Shark Chronicles 051 – Port control Port Control
Posted by Fiona Graham & Siân Fôch-Gatrell on June 25, 2009
“Port Control, Port Control, coming from Cheetah, over!”
The Oceans’ interns have experienced a fun packed and exciting few weeks starting with a seal predation from our tagged shark Alek, and ending with a bungee jump from the highest commercial jump from a bridge in the world! The interns are getting eager as the bigger sharks are starting to arrive to hunt the seals at Seal Island and as we witness more breaches. Each visit to the island thus far has been action packed with animated individuals, lots of tug-of-wars and many laughs!
There have been a few sessions of tracking Alek in June, who was named after a brave Oceans's friend but bad weather and the shark spending most of its time within the breakers made it difficult to carry on.
Despite it being winter in Mossel Bay, the interns have been delighted to have experienced such lovely weather in a very beautiful town with amazing scenery. Even the influx of interns from Miami have not complained much about the weather!!!
Aside from the morning and afternoon chumming trips and the patchy tracking of our famed shark Alek, we have completed stints of 24hour seal surveys and intermittent dolphin surveys from the lighthouse.
Almost all the interns have now seen all of the ‘marine five’ which includes the sharks, seals, dolphins, whales and penguins. The Southern Right whales have been coming in very close to shore and there have been a few sightings of Humpback whales as well from our boat Cheetah and from the lighthouse.
We look forward to more exhilarating chum trips and face-to-face encounters with ‘Ze German’ (a feisty female filmed by the German film crew) as well as many more of our favourite sharks. Aside from that we are looking forward to having more great times with great people. “Over from Cheetah… standing by!”