8 June - Dry Tortugas

Today was fine.  Nothing out of the ordinary happened.  My wrist is feeling a little better, the dives were uninteresting except for a few nice moments (juvenile jackknife fish, pictured), and I'm looking forward to being home, minus all the yard work that needs to be done.  Two more dives tomorrow will conclude the trip and I'll be back home by about midnight tomorrow night.  Good times.

7 June - Dry Tortugas

Highlights from today: Jean-Ann didn't fill my tank properly last night so when I discovered it this morning I was able to negotiate the nullification/retraction of my beer fine from a couple days ago.

I started reading 1984 again and now I'm 37 pages into it and would like to keep going.

The diving was not interesting at all today.  The Heat won in Boston tonight and will host game 7 for a place to play OK City for the championship.  Unfortunately I'll be riding home from Key West during the entire game.

I still don't think I've found my place on the boat with this crowd but I've had a good experience overall.  I'm looking forward to the last 6 dives, getting home, and coming back out for a week cruise in the Keys in a couple weeks.

6 June - Dry Tortugas

Yes, today was a definite improvement from yesterday.  I decided to start learning the scientific names of the fish, we had great dive sites, Ben saved me from getting yelled at by Mel for having my shorts tied up to dry too close to the life rafts, and I saved Michelle from being swept away by the current.  After the first dive, I grabbed the end of the rope and she somehow ended up behind me and I reached back in just enough time to grab her wrist and pull her back in.

Best of all, my wrist is slightly better and I'm in bed before 9:00.  Now I'll read until I fall asleep.  Only 2 and a half days of diving left and 3 days until I go home and get to see Christina.

5 June - Dry Tortugas

We finished diving early today so now I'm washed, dried, snacked, and waiting for dinner.

It turns out that my wrist is worse today.  I can only put little pressure on it and can't bend it very far.

Today has been the worst day of the cruise.   (I took a nap at this point then had dinner and so now it's much later) It started out with waking up to a dream that Anne Moss was in, reminding me after waking up of how she recently took her life.  I then came upstairs to an average breakfast as I discovered that my wrist is much more hurt than I thought.  It seems to be a mild sprain.  The sun hardly showed itself all morning and only seldom did it appear the rest of the day, of which I was on intern duty meaning I was responsible for helping recover divers all day long.  As I came back from my second dive, in my haste to get lunch, I forgot for the first time to take my first stage regulator off my tank and a group of people publicly called me out on it (forgetting results in owing the crew beers).  Taking it all in stride, I hurried back inside to get lunch.  After about 4 bites, the door opens and Mel in her standard biting, demanding tone hollers in "divers are up and we're lacking in Team 5 interns..."  Of the 5 teams of 4 divers, one is selected each day from each team (in rotation) to have intern duty so there are 5 interns each day.  Instead of asking me to come out and take a break from lunch, she went for the more roundabout approach which really rubbed me the wrong way.  The reason it got to me so much is that it was a buildup of several things.  The worst of all of them, as silly and melodramatic as it may sound, is that I don't feel like I'm closely connecting with people on this trip.  I don't feel like I am quite as qualified to be here as a fish ID specialist.  There are some awesome people on the trip, but I don't feel like I'm really close to any of them.  I'm kind of the odd one out.  It's weird feeling most comfortable here in my teeny bunk behind the cheesy little frog-themed curtain around the bunk instead of being around people, or even diving for that matter.  Honestly I think I'm just being moody and worn out emotionally after 6 full days on board.  This being said though, the Heat loss added insult to injury tonight 90-94 putting them down 2-3 in the series.  Tomorrow is a new day and I will hopefully have a better attitude.  Goodnight.

