Winter of the Shark: It Pays to Know People

This past weekend marked a new venture into shark-related field work.  For the better part of two months I’ve been fighting the good fight to keep ECU’s acoustic array up off of Cape Hatteras, and last Friday and Saturday finally managed to actually play with…

So That’s Where the Sharks Have Been… UPDATED

Yes, it’s been a while and yes, I do have more Summer of the Shark updates (and yes, this “summer project” has gotten pretty far into autumn).  To get back into the swing of things, here’s a quick post on an interesting sighting I made…

Summer of the Shark: Best Red Drum Survey Ever

In fisheries and marine science you have days that, by any objective standard, should be an amazing day in the field.  You get a ton of samples, the gear (mostly) works as planned, you find out some interesting stuff, and overall have a lot of…

Summer of the Shark: Stingray City

My summer-long (likely into a little bit of autumn) quest to find sharks in the Pamlico Sound took me to the waters of the Neuse River this past Thursday.  I’ve been out on the Neuse looking for sharks on a couple occasions before, and it…

Summer of the Shark: Warts And All, Mostly Warts

Some field days just don’t go well.  This past Thursday I went out with Evan and Jeff to do a little opportunistic shark sampling in the Pamlico River while they were out collecting water samples for a striped bass project.  What actually happened was quite…

Summer of the Shark: Hatteras Blues

Field work season has officially begun.  On Wednesday and Thursday I set out for Hatteras and Ocracoke with labmate Evan and his brother Austin to test the gear, get an idea of how much sampling can happen in a day, and maybe even catch some…

Cape Hatteras Doggin’

After most of a semester in the office, I finally managed to get out on the water this past weekend.  I traveled down to Hatteras with Andrea to help out with the latest piece of his project tracking different life stages of spiny dogfish.  He…

The Hammerhead Incident

What happens when a surf fisherman in Miami lands an enormous great hammerhead on Super Bowl Sunday?  A conversation about regulations, engaging stakeholders, and my first attempt at Storify.  Read on.

Hunting Bull Sharks in the Neuse

Yesterday I got the chance to wake up before dawn and head down to Morehead City to help out Duke PhD student Meagan Dunphy-Daly in her research on bull sharks and their habits in the Neuse River.  She has a guest post up at the…

Harpoon Fishing is Totally Badass

Bycatch is a huge problem in commercial fishing operations.  The need to make trips out on the water worth the expenses of gas, gear, and work-hours means that often commercial gear is designed to capture as many fish as possible in the shortest amount of…