NOAA Teacher at Sea Peggy Deichstetter Aboard Oregon II August 29 – September 10, 2012
Mission: Longline Shark and Red Snapper Survey Geographical area of cruise: Gulf of Mexico Date: September 2, 2010
Me, tagging the shark
Finally, my first taste of shark.! My shift started at midnight. We baited 100 large hooks with mackerel. Then at a precise location the hooks were released one by one on a long line. The hooks were left in the water for one hour. Then the hooks were pulled out in the same order they were put in the water.
My first shark
We cleaned up everything because it is really good to wash fish slime off before it smells too bad. After our shark adventure, we did another plankton tow. This time we collected pounds of sea grass. A piece of discarded plastic about the size of a Frisbee blocked the plankton shoot so that grass accumulated.
We arrived at our next site and once again baited 100 hooks, released them and waited an hour. Our luck was a little better this time. We got two large sharks, one of which I got to tag, a couple small ones and a remora.
