Barb Block, salmon-tagging in Alaska. Today in Prince William sound was perfect. I was in the work skiff much of the day. The water was glassy calm, Chris Perle, AaronCarlisle, Dan Madigan and the rest of the team was on the Solstice, an Alaska Department of Fish and Game research vessel. Eagles were calling, mist rolled over the snow-capped peaks.

Here in the land of the salmon shark at latitute 60 degrees North, we caught and tagged them today. A lot of them. With the skiff, we were able to get in closer to the shore and catch 6 sharks. We handled about 8 animals in all today.

The sharks were large -- up to about 350 pounds. Everything went smoothly, with captain Dave Anderson and his mate, Ted, helping out the shark tagging team. Each fish has to be maneuvered onto a cradle, and the handling is tricky for such large sharks. Here's a photo from last year.

We put only SPOT (satellite position-only) tags on some sharks, pop-up tags on others and the internal archival tags on the rest. On one shark, we put all three. If we an retrieve the internal tag -- which would happen if a sport fishermen caught the fish found the tag and sent it to us -- we can look at the internal body temperature of a shark as it travels from Alaska to the tropics. The pop-up and SPOT tags wil work together to give oceanographic information and good location positions when the shark comes to the surface and puts her fin out.

The physiologists also had a good day getting samples. There was a renewed debate about the temperature of salmon-shark hearts, so we measured them: 12.2C in the ventricle in a decked shark, with a red muscle temperature over 24.4 C. How about that! These sharks are truly warm sharks with a cold heart.

All and all, it was an outstanding day of shark tagging. The key was remembering that salmon sharks like silver salmon, not pink salmon! And thanks to
Captain Dave B. and the Valdez sport fishers for helping us out.

We're now anchored up in Comfort Cove. We've seen bears, and have an alpine vista of snowcapped peaks, and Alaskan wilderness. We hope to send some photos tomorrow.