July 16, 2024 • 45 mins
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert chats with shark scientist Jasmin Graham about her new book “Sharks Don't Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist.”
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb, and this episode of Stuff to
Blow your Mind, we're going to be chatting with Jasmine Graham,
a shark scientist and author of Sharks Don't Sink. This
is a great book and it is out right now
in all formats, So I encourage you if this interview
grabs you, if the subject matter grabs you, and especially
(00:34):
if you're interested in sharks, this is definitely some great
summer reading for you, so pick up a copy, especially
if you are going to go out to the beach
or in any way experience the ocean this year. So
without further ado, let's dive right in. Hi, Jasmine, welcome
to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
The new book, Sharks Don't Sink. Adventures of a Rogue
Sharks Scientist is out in digital, physical, and audio formats.
I really enjoyed. It's a science book about sharks, but
it's also a social advocacy book and a personal memoir.
So I wanted to ask you. I'm going to ask
you about all of these aspects, but I guess the
best place to start is the simple question, how did
(01:18):
you become interested in shark biology.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
I was always very interested in the ocean, and I
grew up fishing with my dad and come from a
fishing family, and so the ocean was always part of me.
I didn't really think much about sharks. I wasn't one
of those people that was afraid of them. I wasn't
super obsessed with them as a kid. They were kind
of just animals that existed. But whenever I was in
(01:42):
college working on my marine biology degree, I met a
professor who studied sharks, and I started talking with him
and doing some research with him, and they kind of
fell in love with sharks. I did a lot of
different marine science research while I was an undergrad, but
I just kept coming back to sharks because I just
think they're so cool. They've been here so long, they
(02:04):
have such neat adaptations, and I've always been someone that
roots for the underdog, and they're very misunderstood, so I've
always enjoyed working with them.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Now. In the book, you discussed the challenges and limitations
of the academic world. I think a lot of us
outside of academia only have like a surface level understanding
of things like publish or perish, And so I might
ask you to discuss that a little bit for everyone.
But also, you know, I think it's easy for us
outsiders to think about science and research as being well, okay,
(02:36):
this is like a pure logical thing, and we let
ourselves forget that we have all these issues of politics
and discrimination very much in play in that world as well.
What are the challenges facing up and coming research scientists
and scientists of color in particular.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Yeah, it's interesting that you point out this perception that
science is objective and without bias, and that's how science
should be in its purest form. But obviously science is
conducted by human beings, and human beings all have biases,
We have flaws, where illogical sometimes, and so I think
(03:13):
it's really hard for people in the science field, not
just people outside of the science field, but even people
in the science field to come to terms with that
that this area of research that we do, you know,
we do the scientific method and all of that, and
we like to think of ourselves as being objective. It's
really hard for us to admit that our biases come
(03:34):
into play in our scientific research. But that's something that
we have to deal with because We've seen science be
used for some really terrible things. We've seen science be
used as an excuse for genocide. We've seen science create
atomic bombs. We've seen science do all sorts of really
not great things. And so we have to recognize that
(03:59):
we have this responsibility as scientists to try to be objective,
but recognize that we are not entirely objective, and so
we have to be critical of how we think, how
we interact with each other, and all of those things,
everything to who gets to present to the scientific conference
(04:20):
or who gets to work in somebody's lab, or who's
invited to speak at this university, all of that has
bias associated with it, and so we have to work
really hard to be responsive to that. What that looks
like in terms of scientists from marginalized communities, it often
looks like not getting as much mentorship opportunities. It looks
(04:42):
like not being in the club, you know, like a
there's a clear these are the cool people in science,
and we all hang out together and we all talk,
and then there's outside ring of people trying to get
into the cool club, into the inner circle, as it will,
And so those in the inner circle have to be
(05:04):
really mindful of those who are outside the circle trying
to get in and making sure that they're accessible pathways
to that. Because science and academia the way that it's
set up, has a lot of potential for gatekeepers to
solely decide who gets accepted into a PhD program, who
gets published. We have this idea of peer review, which
(05:27):
is really great if you assume that your peers are
objective and going to be fair and just. And yes,
there are a lot of people that give fair reviews,
but there's a lot of people whose reviews are biased.
They see somebody's name and they say, I don't know
that I trust that person just based off of their name,
(05:50):
if it's a name that sounds feminine, if it's a
name that sounds quote unquote foreign. You know, I've had
people that are in different countries trying to publish work,
and they complain a lot of times that they get
really unfair peer reviews that basically imply that because they
are from a country in the global South, their science
isn't as credible as somebody from Europe or North America.
(06:14):
And so that's something that we struggle with. So those
are just a few examples, but there's lots of areas
where bias can creep in, and because we like to
think of ourselves as objective, sometimes we choose to ignore
those things and kind of stick our head in the sand.
