Mauvis arrived on Little Cayman about a week ago now with two great new people on the team, Johanna the Shark and Pete the Snapper. Rupert arrived a few days ago, having returned from Jeddah where he is running a coral restoration programme at King Abdul Azziz University.
It is always such a pleasure to land at the Edward Bodden Airfield (note, not airport), which is a long field. Little Cayman is lovely, quiet and spectacularly beautiful. We are here to survey for sharks, snappers and groupers as part of the Darwin Initiative grant with the Department of Environment. The DoE house is chock a block with us, gear and food for most of the month in a small but comfortable space. Most of the larger gear and equipment is in a hurricane damaged building adjacent, along with a freezer full of our bait. The rest of the bait is being looked after very kindly by the Hungry Iguana and Southern Cross. The DoE boat is so full of camera trap and long line gear that we have difficulty finding a place to stand much less work. With a bit of juggling, we have ourselves well organised and running smoothly.
Less smooth is the weather, which is a force unto itself. Three weather sites that we use on the internet have all agreed on what the forecast would be. That in itself is amazing, but bore no relationship to what has been happening. So those flat calm days the weather sites promised were actually blowing hard, and the clear skies bucketed on us. We have been able to deploy the camera traps, it is the long lines that need good weather to work on any sharks caught.
The conditions finally came together yesterday on the south-west of Little Cayman, where after four hours, we caught a lovely male blacktip shark (Carcharhinus limbatus) that we named Castro after the fisher who brought his good luck with him. Johanna was in love with the shark, hard to take her gaze off the first Cayman shark in her hands (literally). Pete’s shark belt buckle seemed to do the trick! Interestingly, we had a blacktip shark on our camera trap in this area a few days ago.
It is always such a pleasure to land at the Edward Bodden Airfield (note, not airport), which is a long field. Little Cayman is lovely, quiet and spectacularly beautiful. We are here to survey for sharks, snappers and groupers as part of the Darwin Initiative grant with the Department of Environment. The DoE house is chock a block with us, gear and food for most of the month in a small but comfortable space. Most of the larger gear and equipment is in a hurricane damaged building adjacent, along with a freezer full of our bait. The rest of the bait is being looked after very kindly by the Hungry Iguana and Southern Cross. The DoE boat is so full of camera trap and long line gear that we have difficulty finding a place to stand much less work. With a bit of juggling, we have ourselves well organised and running smoothly.
Less smooth is the weather, which is a force unto itself. Three weather sites that we use on the internet have all agreed on what the forecast would be. That in itself is amazing, but bore no relationship to what has been happening. So those flat calm days the weather sites promised were actually blowing hard, and the clear skies bucketed on us. We have been able to deploy the camera traps, it is the long lines that need good weather to work on any sharks caught.
The conditions finally came together yesterday on the south-west of Little Cayman, where after four hours, we caught a lovely male blacktip shark (Carcharhinus limbatus) that we named Castro after the fisher who brought his good luck with him. Johanna was in love with the shark, hard to take her gaze off the first Cayman shark in her hands (literally). Pete’s shark belt buckle seemed to do the trick! Interestingly, we had a blacktip shark on our camera trap in this area a few days ago.