Team 1: On the Water and in the Lab

Today we broke up the six volunteer research assistants into two groups, one in the water photographing/collecting data of the sharks, and the other in the lab analysing the data. Luckily enough I was in the group to go diving again.

Diving yesterday with the whalesharks was awesome, but today was even more awesomerer, if there is such a word. We came across seven sharks ranging from 4 metres to 8 -10 metres. At one stage we found two sharks frolicking together on top of the water. Unfortunately once we got into the water they soon dived down out of sight, maybe we were interrupting something.

Today’s tour operator was very professional, supplied great food, made you very relaxed but still ensured we respected the sharks space and environment. They kept saying “this would have to be one of their best days they have had and we are so lucky to be here today”. Maybe it’s part of there sales pitch they say to everyone to make them feel special, but I believe they truly meant it. And why wouldn’t you, swimming with seven different sharks in a great location, it doesn’t get much better than this.

The guys in the lab had some wins as well today, analysing some photos of the sharks taken previously, and managing to finger print match them to other footage of sharks taken elsewhere. They were pretty excited telling us all about it on our return, until we mentioned what we got up to today. Oh well they’re the breaks, hopefully tomorrow they will have as much luck and fun, as we had today.

We finished off today with a talk from Emily Wilson, the Whale Shark Project Officer from the Department of Environment and Conservation. She gave an informative presentation of the whale sharks at Ningaloo Marine Park, including the population of whale sharks at the park each season, the areas where they are found in the world, and the paths taken by some of the whales which were tagged with tracking devices back in 2002.

Tomorrow’s a lab day for our group, so hopefully the photos we took today we help us identify some of the whale sharks, and get a real appreciation of what Brad as been up to all these years.

-Ken