Still Swimming

Well, that was an entirely unintentional month off.  Apologies to those checking for regular updates (especially since I hinted they would be coming in the last post… on October 18th).  I won’t dodge the issue: I’ve officially hit the rough part of being a grad…

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: Back to the Pamlico

Tuesday saw Evan, Andrea, and I head back to the Pamlico River to cover it with the longline (you can see why it was missing last time here) in my brave/foolish attempt to see if there are any sharks in the Pamlico Sound.  Weather-wise, we…

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…

Summer of the Shark: Prologue

As mentioned earlier, this summer I’ll be starting the first of several shark-related projects that should (hopefully) add up to my dissertation.  The first is a summer pilot study that aims to find shark hot spots in Pamlico Sound.  Tomorrow, before the crack of dawn,…

Dogfish on Tour: Oh, Canada

After getting most of the financial issues under control, I can finally formally announce that I’ll be joining in on the annual meeting of the American Elasmobranch Society (AES), which this year is part of the World Congress of Herpetology (usually it meets as part…

Another Round on the Neuse

Late last summer, I embarked with an intrepid crew of Duke grad students to track bull sharks in the Neuse River.  We came up empty-handed that time, but a year later I found myself going back for another crack at catching, tagging, and following the…

The Future

Posts have been a little sparse here for the past month or so, and it’s because I’ve been spending a lot of time a.) finishing up my first year of PhD school, and b.) setting up a new batch of projects set that will keep…