But we have to really confront it in order to
make sure that science is actually objective and equitable.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
And just thank you for walking us through that. Could
you talk a little bit about Minorities in Shark Sciences
or miss how this came together, what sort of work
it's doing, and where you'd like it to go in
the future.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Minorities in Shark Sciences is four years old, so we
were founded in June of twenty twenty. We actually met
each other on on Twitter, me and the other three
co founders, and we really wanted to create a sense
of community. That's what it started out as. We want
to create a sense of community where people feel like
they belong in science, where people are able to build
(07:13):
their science identity in a place where they feel that
the rest of their identity can come along and they
don't have to leave it at the door in order
to be accepted. And so that's sort of where Minorities
in Shark Sciences came from. Since then, it's grown to
be so much more than just community. It's grown to
(07:36):
be this sort of wave of change in marine science
and shark science in particular, where we were astounded at
how many people you did an open call of who
is trying to get into shark research or marine science
and feels like they are the first or the only
person like them in the room, come and join us.
(08:00):
Five hundred people responded. That's a lot of people. And
so having this movement build of Okay, now we have
a responsibility to all of these people who are sharing
their stories, who are pointing out these issues, who want
support in their universities, in their academic institutions, in their
(08:20):
organizations to bring these issues to the forefront, because what
we found is that a lot of people have been
experiencing these things and have been trying to draw attention
to them individually. And it's a lot of Oh, I
think you're imagining that they maybe don't mean that you know,
all of these sort of but but but but but
(08:43):
and so that could be really frustrating to have people
not believe you whenever you're trying to address something. But
you can ignore one person, you can maybe ignore two people,
ignoring five hundred people saying the same thing. That's really
hard to do, so you got to stick your head
pretty far in that's sand. And so that's sort of
what this movement has become is giving voice to people
(09:06):
who haven't been able to have their voices amplified before,
doing cutting edge research and making sure to elevate people
who are doing research that maybe wasn't being respected before
and being able to amplify that work and bring attention
to it with this collective power that Myths as an
organization has built. And then also getting to bring more
(09:30):
people into the fold, making sure that more people get
into that inner circle, providing the mentorship experiences. So we
do mentorship experiences, we do professional development workshops, we help
people build skills, all of these sorts of skills that
you don't learn in school but people expect you to
magically know how to do. And then also getting internships
(09:50):
and fellowships and things like that, while eliminating the financial
barrier associated with that, because that's been a huge problem
in the past. Is this pay to play where you
have to pay someone to go work for them, which
exists in marine science and is super common. But if
you went to pretty much any other field of career,
(10:11):
if you say wanted to go intern at Google, it
would be absurd for you to pay to intern at Google.
Google would pay you to intern at Google. But in
marine science, for reasons, lots of reasons, it's flipped where
the expectation is you're going to pay for this, and
so that makes it really hard for people to access
those experiences. But they need those experiences to get the job,
(10:35):
to get in that inner circle, to meet those people,
and so MISS is all about eliminating those barriers introducing
young people to marine science. In the ocean. Early on,
we serve what we call kada gray. So we're really
interested in bringing everyone in and making everyone feel connected,
whether that means they want to be a scientist or
(10:56):
they want to just advocate in their everyday lives. We
want to make sure that people have access to the
information about what's going on in our ocean ecosystems because
it affects all of us.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
That's awesome. Now, getting I guess more into sharks again.
You spend a great deal of the book discussing the
elegance of sharks. You know from broad strokes about their
appearance and evolution to biological specifics and species level details.
You know, I'm not going to ask you to go
through all of that here. I encourage listeners to go
(11:28):
check out the book. But in brief, why are sharks
such an evolutionary success story? Why have they done so
well and why have they changed so little?
Speaker 3 (11:37):
That's a great question and something that we as evolutionary
biologists are really interested in, and we don't have all
the answers. But something that's really unique about sharks is
that they've been around on this planet a really long time.
And when I say a really long time, I mean
before the dinosaurs, before we had trees, before Saturn had
(12:00):
its rings. This we're talking four hundred million years of time,
which I think is really hard for us to grasp
as human beings who have been on this planet for
a blink of an eye. But they've been here and
pretty much not changing that much. The same basic body plan,
same basic in the time that dinosaurs became chickens. Because
(12:23):
closest relative to dinosaurs a chicken, it's pretty wild to
think that sharks kind of looked the same and we
went from a dinosaur to a chicken and the same
amount of time, and so it's it's really cool, but
it's also something that makes it really alarming when we
think about losing them at the rate that we're losing them.
(12:43):
So they've survived every mass extinction event thus far. Supervolcanoes,
meteor showers, you know, all of these ice ages, all
of these things that other organisms didn't survive. They survived.
But we're in the sixth mass extinction that's driven by people,
and they're dying at an alarming rate, which we should all
(13:05):
be concerned about because we don't know what the world
looks like without sharks. Sharks have been here so long
that we don't even know what happens to an ecosystem
when they're not there. We have no idea what the
consequences of that are. And it's also really upsetting to
think that we as a species are more damaging to
(13:26):
the marine environment than super volcanoes and meteor showers. That's
pretty bad, and we need to start thinking about how
we live sustainably, how do we coexist with all of
these creatures that are here inhabiting the planet right now,
because we just got here and we might not last
(13:47):
very long if we keep going the way that we're going,
and so That's something that I think is really important
to think about. And sharks have all of these really
cool adaptations that we can really learn learn from. I mean,
Michael Phelps had a whole swimsuit designed like the skin
of sharks, and it was actually so effective that they
(14:10):
banded in the Olympics. Like, just by copying how a
shark's skin is designed, you increased your speed so much
that it was banned at the Olympics. That's wild. Like
nature has some really cool ways of figuring out how
to solve problems, and sharks have really solved a lot
of them. And so we can learn a lot from sharks,
(14:32):
but not if they're not here.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
You talk about sharks as k selected animals rather than
are selected animals, and how that plays into their vulnerability.