4 June - Dry Tortugas

The visibility on today's dives went down the hole.  With it, however, did not go the quality of dive sites.  The redeeming factor was the supreme amount of reef relief (topographically speaking).  The sites today had pinnacles, valleys, swim-throughs, walls, plateaus, caverns, etc, enough to rival Shark's Cove in Hawai'i.  The visibility unfortunately did degrade the overall quality of the dive but I still had my favorite dive today.  I think my outlook on diving and quality of dive sites will change when I get back home.  I think I will start to notice fish species and abundance much more automatically than I do now.  A bad site might be redeemed by a rare dog snapper instead of some random big fish.  I'll find out when I get back to diving in Miami.

Two more noteworthy things happened today, neither of which are necessarily good.  First, on the second dive of the day, Oryiey (really not sure how to spell his name) got lost looking at fish.  I finished my count and together with Nathan we found Michelle.  We waited for him then searched for a couple minutes before ascending, with a full 3-minute safety stop.  Sure enough he was at the surface and he had in fact gotten lost but not knowing that gave us a bit of a scare underwater.  The other noteworthy tidbit is that while doing pull-ups (I miss climbing) on a 3"x3" betal beam, my left hand slipped a bit and was pulled in a weird way as I tried to hang on.  The back of my hand below the pinky and ring finger hurt as if I've pulled something.  Hopefully a good night's rest can remedy the situation.  I'll keep posted, but the first step is to sleep and it's already past 11pm.

3 June - Dry Tortugas

It's going on midnight right now so this will be short.  The reason I'm up is because I just finished watching the 4th playoff game of the Heat-Celtics.  Boston won 93-91 in overtime when Wade missed the game-winning buzzer-beater.  Sad times.

As for today, the diving was pretty good.  Not quite as many fish, but there were some big ones like schools of permit and a blacktip shark.  After the last dive today we went snorkeling and saw a nurse shark, permit, dog snapper, and huge barracuda.  I'm still finding my place in this crowd, but it's a great experience.

2 June - Dry Tortugas

I'm beginning to realize how nice it can be to be disconnected from the word for a while.  Sure there are times throughout the day that I wish I could call someone perhaps about a joke or say how something reminded me of them.  Of course I miss family and friends and being with and talking to Christina on a regular basis.  Aside from that, I'm enjoying being out of touch with the rest of the world.  Another thing I am recognizing is the benefit of being alone/having alone time.  I walked all over Fort Jefferson today alone and it was great to go wherever I wanted without considering anyone else.  Allow me to specify however that this is a good thing in moderation.  I enjoyed getting right back to the group after an hour or so and getting right back into fun and games.

1 June - Dry Tortugas

After going to sleep around 9 last night, I felt great waking up at 6:30.  I had breakfast and everything was going well until Mel came bursting through the cabin calmly but deliberately to get the oxygen kit.  It turned out that Dave and Tracy had gotten tangled in their line and shot up from 50ft at the end of a 100ft dive.  We put them both on oxygen and tried to get them to sit still.  They are fine last I checked (some 14 hours after the incident) so that's good.  Apparently they only sat out for one dive before getting back in for another 70+ft dive.
After that incident, another dive team had their float caught in the prop on the descent, my team had our float disappear (but got recovered), and it was 100% overcast all day long with wind and rain for the majority of it.  We've all had better conditions.  Oh, not to mention the Heat lost tonight.

However, the day did have its glows.  The food was great, the sunset was stunning, I found a handful of other euchre players, and the diving was amazing.  The sites today were easily as good as some (not all) of the better spots in Belize but with more fish than Belize.  The 3rd site had pinnacles that were about 20ft high with schools of jacks, snappers, and chub.  The diving here is indeed very good.
I'm fitting in more but still feel like a weak link particularly when it comes to knowing my fish.  I'm going to have to work on that.  It's almost midnight which means it's after bedtime.

31 May - Dry Tortugas

The first full day has been interesting.  There are already some people I don't fit with perfectly and others that I would work with on any project.  It's funny though because I seem to have been wrong about a handful of them.  Some I thought I would struggle to relate to are turning out to have the most in common whereas others I thought would be great to be around don't seem to have as compatible personalities as I thought.  I get along well with everyone but as I'm sure you all know, there's a range: people can fall anywhere on the spectrum.
Overall I would call this first day a success and I'm looking forward to the days to come.

