Our last day began with a final effort to satellite tag another shark. We started a burley slick with baits early and within a couple of hours we had a large tiger nosing the baited hook. But these are smart wary animals and after being drawn to the boat three times during which Richard made one attempt to drop in and tail rope it, the shark dropped from sight and never reappeared.

The other half of the tiger shark tagging story which we haven't relayed to you yet is that as soon as we tagged the first shark we had called CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organization) which is partnering with Richard and sponsoring the satellite time necessary to track the tiger sharks. The tags work by collecting data; depth, time, location, and then when the shark surfaces and the tags antenna breaks the surface of the water it sends a burst transmission to the satellite of the data collected since the last surfacing which then sends the data to the CSIRO computer. Richard was told by his colleague at CSIRO, can you hear the computer key strokes clicking away as he checks with the mainframe, that the shark had yet to surface. The first shark Richard tagged at Raine, back in Feb.'02, was tracked for some four months providing valuable insight into the movements of female tiger sharks after their annual visit to Raine Island for the turtle nesting season. You can learn more at Richard's web site
http://www.sharkresearch.com/shark_tracking_results.htm

Back at Raine Island, after we all became convinced that the shark would not reappear there began a mad rush to repack and stow all of the gear which had been unpacked and spread all over the boat. Three weeks of using equipment in different places creates havoc when it all has to be in one place in an instant. My equipment definitely didn't do back in the same places it came out of.

By 1:00 we were motoring away from Raine Island, watching the last of the turtles as they rose and frightened by the what they found in the world above dove hard with a big splash. Within fifteen minutes we were well outside the reef and into the slop. It was bad running for the next 18 hours until re-entered the Great Barrier Reef system which offered some protection from the ocean waves we had been fighting all way from Raine. I tried once in the early evening to write this piece but found it was too stressful (read sickness making), the computer bounced everywhere on my lap in the bunk, and I couldn't get rid of the growing queasy sensation in my stomach. After about five minutes I shut the machine down and had to pretend to get some sleep. This went on for the next eleven hours, the boat pounding into the waves with a jarring force you could feel in your bones. In several occasions, a couple of us reported being lifted off the bunk, getting airborne!

So the winter expedition to shoot Raine Island: Nature's War Zone is almost at an end. The field work is over, all that is left is to get this part of the story back for processing and ride this bucking vessel back to Cairns. But we will be going back for the wet season shoot. We will leave in mid late January, something like the Jan.20 for a three week expedition. If this expedition was marked by harsh heat we are expecting a lot of rain on the next trip and we hope you will join us on that trip.

We will be working hard to tag another three tiger sharks and continue our efforts to document the relationship between the sharks and the turtles. Please check in here at the web site just after the new year for further information about the start date of the next expedition and join us. As always we will be prepared to answer questions about what we are doing and the wildlife we are working with.