Today we moved the boat to Nixon’s Harbour on the south coast of South Bimini. It was particularly hot this morning so I decided to have my first attempt at underwater filming with the GoPro. I managed to hold the camera at too high and angle and mostly recorded the surface of the water- but it is rather attractive...............

We had arranged to go and see SharkLab, a research station that has been operating here since the 1980’s. Unfortunately our dinghy has developed yet more leaks over the past few days and is now unusable, so the educational officer agreed to come out to the boat to pick us up.

SharkLab is currently home to 22 researchers, mostly research assistants continuing the long term Lemon Shark project that they undertake. The mangroves on the island are ideal for juveniles and genetic studies have shown they display natal fidelity – females return to the same area they were born to have their pups. They stay in the mangroves for about 7 years and then go out to sea for another 7 before returning to have their first litter. Reaching sexual maturity at such a relatively old age compounds the problem of over fishing – with up to 100 million shark killed annually, many for the morally indefensible shark fin soup, they need all the help they can get. All sharks are protected throughout the Bahamas and SharkLab routinely tags Lemon sharks, Nurse sharks and Great Hammerheads. They  have data on one individual Lemon shark that is known to be 38 years old.

Our tour lasted about an hour and was spent with three small sharks in a pen of their beach. You can see the boat in the background.

As well as interesting facts, we also got to stroke more endangered species. This Lemon shark was about 18 months old, estimated from the healing of her umbilical cord. She had the rough sandpaper like skin sharks are known for, and pale yellow dorsal fins that give them their name.

The Nurse shark felt smooth and rubbery by comparison, evolved to squeeze in and out of the small crevices where their food lurks. They are one of the species that can pump water over their gills so do not have to swim constantly and apparently have a huge throat cavity that acts like a bellows valve and can produce a negative pressure equal to 20 Dyson hoovers - they can suck a conch right out of its shell. They also eat algae and coral but that might be by mistake bearing in mind their feeding technique!

We returned to our usual anchoring spot for the night – this is what a happy anchor looks like in sand and 4m of clear blue sea. If only it was always this easy.