Early Morning Shark Post

• Vanuatu fisherman catches killer shark. In the spirit of Survivor the battle took place by torchlight as a local fought the 2.8m long (9′) shark that claimed the lives of 4 people and one dog. The fight witnessed and cheered on by over 40 people, the stand up rod holder snapped and the fisherman was forced to fight the full 140kg (300#) shark by himself as he pulled out over 300m of line and two bouys. Once brought on board the shark was shot three times before they decided it was dead. Apparently the bouy was baited with a dog, though likely a dead one.
• If you didn’t manage to find that grossly over stuffed feeling on Thanksgiving, this might help. A Tiger shark was caught with another shark protruding from its mouth on Tannum Beach in Australia. Researchers hope to make a case for tagging and tracking of tiger sharks.
  

  Dr Pepperell says tiger sharks are also known to ingest all manner of things found floating in the coean – including whole rolls of linoleum, nuts, bolts and copper wire.

  whole rolls of linoleum, nuts, bolts, copper wire… a human arm, complete with tattoo…

  If they find something not to their taste, like many other sharks they can regurgitate foreign items – but there doesn’t seem to be much a tiger shark can’t stomach.

• If you’re heading down to Florida for Christmas you might want to think twice about going surfing. There have been 3 shark attacks in 3 weeks (more, more). Experts are saying that it’s due to the large number of people in the surf. A “law of averages”. Then again you’re more likely to die on the way.
• One man from Edinburgh became facinated with sharks after seeing the feature film JAWS and ever since has learning and collecting all types of shark stuff. His collection includes over 300 teeth and jawbones and has taken over his both his spare room and garage. One of the prizes of that collection is the jaw of a 16′ great white shark, caught of the coast of Australia.
• It’s important to understand how sharks think and find their prey. And perhaps more importantly, should you really punch a shark face?
  

  “Yea, I punched a shark in the face.” – Dane Cook

More shark stories this afternoon.

Ok, maybe you don’t like sharks as much as I do. Do you like reptiles? Check out these photos from the Serpentario here in La Paz, Mexico.

Monterey Bay Aquarium

While I was in Santa Cruz for Thanksgiving I made sure that I visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Though my choice of going the day after Thanksgiving was not the brightest one, I did have a great time and managed to take a few great photos despite the overwhelming crowds of children. All of the images here were taken with a Canon PowerShot SD550, and not my usual Canon PowerShot SD10 ELPH because I forgot the battery in Mexico.

Upon entering the aquarium the first thing you see is the awesome Kelp Forest exhibit complete with a large school of tiny fish, Leopard Sharks, and a Wolf Eel I couldn’t get a clear picture of. Be sure to check out the live kelp cam.

As you might expect there were more exciting and strange animals at every turn, like this Sheep Crab (pictured below). It wasn’t long before we started moving in to the deeper water inhabitants like the goliath grouper below, and huge yellowfin and bluefin Tuna. I wish I could have captured better images of the Tuna because there were easily a few over 500 pounds. As a fisherman seeing these beasts up close for the first time in my life I was unable to blink and had to be pulled away from the glass.

As we continued through the aquarium there were quite a few areas where you could pet and/or feed different species of fish, stingrays, sharks, and more. It was nearly impossible to get pictures in this area with all the children pushed up against the exibit and their parents close behind them. I did manage to break through their wall and snap two good images of the Yellowtail feeding, and the Shark petting exibits.

The Jellyfish were truely a highlight of the trip for me and that area of the aquarium was nearly empty of little children running about, screaming, and getting their oily fingerprints all over the glass. I was able to take my time getting high quality photos, and watch the jellies slowly waltz around the tanks. The layouts of the jellyfish exhibits and the lack of children made for a very relaxed environment.

The view of the Monterey Bay from the aquarium is just as amazing as everything you’d see inside with a few added bonuses. You can easily spot seals, turtles, and other marine wildlife with the provided (and free) telescopes located all around the observation deck. If you look closely at the last image blow you might notice something familiar. Not ringing a bell yet? Well the Monterey Bay Aquarium was where they shot portions of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and this is where they kept two Humpback Whales. You can watch a short clip from the making of the movie at the Monterey Bay Aquarium website.

I definitely want to go back to the aquarium when it’s not as busy, perhaps even write up a much more in depth article, but I don’t know when that may happen. Until then I’ll probably just watch the live webcams while I’m working.

More Koi Pictures

The pictures were taken with a Canon 5D. Which is very impressive! You can see that big flathead catfish in the last picture. The rest of the pictures can be found in the previous entry.

