by Dani Escontrela, RJD Intern
11/11/12

It was going to be another day of shark tagging and I was too excited. After the last trip with no sharks, all I could hope for was for this day to be different. As usual, I woke up at 4:30am and began my long drive down to the keys, picking up Christine and Emily along the way. We had a pleasant drive down with a beautiful sunrise for company.

Once we got to Curt’s house, we met with the rest of the RJD crew, David, Stacey, Austin, Kyra, Evan and our fear less trip leader, Leann. Most of the gear was on the boat but we still had to some last minute preparations to make, such as making more gangions and getting a few more supplies.

Soon after, the students from South Broward High School got to the boat and right away I recognized a lot of familiar faces.  We did our usual introductions and then had a long ride out to the site. We went to Middle Grounds in the Everglades which was very exciting; last time I had been there we had caught eight sharks, and had also found the “bull shark lair”

Once we got there we deployed our drumlines. Something especially important was that we had new goodies: a brand new accelerometer that we were testing for the first time. After an hour of waiting, some amazing lunch and an overview of what we were going to do if we caught sharks, we went back to pick up our first drumline.

Read more