Discus

When I say to people that i study discus they give a strange look and wonder what Im talking about. I hope a few have had the thought that i study maximising the distance that discus are thrown by the British Olympic team- perhaps looking into discus aerodynamics or density or structure. I even tell some that I study discus reproductive biology. I really hope some of these people have had the doubt, if even for a moment, that the discus thrown by the British Olympic team might actually living things, things which are in need of breeding programme in order to get the best quality traits enhanced for the competition discus.

The truth is I am studying discus fish. When i tell people this they seem glad that the awkard moment when they didnt know what i was talking about has passed, and are so relieved that they dont actually give discus fish much thought.

It was a sad day last week when we had the fist death in the discus camp, and 'male #3', or 'ill-boy' as he was getting called increasingly frequently went off to the big chest freezer in the sky(lab).

A moments silence.

Jabba in the hut

Ive got rabies.

Ive had it for 25 minutes. My arm aches, but I've not got the rage.

I went to see a nurse and she injected me with the virus. Its only a weakened form of course, so my body's immune system is gunna kick its ass out of town. If my immunization is the Rugby World Cup, then the rabies is Portugal and my immune system is New Zealand.













There is going to be a rout. Ive got to get two more hits of course, two more games in which I should become accustomed to the Portuguese play. They might get a few points on the board. My body will remember these games and face up to any conceded points. I will prepare methods to combat them if we ever play again in the future. That way, if while in the Amazon I get up for a leak in the middle of the night and get bitten by a rabid vampire bat,














my body will immediately recognise the Portuguese attack and call up the immune-players that are best suited to suppressing its well drilled, expansive backs play. The saved time in defence-selection should give me the chance to get to the local medical hut and get a booster. The extra momentum gained by bringing on this boosted up front row in a delicately balanced game should be enough to tip the result in my favour. The game will be hard fought. The cup will be life.

The Wrasse that time is going to forget

Ive been in the water for an hour now and the cold is starting to take hold of my movements. My attempts to get the giant ragworm down next to the wreck are becoming more desperate and I curse the small weight on the line for not resisting the pull of the current. I notice a dark shape emerge from the wreck, but its difficult to see with the thousands of plankton blocking my view. A wave washes over my snorkel but i hold my breath as I'm sure the shape must be getting close to the ragworm and I don't want to have to look away...

Ive been doing quite a bit of snorkeling over the summer and starting to really take an interest in the sea life. A friend at work is doing a practical class this year that involves looking at the morphological adaptations of different marine fish skulls. To do this he needs a selection of fish with different feeding habits that he can dissolve the flesh away from in a Quint from Jaws type vat of acid leaving a clean skull.

Big J and I have seen a lot of humongous wrasse while snorkeling, and in a moment of Einstein like foresight I thought that it might be possible to catch them using hand line while in the water. This intuitively seemed like it might be an idea that would prove to be very difficult in practice, so i did a bit of investigation. Googleing "fishing while (snorkeling OR swimming)" gave one or two returns that referred to people having done it, so I felt like it was worth a go.

We went yesterday to Thurlestone, on a low tide, and managed to find the wreck of "The Louis Sheid" in 5 to 10 metres of water.

... Suddenly the shape darts away from the wreck, and i cant quite believe my luck as the line pulls tight and the fish is hooked. The prehistoric looking ragworm was too good an opportunity for Mr Dark Shape to pass by. I wind the line back in, amazed at how the fish's dull pulling of the spool is telling my hand a completely different story to the theatrics and dramatic lunges that my eyes see are going on under the water. The dark shape makes a brave fight of it, and is clearly not happy with the way his day is panning out, or, perhaps more seriously in the longer term of things, his skulls newly acquired destiny.

Back at the car and Mr Ballan Wrasse seems a lot smaller than he did in the sea, maybe 1 and a quarter pounds, but I'm still thrilled at the success of the first fishing-while-snorkeling trip and start thinking of the possibility of tying some mackerel feathers to my fins and going for a swim.

I get home late, put on the TV and am delighted to see its the fantastic 'Tribe' with Bruce Parry. The very next scene is a group of remote Pacific islanders doing some fishing while snorkeling for themselves and cant quite believe the coincidence.

Peaks at the end with the jumping tiger

Sometimes I find it difficult to keep the blog up to date. I enjoy writing a post about a specific thing that has happened, but it often takes a lot of time to get my spelling mistakes just right. If I have a busy week at work (yes they're slowly starting to appear) or have to do jury service (one was guilty, one got off, I said they were both guilty but the judge accepted the 10-2 majority) I can suddenly find myself with three or four out of date post ideas but with nothing concrete to publish.

In a whistle stop tour of the last few weeks:

I have been training my ass off for the Bristol Half Marathon which is on Sunday. I achieved my lifetime aim of a sub-1 hour 30 mins two years ago, so this year my motivation is to beat the athletics legend Steve Cram, who is running as a race profile raiser. He has been out in Osaka covering the world championships for the past few weeks for the BBC, so hopefully he hasn't had time to train and wont be at his usual 1.26-8 standard. The world championships themselves were fantastic. I found myself glued to the TV for hours at a time- much like when i recently watched season 1 of Heroes. I occasionally found myself with tears in my eyes as athletes ran themselves into the ground, or in an instant of finely honed power and technique achieved what they had been training all year for. For me, being an athlete must be somewhere near the best job in the world. And how fit, in every sense of the word is is Kelly Sotherton?

In some breaking video clip news, I have been watching and listening to a lot of Mark Watson (for example click on me and try not to smile), and he is my new fave comedian. I also came across this video showing a tiger being so fantastically (and yet sickeningly) agile that I later realised I hadn't moved for a full minute after watching it:

Cool jumping Tiger

He would be in the elephant jumping event at the Tiger worlds.

If only that competition existed outside of my head.