Expedition leaders: Dr. Phil Matich, Dr. Simon Dedman, and Dr. Tristan Guttridge

Crew: Corey, Elisabeth, Gabby, Hannah, Jamie, Morgan, and Riley

Introduction

We have just returned from 2020’s first Saving The Blue research expedition on the Bahamian island of Andros! It was a swashbuckling good time, packed with charismatic sharks, the adventures of a lifetime, and a big scientific first. During the course of this six-day excursion, we tagged and released a healthy 33 sharks, from 7 different species, and the fun didn’t stop there. We provided shark and sawfish education at a local elementary school, cleaned up a beach that was covered with trash, snorkeled in blue and green holes, and spent quality time with some very pleasant mahi-mahi, yellow fin tuna, sea turtles, and other lovely sea creatures.  

On a sleepy Ft. Lauderdale morning, a ragtag group of shark enthusiasts descended upon a semi-private airport to meet expedition leaders Dr. Phil Matich and Dr. Simon Dedman. The Saving The Blue research team was ASSEMBLED! 

With the team champing at the bit to get our research on, we quickly deposited our gear into air-conditioned, double-occupancy rooms, then convened at the Bonefish Club’s dining hall, which would serve as our rendezvous point throughout the adventure.     

After a quick lunch and safety briefing, we ruled out doing the afternoon’s research by boat, as the wind was whipping up the seas.  Phil and Simon, along with our boat captain, Cole, decided that our best option would be to conduct our research by gillnetting in the shallows of a nearby beach. 

The team set about anchoring the gillnet, which fully extended out several hundred feet in the waist deep water. While this gillnet spectacle like the world’s weirdest volleyball court, it quickly served up a pair of gorgeous lemon sharks. 

Phil and Simon conducted the first round of tagging, measuring, and releasing, to show the team how to do it without anyone, including the shark, getting hurt.    

The team got hands-on with the second shark and assisted in tagging, measuring, and checking the shark for claspers, which are external grippers for reproduction in males; both of our sharks were ladies. Afterward, she was released to go about her business of looking for tasty morsels in the shallows.     

Note: Both of the sharks had umbilical scars; lemons are viviparous, and give birth to live young. As the sharks get older, the scars disappear. Given their size and the umbilical scars on these females, they were probably one or two years old. 

Those were all of the sharks we would catch on our first day of researching. At around 5:30 PM, we headed back to the Bonefish Club for a delicious meal consisting of authentic Bahamian cuisine, then we packed it in for the night. 

Day 2

Today was a school day in Andros, and the Saving The Blue team were the guests of honor at Behring Point Primary School. Our mission was to educate students on the sharks and rays of Andros. 

Phil and Simon got up in front of the class and dazzled the students with facts about local marine life. Phil even played a game of guess-the-critter with them, drawing an unidentified elasmobranch on the whiteboard and asking them to identify it. Sure enough, one sharp student in the back of the class correctly identified Phil’s critter as a sawfish. 

At the conclusion of Phil and Simon’s talk, we handed out shark and sawfish coloring sheets, crayons, and stickers, which the students loved.  After a photo with the entire class, we said our goodbyes and headed out to catch some sharks. 

With the wind ripping, any utilization of the boat was again ruled out. We headed out to a large shallow bay to try our luck gillnetting.  Sure enough, it quickly paid out in three lemons, which the team expertly processed. 

When low tide set, in we moved the gillnet to the entrance of a nearby brackish creek. No sharks paid us a visit at this spot, but we did enjoy having lunch, exploring the gorgeous Bahamian pines, and examining some precocious puffer fish that lived in the creek.   

With the tide starting to rise, we decided to gillnet the entrance of the bay to see if we could catch any sharks that were riding it in. No sooner did we get the net setup did the skies open up and pelt us with rain. That was the end of shark research fun on this fine day.   

Back at the Bonefish Club, we enjoyed a sumptuous dinner. Then, Phil and Simon dropped knowledge on the team with a lecture on Bahamian sharks. With our minds filled to the brim with shark knowledge, we went to bed and enjoyed many a sweet sharky dream. 

Day 3

The morning’s weather report indicated that for the first time since we arrived on Andros, we were tracking to have a relatively wind-free night.  We would finally do our research by boat.   

With night research on the schedule, we had the day to otherwise occupy ourselves.  First up on the itinerary was prepping for the night’s research.  Phil and Simon showed up how to build hooks for the drumlines that we would use to catch sharks. 

Next, we traveled to a very scenic inland green hole to knock the dust off of our snorkel game. Snorkeling in this green-hole was a blast, as we got to explore the mangrove roots and examine the curious fish that called this flooded sinkhole home. 

Feeling refreshed and peppy after our swim, the team popped over to a nearby beach that was covered with trash. We were having none of these wretched conditions, so we set about righting the situation by harvesting bag after bag of trash. The beach was now sparkling clean, all save for one giant ghastly fishing net that had become entangled in driftwood.  

