I haven’t written for a while, mainly because I’m stuck on the land. 😩

Lots has been happening though.. so about a year ago I stopped ordering plastic straws for the pub, I watched the awful video of a turtle having one extracted from its nose. That grossed me out so much I couldn’t put another plastic straw in a drink ever again, from that day we made the move to metal reusable straws.

Anyway, that was 15 months ago, back to the present day.. Matt and I have got 55 sites so far confirmed as plastic straw free starting from September.
We are talking millions and millions of plastic single use straws per year, 80% of marine rubbish comes from land based sources… and plastic straws are the most common items found.

Our website launched last night, its so cool. Not only does it have easy to remember facts, we are selling the metal straws from it too. I added a page today that will list all of the people and venues that are part of this plastic free revolution.

WWW.STRAWSSUCK.CO.UK

The plan is to get every pub and bar in the UK plastic straw free by 2020, starting with Brighton.

We have a long way to go but the feedback from managers of the sites I have visited is great so I’m pretty confident. Plastic cups are up there on the agenda too and we have been looking at an awesome company called Stack Cup as a possible solution. They are still plastic but they are reused by the customer and can be washed.

A Japanese theme park (Space World theme park in Kitakyushu) have frozen 5000 fish and sea creatures into an ice rink, the punters can skate over what the park are calling the – Aquarium of Ice.  More like the Nightmare before Christmas than a “pretty and educational wintery experience”

Thanks to a huge backlash on Facebook and twitter they have closed the exhibit.

This story really shows what public pressure can do and maybe with more support the likes of the Taiji dolphin drive hunting could end.

Here is a link to the full story.

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I’m watching cockroaches run up and down the departure lounge and twitching like a mad person as I’m sure every mosquito in here is trying to get me.

This one is up there with my worst airports. Only 2 hours to go…..

Diving outside the bay off Mafia island got me my shark fix for today or so I thought.

Was it a Guitar fish or Guitar shark? The first one was considerably bigger than the second but it was only after the discussion with the others that I realised I hadn’t pressed play on my GoPro and therefore had no evidence of it – very annoying!

and apparently Guitar sharks don’t exist they are all rays…

Guitar ray – pectoral fins fused to the head, gills on the underside

Guitar shark – pectoral separate, gills on side

Tonight we had a really interesting talk from Chris Rohner.

From water samples during feeding Chris and Matt have been able to identify the types of plankton consumed. This however will only give information on what the shark is feeding on right then.
From a skin sample they got more detailed information on what the shark feeds on when not at the surface. The samples show there are two types of fatty acid present;

Omega 3 – From the Plankton including copepods, fish eggs, krill, and small fish

Omega 6 – unknown

It is thought that the Omega 6 comes from feeding in the deep scattering layer.

Sonar operators, using the newly developed sonar technology during World War II, were puzzled by what appeared to be a false sea floor 300–500 metres deep at day, and less deep at night. This turned out to be due to millions of marine organisms, most particularly small mesopelagic fish, with swimbladders that reflected the sonar. These organisms migrate up into shallower water at dusk to feed on plankton. The layer is deeper when the moon is out, and can become shallower when clouds pass over the moon.[5] Wikipedia 

Chris found from an autopsy of a manta ray that lantern fish were present in the stomach. The fatty acids from the fish match up with the skin sample of the whale shark so it’s possible that the times we don’t see the sharks on the surface they are feeding at depths of 200m – 900m on lantern fish.

Lanternfishes (or myctophids, from the Greek mykter, “nose” and ophis, “serpent”) are small mesopelagic fish of the large family Myctophidae. 

Sampling via deep trawling indicates lanternfish account for as much as 65% of all deep-sea fish biomass. Indeed, lanternfish are among the most widely distributed, populous, and diverse of all vertebrates, playing an important ecological role as prey for larger organisms. With an estimated global biomass of 550 – 660 million metric tonnes, several times the entire world fisheries catch, lanternfish also account for much of the biomass responsible for the deep scattering layer of the world’s oceans.

Wikipedia 

Whale shark spotting from the sky as we travel to our main destination; Mafia island. About 40 minutes from Zanzibar airport.

Ricardo and me are debating whether the guy the size of a hippo in front of us will fit through the teeny tiny plane door and whether the putt putt thing will have the power to take off. We feel a bit silly worrying about our extra few kilos of dive gear now…

“One of my regrets in life was not swimming with whale sharks” – Sir David Attenborough

Male juvenile whale sharks off Mafia island