By Mike Busch
Last month I was invited aboard the M/V Ocearch to check out their Great White Shark tagging expedition off Montauk. If you missed Part I click here.
For a quick primer on why Ocearch decided for the second year in a row to target Great White Sharks right off Long Island Beaches, check out the short video below.
After a hurricane swell and rainstorm cut my first trip short, the Ocearch team was nice enough to invite me out again on Saturday, August 19th to get a full day of action and hopefully witness a young Great White Shark caught, tagged, and released safely back into the Ocean.
Simply tagging doesn’t quite explain what goes on, it is more like a high speed Nascar pit stop with scientists taking multiple measurements, blood, and attaching both GPS and acoustic devices for tracking the sharks on the Global Shark Tracker. All this is done in less than 15 minutes to ensure a safe release. For a great example of the process check out this short video.
The night before the trip I was informed that the boat had moved from Montauk to just South of Shinnecock Inlet, following some of the huge pods of bunker down the beach. This was welcome news to me as I would be picked up in Hampton bays and could avoid the weekend traffic on the way to Montauk.
I was picked up at Oakland’s Marina along with a few executives from Costa Sunglasses, one of Ocearch’s main sponsors.
On the way out we passed some huge big bunker pods and saw a Humpback Whale, always a good sign.
Once I got on the boat, the crew was already catching live bait and chumming off the stern of the Mother Ship.
Continued on pages 2,3,4,5,6, and 7