Thursday, March 3rd 2011

Next morning, I kept waking up before my alarm, at like 4:00, 4:15 etc, and finally gave up and got up around 5:20. I threw on my clothes, grabbed some toast and then waited for everyone else to get up and for Julia to get there. We opened the garage to try and get ready for the day and ended up accidentally setting off the alarm. (Julia had to explain to the security guy that showed up that we were all new volunteers.) We loaded up everything on the buckey and this time I was working the morning shift so we headed off to help the clients put on their life jackets and then board the boat. Grant wasn’t there, so me and Jillian were handling the data collection on our own. I love, love, love data collection because I get to look at all the sharks and really get to know their personalities, but on the other hand I’m too busy recording data to take pictures. I have seen so many amazing things like sharks charging straight up at the bait and putting their whole bodies on the surface of the water and smashing themselves at the cage and sometimes even chewing on it. I just never get pictures of it because I’m frantically recording their vertical ascent or bait taking or kelp smashing. (OK so it is only the third day; I’ll get pictures of that later, I guess)

I actually remembered to eat lunch today. We eat lunch on the boat and sometimes I’m so busy that I forget to grab a sandwich. (the sandwiches on the boat tend to be things like white bread with shredded cheese on it or wheat bread and chopped up egg or if we're lucky bread with shredded cheese and a slice of ham) Even if we forget to eat lunch, we all eat lollipops while on the boat. They supposedly help with seasickness but we all like them because they are filled with some kind of crumbly sugar stuff.

In the afternoon we walked to the two little shark shops up and down the road. I only ended up buying an underwater camera. Then me and David walked out to the shore and explored around the rocks; we saw some hermit crabs, a few sea snails, and a dead fish.

We then came back to unload the boat and eat dinner. Emma cooked again, she made homemade broccoli cheddar soup, which was absolutely amazing. We all pitched in to help and while we chopped and cooked we had my ipod on a dance mix. I’m sure our dancing/cooking was very amusing. We then went for a walk as a whole group (minus David) down to the tidepools to climb on the rocks and look at the hermit crabs and poke the sea anemones.