The wind has been causing us some issues for the last couple of weeks – 20 knot winds are not ideal conditions in which to run longline surveys. As such things have been a little slow following the completion of the baited video survey component of this quarter. We have managed to set only twelve longlines so far with another twenty four left to do this month. Exciting things have happened already on some of the surveys though. We caught our smallest tiger shark to date – an 85cm male that was probably only six months old which would suggest that it might have been born not too far away. The really cool thing is that a faculty member’s daughter, Harriet Dahlstrom was on board and got to tag her first shark – aged six! On the same set we hooked our first great hammerhead that unfortunately got off the line before we could work it up. The sightings of our first hammerhead on the baited video surveys and now our first one on the longline bodes well for the remainder of the longline sets. Fingers crossed we shall see some more.
The lull in sampling has also allow me to go through the all the best bits of the baited video footage. Click here to have a look at the highlights so far……..