Shark Tagging

Petrel liquer- final stages

This gear did the trick- we pulled in 70-80 Wilson's Petrels (a European record?) and on another occasion 2 Little Shearwaters and 10+ Band-rumped Petrels.

Photos of some Wilson's here:

http://peteralfreybirdingnotebook.blogspot.com/2009/09/blog-post.html

Traditional Buckles Chum

Ingredients: Box of sardines, tuna oil, cod liver oil, sunflower oil.

Allow sardines to rot for several days, then bung it all in an onion bag and then pour and stir in a mix of fish, cod liver and general oils. Tie onto side of boat and if you are in the Azores the sharks will attack the boats. After several days of this hanging off the side of the boat the smell is nauseating.

Petrel liquer

Ingredients: 4kg of margarine, 2 kg of tinned tuna and a splash of cod liver oil.

Melt the marg in a marine biologists saucepan and kitchen and then bung in the tuna. Boil it up and then wisk it so that there is boiling burning tuna and marg all over the freaking place. Let it cool down and take it on the boat in a bucket. Either melt it with boiling water or stick it in the microwave (if you have one on board) and then pour it over the side. The Petrels loved this stuff- they were licking it off the ocean. It doesn't smell bad either and really is weak constitution friendly. I think Shirihai invented this but he didn't invent this:

Petrel liquid gold

Ingredients: 1kg of tinned tunna, 4 bottles of 330ml cod liver oil, 3 litres of sunflower oil.

Bung it all in a bucket, wisk and then pour in the ocean. It is failed to attract anything yet.

A Prophecy

I thought I would have a go at a bit of prophecy. How hard can it be?

Right, in April 2007 I predicted (well I backed the doom and gloom merchants) that a deep recession was coming. I based this on numerous independent sources including friends telling me what their monied clients were doing or what my monied clients were doing . So I followed the leaders- people who I respect for their business sense and simply copied them.

I sold my house, pocketed a tidy sum and went into a recession bunker in May 2007 (six months before the first wave and a good 18 months before recession was official). I contracted my business by simply not replacing people moving on and cut advertising to minimalise costs and passed the cuts onto customers- to remain competitive to see out the financial storm.

Following an intial wave in late 2007, by the summer of 2008- it all kicked off. The entire world banking system went into meltdown and house prices began to crash. Unemployment started rising and businesses started folding.

So basically, so far, my strategy has been pretty good and I managed to successfully back the right horse- which is this case was one of the worse case scenarios. I just picked up a property bargain (a saving of 25% from peak price) and the business is ticking over nicely. So far I have managed, by calling it well before it happened, to have incurred no significant losses- yet!

Now I have a new prediction. That prediction is this:

We are all fucked.
Within 18 months.

I reckon the worse of the recession is yet to come.