30 - Dry Tortugas

My first research cruise has officially begun.  After a weekend of being sick and not getting much done, today has been a total whirlwind of craziness.

My day began at 5:45 when I awoke to rent a ladder from Home Depot so I could install my motion sensors on my outdoor floodlights.  It doesn't make sense to leave them on for 10 straight days while I'm away so I wanted to get it done before leaving.  I struggled to fit the components into the existing fixture so to make a long story short all I did was replace the bulbs with energy efficient ones and left the 4 by the corner/backyard on.  While up on the ladder, I noticed a serious accumulation of leaves and muck on the roof of the screened porch, likely the culprit of all the leaks I've noticed below.  I decided to clean out the roof of all the debris then decided the grass had already gotten out of hand and needed to be cut so I quickly took care of that.  After showering, paying my cable bill, and finishing up the last of the packing, I headed out to return the ladder, pick up a few things from CVS, fill up my car with gas, and drive to RSMAS for a meeting.  Afterwards, I rushed off to the post office, picked up lunch, returned to RSMAS to eat and fix an inflator hose for the trip.  We got away late but reached Key West by 7pm.

I have been introduced to the crew, several of the divers, and the boat.  After an hour and a half briefing, we were able to take some time before the 11pm departure during which time my carpool (Steve, Nathan, and I) got dinner.

We watched the end of game 2 of the Heat-Celtics playoff game where the Heat won in overtime.

Now I've climbed into my bunk below deck and am being lulled by the slow steady rocking of the boat cutting through the calm waters on a clear night on our way to the Tortugas.  It's been a long time since I've slept on a boat (and Passion, the yacht I sore didn't hardly rock anyway) so it's nice to feel the calming sensation again.  I write this at 12:30 in my bunk tucked away below deck behind my curtain nestled up against the wall under a dim, almost flickering light thinking to myself that I'm finally on another grand adventure.  I'm excited to see what this new experience brings.  As for now, I've earned my sleep.  Goodnight.

Dry Turtles

I meant to post earlier about my upcoming trip.  This is really my last opportunity to put anything before I go.  Tomorrow I leave for the Dry Tortugas, an area about 70 miles west of Key West, accessible by only sky or sea.  I'll be spending a bit of time out there doing what are called Reef Visual Censuses.  I'll be doing working dives about 5 times a day where the entire dive is devoted to surveying the sites by identifying and recording fish species, recording the amount of each species present, minimum, maximum, and average lengths of each species.  The census also includes a plethora of recordings for the benthic habitat: type of substrate, hard/soft coral species, vertical relief, slope, visibility, temperature, cross-sectional area at several heights above the base depth, and a number of other sightings such as trash, lionfish, urchins, conch, etc.  It's going to be a lot of work, but from what I hear of the diving, it's some of the best in nearly the entire Caribbean.  The Dry Tortugas is an area whose regulations are very strictly enforced, thus keeping people out.  Boating, fishing, swimming, and diving are highly restricted and the paperwork required to bring a boat into it keeps most of the world away.  This means that many of the fish that I will see out there have never seen a diver before.  Many of the reefs are potentially unexplored.  I'm anticipating that the amount and the variety of marine life is going to be rivaled only by the Philippines and the Red Sea (of the places I've dived).  Yes, I know my hopes are high.  I don't honestly expect the diving to be as good as either of those two places but I do think it will be the best I've seen since Egypt.

I desperately need some sleep because I'm waking up tomorrow at 5:45 to take care of a long list of tasks that need to be finished before I leave at 1:30.

P.S. there's no internet or cell reception on the boat so you'll have to wait until I'm back to find out how it went.  Peace!

Spring Break!