Food, Football, & Fishing

Happy Thanksgiving to all you Americans out there, and I suppose a belated one to the Canadians. My trip to Santa Cruz was long and occasionally frustrating, the waiting not the flying. I think the biggest annoyance on the trip was that Dallas Fort Worth Airport has big screen Samsung TVs playing CNN Headline news everywhere, literally everywhere, and because there was apparently no headline news they repeated the same broadcast every 15 minutes.

Im still hoping that we make it out to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, but imagine my surprise when I arrived and I found a huge Koi pond in the front yard. I’ve been out walking around a bit this morning, mostly enjoying the mountain air and staring up in to the huge trees, everything I can’t find in La Paz. So I figured that I would share some photos, I haven’t gotten a good picture of it yet, but there is an albino Flathead Catfish in the pond thats pushing 15-20 pounds. Maybe after dinner I’ll go noodling.

Continue reading “Food, Football, & Fishing”…

Weekly Wrap-up

• Friday Fishing with On The Patio, always a treat, almost always NSFW, but this ones pretty safe.
• Fishing boat runs aground off Hawaii’s big island. A 69-foot fishing boat, named Seven Stars, crashed in to some rocks about 7 miles off shore just before 5 am. The Coast Guard was alterted and managed to rescue the entire crew and are now concentrating their efforts on the 700 gallons of diesel fuel that’s still onboard the wrecked ship.
• Two fishing clubs in Hawaii call for a federal investigation into council fishing regulations. The investigation hopes to determine whose interests the council is actually representing. (more)
• Muskyfishing.Blogspot.com is a well written blog all about musky fishing. Unfortunatly, the writer doesn’t seem to have any information about himself on the page, or a means to contact him. If you’re the author and you’re reading this send me an email (jwm at fishingfury dot com).
• FlickR photos. Check out some of the newest photos FlickR users have uploaded and tagged ‘fishing’.
• 14 more fishermen charged with illegal fishing. Will they never learn?
• Fishermen in Guam try long-line fishing for the first time. The fishing boats will release over 20 miles of line, armed with thousands of hooks, the line is expected to bring in about 50 tuna, mahi-mahi (called dorado here in La Paz), or marlin.
• Indian fishermen protest ban in Orissa. About 300 fishermen showed up to protest a new fishing ban near the Gahirmatha marine sanctuary. The sanctuary is home to the world’s largest nesting site of the endangered Olive Ridley turtles.

Free Photo Software

Here at Fishing Fury we always love good software, especially when it helps us organize, edit, print, and share our photos.

• Picasa – Another awesome invention by Google. Picasa is software that will help you organize all of your images. You can fix a variety of common photo problems, like red eye, or use the 12 lighting and colour effects to make those final touches. Picasa can create photo collages, order or print images yourself, post images to Blogger, create gift CDs for your friends, backup your images to CD and DVD, and a great deal more. I use this program on an almost daily basis and highly recommend it to anyone that takes a lot of pictures. The latest version even supports RAW images. Take a tour of Picasa and its many features.
• Picaboo – I just started using this program and already I can tell that I like it. Picaboo lets you create rich and dynamic photo albums to share with your friends and family. You can share your albums via email, print them out yourself. You can even order prints, album DVDs, and bound albums. The only bad thing I can say about this program really, is that it doesn’t support all of my fonts.
• Neat Image – Digital camera images can often times be ruined by low light, high ISO speeds, or high JPEG compression. Neat Image understands how images turn out this way and is capable of adjusting images back to near crystal clarity. I would say this program has a bit of a learning curve, but the results are worth it. I recommend the quick start, and don’t forget to check out tips and tricks.
• PXN8 – PXN8 is an online photo editing service, it even hooks in to flickr. Try playing with a random photo, or enter the URL to one of your images and edit instantly. Its totally free and you don’t even have to install anything.

Now that you’ve organized all your images it’s time to share the best ones. There are tons of image hosting services out there, but if you’re looking for image hosting services that are just as robust, look no further.

• Riya – Riya is an image service that will organize your image by whos in them. How does it do that? Facial Recognition of course, and a little input from you. But that’s not even the best part, Riya learns who people are and automaticly tags images, it can even read signs! Depending on the photo hosting service you’re using now you may even be able to import all your images from sites like flickr (support coming soon).
• flickr – I would be hard pressed to believe that people haven’t heard about flickr by now. Flickr is a very popular online photo hosting service that allows you to add comments, and notes to images (or parts of images), tag your images, organize them albums and share them with your friends and family. Flickr is also supported by a large amount of third party software.