Otter trawl on the Napa River
A day out on the Napa river as part of the Otter trawl survey team.
A day out on the Napa river as part of the Otter trawl survey team.
Field work is supposed to be where ecologists get to play Indiana Jones. The reality with swing-dancing joke-cracking fish-loving UC Davis research scientist Jim Hobbs is somewhat different: wet, muddy, smelly, and mostly involving either waiting for leopard sharks or harvesting leopard shark vomit. by Alessandra Bergamin on December 10, 2014
by Alessandra Bergamin on April 17, 2014 It is early morning at Eden Landing Ecological Reserve and in a pond designated as E9 by the managers of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, the water is cold and still. A leopard shark, around three feet long with distinct black and brown bands and spots mottled across a steel-gray body, rests on the pond’s silty floor. There is no real agenda for the day except, of course, to eat, but for one of the largest predators in the San Francisco Bay that shouldn’t be too much of a challenge. So the shark can afford to wait for the water to warm and the tide to come in before it starts its day.
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