4 team members with a Caribbean Reef Shark.  Photo: N. Hammerschlag

My legs were pressed tight against the gunwale (side of the boat) as I balanced and braced myself to pull in the line. Hand over hand, the 40 pound weight slowly came closer and closer to me while the rope tore at my tired rugged hands with every pull. From behind me came the usual words of encouragement from the rest of the very capable team while one of the members coiled the rope as it came onto the deck. The sun beat down on the clear blue water and heated our small boat, turning the sweat and ocean water on my body into a layer of crusty white salt. Heaving the weight onto the deck, I announced that the hook timer was intact. The hook timer is a device used to tell how long a shark has been on the line. When the shark takes the bait and swims away, the timer pops and begins counting. This way when we pull them in, we know how long they have been hooked and use this knowledge to decide a plan of action. If it has been on for over an hour for instance, especially for a hammerhead, we let it go without taking a full set of data.

Diagram of fishing setup

One of the team members jumped in and started reeling in the monofilament while another prepared the next bait to go on the hook. We paused as we noticed that there appeared to be some tension in the line. Curious, we all stopped to watch, hoping for the best. Since nurse sharks live on the bottom, they often take the bait and don't move so we assumed it was just another nurse. As it came closer it became clear from the shape and coloration that it could not possibly be a nurse but we couldn't quite identify it.

With one flick of the tail, the shark bolted and the one reeling it in struggled to stay on two feet. Knowing the shark was one of our biggest, all six of us quickly took action and within seconds we were all standing by: one with a tailrope, another with the cable, someone else to move the weight as needed, another to spot, and two people helping to pull in the shark. These tasks are never assigned but always get done as needed. We had become very good at recognizing what needed to be done and making sure it happened by this point in the trip.

“Definitely a tiger!” the captain called out as the shark neared the surface, still fighting and threatening to pull two of our experienced team members overboard. (Tiger sharks sometimes don't realize they're hooked and thus don't pull enough to pop the hook timer which explains why it was not engaged.) A renewed excitement washed over the crew. I wanted to drop the tailrope to help bring the shark in but there are only so many hands that can pull the line at a time. At long last, the shark was brought alongside the boat, the cable was wrapped around the body and I made quick work to slide the tailrope around the tail. The massive tiger refused to cooperate and she rolled over and over and over while we did our best to hold her in place. My hands were aching while I braced myself in the engine well grasping the aluminum rod that held the rope now attached to the shark's tail.

After a few minutes, she exhausted herself and we were able to start taking data. During this time it was decided that a couple of the girls (one being the videographer) could jump in the water with the shark so they quickly pulled their gear together. My long arms were needed to hold the dorsal fin out of the water enough to take a fin clip. After passing off the tailrope I made a split-second detour to my underwater camera to hand to the other team member in the water before grabbing the medical shears and draping myself over the gunwale in one smooth motion.

Trying to hold the shark. Photo: C. Shepard

Sharks secrete what is called TMAO on their scales and for all intensive purposes we can just consider it to be a mucous layer all over their body. For a reason unknown to me, tiger sharks have a lot of it. The reason I bring this up is that when trying to hold onto a dorsal fin to lift a several hundred pound fish up from the water as much as possible with one hand, operating medical shears in another hand, and holding onto the small piece of fin that is being cut off with yet another hand, things are complicated enough. Throw in a moving boat, raise it about 3ft from the water, and add a whole bunch of slippery TMAO into the mix and the task is rather impossible. Luckily with the help of the girls in the water we were able to take the sample and we were ready to set the shark loose.

