Viewing page 33 of 108

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

ing was actually more varied than the others.  
May 11--Continued strong shamal.  Yusif caught a small nurse shark on broken up gub gub.  In one eel pot I caught 70 small Terapon 2-4 inches, 4 apogonids, 1 Faskar, 1 Lethrinus (red gill cover) in an overnight set.  Since I had so much else to manage I saved only 2 Terapon.  It was a wire funnel trap.  The cloth funnel trap caught only one apogonid.  A pipefish mysteriously appeared in the bottom of the collecting can; all I can think of is that it was coughed up by the shark.  He also caught a blunt head grunt.  Then we moved into the dock all day to get our rigging changed over to the Tarat-jig poles. The wind blew hard all day.  I swatted flies and wrote up notes.
May 12- Fair with continued shamal winds.  Last night tho we went to the same place as before the fishing was poor with scattered bait and cloudier water.  I caught one siganid floating at the surface like a frog in a pool. This morning we went into port again to see Gurley and get Ahmed straightened out.  Then we went out and picked up the big traps (four of them) the most recent baited one had only 2 small fish; one almost without bait was loaded with 8 siganids, a Lutjanus, several chaetodons, angelfish, etc. I had a case of the runs so did not feel so well.  The eel pots in the morning place left over night yeilded 2 toadfish, and some more [[underline]] Terapons [[/underline]].  In the afternoon, the shamal increased with a cloudy sky, and even a few drops of rain.  I felt worse till late evening; we stood in at west pier tied to pipes 100 yds south of the pier to pick up Ahmed when he came back from Dhahran.  I wrote a letter to Lucile.
May 13- At 2 A.M. I almost rolled out of bed as the boat turned over on the starboard side because the tied had gone out.  I got in Gurley's bed for awhile till it straightened out.
[[end page]]
[[start page]]
47
No equipment went over the side.  At 5 A.M., Abdullah captain speared a [[underline]] sbaiti [[/underline]] [[symbol for male]] 8 lbs 595 m.m. S.L., and 69 mm. T.L. with a long piece of goat skin in its stomach.  The testes were yellowish and small but were more the shape of testes with sharp edges and no blood vessels.  They called it a male because it was more elongate, and less stocky.  The day was spent in at dock getting a few supplies, supervising work on the Tarat [[?]].  I wrote notes and wrapped fish specimens all morning.  8 gal. tank in box #6 got completely filled with fish in formalin, and #22 with a trammel net were returned to the storehouse.  A 55 gal. drum of formalin was picked up and box #13 with mason jars & rotenone.  Mr. Sanders and others were very cooperative.  Jim and Mr. Sanders cleared it thru customs, and it took the usual amount of time.  It became calm and hot from 10 A.M. on, but the shamal came up again before 7 P.M. with moderate winds.  This evening we anchored 200 yds. from shore 1 mi north of west pier.  There were snakes plentiful as usual and the bait was scattered and then became heavy like a movable cloud under the light.  It consisted mostly of herring and dussermierids.  Jim speared a squid with a spear.  There were several blue crabs and 1 mole lobster caught.  I caught a small scarpaenid.  We saw several larger fish like small barracuda, and we saw one fish with black and white band which was longish; but it went quickly.  No two nights even in the same place are the same for the fishes.
May 14 - Calm and clear at dawn.  The eel pots yeilded [[underline]] Terapon [[/underline]], Lethrinus (red gill), Scolopsis with the brown band, and one parapercid.  I kept one parapercid and one of each of the others.  We picked up 2 of the last traps in water and got blowfish and several parrotfish [[underline]] Plectorhynchus [[/underline]], filefish and porgies.  We rounded Ras Tanura Pt. at 9:30 A.M. in a flat calm headed north.  Around the boat in the morning I noticed a small school of Scomber jumping about close to shore.  We reached the Refinery area at 10:45 A.M.  Small schools were in evidence of Scomber.  At 
[[end page]]