Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Shark Research at Tiger Beach, Bahamas 2008

Recently Doc Grubers team from the Bimini Shark Lab went to Tiger Beach, Bahamas to conduct some "tagging and tracking"of the locals there.

Is it just us, or in a field of shark researchers, these guys seem to have more fun?

Here' the expedition report, it's a must read:

We anchored up and started to put chum in the water to attract the sharks. It didn't take long to get a good slick of menhaden oil and blood fanning out from the stern in the current. I went inside the boat to prepare my camera gear and wait for sharks to find their way to us. Steve had hung a huge snapper carcass off the back of the boat, so I was confident we would have some hungry customers showing up real soon. Within an hour we had six lemons circling the back of the boat. We started throwing bait in to them and drew them close to the boat with pieces of bait on lines. When they got within range we popped them with a pole spear to take a small skin sample for DNA analysis. More lemons joined the fray until we had approximately a dozen prowling off our stern. As we glanced around Steve and I saw a large dark shadow making a large arc about 100 meters behind the boat. We looked at each other and excitedly shouted "TIGER!!!"

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