Can you can you walk us through that real quick?
What does it mean to be a K selected organism?
Speaker 3 (14:47):
Sure? So, when we think about the term k selected,
and that's a term that's been used for a long time,
people are starting to transition away from it, but I
think it's really good for this concept. You have an organism,
think like a sequoia grows for a really long time,
gets really big, and that's that's great, you know, lives
(15:11):
a long time, super long life, which is a strategy.
And then you think of like a mosquito that lives
and dies pretty much within a couple of days. And
so you are comparing those two things, and it's not
that one is more effective. Mosquitos, you know, are effective
(15:33):
at existing. Sequoias are effective at existing until you introduce
something like people and all the things that we do
that causes these things that are supposed to be living
a long time to not live a long time. And
so these these case selected organisms are their strategy is
(15:55):
live a long time, produce a lot of young over
a long period of time, not just you know, put
all of your eggs in one basket right at the beginning.
When we have mosquitoes and things like that, there are
selected they don't live a long time, but they have
a lot of young in that amount of time. And
(16:16):
that's fine. Whatever strategy works until you start cutting down
sequoias before they get to live their full life and
reproduce as much as they should have if they live
their full life. Same thing for sharks. It takes sharks
a really long time to mature. So you think about people,
we're also long lived don't reproduce very much. If we
(16:40):
all died before we hit twenty years old, think about
how many of us wouldn't have had children. Think about
what that does to the population we're supposed to live.
You know, roughly seventy eighty ninety some people live to
be over one hundred years old, and you have time
to have multi full children. Not if you die at
(17:02):
twenty that's you don't have that opportunity, and so you
can't replace yourself. And so that's what's happening with sharks
is their strategy worked for a really long time until
we had these other things come about that are now
killing them and they're not living their full life expectancy
like they should have, and so that's affecting everything. It's
(17:26):
affecting how many young are in the next generation. It's
affecting the health of those young because we also have
things like maternal offloading, which is where a mother shark
has so much toxins, think mercury, think all of those
things in her body that it starts being detrimental to her.
(17:48):
And the strategy for a case selected individual is I'm
going to get rid of these toxins and my next
litter of pups. I'm just gonna dump it all into them,
and they might not survive, but I will keep living
and I will have more pups. So I will make
the sacrifice of these pups so that I can keep
living and continue to have pups, which is a great strategy,
(18:11):
except for if you then are always accumulating mercury and
now all of your pups are not healthy and you're
continuing to live and reproduce, but the pups that you're
reproducing aren't as viable because they have all these toxins
in them. And so those are sort of things that
(18:32):
you don't start to think about until you kind of
dive deep into the ecology and how sharks work. And
that's sort of what I like to talk about in
the book so that people can understand, hey, conservation of
the oceans involves conserving sharks.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
I think are some of the most I guess winnable
problems with shark conservation right now, like what are the
areas where that are the most easily addressable that maybe
we're not addressing yet.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
So fishing is a big problem we have overfishing, which
is where they're taking more out of the population than
can replace themselves. But then we also have by catch
and by catches where they're not actually targeting sharks. Sharks
are not the goal. Sharks are accidentally being caught. And
(19:35):
so that I feel like is something that's we can address.
Is it's not a matter of how do we feed
these people, how do we make sure that these people
have their economies stabilize. They don't actually want these sharks.
They don't want the sharks. We don't want them to
catch the sharks. This is a perfect way for us
(19:56):
to come together and think how do we keep sharks
out of your gear? And so that's a lot of
what I start thinking about is bycatch reduction, how do
we keep these species that people don't want. They don't
want to eat them, they don't need them for anything.
That's a huge problem where they're dying for no reason
at all. We're not even using them. And so that's
(20:19):
one area. Another area with overfishing is a bit more
complicated but still doable, is how do we cut down
on the amount of products that we need. So we
think about squaling, squalling, and it's the oil in sharks livers.
A lot of it's used in cosmetics and lotions and
(20:41):
things like that. Whilst scientists have figured out a way
to manufacture synthetic squaling, so we replace all of the
squaling that's coming from sharks with synthetic. We've already cut
out a good number of sharks deaths and so little
things like that, simple switches that we can make in
(21:02):
order to cut down on the amount of products that
we use. I think people tend to focus on other
people as a means to change. So we think about
shark fin soup. That's what a lot of people like
to focus on, is well, we need to stop the
(21:23):
Asian people from eating shark fin soup. This is not
an Asia problem. This is an everyone problem. And it's
really easy for you to point at somebody else and say, well,
it's their fault. We need to start thinking about what
can I do, what can we do here to make changes.
