On an average in water day with the project, we leave the house at about 8:15 and wander the few blocks to the marina. When it's just the volunteers, Darren and Manolo, we board the boat and are we make our way to the research area. Occasionally we bring guests with us and then we either do a conservation briefing at the office or on the sea. We generally go out on research trips 3-4 days/week depending on the weather conditions and wind. The wind hasn't been very nice to us this past week so more time for blogging and office work!
After a ten to fifteen minute boat journey, we are at the search area and we start looking for fins or shadows in the water shaped like sharks. Darren usually stands at the front and Manolo is usually our captain although we have a few others that sometimes jump on board as captain. Occasionally Manolo gets in the water and dives deeper than all of us without fins and casually waves back up at us while checking out the sharks. He is actually a fish.
Everyone is searching the area and we are just waiting for someone to shout the word "TIBURON"! I've made it a game to try to spot a shark before Darren, I think I've only been successful once. We cruise around to the different sharks and take turns getting in the water to collect data. Someone always stays onboard to records information on the boat about the sharks behaviour, other sharks in the area, the number of swimmers in the water and gps/time of the encounter. Once the swimmer returns to the boat, we add information about distinguishing features, the size and sex of the shark as well as scarring information.
In La Paz, we are fortunate to have a large concentration of sharks very close to shore making it easy to get out to the animals. This also means that there are a lot of tourist boats in the area. The rules in La Paz are quite clear and help to protect the animals but unfortunately, they aren't always followed. Boat captains need to drive slowly in the area and there should only be one boat per a shark with a maximum of 6 swimmers and one guide. All boats also need to have a license to be in the whale shark encounter area so if you are going out on a tourist boat, please make sure they have the appropriate licenses.
After a few hours of encounters, usually around 11 or 12, we come back to the shore, help empty the boat and head back to the office. We grad some lunch (stay tuned for a blog about our favorite restaurants) or a shower and a nap and then start on the office work for the rest of the day. Each day, we sort our photos into the different encounters and go through the process of identifying the individual sharks.
That's a typical day for us and on days that are too windy, we get caught up on the ID data and adding information to our databases and spreadsheets about the sharks that we've been able to learn about in the bay!
-Nicole (photos courtesy of Maria!)
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