The Fish Tank: Sept 10

Sept 10, 2016
Saturday

Rough seas were still with us this morning. The support boat could not make it for the 8 AM dive. Might have been a good thing. I am still a bit sore from the rough dive yesterday. A few knocks and cuts but OK. I am definitely getting a leg workout! Especially when I swim carrying materials or even worse... bricks.

Not to waste time we decided to go through the three days worth of Gopro video we have. Big project! There are two hours of video on each Gopro twice a day and ten cameras at a time. a typical video shows what kind of fish are nibbling at the grass we leave them. It also shows if any predators like sharks, lionfish, or baracuda are around. We do get some cool pictures from the videos though. Here are a few...

Eagle Ray

Another Eagle Ray..I love these

A curious fish checking out the camera

A trumpet fish

A cute truck fish

We make an excel spread sheet with the numbers of parrot fish and surgeon fish. We also count the sharks, barracuda, etc... These numbers are put into graphs to show how the fish interact. Do the smaller fish hide from the predators? Does the rougher water offer more protection than the calmer water? All cool things the marine biologists I am working with are trying to figure out.

we make lots of trips carrying things to set up the experiments.

The thoughts that the noise maker was not attracting sharks enough was brought up. SOOOO

we decided to make it more fun! We asked for some chum. Which is basically chopped up fish.. all smelly and slimy..but meat eaters LOVE it!

This is our support diver bringing us boxes of chum, It was frozen so it wasn't too messy...yet.

The chum was hung in mesh bags on the guide ropes we have around the habitat. There was some immediate interest..

The best part was when the shark came over!

The sharks have been in the area since we pu the chum out. It is midnight here now.

I have to add that every time we come into the habitat we enter from underneath and into the wet porch. You never know what is waiting to greet you when you come home.