(21:43):
It's not about pointing fingers at people, and I think
it's a very slippery slope. It's really easy to fall
into racism and xenophobia and be like, these people that
are not like me are the problem. Fishermen are the problem,
Asian people are the problem, Indigenous people are the problem.
It's never I'm the problem. We have to start thinking
(22:05):
about how we are contributing to the problem, because we
all are, and we can't just go pointing fingers at people,
especially because the people that tend to have the fingers
pointed at them are marginalized communities who don't have a
seat at the conservation table when these discussions are going on.
It's really easy to blame someone when they're not there
to defend themselves, and so I always like to tell
(22:26):
people just be mindful of that when you're starting to
think about conservation, start with yourself first before you start
pointing fingers at other people.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Now in the book, you bring up the topic of
beach renourishment. Is this something that threatens sharks in the wild.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
Beach renourishment is something that's really interesting because as we
have people living on coastlines, we have kind of two
I guess groups of people living on coastlines. We have
people who are living on the coastlines because they don't
have anywhere else to go. And we have people that
(23:05):
are living on coastlines because they want beachfront property and
they want to look at the ocean. And so these
are two groups of people that are often in conflict
with each other because there's the people that have the
beachfront property, have money and power, and the people who
(23:27):
do not and are there because that's where they've been pushed.
Thinking about Indigenous communities in Louisiana, a lot of Indigenous
communities got pushed to Louisiana and those parishes that are
coastal that are now going underwater, and that is not
where they intended to be, that is not where their
(23:50):
native lands are, that is where they were pushed. And
then we have people you know that want to come
and live in Miami and you know, have their beaches
and stuff. And so we have to think about this
from like two perspectives because there are reneurishment things where
we're trying to keep land available for people who have
(24:10):
nowhere else to go. And that's one issue, and there
are lots of ways that we can think about, how
do we keep people where they are, how do we
help them decide where they want to go and give
them a place to go if that's what they choose
to do. Then we have this other group of people
who are like, I want white fluffy sand in a beach.
(24:33):
That is a different situation, and that's what I'm talking about.
Just to clarify. That's what I'm talking about when I
talk about renourishment projects being a problem renourishing a beach
because you want your nice beach. You're a hotel, and
your private beach is disappearing. That's do we need to
(24:54):
do that? I don't know, that's debatable. And so we
have this issue where we put this fake sand or
not fake sand, but sand that's not supposed to be
there in an area where the ocean wants to move it,
like mother nature has decided this beach ink won't be
here no more. And when mother nature decides something, it's
(25:15):
really hard to counteract that, and you need to have
a really good reason for doing that because it's going
to be really expensive and it's probably not gonna work,
or it will work, and it won't last very long.
And so what we have, like in Myrtle Beach where
my family is from, is we have these hotels and
these owners of beachfront property saying, well, my beach is
(25:37):
disappearing and that's a natural process, but we're trying to
stop it for economic reasons, and we put this sand
here and then a hurricane comes, like Hurricane Ian came
and they had just done a beach y nourishment project.
Guess we're all of that sand that they spent millions
(25:57):
of dollars putting on that peachment. Whoop, the mother nature
took it away. Mine. No, not supposed to be here.
But where does that sand go? It gets dumped off shore,
it covers up reefs, it covers up sea grass beds,
it covers up all of these habitats where fish are living,
(26:18):
and all of the sand just this whole beach just
shifted into the water. And that's where we have an issue.
Is the ocean giveth and the ocean taketh away. Like
you can put all the sand there you want to.
If the ocean does not want that sand to be there,
it is not going to stay there, and it's got
(26:38):
to go somewhere, and that somewhere is often covering important habitats.
We have fishermen that I've talked to that say, immediately
after a storm, after a renewished area gets swept away,
they can't catch fish. And that's just terrible because that
(26:59):
means all of these where do all these fish go?
All of these fishermen that are relying on this, all
of these communities relying on this for food, it's gone.
They can't access it until the sand starts moving further
and further offshore, which who knows how that's how long
that's going to take. And so these are things we
have to take into consideration. We make these decisions as
humans because we are part of the environment. The environment
(27:21):
is part of us. Every decision we make has an
equal and opposite reaction. So we need to be making
decisions based on necessity, not on I want my beach
to look at ice.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Now, coming back to just sort of like the character
of Sharks, the being in the water with sharks. You know,
the book is coming out in the summer, this episode
is publishing in the summer. A lot of people are
getting in the water. Sometimes people are getting in the
water maybe in the vicinity of sharks for the first
time or for the first time in a while. Do
you think there are key things that like the average
(27:56):
person getting in the water with the sharks might need
to learn about them or unlearn about them, Like what
do folks often just maybe not seem to understand or
need to understand a little better before they get in
there with them.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
Yeah, there's just a lot of fear surrounding the ocean
and sharks in particular. And I mean, there are tons
of people that will not get in the ocean because
they are that afraid of sharks. And I mean I
can give numbers and figures and statistics, and maybe that
affects people, maybe it doesn't. You have this fear that's
(28:31):
been built by years of watching these shark movies and
hearing these news stories and all of the sensationalized things,
and that's something that takes time to get over. And
I think some of the best ways to overcome that
is to do it you just exposure therapy, get in
(28:54):
the water, see that you're fine, and then you're like, Okay,
that wasn't so bad. I'll go a little deeper next time.
