Yesterday we went out tagging with Rachel Graham from WCS. We are going to put out accoustic tags in Kenya with Rachel in November. We met Rachel at the conference in Perth 3 years ago and it was great to meet up again after so long. Also on the boat was Rafael who is a representative from CONANP, Mexico’s national marine regulatory body. Rachel put out 2 accoustic tags, Rafael put out some streamer tags as well as taking biopsies and Volker took some amazing underwater footage of the sharks. I took pictures from the boat and had some fantastic swims with the sharks we saw. We also saw dolphins, 2 sets of mating turtles and hundreds of cow-nose rays which Volker managed to film which wasn’t easy because they were very shy and moving at an incredible speed. We will show you some of his video work when we get home next month. In the meantime here are some of my pictures.

Here is Rachel about to take some photos of a tagged shark.

This is Rachel’s husband Dan swimming alongside the shark.

 

It was incredible to see how the sharks feed mouths agape. The water was very clear on the surface but surprisingly murky (and cold!) once you got in.

This is the jetty with all the whale shark tourism boats. There are a total of 140 licensed whale shark watching boats here on Holbox island and people come here almost exclusively to swim with whale sharks.

Rachel has made some temporary tatoos - here is a picture of Volker and me with our whale shark tatoos on

Tomorrow we will finish off working on our presentations for the conference which starts on Tuesday. We will continue to keep you all updated on our work here on Holbox island.

Until then, all the best from Mexico!

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