Watch for Sharks!

Oh, I most definitely did!  All day long! Watched 15 of them actually, as they came on and off our boat during our Long-Lining Trip today.  In a word it was flipping-awesome.

I'm sure you've all heard about the sharks at Orange Beach and are probably alarmed that my class went to collect sharks today.  Those vicious man-eating beasts! They're flocking! They must want to attack us! They want to eat us! They're dangerous! Stay away from them!  Yes, yes, yes. I've heard it all-- we've all heard these things time and time again.  But let's just stop this stigma society has with sharks right now.  Why do we have such a stigma with sharks anyways??  
Sharks have large, pointy teeth that look scary...but some people look scary too, so that can't be it.  Sharks have killed people in the past... but so have bees- it's 50x more likely that a bee will kill you than a shark.
These sharks are "flocking" at Orange Beach. Yeah, so what?? We have people that flock at shopping malls every day, and that doesn't freak us out (Well it freaks me out a smidgen, especially on Black Friday, but I digress).  And a group of sharks isn't a flock-- it's a shiver.  There's a name for it because it happens.  Sharks being in groups is a thing.  It's not "normal" for sharks to get in groups like this everyday, but it is perfectly normal for feeding and mating behavior.  And this grouping of sharks happens everywhere, not just at Orange Beach.  The only reason Orange Beach is a "big deal" is because it was in nice clear water, so that the sharks could be seen easily.  I guarantee that the same behavior at Orange Beach has occurred here at Dauphin Island, and probably sometime when I was swimming with them in the ocean.  But DIs has less-than-crystal-clear water, so an aerial view is not quite as revealing.

We fear sharks because we fear the unknown.  We just don't know much about sharks at all, and that's why this Long-Lining trip was so important.  Every shark that we caught was identified, measured, weighed, and tagged before being thrown back into the ocean.  When these sharks are spotted in the future (by fishermen or researchers or people like you!), we hope that they'll report the tag they saw and we can learn migration patterns of sharks and have an idea for shark population and species.  the more we understand them, the more we can protect them.  The more they're protected, the less invasive we are.  The less invasive we are, the less we need to worry about sharks.  

So now that I'm off my soap box, here's a recount of today-- one of my favorite days ever!!

We got an email from Jim telling us to "be ready to wrestle with the primitive denizens of the deep," and boy was I ready!  I love love love sharks!! Ever since I swam in a shark cage in high school, I've been a little obsessed.  They are just SO fascinating!  And whale sharks... Oh my goodness I'm obsessed with them too. If I could work with sharks my while life, I'd be one happy camper.  But back to today's shark-packed-life...

At 7:15am we all climbed aboard the E.O. Wilson and traveled out about 10 miles to set up our lines.  We were "Long-Lining," which is letting out one ridiculously long line with lots of little lines hanging from it with bait.  I made this beautiful picture to illustrate:

I'm a Paint artist, I know! Each orange circle is a bouy; the grey rectangles are weights.  You'll notice that our hooks are near the sediment-- that is by design.  Sharks are bottom feeders, so if you put food on the bottom, you'll catch them!  This also meant that we weren't going to catch any pelagic fish (those little red guys in the picture).

So the line was set up and our shark expert (Dr. Drymon- who the one of the coolest people I've had the pleasure of meeting) started calling the sharks, "Come on, fish!" and they listened!  It felt like we caught shark after shark, and every time we got another shark, the boat cheered with enthusiasm.  We brought up each shark on the boat to identify, measure, weigh, and tag.  And 15 sharks later, we had 4 new species for our collections and a fabulous day to remember. The Great Hammerhead we caught had to be wrestled down with four people, and the Scalloped Hammerhead was so big that we couldn't even get it on the boat!  I also took a picture with a Blacknose Shark:

 

^I'm dying of excitement right here!!!

Due to the current attention sharks are getting, our class made it on Channel 5's 6 o'clock news in Mobile, AL.  So we got to play with sharks all day and became famous. Gosh, we're cool! 

^Proof I've been on the news. Bam!

This was by far the coolest thing we've done this summer.  It actually might've been the coolest thing I've done in my life ever.  Ahhhh! I'm just really high on life right now!  Nothing excites me more than playing with sharks. And just a side note:  I would ABSOLUTELY LOVE to study sharks in Grad school. So if you know anyone looking for another Grad student (for a PhD) or know of a professor that studies sharks, help a sister out.  You'd probably make my day life.

What's coming up: Well certainly nothing that's going to top today!  Especially because it's ba dum ba dum ba dum badumbadumbadm....DEAD WEEK!  Talk about terrifying!  Our Species Collections are due tomorrow, our Lab Practical is Thursday, and our Final Exam is Friday.  Welcome to Finals week at DISL!  It's going to be full of cram time and lacking beach days, and I'm not looking forward to it.  But I'm going to be so incredibly knowledgeable on all things Marine Vertebrates by Friday that I won't know what to do with my newly brilliant self.  Prayers are always welcome!  See you on the other side, friends!