I am looking at the ecology of shark
populations in Winyah Bay, South
Carolina. Winyah Bay is an hour south of
school about hour south of Conway and
Coastal Carolina.  And we go fishing in
Winyah Bay and we do long lining trips
to catch and release and tag sharks.  When
we go fishing in Winyah Bay we use
one of three different boats provided by
the University and we have captain's
provided by the University.
We take undergraduates with us and we
set out with all of our fishing gear, our
bait, our safety gear, and various other
things we may need and we set out to go
fishing we set long lines anywhere from
four to six long lines a day average is
probably five or six.  And we basically
set those long lines for about thirty or
forty minutes
we then haul them we take the animals
off the long lines if we caught any we
tag measure and release them without a
hook.  When we set a long line we measure
water quality parameters for both the
bottom and top water because that will
change depending on how much fresh or
salt waters in the system.  And we measure
the temperature, dissolved oxygen and
salinity and we also take down the depth
that we're fishing at.  And that way we
can relate the Sharks presence or
absence to these water parameters.  So we
set the long line, we measure those
parameters, we wait 30 to 40 minutes and
then we go and retrieve our long line
and we haul the long line from the water
back into the boat and we will take off
the hooks as we go along and if there's
an animal on the hook we will work as
fast as possible we'll get the animal on
board if it's small enough to bring on
board.  We will take the hook out we will
do three measurements if it's a shark,
pre-coddling, fork length, and total
length, and we will tag the animal.  We may
write down any interesting notes we find
if they
most injured or has some peculiar growth
or parasites something like that and
then we'll release the animal.  It's very
important that we do this in a timely
manner because this is tag and release
so we want these animals to be as
healthy as possible and as least
stressed as possible and that's also one
of the reasons we fish our long lines
for so such short times.  A lot of
commercial fishermen or fishermen out
there who use long lines in order to
catch animals to eat will soak them for
up to days at a time and we really want
our animals to survive so we only soak
them to 30 to 40 minutes.  The whole
tagging and measuring procedure
ideally happens in one to two minutes
and then animals on its way.  Right before
we release animal we will also swim the
animal a bit in the water to make sure
that it still has oxygen going over its
gills, it's blood is flowing and it has
its muscles moving and it's ready to
swim off
so it has the best chance of survival.  So
studying sharks and further
understanding where they go, why they go
to those places, how old are they when
they go there.  Questions like that can
help us further understand and protect
these species that are crucial to
maintain these healthy oceans which so
many people, if not everyone in the world
relies on.  My research is important to
Winyah Bay for a couple different reasons:
the shark populations in Winyah Bay have
been rarely studied.  We have discovered
that Winyah Bay is an important
habitat for up to 12 different species
of sharks and these species are actually
coastal migratory species.  And more
specifically Winyah Bay is a possible
nursery for sharks,
meaning that juvenile sharks or newborn
sharks will inhabit Winyah Bay in order
to feed and take refuge from larger
predators.  And this bay then gives them
the chance to grow and mature and add to
these populations and potentially help
shark populations
in the U.S. Atlantic coast.
