Shark Research Start with Pelagios
By Jacopo Gobbato
After a difficult lockdown year at home waiting due to pandemic situation, I have been so fortunate to have the opportunity to join Pelagios Kakunjá for 2 months to complete my internship and gather data for my master thesis with Milano-Bicocca University in Milan.
Despite tons of form and documents, my journey to La Paz was calm and smooth, and in 10 minutes from the landing my adventure was ready to start. Dr. Darren, my reference point for all my stay, came to pick me up and took me to my room while showing the best spots and food places in the city. Too excited to wait, I’ve taken just few hours to organise my stuff and I started with BRUV training and assembling to finish with night fishing! It was amazing to finally manage real shark, understand research techniques and collect data!
From that point on, Darren was amazing in helping me to join every possible project running! I’ve been involved in BRUVS monitoring, mangrove nursery surveys, fish camp sampling, drone surveys, and most of the time the whale shark monitoring project. I had the opportunity to swim along numerous different whale shark, so many times that in the final surveys I could recognise the most popular ones directly from the water, what a privilege! This project also helped me in taking data for my thesis, that now I’m analysing and writing here at home.
I was also very lucky to be involved in a shark tagging trip! It was an amazing experience, from witness how easy it is for fishermen to manage shark, to lot of knowledge shared by Miguel and Katy who were in that experience with me.
In my free time I have a great time in Cabo, where I enjoyed some diving, and cycled all the bay to see the best sunsets ever.
During all of these activities I’ve seen and made photos with different type of sharks, whales, mobula rays and even sea lions! During one whale shark survey, we also had an amazing encounter with a mother humpback whale with her calf, incredible experience!
It is not all easy and funny, there are also some office days full of spreadsheets filling, coding to analyse data and cleaning of instrument, but is necessary and when some results start to come out it is very fulfilling! With Darren we also have lot of fun in the dark side of research, the one you don’t see in the documentary! A lot of problem solving with crazy engineering ideas to repairing engines, boats, bikes, roof racks for the van and even a new rolling system to carry our beloved Ugly Betty (dinghy)!
Now that I’m going home, I can for sure say that this was one of the most amazing experience in my life and I cannot thank enough Pelagios and its staff for all of these. I will never forget how you helped me in what I hope would be the early start of a career in shark research for me! Thank you Pelagios and, why not, see you soon again!
Blog publication date: May 22, 2021