What kind of sea lovers would we be if we left that horrid net there? What if it drifted back into the ocean where it could doom an unknowable number of sea creatures to death by drowning?  No, this would never do. 

The team produced several diving knives and meticulously cut through the net to remove this dangerous garbage from the driftwood. We then dragged the net to our enormous trash hoard. Shortly, all of it was loaded up in a truck and hauled away. None of this trash would ever besmirch the ocean again. 

Back at the Bonefish Club, we recharged for a bit and ate dinner as twilight descended upon the island. Our night of catching sharks from the boat was about to begin. 

Before we got started, Captain Cole gave us a safety briefing on the boat’s protocols. Then, Phil and Simon explained how to do a workup on a shark via the boat. They would supervise the captured shark while teams of two cut bait, threw the drumlines, applied tags, and collected data (shark measurements, water temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen). The teams of two would rotate through the tasks so that each of the citizen-scientists experienced all of the roles.

Drumlines were then cast out into the dark sea. It was not long before the nocturnal hunters turned up. A sharpnose, a large blacktip, and four cantankerous nurse sharks were all worked up and released to resume their nightlife. 

At 11:30 PM, the sleepy team headed back to the Bonefish Club.  We would need our rest, as tomorrow, we would be graced with a visit from a glamorous shark VIP. 

Day 4

We had breakfast at 7:00 AM, prepared hooks for the day’s research, and then headed out for a full day at sea. 

Knowing that we had a long day of throwing drumlines ahead of us, we decided to get our minds right by going for a dip in the crystal-clear waters of a nearby cay. At the cay, we were greeted by a cornucopia of pleasant reef fish, with the odd sea turtle eye-balling us from afar.  

With our minds right, we got back onto the boat and headed out to where we would conduct our research for the day.  Along the way we spotted a suspiciously large elongated dark shape cruising through the sea grass.  A tiger shark was on the muscle likely prowling for those lookie-loo sea turtles. 

At the fishing spot, the drumline café was opened for business, serving up a helping of sustainably sourced bonita for any and all hungry sharks to feed on. And the sharks were indeed ready to dine, as four Caribbean reef sharks and one nurse shark were quickly caught, processed, and released.

After tagging and releasing five heathy sharks, we were probably at a seven on the awesome meter. Captain Cole, king of the high seas that he is, cranked that awesome meter all the way up to ten when he belted out the sweetest words in the shark research game, “Big shark on line one!”   

And a BIG shark was indeed on line one:  that extended caudal fin, that towering dorsal fin, that spectacular alienlike cepahlofoil… it was a massive of great hammerhead shark! 

Great hammerheads, despite their huge size, are actually very delicate creatures that do not do well with being man-handled by man-apes.  This big powerful fish would need the VIP treatment to ensure that it left our care as healthy as it had ever been.  The team had to be at their very best.  

With the big beauty lined up next to the boat the team focused on keeping the shark’s gorgeous head completely submerged at all times.  With a constant flow of water over its gills, the hammer remained calm, which allowed the team to perform a textbook workup of the 3.4-meter juggernaut of a female hammer.  Her ladyship was expediently released and she gracefully swam off like nothing had ever happened.   

The team was euphoric at this incredible encounter with such a magnificent otherworldly creature.  Only later would we learn that this was the first great hammerhead ever tagged by Saving The Blue.  Go team!  Go! 

Around dinner time the team returned to the Bonefish Club to partake in some savory vittles and then Simon rocked the mic with an intellectually enriching lecture on using Baited Remote Underwater Video (BRUV) to survey sharks.   

As the night faded away into sleepy-dreamtime, word of our encounter with that majestic beast made its way to the ears of another majestic beast up in the States.  Dr. Tristan Guttridge, Vice President and Chief Scientist of Saving The Blue, heard this incredible tale, and he wanted in on the great hammerhead action…

Day 5

With the team still abuzz from the previous day’s great hammerhead encounter, we started the day by heading out on a 45-minute journey to a vast open deepwater trench called the Tongue of the Ocean. 

You know that you are at the Tongue of the Ocean because in an infinite sea of nothing there is one thing here: a mighty cement buoy.  In the vast emptiness of the sea this buoy provides coverage, which pelagic fish species congregate around.  One of those pelagic fish species, the silky shark, is exactly who we came to spend time with.   

We dawned our snorkel gear, hopped into the ocean, and relaxed as about a dozen silkies casually cruised by to examine these human curiosities.  Mahi-mahi and yellow fin tuna also came in for a look-see.  Eventually, the human zoo closed when the team got back on the boat.  Now it was time to tag some silkies. 

Catching silkies isn’t like catching other sharks as you don’t have to spend time waiting.  That allowed us to rapidly tag three silkies with Phil and Simon surgically implanting acoustic tags in two of them. 

Alas, the motion of the open ocean was really starting to rock the boat and some of the team were getting a little green in the gills.  We headed back to the Bonefish Club for a short break to let any queasiness subside.

Post-break, we hopped back into the boat and headed just offshore to set drumlines in vastly calmer water.  The payout for our afternoon’s labor included three reef sharks, and two surly nurse sharks – all expediently processed and released as healthy and happy as they had always been. 

