Thursday, November 15, 2007

Great Day

Today was a really good day. I saw some good stuff. First, I sprayed some weeds, then went to Eastern Island to check on our bird calling stations. On the way over to Eastern, we saw a really big tiger shark eating an albatross. I didn't get great pictures of it but I'll show you what I've got. We guessed it was in the 10-12 foot range. I'm glad we were in the boat, but Ben, Kristin, and Matt were going snorkeling after they dropped Greg, Linda, and I off at Eastern. They were going to take the cinderblocks with the cloth to check for oyster colonization that Kristen and I had put in a couple months ago. They didn't end up seeing any sharks while they were doing that.
Over on Eastern There were a few turtles and lots of seals. We also found that the short-tailed albatross returned to its usual spot. There's only one and it comes back to the same spot every year, so we're hoping this year that maybe a mate will show up.

I helped out with picking up the cinderblocks this afternoon. It's not that easy to tread water holding a cinderblock you know.

I took some good pictures today so I'll probably be giving you photos from Eastern Island for a little while.
Here's the tiger shark we saw today. It already ate the albatross.
The short-tail is hanging out with the decoys.
A close-up of the "golden gooney", as people around here call it.
This is the solar panel for running the ipod shuffle that tries to attract more short-tails. We have a couple more of these around to attract Bulwer's petrels. There were a lot of those petrels until the rats extirpated them from Midway.

3 comments:

Peggy said...

Beautiful shark!! I'd have been so excited to see that. Tiger sharks are really lovely and only slightly bitey. Interesting to see the solar panel for the shuffle.

Anonymous said...

Pete, that reminds me of the time I saw a tiger shark eating an albatross in the Red River near Grand Forks and I jumped out of the boat and saved the albatross. My friend asked me when I learned to wrestle sharks, I looked at my watch and said "about 10 minutes ago"

-Napoleon

Pete Leary said...

I forgot how many albatrosses and sharks there were in North Dakota. That's good that you saved it though.