I'll go a little deeper next time. And once you
get in the ocean, you discover all of these amazing
things that the ocean has to offer. Once you start
snorkeling and looking underneath the water and seeing all of
these fish that are swimming around you and all of
(29:15):
that stuff, hopefully the fascination with the ocean will start
to outweigh that fear. And I like to kind of
remind people we say things and our language affects people's
perceptions and so you know, media all of that. Just
(29:36):
being mindful of the way that we portray sharks. So
saying things like shark infested waters, the waters are not
shark infested. That's where they live. It's if anything, they're
people infested, because we're the ones that aren't supposed to
be there. You wouldn't say that the sky is bird infested,
like they live there. That's where they are. And you know,
(29:58):
the pictures that we choose to use when we have
a story. I mean, someone will get nibbled by like
a little tiny leopard shark and they'll be like shark
attack off La Hooia Shores. It'll be like a great
white shark. No, it was like the little tiny, two
foot little leopard shark and the person needed a band aid.
We don't need like this whole thing. And yes, there
(30:21):
are people who have bites. They have negative encounters with sharks,
it does happen. But we have negative encounters with all
sorts of wild animals. They are animals. We have negative
encounters with each other. We you know, it's it's a
fact of life that if things are in proximity to
(30:42):
each other, eventually there will be a negative encounter, and
it's it's something that I hope that with the love
of the ocean and this increased desire to be in
the ocean, similar to how we still get in cars
even though we know that we could get in an accident.
That's because our necessity are a desire to get from
(31:03):
one place to another quickly and not have to walk
outweighs our fear of getting in an accident. And that's
sort of where we're going with kind of exposing people
to how cool the ocean is, how exciting it is,
and then that fear is kind of downplayed a little bit.
And am not saying that there's like a zero percent
(31:24):
chance that you're gonna get bit by a shark. What
I am saying is, wouldn't you rather experience this amazing
thing rather than be cut off from it because you're
afraid of this thing that's really not gonna happen happening.
And I also like to remind people, like I work
with sharks for a living. I'm like around them all
(31:47):
the time, I'm touching them all the time, doing things
that they don't exactly want, Like you don't like for
your dentists to be in your mouth. You don't like
for your nurse to draw your blood. You don't like
these things. They're like good for you, and like the sharks.
Don't understand that sharks can't think like people and be like, oh,
(32:08):
this person's trying to help me. Look they're removing a parasite.
How nice of them. They're like, ah, why are you
touching me? Ah? And so I haven't had any issues
with sharks. If I haven't, I have like way higher
probability than the average person. So you're fine, Like you
just walking in the water up to your waist, It's like,
you're fine.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
So if chips are down. What's your favorite shark species?
Speaker 3 (32:43):
My favorite shark species is the bonnet head shark because
they're adorable. It's also the first shark that I got
to work with, and they were the first shark to
be discovered to be omnivorous. So they eat plants and animals.
Seagrass makes forty to sixty percent of their diet actually,
which is pretty wild that this little shark is eating
(33:08):
potentially more plants than they are eating animals and getting
more nutrition from plants. And so, I mean that just
goes back to how cool sharks are. We have this
one dimensional view of sharks because you hear the word
shark and you think great white jaws, mindless killing machine.
(33:28):
But there's so much diversity that actually white sharks are
the exception and not the rule. Most sharks are small.
Most sharks are less than four feet long. A lot
of sharks live in the deep sea. Some of them
grow glow in the dark. Some of them have hammers
for heads, some of them eat plants, some of them
are pretty colors, some of them are filter feeders. It's
(33:49):
just there's so much variety, and we're really doing sharks
at disservice by only thinking of them in this one way.
That would be like us thinking that all humans are
I don't know, six ' five or like I don't
know yao ming or something like that, like where they're
not like, we're not all like that. We had a
(34:09):
lot of varieties. Some of us have different hair colors,
we're different shades, we're different sizes, we have different interests,
and it would be doing humans a disservice to narrow
us down to like one type of person. So we
shouldn't do that to sharks.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Now that you pointed out it. It does feel like
even in like science reporting, a lot of times, like
the shark diversity stories that kind of end up poking
their head up or ones about like gnarly looking teeth.
You know, it'll be like, oh, look at the goblin shark.
It's it's gnarly looking, you know, and and maybe less
so on Well, here's a shark that eats. It is omnivorous.
(34:47):
So that's a great point. Now in terms of your research,
what shark or race SPECIs are you working with the
most right now?
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Right now, my work is mostly on understanding the effects
of a harmful alcol bloom called Florida red tide on sharks,
and so I'm doing that work here in Sarasota Bay
and Tampa Bay, and so a lot of the sharks
that I'm working with are black tips, black noses. I
(35:16):
still am working with bonnet heads a little bit, although
not as much. And then we have scalloped hammerheads and
great hammerheads as well, and so those are the main
species that I'm interested in working with right now. I
still am a part of the sawfish research right now.