We returned to the Bonefish Club for dinner and the team was greeted by Tristan Guttridge himself, who had just arrived on Andros with a bag of scientific goodies and big ideas.  He posed to the team, “No one has ever put a Smart Position Or Temperature (SPOT) satellite tag on a great hammerhead shark in Andros before.  Let us be the first.” 

Challenge accepted! 

Day 6

The plan was to spend the entire last full day of this expedition out at sea tagging any and all sharks.  Could we get a great hammerhead?

After breakfast, Captain Cole took the team to our spot that had a reputation for hammerhead sightings. We deployed the standard weighted-buoy drumlines, but also free-ballers, which are simply a baited buoy with no weight attached.  We were using every trick in the book to catch a hammer. 

The drumlines began to pay-off the team processing a hefty seven reef sharks.  But where were the hammers?   

With our Awesome-meter at a very solid eight, Captain Cole disrespected its maximum setting of ten and cranked it to an impossible eleven by once again yelling those sweet, sweet words, “Big shark on line five!”

At line five, we got a look at the large dark shape slashing through the water.  It was obvious what species it was…

Extended caudal fin – CHECK! 

Towering dorsal fin – CHECK! 

Spectacular alienlike cepahlofoil – CHECK! 

Hammertime was upon us!    

Applying a SPOT tag is next-level tagging.  In order for a SPOT tag to work it has to be placed onto the shark’s dorsal fin (the SPOT tag works whenever the shark’s dorsal fin breaks the surface of the water allowing the tag to ping data to a satellite).  The placement process takes a little time to ensure that the tag is properly attached.  The team would have to perform flawlessly to properly attach the tag while ensuring this glorious delicate animal suffered no adverse effects during the process. A sharks wellbeing is always our priority.

Like the previous hammer, the team expertly managed the hammer’s head by keeping it submerged the entire time.  With the shark relaxed and rocking a namaste vibe, Tristan had time to attach the SPOT tag.  Despite the waves rocking Tristan’s hands, the SPOT tag was attached to the hammer’s towering dorsal fin perfectly.     

With the shark looking peppy it was released with its new accessory.  This big male cruised off into the shallows to go about its very important sharky business.    

With a visual that the shark was healthy, the tagging team exploded in congratulations and high-fives.  We had just SPOT tagged the first hammer ever in Andros.  What an accomplishment! 

On that high note, we headed back to the Bonefish Club at 7:00 PM and had a late dinner.  As the team recounted the day’s glories, Tristan fired up his laptop to see if, perhaps, the hammerhead’s SPOT tag had sent any pings back to the satellite.  As Tristan eyed the satellite map it was clear that after our contact, the shark, who would be named Storm, had crossed a deep-water channel and had surfaced for a moment allowing the SPOT tag to ping the satellite. 

Tristan showed the team the satellite map along with the ping-point.  We stood in awe at seeing the first data point ever collected by a hammer that was SPOT tagged in Andros.  Every single one of us was incredibly proud at having been a part of this magnificent scientific first. 

After a round of celebratory drinks, we all headed off to bed.  Our last full day in Andros was over and it was one that we would all remember for the rest of our lives.

Day 7

Today was the end of the research expedition. 

After overcoming weather issues, visiting a school, cleaning up a beach, and tagging an abundance of sharks, including two incredible great hammerheads, it was time for some added fun.  We headed out to a shallow coral reef that opened up into a magnificent blue-hole to do a little snorkeling. 

The team swam along the reef-rim of the blue-hole observing the tons of fish, including one invasive lionfish, that called this place home.  It wasn’t just fish living here as a gigantic sea turtle appeared out of the blackness of the blue-hole and zipped away not wanting to be bothered by our frolicking. 

Alas, all great adventures must come to an end.  The team departed the blue-hole and headed back to the Bonefish Club, packed up our gear, squared our spending accounts (drinks are bought on an honor system and paid for prior to departure), and then headed out to the airport. 

At the airport the team thought their time experiencing resplendent creatures was over, but then an inbound flight produced none other than Annie Guttridge herself.  Greetings were exchanged, Annie headed out to the Bonefish Club, and the team boarded their flight back to the states.  The adventure was now ending, but not without one last mind-blowing aerial view of the Bahamian dreamscape. 

After landing back in Fort Lauderdale we said our bittersweet goodbyes.  While the adventure was over, we would always have the memories of this once in a lifetime experience. 

Thank you

Thank you to our research trip leaders Dr. Phil Matich, Dr. Simon Dedman, and Dr. Tristan Guttridge for guiding the team through an incredibly successful week. A huge thank you to our research assistants for their passion, determination and endless enthusiasm to work hard, learn, and produce results. We would also like to thank the Andros Island Bonefish Club for their hospitality, and hardworking and ever professional Captain Cole from PFO Charters, for his top-class boating and captaining skills.

Gratitude must also go to Jamie for writing this incredibly engaging blog, and all on the trip for their generosity in allowing us to use their images.