First day of Chumming

Today I went on my first chum trip. I woke up at 5 to skype my parents (like 8:00 pm their time), ate breakfast and were in the car just after 6:30 am. We got to the dock and couldn't get one of the engines to start, so somebody had to drive out to help us. Of course it started right up for the guy they had to wake up to drive to help us. Go figure. So we drove out to the spot - it was about a half hour boat ride. 

There were 5 interns on the boat and a person in charge assigning us jobs. One was on chumming, one was on photography, one was on data, one was on the bait rope, and I was on spotting. I had to climb on this platform on top of the boat and watch for any sharks to show up. If they did I had to tell the bait roper which direction they were coming from. The bait roper holds a line with a buoy (pronounced boy by most of the people down here - which is very confusing because most of the time its not a boy in the water, its just a buoy) and a tuna head on it. When a shark shows up they are supposed to drag the line away from the shark so the photographer can get a shot of the fin (used to ID individual sharks). The chummer had a bin of sardines and other little fish. He would fill the bin with buckets of water, stomp on the mixture to mash up the fish and then dump the fish water back into the ocean. The data person took data on when the shark showed up, how big it was, and any distinctive markings. 

We chummed and waited for about three hours, only pulling up the anchor to move once. The whole time we were in sight of shore, probably only a couple hundred yards off. I had pretty much given up hope, had eaten most of the food I had brought, and was kind of zoning out (bad idea for the spotter) when I looked left and to my surprise and excitement saw my very first great white shark!!!!!! 

So I had to yell to the spotter which way she was coming from, keeping the buoy in the center of the clock. My problem was I put myself at the 12 instead of the 6 where I should have been, so my clock was upside down and I was yelling the wrong directions. 

But after I pointed her out, the bait roper could see her and wasn't really even listening to me. Oh well. 

She didn't really want to play with our bait anyways, she just made a few appearances, circled the boat a few times and then peaced out. We had to leave too because it had taken her so long to show up. 

Overall it was a pretty successful trip. We stopped by Seal Island on the way home, and the smell of hundreds of seal and their poo laying in the sun all day is overpoweringly nauseating.... So so so so so so gross! People were gagging and eyes were burning and we didn't even get that close.

 

My Month of Training in Anchorage, AK

Day One South Africa

So my parents dropped me off at DIA around 11:30 pm and before I had even started to go through security, Dad had managed to lose one of his precious bouncy balls into the maze of security ropes. Good thing there were all of 10 people in the airport (that includes security). I went through the ropes and bounced the ball back before heading off on my next big adventure!

 The plane ride to JFK was fairly uneventful; I sat in the very back row next to that seldom seen fat asian man who took up more than his fair share of the seat. Then I waited around JFK for a few hours - also fairly uneventful. 

We boarded for the JFK to Johannesburg 15 straight hour flight in the biggest plane I've ever been in. They started the boarding with row 70 and there were 8 seats to a row where I sat. The guy who randomly sat down next to me was coincidentally enough heading to Mossel Bay for the same internship! Crazy! Also a very nice South African man with a great accent but horrible breath sat on my other side. (Heads up: on planes that big the F seat isn't the window seat, so don't get your hopes up). 

15 hours later and WHAM! I'm in South Africa! I waited in the customs line with my new intern friend but lost him as soon as I got through. But it was ok, I wasn't worried, I was very distracted. Because the New Zealand All Blacks were coming out of the customs line right behind me! There were so many of them! And they were Huge! And Beautiful! (side note: literally every time I go to the airport I wish for something like this to happen! and this time it actually did!!!!! I was so so so so so so so freaking excited!!!!)  They were all there! right there in front of my face! I walked past their baggage claim like 4 times! and then waited to go to my next gate until they came out with all of their bags. I was trying to get the attention of their captain to get his signature, but I had to settle for the really cute player who was standing next to him. I'm totally ok with that! 

On the way to George, SA, my final stop I rode the bus next to these 4 little South African children traveling by themselves. They were very nice, but the older sister had to translate every thing the little brother asked me because I couldn't understand anything he was saying. 

I made it to George and got picked up by my new research people and there was a group of probably ten of us there. Once we were all there we drove the 20 minutes to Mossel Bay! 

Our hotel is pretty nice. We have a pool right outside our room. There are 4 of us crammed into a pretty small room, but I think it will be really fun. There's a British girl, and Australian girl, and an American in my room. They all seem very nice. 

Then most of the group of new interns walked across the road a ways to a really nice beach! There were some surfers out and Seal Island where all of the sharks hang out were in sight. The  water was pretty chilly, but not freezing. Then we spotted a bar on a hilltop overlooking the ocean. We went there and had a few beers and watched the Springboks beat the Wallabies! Overall a pretty perfect day!