If we really do get recycled when we die and come back here again to do it all over again, my next life I want to be a fisheries biologist. I think about fish for large portions of each day, it would be great to be out there doing field research.
That won’t happen for me, but if you know some young kid who might want to do something like that, you should have them check out Bimini Sharklab. They take on interns and teach them the craft and they just do some pretty damn cool work as well. Really, check them out.
They have a great website and you can follow them on Twitter and Facebook as well.
I love sharks. Maybe I love them because my daughter loves them, but I think it is more than that.
Nurse Shark, snorkeling with El Pescador.
I love seeing sharks up on the flats because it means everything is working, the system is healthy and things are as they are supposed to be. Where you find sharks, you find bonefish. When you see a barracuda hanging around, it is likely a bonefish will pass that way before too long. The predators police the flats, picking off the injured, the sick and the less fit. They are the reason a bonefish swims 25 mph and tails in inches of water. They are what they are because of the predatory pressures exerted by those sharks and cudas.
So, we should all love sharks and forgive the odd shark or cuda that steals a fish off our line. They are the ones who made them, after all.
Company.
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Tags: Bimini, Bimini Sharklab, sharks
Your daughter may be a marine biologist and you had a lot to do with that! Have you visited Scripps Inst. of Oceanography down in La Jolla? And, you can participate in tagging and genetic research with the B&TT! I’d go on one of their tagging trips but the lodges are out of my price range. I can do the genetic study (fin clipping) on my budget trips! You have the power of the e-pen and can get yourself invited (gratis? or maybe on the journalist’s rate) )on one of those tagging trips!
Excellent point about the presence of predators and the quality of the fishery. If their food isn’t around, neither will they be around. And my personal ‘barometer’ is the enigmatic stingrays. It seems like if you don’t see rays, you won’t see bonefish. I think it’s because they eat off the same menu. Which brings up another interesting yet contradictory observation. Why is it that off Florida the bonefish will often ride the backs of cruising stingrays hoping for an easy meal. Yet in the Bahamas, they rarely behave that way? Ask any Bahamian guide if they look for bonefish on the backs of rays and they’ll say no. Complete opposite in Florida. There’s a good research question for a budding marine biologist.
Good question Doug. In the Bahamas you do tend to look for other fish riding behind rays. My dad caught a mutton snapper that way and I’ve been told to look for permit riding behind rays.
Ohhh, your daughter and mine has the same passion- shark. I’m glad your love for shark reinforced her. We are just so scared of it that we can’t do the same. You got good photos there!