I know, I've been neglecting this blog. I've had over a week on shore now, with actual internet access, and haven't made a single post. I have some catching up to do.
First, yes, I am back on land, in Texas. I am going to spend the rest of August diving the Flower Gardens. August is usually the best month out there, so I am pretty excited, plus one of the trips is the coral spawn, which is always amazing. Here's hoping for a whale shark or two. There's also been a school of about 20 scalloped hammerheads on one of the rigs that have stayed there for about a week.
An update on the surgery patients that I wrote about in previous post... on the last trip we did in Florida, we took some researchers out to Riley's Hump, the area where we did the tagging. One of the things they did, besides swimming around like banshees trying to locate the spawning Mutton Snapper aggregation, was to see if they could get some preliminary observations on the whereabouts of our little out-patient surgical volunteers. So, we dragged around a receiver for an evening. The early news was good - the Nassau Grouper, all 3 of the Red Grouper, and 4 of the 8 Mutton Snappers were detected. Given the short amount of time we devoted to looking for them, that is good news, although maybe some the tags could have all been riding around in the digestive system of a Bull Shark. Once they download data from all of the receivers, they will know a lot more.
Speaking of Bull Sharks, I had 2 great encounters with said species this summer. One was a medium sized bull who seemed a little perturbed that we were swimming in his area. The other was a very large bull with his own little shark-groupie-solar-system of Jacks, Remoras, and bait fish accompanying him. Very cool. After both of those dives, I had a smile on my face that I could not wipe off for hours.
I've still got more things I want to write about my summer in Florida, but this is a start, so I'll shut up and post this now.
P.S. Dolphin video coming soon.
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