The Other 70% of the World

Name: Karagan Ross
Class Year: Class of 2020
Hometown: Nashport, Ohio
Internship: Marine Research Intern
Location: Oceans Research, Mossel Bay, Western Cape, South Africa

Being a spotter for our first chumming trip!

As I'm nearing the halfway point of my time here at Oceans Research, I decided it was time for another blog post. Before I get into some of the highlights for this week, I wanted to take a minute to reflect on the past two weeks, as I am honestly in disbelief of all the amazing opportunities I've already had. During one of our first boat trips, one of the field specialists looked at us and said, "Most people never get to explore the other 70% of the world, but now you all can" and that has been stuck with me ever since. It is unbelievable to me that I have this chance to study the creatures that inhabit the majority of our planet. Before I get too tangential in this intro, I'll get into just a few of the amazing shifts I've had this week!

An amazing shot from the head field specialist, Sasha!

This week, we went on two separate chumming trips: one on Monday and another on Friday. While our Monday trip was good, our Friday trip was fantastic! We were able to collect photographic and GoPro data for 6 great whites, and saw one more right as we were about to leave our site (unfortunately, this last shark wasn't around long enough for us to collect any data). Being able to spend this amount of time watching great whites has been such an eye-opening experience. Before this internship I had never thought of sharks having distinctive personalities; however, during our 4-hour observation periods, each shark begins to show their individual traits. For example, some sharks we see are extremely predatory by nature, while others are more investigative. Sharks, especially great whites, get the reputation of big, scary monsters, so seeing these differing personalities really makes you rethink this stigma.

Releasing a leopard catshark!

We also went on two very successful tag-and-release fishing trips this week! We collected data on 10 individual benthic sharks during each trip, and were able to find some other interesting species along the way. On our second trip, I caught a fairly rare Catfaced Rockcod, which we made sure to tag before releasing. We are specifically trying to study leopard catsharks and pyjama catsharks, however we tend to find some smooth-hound sharks during our trips as well. This week, us interns got the drill of how to efficiently collect all of the data we need: put the shark into tonic immobility (to avoid injury due to sudden movement), measure the shark, collect a genetic sample, tag the shark and release it. Last week, the field specialists had to walk us through the steps for each shark, and now we are able to collect everything with little help! One of my favorite parts of this internship is how the field specialists give us the ability to try everything out and learn on our own, instead of having us just sit back and watch them do everything. It's really allowed us to learn how to function together as one unit, while giving each one of us the opportunity to learn hands-on.

Collecting a genetic sample on a pyjama catshark!

On Wednesday, we took to the beach in Hartenbos, a neighboring town, to collect shark and skate egg cases. Sharks and skates are oviparous, meaning they lay eggs, and once these eggs hatch their casings wash up on the beach. We collect these egg cases to determine the abundance of each species we find, while also determining how many of these eggs actually hatched and which were subject to predation or damage.While doing this we also participated in a beach clean, where we found an abundance of cigarette butts, bottle caps and plastic straws lying around. During our analysis, we found we had collected mostly twineyed skate egg cases, but we also had collected a few puffader shyshark cases, one biscuit skate egg case and one extremely damaged leopard catshark egg case! Using the different measurements we took to determine the species of each case turned out to be quite the challenge when we found a case that suffered damage, but in the end we were able to identify all of the 100+ cases we collected!

The last shift I want to highlight is the intertidal survey I took part of on Thursday afternoon. We made a 40m transect using a piece of rope, and every 5m we placed down a metal square to use as our quadrats. At every quadrat, we would identify any species we saw, and the abundance of each species. This got a bit difficult for species like blue coral worms, where we could see more than 200 individuals in a 1 square meter area! For these types of species, we were able to make an estimate (thankfully!) rather than having to count out every individual. Afterwards, since we finished early, one of the field specialists gave us an interesting task: go out and find an interesting species, and use your biology knowledge to tell him its niche. Between the four of us interns, we chose a sea urchin, a black-lipped topshell, a green snail, and a cuttlefish! This really got us thinking about why each individual species inhabits the area it does, and what purpose it serves to the overall ecosystem.

That's all I have for this week! Thank you so much to everyone who has been following along with my journey thus far. Make sure to check out my next blog next Sunday to see what exciting things we will be up to this week!