(35:38):
Sawfish are experiencing a unprecedented die off in in the
South Florida area where they're exhibiting this weird spinning behavior
and washing up dead. We've lost quite a number of them,
especially considering how small the population is already, because they're
critically endangered, so there's not a lot of them, and
(36:00):
so that's been a big concern, and so I've been
kind of just helping where I can, giving my expertise
where I can, since I have worked with them for
a number of years. Because it's all hands on deck
right now. No one knows why this is happening, how
to stop it, what's going on, and so we're all
just kind of lending support where we can. So that's
(36:21):
sort of an ongoing side project of mine, built more
out of necessity, where we're trying to deal with this unprecedented.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Event now in the shark science is obviously they're going
to be species that are hard to get to or
rare in number, But in general, are there are there
any shark species that are considered like understudied, not so
much because of their remoteness, just because like we just
don't know, don't don't pay as much attention to them.
Are there any stories like that in the shark sciences?
Speaker 3 (36:52):
I feel like there are tons of understudied species, and
you ask a different scientist and they will give you
a different answer, like the I mean, there's so many
species of sharks. There's about five hundred species of sharks,
so we're not studying all of them. Some of them
are in the deep c we can't get to them.
Some of them are in areas where there's not a
(37:12):
lot of support. So, as I mentioned, there are scientists
in countries in the global South that are doing work,
and that work is happening, but it's not making it
into the mainstream publication system because of these biases that exist.
So we have that issue where there are sharks species
(37:36):
that are being studied by someone, but we don't get
to hear about it that much because their work is
being suppressed or undervalued. And so that's one thing. And
then there's also some species that just aren't as glamorous,
Like there are some species where people are like, ah, yes, whales, sharks,
(37:58):
I will give money to fund ail shark research. If
you're like, I want to study I don't know, the
shy shark or something random, people are like, okay, you know,
there's not as much flashy money people want to spend
money on things that are cool and glamorous and they're
(38:20):
like really excited about. People aren't really like investing as
much money in sharks that are like just like super cash.
So there's definitely like a not equitable distribution of funding,
and so that also drives what people choose to study,
because if they can't get funding to study that animal,
(38:41):
then they have to go and try to study something else.
And so there are some of the less charismatic i'd
say shark species that are not being studied as much.
But I mean there's also like tons of people that
(39:02):
are working with sharks, but like I said, aren't making headlines,
they're not making it into the mainstream. And so that's
part of what MISS is trying to do is amplify
the work that's being done on some of those lesser
known researchers and areas where people are doing work.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
In the book, you write so passionately about like what
attracted you to marine biology in the ocean, as well
as the challenges you've faced. What advice do you have
for any young people out there who maybe feel the
same attraction to the ocean into marine biology and are
considering a career in science.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
I would say, if you're considering a career in science,
you should one hundred percent go for it and don't
let anyone tell you that you can't do that, and
don't doubt that you can. A lot of people think,
you know, whenever I say, oh, I'm a scientist, people's
first reaction, like nine times out of ten is oh, wow,
(40:00):
you must be really smart. And that's because we have
this perception that scientists are smarter than other people. And
I'm gonna let you in on a secret. We are
not any smarter other people. That is not true, because
what does smart even mean. I don't know, Like I
(40:22):
think there's a there's a famous quote and I can't
remember who said it, but it was, and i'll paraphrase.
Everyone is intelligent, but if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its
whole life believing it is stupid. And you know, we're
not any smarter than anyone else. And so if you're like, oh,
(40:42):
I want to do science, but I don't think I'm
smart enough, throw that out, because let me tell you,
there are some not why scientists out there, and some
of them are like really high up their big shots,
and they're they do some things that are illogical. So
(41:03):
just because someone is a scientist doesn't mean they're smart.
And so you shouldn't think like I don't think I'm
smart enough to be a scientist. That's a myth. Scientists
aren't any smarter than other people. I say, as a scientist,
I can tell you right now I am not smarter
than anyone else. And then people have this this fear
of well, if I've become a scientist, I gotta do math,
(41:24):
and math is scary. And I struggled with math a
lot when I was in school. It was like my
hardest subject and I actually had to get through some
of my math classes. I basically was in my teachers
class after school every day, getting tutoring to make it through.
(41:49):
And so like, you don't have to be good at
everything to be a scientist. All sciences is asking questions
and trying to figure out the answer. That's all it is.
People put all this flare and handwaving and whatever, and
that's all it is asking questions trying to figure out
the answers. You can do that now, and wherever you are,
(42:12):
whoever you are, you can ask questions and try and
figure out the answers. You can do science. That's all
science is. Everything else is just flair. Doesn't matter what
alphabet is after your name, doesn't matter. If you have
a degree, doesn't matter, if you even know how to read,
you can do science. I have seen children, toddlers do
(42:33):
science where they see ants walking and they go, where
are those ants going? And I say, I don't know,
why don't you follow them and find out? And they
will follow the ants and figure out where they're going.
Guess what, that's science. They just did science. Can't spell
their own name, but they did science, and so that's
all it is. So don't be intimidated by it. Don't
(42:54):
think that you have to be somebody special to do it.
