Hello from sea!
I’m Sophie, and I’ll be taking over the blog for today. Meredith got us off to a great start on life at sea, so I’d like to spend a moment to reflect on our experience at Rangiroa — our first stop after Tahiti. We sailed away from Tahiti on May 10th after a full day of settling into the ship on the 9th, and we arrived at Rangiroa on the 12th. Our arrival in Rangiroa was a quick turnaround that came just as we were recovering from seasickness, and it threw us out of the rhythm that was just starting to form on board, but we managed to get a lot done! My project group (Zulie, Jonah, and myself) is team SHARKS (Survey to Holistically Assess the Results of a Key Sanctuary), and our priority at Rangiroa was to survey the atoll’s shark population through drone surveys, snorkel transects, and Barb’s Baitless BRUVs (BBBs), while also getting the perspective of local scientists and fishermen. You’ll have to wait for our final paper to get all the details, but I’ll fill you in on some of the exciting adventures we’ve gotten up to so far.
Just a couple hours after our arrival, we set off to the “aquarium,” a mini protected area inside Rangiroa’s lagoon. Here, we snorkeled, and Zulie and I got a chance to practice our transects with videos underwater. Zulie and I didn’t personally see sharks, but many others including our third partner Jonah did witness blacktip reef sharks. What I did see was SO MANY FISH! It was the first time I’d ever seen such brightly colored fish and different varieties of coral in the wild, which was pretty epic.
After the aquarium, Zulie, Jonah, and I set off in the rescue boat with our professor Barb and maritime coaches JP and Audrey to start some initial drone transects. We had to get out of the no-fly zone, which extends out three kilometers from the airport from close to where the RCS was anchored, so it was a fun adventure to reach the survey destination (I got majorly splashed with sea water, in the most enjoyable way). We flew transects up and down the coast, but no sharks were there to be seen… It was interesting to see the discrepancy just a little way out from the protected aquarium that was spilling over with life. This stark contrast started to get me thinking that maybe the small no-take zone really did make a big difference for the sharks, and for biodiversity in general.
The next day we got up early for a great trip to the Blue Lagoon (lagoon in a lagoon)! Barb organized a local boat to come take us out to this area, quite far from the RCS, and it is part of a protected zone where fishing is only permitted for yourself, and not for the purpose of selling to others. And finally, we saw SO many sharks, all blacktip reef sharks! We got some great drone and snorkel transects, including of the baby sharks in the nursery just off a little island in the middle of the Blue Lagoon. I spoke to our friendly guides, Hector and Brandon, who were local fishermen and offered informative prospective on the shark populations and fishing presence throughout Rangiroa.
The culminating event of our epic adventure was a visit from the Mokarran Protection Society, a local science and conservation organization that studies the Great Hammerhead shark, a species that is endangered and heavily based in French Polynesia. The Mokarran Protection Society is interested in learning more about where the Great Hammerhead goes and what its seasonal patterns are because little is known about their populations around the world. They are especially trying to understand if the sharks leave French Polynesia’s exclusive economic zone, which forms a boundary of where the sharks are protected (invisible to the sharks, of course). I connected with the Mokarran Protection Society back at Hopkins when I saw that their work was related to our SHARKS project and wanted to hear more of their perspective as experts in this field, and they enthusiastically offered to give a talk to us when we came to visit Rangiroa. We picked up three of their members on the rescue boat from shore to set up for a talk in the cozy saloon of the RCS. Their talk was excellent, and it was helpful in framing the importance of sharks to French Polynesia as not just ecological, but cultural too. They discussed their work on acoustics and use of citizen science to collect more data on the sharks’ migratory patterns, as well as their hopes for expanding the organization that has accomplished a lot in just five years. It was great to meet them in person and I look forward to keeping in touch and sharing the data we collect on shark populations for our project. Here’s to hoping we see a Great Hammerhead!
Now after a busy trip, we are back to our routine watch lifestyle as we sail towards Nuku Hiva, and we are starting to get into a rhythm of how things work on board, including our 18-hour days (6 hours on, 12 hours off). As Meredith mentioned, seasickness did come back, but it’s much better now, and it seems to be this way for most of us on the RCS. I will concede that typing this blog on the computer is probably one of the worst things I can do for seasickness but thank goodness I spend minimal time staring at screens while aboard. My favorite past times so far are journaling, memorizing lines/pins on the ship in preparation for our pin chase (go ACE watch!), and staring out into the watery blue and beautiful sky above. I’m working on learning constellations, which is helpful when steering at the helm and navigating by the sky. I also got a chance to do a star fix with a sextant this morning during dawn watch (the 1am-7am watch, which is my favorite at the moment). For this, I brought a couple stars down to the horizon and used the sextant reading to calculate a pretty accurate geographic position of our ship. I look forward to more star frenzies! Another exciting activity we got up to as a group was a poetry slam led by our visiting professor Boris Worm, where we shared some of our creative thoughts and words with each other and crafted up poems inspired by a shared encounter with a seabird.
There is always so much more to say, but I think I’ll have to end the blog here for the next blogger to pick up from. Everyone is safe and well, and most importantly having fun. I’ll attach some pictures to prove it. We miss our friends and family, but I can’t wait for all that awaits us in the next few weeks.
All the best,
Sophie at Sea
