Slow week for sharks, but we are getting plenty of exercise in elasmobranch anatomy. The fact that our big buddies, the local white sharks, are moving away from SealIsland and are less frequent on chum trips is most definitely a bummer. Not to mention the weather has turned a little more unpredictable and violent which keeps us from even getting on the water some days. This aside, our time in MosselBay has still been exciting.
Recently Britain’s Channel 4 visited MosselBay to continue their work on their television series “Inside Nature’s Giants”. Their subject: the great white shark. They acquired a 4.3 meter white shark from a beach protection net in kwaZulu Natal on the east coast of South Africa for the dissection for the film crew and for the PhD project of OCEANS scientist Enrico Gennari.
They set up near the aquarium and raised the shark up on the dissection table. Channel 4 provided everyone in the show bright orange jumpsuits and little white boots. It was fascinating to see shark anatomy on this huge scale. I think the locals of MosselBay thought so too. The dissection turned into a town gathering with masses of locals crowded around behind the caution tape and perched up on the railings of Big Blu trying to get a good view. I didn’t blame them it was quite a spectacle.
Enrico’s elasmobranch dissections for school kids also continue to be a hit. Today he switched it up and dissected a ray instead of the standard soupfin shark.
We also were able to rescue and rerelease a green sea turtle and a penguin. The poor little turtle was not just tossed around and battered in the epic storm we had recently, but he also had a quarter of his shell removed by a shark bite. It was in sad shape. But we made sure that it was in decent shape and was healthy enough to survive on his own before releasing it into the waters of MosselBay.
The main focuses this week were the arrivals of new interns and sorting out a new home for our adopted green turtle, now nicknamed Crush (like the Turtle in Finding Nemo).
The question to which aquarium would be better suited to Crush’s needs was somewhat abandoned when the animal still hadn’t eaten by the second weekend and showed no signs whatsoever of recovery. To the turtle’s luck, SAMPLA director Enrico, against others’ opinions, never lost faith and a detour was worked into an airport trip for one of the leaving SAMPLA interns, and early Monday morning, Crush embarked on the long journey to Port Elizabeth’s Bayworld aquarium.
Bayworld was the perfect place for the young thing as Dylan, who works in what could be called the ‘recovery unit’ of the facility, had been successfully nursing another green turtle with the exact same condition, and was looking forward to releasing her. This was great news for Crush to have experienced people at his bedside caring for him (or her, too young to be determined). It was explained that with quick thermocline changes, bacteria in the digestive system can become overactive and create an air bubble within the shell, debilitating animals to dive, or feed, and naturally they would not recover in the wild.
It is doing well now, and looking forward to a speedy recovery.
Thanks Freyja and Naomi…
The rest of the week was a jam-packed week for the SAMPLA interns. In fact two new interns, Amy and Riley, were fast welcomed into the house with chumming trips, a twenty-four hour seal survey, aquarium maintenance, a Halloween fundraiser, and a weekend of filming for a documentary.
Seal survey started off with the appearance of Big Rosie, a shark that is easily 4.5 meters if not longer. Throughout the night the interns counted incoming and outgoing seals, and were all mesmerized by the beauty of the bioluminescent trails left in the water as the seals swam past the boat. Some were even lucky enough to spot the shape of a shark lit up by this same bioluminescence. A couple of hours after the sun rose over the horizon, the interns began taking shifts watching the seals from the top balcony of the Dias Hotel. In the span of a few hours, interns witnessed three predation attempts, including one successful predation. The seal survey finished in time for the interns to organize matching “Team Zissou” costumes and head to the Halloween fundraiser, benefiting the Mossel Bay Shark and Ray Aquarium.
Saturday and Sunday morning five of the interns woke up early to help out with the History Channel documentary film shoot. While the days were long, it was exciting for everyone involved. Many members of the film crew had never seen great white sharks before, so you can imagine their reaction when they witnessed a successful predation within forty meters of the boat. A pod of common dolphins and two southern right whales showed up, but the great whites were always the biggest stars with multiple shark breaches throughout the first day of filming and a second predation close to Cheetah on Sunday. Two of the SAMPLA interns, Beverly and Fabrice, managed to catch this second predation on video and in photographs. The documentary will be aired in March of 2009 on the History Channel in the United States and everyone is very eager to see which SAMPLA cameos make the final cut.
Everyone was excited this week, as the plan was to tag one of the larger 4 or 5m sharks seen recently and track it round the clock. However, unfortunately the wind picked up, and the SAMPLA team was left with itchy feet doing investigatory chumming trips, while the larger sharks remained elusive and the weather less than ideal for tracking conditions.
The change of plan didn’t slow down the pace though, with multiple encounters with both Southern Right and Humpback whales, the interns managed to get some beautiful shots.
The mood remained high, and although conditions didn’t improve completely, come Thursday morning, despite rain and winds, we managed to tag a feisty 3.5m shark named Tiger after the stripe like scars on her flank. Due to the winds, tracking has only been able to occur for half-day sessions, but the few working the boat on Friday caught up with her and witnessed some unbelievable breaches behind the boat.
The week drew on, and the tables turned, come Sunday, during an early chum turned tracking trip, the crew onboard Cheetah stumbled across a sea turtle, unable to dive, which seemed to have an infection, leading to an air bubble within the shell, or to have ingested something, possibly plastic, which was keeping it buoyant and tiring the animal out making it disorientated and with little chance for survival. SAMPLA director Enrico brought the turtle on board and took it to the SAMPLA aquarium, and is looking forward to the next possible trip to a rehabilitation aquarium in Cape Town or Port Elisabeth, to receive the best care available.
