Catching up

The last few weeks have been pretty busy with other field projects and travel but also with some exciting developments on the Keny whale shark tagging project. I dragged into San Diego on 4 March after two long days of travel home from Mombasa. Two days later I headed out to San Nicolas Island and then San Miguel Island in Southern California waters to count northern elephant seal pups and then tag a couple thousand weaned pups to finish off the 2008 breeding season studies. San Nicolas Island is a U.S. Naval outlying landing field and tracking station and San Miguel Island is just north about 60 miles and is one of the five islands in the Channel Islands National Park. It was a wonderful expedition with some incredibly fine weather and also some not so fine weather with strong winds and pelting sand. After coming back home from those trips on 18 March I headed back east on 21 March with Dr. Pamela Yochem, HSWRI Senior Research Biologist and Executive Vice President, to participate in a panel on careers with animals and conservation at the annual National Science Teachers Association meeting in Boston, Massachussetts. Just got back home late last night and now will have some time in the office this week at least to catch up on reports and accumulated things.
But just as I was returning from Kenya, two pop-up satellite transmitters appeared just north of Kenya, drifted for a little bit and then looked like they got stranded on the coastal reef or perhaps on the beach. I started sending the geographic coordinates of those tags to Nimu Njonjo and Volker Bassen at Diani Beach, hoping that we might be able to recover the tags, download all of the stored data, and then rehabilitate the tags for additional deployment next season. One of those tags was one that we attached to a whale shark off Diani Beach in February 2007, so we are waiting to learn all of the stored secrets on where that shark had travelled during the past year. The other tag we had just attached to a whale shark off Diani Beach in mid-Februray this year. It may have detached because the shark had spent several days at a relatively constant depth, a programmed release feature of the tag. Nimu and Volker sent David French and Simon Wanjonah up to the northern Mombasa coast for a search and recovery mission....they had quite and adventure with this but found both tags (!) and they have now arrived to San Diego where I am preparing to send them to Microwave Telemetry for data recovery and rehabilitation. Simon describes their beachcombing adventures at http://whalesharks.wildlifedirect.org/

Until next time,
bs

Final effort, a magnificant day; 2 March

The past two days have been a bit frustrating spending much time on the water and a lot of hard work in the air by Rob and Peter. But today helped dissipate all of that. We headed out at around 1030hrs on fairly calm seas and winds; four boats with about 42 whale shark enthusiats on board. What started out pretty quietly worked quickly into a fully eventful day. Rob located several sharks in succession...we missed the first one but then tagged the second followed by a brief lull in the action. The next shark encountered was reserved for snorklers and then as the shark accelerated and started diving after about a half hour of snorklers following we were able to tag it. That was followed by a couple more sightings and then a third shark that we tagged first, then relocated, and put several groups of snorklers in to follow above it for a bit. Lots of jellies, including some small Portuguese men-of-war made the following stimulating for a number of the snrklers and we sent one boat in with a couple of sting vicitms of concern.. Then tagged a third one and stuck with it long enough to get more snorklers in the water briefly.
A tremendously wonderful end to a magically productive expedition......17 sharks tagged with the satellite linked data recorders and transmitted. The next step will be their release and data reporting in either 9 months (November/early December) or 12 months (next February and March). Packing up now and will head to the airport in Mombasa in the morning for travel home to San Diego.

bs

Winding down in Watamu, gearing up for Diani Beach again: 29 February

This post evidently did not get published on Friday.....our server was down for a bit on Friday and Saturday so that might be why, but here it is again in any event.

29 February 2008

Last couple of days have been long and busy. Out mid-morning on Thursday and Friday...surveyd until around 1530 hrs on Thursday with water clarity improving and winds light. Rob and David in the microlight on Thursday and Lynne substituted for David on Friday. We had a shorter day on Friday to allow us to pack up and drive back south to Diani and also owing to change in weather early Friday afternoon...water clarity was even better on Friday and visibility ca 20-25 m revealing tremendous diversity and number of fish and jellies and also moderated densities of fish eggs and larve and coral spawn. Lots of green turtles spotted both days, several giant mantas on Thursday and one giant manta on Friday.....but no whale sharks spotted on either day. So total whale sharks tagged for the past 11 days still stands at 14 (4 at Watamu and 10 at Diani), an excellent number for the effort and conditions.We arrived back to Diani Beach Friday evening after rather long haul through Mombasa and began unpacking and reorganizing for the final push today and tomorrow. A tremendous thanks to Hemingway's Resort (especially Garry Cullen and Dicky Evans) and Aqua Venture (especially Steve and Helen Curtis) for their wonderful and warm hospitality and support while we were in Watamu!We'll be out on the water by around 1030hrs this morning with Peter Zinetti (with David from KWS spotting) surveying in the fixed wing and Rob Dodson (with Simon from EAWST spotting) in the ultralight.bs

Last days

We had another long day on the water yesterday with two boats full of hopeful whale shark watchers from around 1030hrs through 1600hrs. Good weather conditions all day with winds picking up from east and southeast (kusi winds) in the afternoon. Rob spotted one whale shark just after taking off near the outer reef but it was elusive in murky water and headed directly offshore and deep just as we arrived to try to jump in for tagging. Peter Zinetti was up in the Cessna for several hours to help Rob in his microlight for spotting. A second shark was spotted mid-afternoon but it used the same disappearing act to evade us. We were able to spend some time with a group of about a dozen bottlenose dolphins that included several young of the year.

Today is our last effort before I head back to San Diego tomorrow so we're hopeful that we'll put one too more tags out today. The weather looks great this morning and Rob and Peter will both be in the air again to allow exhaustive aerial surveying.

bs