We're not special. We're just like anyone else people that
do science. And if there's a scientist that thinks that
they're special, they're just a little too over confident in themselves.
They are not any more special than anyone else. So
anyone can do science. Don't let anyone tell you that
(43:16):
you can't.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
All right, well, this has been delightful. Before we close
out here, remind everybody again that the book is out
now in digital, physical, and audiobook. Right did you you
read for the audiobook? Correct?
Speaker 3 (43:30):
I did? I did read for the audiobook.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Awesome. So it's out in all formats. And then as
far as Minorities and Shark Sciences goes, where can people
go to learn more about MISS, to get involved with
MISS or donate to MISS.
Speaker 3 (43:43):
Yes, So we have a website. It's Miss Elasmo dot
org m I s s E l A s m
O dot org. Elasmo short for alasmobrank which is sharks,
skates and rays. So if you were wondering what that was, Elasmo.
And we're also on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and
(44:07):
LinkedIn so you can look us up there.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Awesome. Well, thanks for taking time out of your day
to chat with me here today.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Thanks thanks for having me, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
Thanks once more to Jasmine Graham for coming on the
show again. You can pick up that book right now,
Sharks Don't Sync. You can find it wherever you get
your books, and it's available now in all fourmats. Thanks
as always to the excellent Jjpossway for producing this show
and if you would like to get in touch with us,
if you have suggestions for future episodes of Stuff to
(44:40):
blow your mind, comments on past episodes, or just any
other comments you want to share with us well, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb, and this episode of Stuff to
Blow your Mind, we're going to be chatting with Jasmine Graham,
a shark scientist and author of Sharks Don't Sink. This
is a great book and it is out right now
in all formats, So I encourage you if this interview
grabs you, if the subject matter grabs you, and especially
(00:34):
if you're interested in sharks, this is definitely some great
summer reading for you, so pick up a copy, especially
if you are going to go out to the beach
or in any way experience the ocean this year. So
without further ado, let's dive right in. Hi, Jasmine, welcome
to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
The new book, Sharks Don't Sink. Adventures of a Rogue
Sharks Scientist is out in digital, physical, and audio formats.
I really enjoyed. It's a science book about sharks, but
it's also a social advocacy book and a personal memoir.
So I wanted to ask you. I'm going to ask
you about all of these aspects, but I guess the
best place to start is the simple question, how did
(01:18):
you become interested in shark biology.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
I was always very interested in the ocean, and I
grew up fishing with my dad and come from a
fishing family, and so the ocean was always part of me.
I didn't really think much about sharks. I wasn't one
of those people that was afraid of them. I wasn't
super obsessed with them as a kid. They were kind
of just animals that existed. But whenever I was in
(01:42):
college working on my marine biology degree, I met a
professor who studied sharks, and I started talking with him
and doing some research with him, and they kind of
fell in love with sharks. I did a lot of
different marine science research while I was an undergrad, but
I just kept coming back to sharks because I just
think they're so cool. They've been here so long, they
(02:04):
have such neat adaptations, and I've always been someone that
roots for the underdog, and they're very misunderstood, so I've
always enjoyed working with them.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Now. In the book, you discussed the challenges and limitations
of the academic world. I think a lot of us
outside of academia only have like a surface level understanding
of things like publish or perish, And so I might
ask you to discuss that a little bit for everyone.
But also, you know, I think it's easy for us
outsiders to think about science and research as being well, okay,
(02:36):
this is like a pure logical thing, and we let
ourselves forget that we have all these issues of politics
and discrimination very much in play in that world as well.
What are the challenges facing up and coming research scientists
and scientists of color in particular.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Yeah, it's interesting that you point out this perception that
science is objective and without bias, and that's how science
should be in its purest form. But obviously science is
conducted by human beings, and human beings all have biases,
We have flaws, where illogical sometimes, and so I think
(03:13):
it's really hard for people in the science field, not
just people outside of the science field, but even people
in the science field to come to terms with that
that this area of research that we do, you know,
we do the scientific method and all of that, and
we like to think of ourselves as being objective. It's
really hard for us to admit that our biases come
(03:34):
into play in our scientific research. But that's something that
we have to deal with because We've seen science be
used for some really terrible things. We've seen science be
used as an excuse for genocide. We've seen science create
atomic bombs. We've seen science do all sorts of really
not great things. And so we have to recognize that
(03:59):
we have this responsibility as scientists to try to be objective,
but recognize that we are not entirely objective, and so
we have to be critical of how we think, how
we interact with each other, and all of those things,
everything to who gets to present to the scientific conference
(04:20):
or who gets to work in somebody's lab, or who's
invited to speak at this university, all of that has
bias associated with it, and so we have to work
really hard to be responsive to that. What that looks
like in terms of scientists from marginalized communities, it often
looks like not getting as much mentorship opportunities. It looks
(04:42):
like not being in the club, you know, like a
there's a clear these are the cool people in science,
and we all hang out together and we all talk,
and then there's outside ring of people trying to get
into the cool club, into the inner circle, as it will,
And so those in the inner circle have to be
(05:04):
really mindful of those who are outside the circle trying
to get in and making sure that they're accessible pathways
to that. Because science and academia the way that it's
set up, has a lot of potential for gatekeepers to
solely decide who gets accepted into a PhD program, who
gets published. We have this idea of peer review, which
(05:27):
is really great if you assume that your peers are
objective and going to be fair and just. And yes,
there are a lot of people that give fair reviews,
but there's a lot of people whose reviews are biased.
