We have had and excellent group of volunteers and interns for the month of January stretching from all around the world. We can actually say it was the United Nations in Kleinbaai for this month. There was Noelle -USA, Blair and Ben – Australia, Uriel – Netherlands, Mairead – Ireland, David – UK, Nicole – USA and Ingo – Germany.
Noelle, Uriel and Blair onboard 'Slashfin'Getting ready to go diving
Mairead and Nicole shark tracking with the marine biologists
Blair, Uriel, Ben, Mairead & Nicole
The sharks for this month was also really good and the volunteers had the chance to participate in the tagging and tracking of our fourth great white shark, Nina.
The dives were all good but with the water a little bit cold the volunteers still had an amazing time.
A part from just working (as non of them minded because this is just so much fun), we did have the ocasional no sea days due to strong winds and rough seas. The volunteers did all sorts of great things such as horse riding, quad biking (be aware of Uriel, that is now known as the flying dutchman), trip to Cape Town and learned how to surf as well as visit our feathery friends, the penguins at Betty’s Bay. They also had a very educational tour at our local abalone farm.
Mairead & Noelle horse riding
Ben, Blair and Uriel quad bikingMairead & Uriel surfingLunchtime together
There was also an Elephant seal reported at Franskraal of being very weak, that the volunteers had a chance to help with taking photos and logging the data. The seal was a very young female. The next day she was reported near the Kleinbaai harbour, so we believe that she will be just fine. With all the fun and excitement we also had to take a break and educate the volunteers on our conservation and marine species, so we had some lectures by our 4 marine biologists . There was also plenty of data to be captured.
Volunteers help with elephant seal rescue
Uriel capturing dataLectures with our marine biologists
cricket in the street
Uriel taking Max and Jake for a walk
Mairead's friend that lived outside her window
Please visit us again and be a part of our blog and give us your comments. To join our programme or have any enquiries, please contact me at tracey@sharkwatchsa.com
Until next month, take care!
Tracey
