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even with only one anchor. The eel pots yeilded nothing. We got nothing off a set tine baited with cuttlefish.  Night light fishing yielded next to nothing except 1 mole lobster, a couple of small atherinids, and a small scorpaenid, and  more green bugs. The bait was very thin. There were snakes as usual and couple of squid. I saw one small fish ^[[insertion]] Pegasus [[/insertion]] which may have been a flying fish. One gar and one small half beak were also seen, and a couple of crabs. There was almost no tidal current. The wind continued with lulls most of the night.   

   May - 7 Continued shamal with dust over the land. The bottom here is a grey muck sandy-clay or clayey sand with a rooted green grass on it as we saw by what stuck on to the anchor. This is characteristic bottom of a large part of this area of the Gulf around Tarut Bay. Some of the clay got in my eel pot and cemented some of the bait into a hard ball all by itself. With such bottom conditions, any kind of dragging fishing gear is not very feasible in these areas. The grass- is short with extensive branch roots, and is apparently a spermatophyte tho it is not now in bloom. By 8:15 A.M., we got under way again towards Shmayly Id which we reached about 8:45 A.M. we continued west then north to the uppermost reaches of Tarut Bay; we reached the oil pipe line across the water at Safwah about 10:15. In the distance beyond was the Dhahran road on the sandy shore, and several stake fish traps. The water was all rather shallow and murky. We passed some fish pot fishermen but they had no fish, and were setting their pots. Another fisherman was headed for the stake nets at the upper end of the bay. We did not go beyond the pipe line because of danger of tangling our rigging with a power line above the pipe line. Another Island is [[strikethrough]] another [[/strikethrough]] indicated on large scale charts just west of Shmayly. Shmayly however is the only island in the upper end of the bay which is not covered at high tide. There are several sand spits

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[[image: a fish with a long beak front, and what looks like wings or long pectoral fins]] [[right corner]] 43 [[/right corner]]
bare at mean low tide in the bay. This morning Jim found the [[underline]] Pegasus [[/underline]] in the same net he had caught it last night. Tho dried out it is still a recognizable specimen of the family Pegasidae. It swam with its wings outstretched. I used 2 quts of poison plus what wet poison there was left over from the other day, and I caught quite a number of fish among a large clump of rooted gulf weed just west of Shmayly Id and a little south. The cube root dust mixed with water into a thick mud makes an effective brown cloud of fish poison which sends some fish to the surface within 5 minutes time. The brown [[underline]] Plesiops [[/underline]] seemed most affected by this poison of any fish except tiny grunts. The crew looted a fish stake trap, and reported [[underline]] Chirocentrus dorab [[/underline]] in great quantities. They brought back a bucket full of them from 15"-36" in length which they had speared; I kept one which was not mangled for a specimen, U-48-44. I wrote up notes in the afternoon. About 6 P.M. I saw what looked like a small manta ray jump clear out of water.  It was possibly 4 feet across at the wings. About 7:30 this evening we tried the 100 foot seine on the north side of Shmayly Id. All we got were large atherinids, [[underline]] Cyprinodon dispar [[/underline]], small mullet, and one small porgy; all was just kept for bait. Fishing by night light rendered very little, I collected one large  [[image - female symbol]] halfbeak with flowing eggs. It was calm during the evening & night.

    May 8- This morning I lifted my 2 eel pots which were set in about 4 feet of water on sand bottom with rooted gulf weed. One had a large parapercid and the other a toadfish. At 8:20, we got under ^[[insertion]] way [[/insertion]] for Ras Tanura west pier for news of Gurley, Yusif, more ice, supplies, and Ahmed to the dentist for a tooth ache. Poor Jim spent the whole day running around trying to get Ahmed to the dentist, and also get some goods ordered, I sat guard over our goods with the flies and wrote notes and made up eel pot funnels  I had a talk with an Italian teacher Marco Bormioli and he was 
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