We finished off the survey today with quite a finale! Today's catch was made up of only blue sharks. Lots of blue sharks! We caught 23 total in the 2 sets we completed today. And one of the blue sharks we caught may have been the smallest I've ever seen. The shark was just 21 inches (54 centimeters) from the tip of her tiny nose to the fork in her cute tail, which is not much larger than the reported size at birth. Catching such a small shark suggests that pregnant females must be pupping close by.

Our survey block today was about 35 miles from San Diego. This was our seventh block in the survey and we have now sampled each block twice. Tomorrow we will fish outside of the survey area in hopes of catching some larger makos to put satellite tags on. Makos and common thresher sharks are commercially fished off California, with the thresher shark being fished the most. Both are popular with recreational anglers also. Much of the shark meat served in restaurants is thresher or mako. From the data we get back from the satellite tags we put on these sharks, we know that the same group of makos and threshers that are fished off California are also the ones fished off Baja.

On Tuesday, we will return to San Diego to change personnel and take on fuel and supplies. After a night in our own beds, we will depart from San Diego on Wednesday and repeat the whole survey again.

Below is the photo I took of the gorgeous sunset that we enjoyed to end our day.