Using bolt cutters to cut the hook is rarely a problem when the sharks are on the boat. However, it's another story when it's a 9-ft tiger shark in the water 3ft below the boat's edge with the hook lodged deep into the jaw and the boat is rocking back and forth. The professor wasn't able to cut the hook himself and needed help. Every situation calls for different measures. This time, help came in the form of me needing to scramble up to the port side, tangle myself there in the railing with my legs, dangle over the edge of the boat with my face hardly two feet from the shark's mouth, pull the monofilament taught with one hand, and grab one handle of the bolt cutters with the other to help him cut the hook. Here was yet another task that proved to be a great reminder that I am not a magician. I had to let go of the bolt cutters and monofilament to reposition myself while barely keeping from falling into the water within striking range of the tiger's jagged teeth. I settled myself, pulled the monofilament, and the professor was able to brace the cutters against the outboard side of the boat to cut the hook. A bit jaded, the shark swam slowly away, dipping under the hull and passing to the starboard side as she descended into deeper water. All six of us shared a brief moment of understood excitement, relief, satisfaction, exhaustion, accomplishment, and exhilaration before the feeling turned to the realization that we needed to make a swift hook replacement, set the bait and line, and tend to the 9 other baits in the water that needed to be retrieved.

Tiger shark swimming away.  Photo: F. Graham

Releasing bait. Photo: C. Shepard

Over the course of the 3 fishing days, 33 sharks were pulled up to the boat with a species list including bull, nurse, great hammerhead, lemon, tiger, caribbean reef, and atlantic sharpnose. Most of the catches were much easier to deal with and we handled them like a well-oiled machine. Although living quarters were tight on the 38ft boat, the trip could not have been successful if we had cut back by one person. The story above makes it sound as if I was doing a lot of the work but this is not the case. Everyone else had just as many responsibilities when a shark was on the line and it would be unfair to go without giving them due credit; I'm the least experienced member of the team after all. Anyway, I had many “firsts” during the 5-day trip to the Dry Tortugas and I apologize for not going into detail. If anyone asks, I will provide another story, but until then, here is the list:

Goliath grouper. Photo: D. Lazarre

Going to Key West
Going to the Dry Tortugas
Touching a tiger shark
Touching a caribbean reef shark
Snorkeling with wild dolphins
Catching a goliath grouper (larger than me) on rod and reel
Snorkeling with a nurse shark


Since returning to Miami from break, everything has gone my way. I found out that my cousin Claibourne had her baby, I got an A on my diving midterm which means I'll be one of the 6 to dive in the Florida aquarium in a week and a half, I used my birthday money to buy a new Halcyon backplate and BCD with Apeks regulators, and I scored a free ticket to the 4th round of the Sony Ericsson Open for Monday night through a friend of Rafael (we don't know who will be playing that match yet). Stay tuned and as I said, let me know if you want more detail on the other parts. It's getting late, this post is long enough, and I think sleep is a little more important at this point.

Stay Tuned

I hope everyone enjoyed the pictures from the shark trip because there is going to be MUCH more where those came from. I am going to spend my spring break (13th-19th of March) on a boat in the Dry Tortugas with about 5-8 other researchers doing exactly what we do on the other trips. However, doing it so many times and without having students around, we will be able to work with optimal efficiency and catch sharks left and right. Furthermore, the Dry Tortugas National Park has heavy restrictions on fishing so we are expecting to catch many more than we do within 20 miles of Florida. [Image from http://www.tropical-adventure.com/travelguide/archives/dry-tortugas-key-west.shtml]

In addition to spring break and sharks, another post to look forward to is going to come even sooner. I'm meeting with a professor on Monday to talk to her about my academic plans. I will not give any further details because there is a good chance she could say there's nothing I can do.

The other thing out of the ordinary that I am personally anticipating is my birthday which is just around the corner! 3 years ago, I was in Cape Town on the day of my first dive of my life, 2 years ago I was home, last year it was spent in Sint Maarten on a day off work, and this year will be on a boat catching sharks. One week from Monday and I'll be 24 years old. Weird.

Before I go, I must ask to keep 2 people in thoughts and prayers. My uncle Rick, although not in the hospital anymore, is still not in full health. Also, my cousin Claibourne continues to have complications surrounding her pregnancy and is in and out of the hospital more than anyone would like her to be. Thanks a million!