Shark Fishing

We put Cuvier in the water at sunrise, about 6:30. We had loaded up the boat the night before with the gear that we would need for shark fishing: lines, buoys, hooks, etc... We picked up our bait in the morning: pink snapper frames, what's left of the fish after the fillet (rhymes with “kill it” here) is removed.

As usual we rotated through all the jobs so everyone had a chance to do each task. When we arrived at the first gps point where we were to set a drum line we had to bait a big hook with a snapper frame and attach the hook to the line and attach a floating drum marker and an anchor. There were three different knots to be tied. Once the hooks were baited and everything was attached, it was all thrown overboard at the appropriate spot and we proceeded to the next gps point where we repeated the process, dropping a total of 12 baited hooks which we would check every two hours until 4PM. Then we came to shore for breakfast.

After breakfast we went back out to check the lines: no sharks and the bait was still intact, so we ran transect lines until it was time to check the lines again. 

That's Greg, Sean and Cindy running transects.

Today's highlights while running transects were a large sea snake (extremely venomous and very common here), bow riding dolphins and loggerhead turtles. I like turtles.

Brett, the director of Department of Environment and Conservation was on board with us for the day. He got a phone call toward the end of the day that there was a dead dolphin on the beach at Monkey Mia (where we live). By the time we arrived, the dolphin researchers were already there. It turns it was a dolphin named Bly who had they had been studying for years. He was about 30 yrs old or more and had no visible signs of what might have killed him. Perhaps old age. They are planning on a necropsy to determine cause of death.