saw four
sharks on the second trip as well, and they clearly each had their own behavior
and personalities. The first- a 2.5 meter male- was inquisitive, but also very
calm. It didn’t really even make bait attempts, but rather just swam around the
boat, watching us. The second one was at first pretty calm as well, but the
longer it stuck around, the more feisty it became, making several bait attempts
and nearly stealing the bait near the end of the trip. I could go on, but you
get the point- they definitely have individual personalities.
We pulled up
anchor and returned to the harbor at about 1:30, after which we again helped
the guests out of their life jackets and off the boat, then took all of the
wetsuits, snacks, towels, and trash off the boat and into the truck to be
driven back to the garage. Then Mayke and I followed the truck to the garage to
start washing the wetsuits, while Dax and Mike stayed behind to help finish
cleaning the boat. We were done with our work day by about 2:30.
After
relaxing at home for a little while I spent about an hour out doing yet another
beach clean. Beach cleans have become something I do just about every
afternoon, and I really enjoy them. It’s nice to spend some time down by the
ocean, walking along Gansbaai’s beautiful coast, picking up everything manmade
that I can find. I have no idea how much junk I’ve picked up since I’ve been
here, but it’s enough to fill several large trash bags. It’s nice to think that
I might be saving the life of an animal by doing beach cleans, and they’re
actually really relaxing for me.
Tomorrow
there’s another 5:45 start in the garage. I haven’t heard yet about numbers,
and I think there’s only one trip, so it’s still kind of up in the air. I do
know that Dax said that if there wasn’t enough room on tomorrow’s trip he’d sit
out, since he went on both trips today, so hopefully I’ll get to go out on the
boat again tomorrow. That’s all the news for this one! This post’s food for
thought: “A person does not grow from the ground like a vine or a
tree, one is not part of a plot of land. Mankind has legs so it can
wander.”-Roman Payne
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