Conchs and Sharks, Part 1!

For the second day in a row, we woke at 6:10 to a lush and beautiful sunrise over the horizon.  We soon transitioned to the flagpole where we reconvened with the Canadian school, Trinity, to raise the flag and sing the Bahamian national anthem.  Today, we sang the anthem much better than yesterday.  Soon after, we voyaged to the beach where a rousing game of beach volleyball took place.  Henry was so excited he had to be confined to a circle to protect his teammates! 

As the sun rose higher and the temperature rose, we traveled to the dining hall where we had a scrumptious egg, bacon, grits, and oats breakfast.  After breakfast, we split up into two groups, Team Osprey and Team Blue Crab.  Team Blue Crab voyaged into the open ocean for the entire day in hopes of catching sharks on long lines.  The reasons for catching these sharks are to study the effects of stress on the different types of sharks that inhabit the waters surrounding Eleuthera. They positioned GoPro cameras along the lines so that later they would be able to compare and contrast the behavior while hooked on the long line.  The types of sharks they were looking for were reef, tiger, nurse, and bull sharks.  However, they came up empty netted. 

The other half of the class spent the day working on Hawken’s new research project-- we will be studying and tracking the conch populations in both the cape and open ocean waters.  The first stage of the project is to find baseline numbers on the current conch populations.  We surveyed three beaches today.  For the first beach, we had to travel down island to Deep Creek, the nearest settlement to the Island School, to visit a beach named Plum Creek.  At this location we only found one lonely conch along with five dead conchs in an hour of searching.  We believe the numbers were low due to the fact of the benthic environment--  it was mainly sand and sparsely placed sea grass.  

After our first survey we headed back to campus for a quick lunch and soon ventured to our second location, the beach right in front of our dorm.  Here, we observed over 200 dead conchs and only three living conchs.  The multitude of dead conch may be due to the fact that fishermen routinely harvest their catch in the Island School harbor.  However, we did observe much higher quantities of sea grass here which may predict higher numbers in the future.  Juvenile conchs thrive in environments filled with sea grass. 

Lastly, we biked to Sunset Beach where we, again, found over 200 hundred dead conchs and only one living conch.  The benthic environment here was reef-like-- rocky with very little sea grass.  This combination made the area undesirable for the conch to live in.  On our way back from Sunset Beach, we decided to stop at the Marina to hopefully catch a glimpse of a bull shark, and what we saw was mesmerizing.  As fishermen were cleaning their catch, we observed four nurse and one bull shark feasting on the scraps that made their way to the water.  The bull shark stood out from the rest with its wide shadow and powerful attacks.  The Blue Crab Team met up with us there and watched in awe with us.  

We were all wiped out after a long day on and in the water.  Things winded down as dinner approached.  Afterwards, we transitioned into an algae dissection in which we learned about the different types and how they fit into the community.  We found many different creatures living inside the algae including fire worms, crabs, snapping shrimp, and small fish.  Overall, today was filled with joy and excitement and we look forward to doing it all again tomorrow, especially the CEI research symposium. 

- Max & Chase