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June 17 - letter to Schultz & Lucile

of it. But without the rowboat, I decided that it was hardly the place to stay. After changing course from N.W. to S.W. once again we passed Naywa buoy or marker 2 miles on our starboard beam at 6 P.M. Visibility better, breeze moderate shamal, course N.W. again. Very light breeze when we arrived at the fish. pier at 8 P.M. The decks are already very damp, and we are in for a calm night. Mohammet brought a weeks collection of fish on board. Ed and Mr. Feltman say the plant is already to open tomorrow, in fact it has been ready the two days of the blow. It will be interesting to see what transpires tomorrow. Ed has gotten us a good room 22B in Ras Tanura which is certainly more accessible. Both Ed and I slept thru the alarm at 3:00 A.M. Mr. Feltman woke us up at 5 A.M.     June 17 - Ed went on out ahead and Swede and I came on out around 6 A.M. No fish boats have appeared yet. I saw some fish under some weed and grabbed them. The rest of the morning, I wrapped fish and wrote up notes. No boats came in this morning. It was calm and clear most of the morning. I also read good letters from home. I finished and mailed a letter to Dr. Schultz & Lucile. And rested the rest of the afternoon with a mild case of the runs. Swede and I will be fishing tonight. It was after 7 P.M. by the time we got 2 company nets straigtened out and on board. Then we went up to "Had al Lowh" to fish for the night. We caught 1 ^[[insertion]]each [[/insertion]] of two species of Scolopsis in the first haul of an old bag seine. The crew dragged that bag seine over some rough bottom and tore it all up; it would have lasted longer if we had stuck to sand bottom. Finally the crew of the Tarut and Yusif caught about a half bucket of fish. Gerrids, sillago, Lutjanus, flounder, Platycephalus, mullet, atherinids, 1 [[brattone?]], goatfish (2 species), herring, etc. The weather was fair with light S.E. winds. We tried a 300 ft. big mesh seine but with only one oar lock we could not operate it very well.
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"thubub"= fog 
  June 18 - Cool at dawn or rather 7 A.M. 31°c. There were actual clouds on the western horizon. Light breeze W by N with a sudden light fog at 7:15 A.M. The crabs were kind enough to take the bait off our seven shark line hooks. At 8:10 A.M. we left for fish pier to dry the nets. I caught quite a number of small [[underlined]] A. marginatus[[/underlined]] with the dip net under the end of the fish pier. Then I tried some rotenone along the rocks at the shore end of the pier. The tied was coming in rather strong, though it was low. Even so I got a number of interesting larval fish. The most beautiful fish was a small dark blue and vermilion orange pseudochromid [[Image: drawing of fish with blue and orange coloring]] 45 m.m. t.l. Another was also seen in the rocks but was not recovered. A colored pomacentrid 37 m.m. was also recovered; it was blue black above and dull yellow below with black spot on the dorsal, anterior peduncle top, and pectoral top [[image: drawing of fish with blue and light yellow coloring, black spot is present on the dorsal fin]] base as indicated in the drawing. I strongly suspect this would become all black as it grew older. Smaller ones than this are a brighter blue above and lighter yellow below.   A shamal sprang up between 12 & 12:30; before that it was almost calm. One tiny grouper was almost a silouette [[image: drawing of fish with black coloring and white spots; labeled "U.S.N.M. 148012"]] with white spots, the distribution of which are reprinted here. I think this is the young of the black grouper or "sbaiti." At any rate it is interesting to find these young groupers also E. tauvina around 25 m.m. at this time.   Several days ago Swede saw a 7 foot either  hammerhead or bonnet shark north of the fish pier, and he thinks that is what eats our lines and straightens our hooks. The shamal increased to strong about 4 P.M. with white caps in the bay. It is interesting to me how fast the fishes have collected around the new fish pier. Barnacles have already grown solid on the steel dock pilings. Besides snappers, gerrids, small fishes, I also saw an 8 inch [[underlined]]Plectorhynchus[[/underlined]]