pictures+and+some+background+information

This is the Bimini Biological Field Station which i stayed at during the trip. There are 8 full time staff members, and a number of volunteers who are there to collect data for their graduate studies.

This is a juvenile Lemon shark, they are extremely flexible at this age so in order to handle them and not get bit you must place one hand just above their pectoral fins. This is a juvenile Nurse shark (//Ginglymostoma cirratum)//, they are a more powerful swimmer than the juvenile Lemon sharks so to handle them two hands must be placed just below the pectoral fins. When handling juvenile sharks you must be careful not to place to much force on their body as they are not fully developed and their organs will damage easily.

This is a Southern Stingray (//Dasyatis americana)// has a flat disc-shaped body with sharp outer-corners and no distinct head, on average they are about 2 meters long from wingtip to wingtip and can weigh up to 136 kilograms. Juveniles have an olive brown/green color, while the adults are gray; both juveniles and adults have a whitish underside. Their tail has a non-venomous serrated spine that is used for defense. They appear to fly through the water as they move by moving its wingtips. They feed on a variety of small fish, crustaceans, and mollusks.

This is a adult Nurse shark, it is easily recognized by the close proximity of its first and second dorsal fin, it also has two barbels between its nostril. This Nurse shark is approximately 9 feet long, but other adults have been recorded up to 14 feet long and 150 kilograms. Nurse sharks are typically thought of as a docile species, but numerous divers have actually been killed by these sharks. If provoked these sharks may bite, and because of its powerful bite many divers are unable to free themselves and drown as a result. Their powerful bite is adapted for their diet of crustaceans, mollusks, tunicates, and stingrays. Did you ever hear the myth that sharks need to be constantly moving or they'll die? well these sharks are able to pump water over their gills, this means they do not need to be constantly moving to ensure they have a constant supply of oxygenated water.

This is a adult Tiger shark (//Galeocerdo cuvier), it is approximately 14 feet, adults can be anyway between 11-24 feet long and weigh 385-635 kilograms. It is second only to the Great White shark in the number of recorded shark attacks on humans, and is one of the most feared sharks in the ocean. They can be easily identified by their dorsal dark striping pattern, a short blunt snout, and also by the close proximity of their second dorsal fin to their caudal fin. Its diet is generally made up of fish, seals, smaller sharks, squid, turtles, and dolphins. // This shark was captured by the use of vertical long lines. A vertical long line is a line that has one end attached to an anchor and the other to a floatation device, their are baited hooks attached to the line at a predetermined distance.

This is a juvenile Sharpnose shark (//Rhizoprionodona terraenovae), adults reach roughly 1 meters in length and weigh roughly 7 kilograms. They are identified by their long pointed snout, and a second dorsal fin that is located behind the anal fin. They feed mainly on small fish, crustaceans, and mollusks. This particular shark was caught by using a gill net. A gill net is, like its name suggests, a type of net catches sharks by their gills. A lead line sinks the bottom of the net to the ocean floor, and buoys keep the top of the net at the surface of the water. The net is interwoven into diamond shaped patters, when the shark try's to pass through the net its gills get caught and the shark becomes stuck. To increase the rate of capture bait was placed on one side of the net.

// This is a Caribbean Reef shark (//Carcharhinus perezi)//, they can grow up to 10 feet and weigh up to 70 kilograms. They are grayish in color with with a short blunt snout, and a relatively short first dorsal fin that has trailing tip. As their name suggests they can easily be found at coral reefs. Their diet consists of cephalopods, small fish, small sharks, and rays.

This picture is taking during the feeding of various species sharks. Sharks have a specific feeding pattern that they follow, they swim in a circle pattern around the food and then the biggest sharks will make their way through the center of the circle for the food. After the biggest sharks have gone though the center of the circle the smaller sharks will quickly enter to get what has been left over.



This is a mangrove forest. To each side of the picture are red mangroves (//Rhizophora mangle)// these mangroves serve as a nursery ground for juvenile Lemon sharks. The help regulate their salt content red mangroves have salt by having relatively impermeable roots, and also having leaves that secret salt The roots you see in the middle of the pictures that extend out of the water are those of black mangroves (//Avicennia germinans)// they help regulate salt levels by excreting salt. Black mangroves are found more inland than the red mangorves.

This is a procedure called a stomach aversion. This procedure is done to see what the shark had eaten lately. In the wild sharks if sharks eat something upsetting some species can empty their stomachs by forcing their stomach out their mouths and into the water, thus for this species of shark (Lemon shark) this procedure is safe.The shark is temporally knocked out by placing it in a box and allowing water treated with a chemical to flow though its gills. When the shark's stomach was pulled out of the mouth nothing came out, meaning this shark has not eaten recently. When placing the stomach back into the shark you must be careful not to cut it on the sharks teeth. To revive the shark it is placed back into the ocean, to speed up the revival of the shark a pump was used to increase the flow of clean water over its gills.