When zero doesn’t mean nothing
After months of preparation, the NEOBLUE project was finally ready to go at sea. Our equipment had been tested, the boat was prepared and everything was ready for the first field campaign. Now there was only one thing left to do: find the newborn blue sharks. Or so we hoped. Our first boat campaign did not go exactly as expected. We spent the days at sea searching the waters of the Ría de Vigo, deploying our equipment and looking for signs of newborn blue sharks. But after the first campaign, the answer was simple. Nothing. No newborns, no blues…
At first, a result of zero can feel slightly disappointing. After all the preparation and long days on the water, you hope that something will happen. And when you come back without seeing what you were looking for, it is easy to think that you have nothing to show for it. But a zero is not always nothing. In fact, our first field campaign was already telling us something. At that time of the year, the newborn blue sharks simply did not seem to be there yet. Their absence was just as much part of the story as their presence would eventually be. So we waited. And then summer arrived. For our second field campaign, we returned to the same coastal waters. The equipment was ready, the boat was loaded and once again we went out searching. But this time, something had changed. They were here.
A newborn blue shark encountered during the second field campaign of NEOBLUE. Photo by © Kenn Papadopoulo
After finding no newborn blue sharks during our first campaign, seeing them during the second was an incredible moment. Suddenly, the zero from our first fieldwork made even more sense. They had not been there yet. Now they were. Of course, two field campaigns are only the beginning, and we still have many questions. When exactly do newborn blue sharks start appearing in these coastal waters? How long do they stay? And why are they using this part of the Galician coast? These are some of the questions we hope NEOBLUE will help us answer. But our first two field campaigns have already reminded us of something important: timing matters. The first campaign gave us a zero. The second one gave us a “one” (presence of neonates blue sharks). Together, they gave us the beginning of a pattern.