Lucky seal!!

We only had one trip out today which was a 1pm launch. We mooched about the house this morning getting in the way of the cleaning lady mostly!! When we got out to the site, there was a pretty big swell so we moved to the channel between Dyer Island and Geyser Rock where the seal colony is.

We got a shark pretty much straight away. This one had a very distinctive dorsal fin with 2 crescent-shaped pieces missing. I’m not sure if I have mentioned this before but Adrian, our marine biologist, is using dorsal fin identification to ID the sharks we see. Us volunteers have to collect data on the sharks, such as markings and anything distinctive about the dorsal fin in particular. We also collect data on the sharks’ behaviour and log each time we see it and what it does. Most great whites are just passing through and we may see the same shark up to a few days later but not much after that. It’s amazing how different the sharks really look and how they can be recognized during a trip!!

We saw 2 other sharks today, including a really big female shark (about 3.8m). We also saw an unsuccessful predation – a baby seal was caught but the shark let it go and it made it back to the seal colony!

Tomorrow we have one morning trip and are planning to go horse riding in the afternoon with another volunteer, Chris, who is working on one of the other boats here. Should be good fun :-)