What goes in the ocean, goes in you.

http://www.wiseoceans.com/

Rocky Shore, Mount Batten

I absolutely love this photo and it has some excellent memories attached. When I was at the University of Plymouth doing my undergraduate degree, we used to come here for most field trips in order to assess the rocky shore intertidal zone, collect data on various things. I had to collect the organisms for my dissertation here also - rock chips containing Chthalamus montagui barnacles (I had to remove the few Semibalanus balanoides that were present), the dog whelk Nucella lapillus (boreal-lusitanian species) and the oyster drill Ocenebra erinacea (classically a warm water species). I had some very fun times here. We even used to come for fun, just to sit on the rocks, have a good mooch in the rockpools seeing whether we could find the biggest edible crab (Cancer pagurus) or the biggest velvet swimming crab (Necora puber) - obviously we did this as to not largely disturb their habitat. In fact, it's a big message to any keen rockpooler - it's all good to go and have a look, turn over the rocks to see what's lurking, but please put the rocks back in the exact same place and be very wary of what is actually underneath the rock. If you drop it in the water without much consideration for what might be living there, you'll probably end up killing things!!

I had some very good times here anyway and I actually do miss Plymouth, mainly for this shore.

Cage diving with Great White sharks in South Africa

I went to South Africa on a field course trip through the University of Plymouth (second year). It was absolutely fantastic since we went out a week beforehand to do the usual touristy things. The highlight of the holiday was a cage diving trip with great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) in Gansbaai. It truly was one of the best experiences of my life.

We were picked up at about 5.30am from our apartment just outside of Cape Town... Then we made a little stop off point (I can't remember where it was, I'm really bad at remembering that) to see a Southern Right Whale and her calf in the water. My camera is pretty poor for zoomed shots, but you can just see the calf below...

... Then a pretty standard shot of the beautiful coastline...

... Luckily I caught a photo of the calf breaching the water. It was beautiful to see (in person), unfortunately the camera doesn't do it justice.

This is just before we got onto the boat at Gansbaai...

... and this is our boat...

... this is the cage ...

... this is... a shark!

... Looking very cold!!!

Tuna head as bait, cage and shark

Shark...

... One of the best photos I took that day, it was fantastic...

... and the other cracking shot. Unfortunately my camera [as mentioned] isn't the best but I thought it was good timing at least!!

And there we have it!

Rachel x