October 27, 2007 – November 6, 2007

Join WWF’s Priscilla Martinez as she travels to Galapagos’ Darwin and Wolf Islands to help study the movement patterns of key shark species through various tagging and tracking techniques. Read more on her unprecedented research trip to help conserve shark species in the Galapagos Marine Reserve.

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Introduction | Days 1-3 | Days 4-5 | Days 6-8 | Days 9-10
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Day 9: Tracking Continues

© Priscilla Martinez/WWF

At 6 am we finished our shift and another group arrived for their turn. We gave the briefing of our night work and returned to the Sierra Negra to sleep. Today is a lazy day. While one of the teams does its shift tracking the shark, the cameramen with us have the opportunity to go back into the water to take to get their best shot. Others sleep, write trip diaries, watch a movie or read books.

We are continuing the shark tracking and I have another night shift. My teammate and I will follow the shark from 12pm – 6 am. The first hours were very difficult to navigate, the sea was very rough and the shark kept moving in circles and heading towards the most exposed side to the surge. With this movement, we were getting all the engine fumes in the bow of the boat and got sea sick. Of course, none of us said a word to try to convince each other that we were fine. It took about two long hours at this stage, with us feeling miserable by trying to maintain the track of the animal, until it finally moved toward the more protected side of the island. What a relief! The new location of the shark made our shift very pleasant and it remained in that spot until early morning.

Day 10: Results

© Segundo Cortéz

At sunrise, we could see a school of gringos (creole fish) following the path where the shark was….or perhaps the shark following them? It was a wonderful and fresh morning, the birds began to leave the cliff, and we had completed our work. We headed back to the boat to get some rest.

The last shift ended at noon, so we still had time to use the last acoustic tags on hammerheads and one more tag on a whale shark.

This has been a very successful trip. We were able to collect the information of the receivers installed in July, marked a total of 32 hammerheads, two whale sharks, followed a hammerhead for 48 consecutive hours, and the trip was filmed to produce a National Geographic documentary on this important project. At 4 pm we raised anchors and returned to Santa Cruz.

We arrived in Puerto Ayora at 9:30 am the next day. Everyone is happy to be back after a productive, safe and successful trip! Hopefully this expedition will have given us more of the information we need to help conserve shark species!

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