They see somebody's name and they say, I don't know
that I trust that person just based off of their name,
(05:50):
if it's a name that sounds feminine, if it's a
name that sounds quote unquote foreign. You know, I've had
people that are in different countries trying to publish work,
and they complain a lot of times that they get
really unfair peer reviews that basically imply that because they
are from a country in the global South, their science
isn't as credible as somebody from Europe or North America.
(06:14):
And so that's something that we struggle with. So those
are just a few examples, but there's lots of areas
where bias can creep in, and because we like to
think of ourselves as objective, sometimes we choose to ignore
those things and kind of stick our head in the sand.
But we have to really confront it in order to
make sure that science is actually objective and equitable.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
And just thank you for walking us through that. Could
you talk a little bit about Minorities in Shark Sciences
or miss how this came together, what sort of work
it's doing, and where you'd like it to go in
the future.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Minorities in Shark Sciences is four years old, so we
were founded in June of twenty twenty. We actually met
each other on on Twitter, me and the other three
co founders, and we really wanted to create a sense
of community. That's what it started out as. We want
to create a sense of community where people feel like
they belong in science, where people are able to build
(07:13):
their science identity in a place where they feel that
the rest of their identity can come along and they
don't have to leave it at the door in order
to be accepted. And so that's sort of where Minorities
in Shark Sciences came from. Since then, it's grown to
be so much more than just community. It's grown to
(07:36):
be this sort of wave of change in marine science
and shark science in particular, where we were astounded at
how many people you did an open call of who
is trying to get into shark research or marine science
and feels like they are the first or the only
person like them in the room, come and join us.
(08:00):
Five hundred people responded. That's a lot of people. And
so having this movement build of Okay, now we have
a responsibility to all of these people who are sharing
their stories, who are pointing out these issues, who want
support in their universities, in their academic institutions, in their
(08:20):
organizations to bring these issues to the forefront, because what
we found is that a lot of people have been
experiencing these things and have been trying to draw attention
to them individually. And it's a lot of Oh, I
think you're imagining that they maybe don't mean that you know,
all of these sort of but but but but but
(08:43):
and so that could be really frustrating to have people
not believe you whenever you're trying to address something. But
you can ignore one person, you can maybe ignore two people,
ignoring five hundred people saying the same thing. That's really
hard to do, so you got to stick your head
pretty far in that's sand. And so that's sort of
what this movement has become is giving voice to people
(09:06):
who haven't been able to have their voices amplified before,
doing cutting edge research and making sure to elevate people
who are doing research that maybe wasn't being respected before
and being able to amplify that work and bring attention
to it with this collective power that Myths as an
organization has built. And then also getting to bring more
(09:30):
people into the fold, making sure that more people get
into that inner circle, providing the mentorship experiences. So we
do mentorship experiences, we do professional development workshops, we help
people build skills, all of these sorts of skills that
you don't learn in school but people expect you to
magically know how to do. And then also getting internships
(09:50):
and fellowships and things like that, while eliminating the financial
barrier associated with that, because that's been a huge problem
in the past. Is this pay to play where you
have to pay someone to go work for them, which
exists in marine science and is super common. But if
you went to pretty much any other field of career,
(10:11):
if you say wanted to go intern at Google, it
would be absurd for you to pay to intern at Google.
Google would pay you to intern at Google. But in
marine science, for reasons, lots of reasons, it's flipped where
the expectation is you're going to pay for this, and
so that makes it really hard for people to access
those experiences. But they need those experiences to get the job,
(10:35):
to get in that inner circle, to meet those people,
and so MISS is all about eliminating those barriers introducing
young people to marine science. In the ocean. Early on,
we serve what we call kada gray. So we're really
interested in bringing everyone in and making everyone feel connected,
whether that means they want to be a scientist or
(10:56):
they want to just advocate in their everyday lives. We
want to make sure that people have access to the
information about what's going on in our ocean ecosystems because
it affects all of us.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
That's awesome. Now, getting I guess more into sharks again.
You spend a great deal of the book discussing the
elegance of sharks. You know from broad strokes about their
appearance and evolution to biological specifics and species level details.
You know, I'm not going to ask you to go
through all of that here. I encourage listeners to go
(11:28):
check out the book. But in brief, why are sharks
such an evolutionary success story? Why have they done so
well and why have they changed so little?
Speaker 3 (11:37):
That's a great question and something that we as evolutionary
biologists are really interested in, and we don't have all
the answers. But something that's really unique about sharks is
that they've been around on this planet a really long time.
And when I say a really long time, I mean
before the dinosaurs, before we had trees, before Saturn had
(12:00):
its rings. This we're talking four hundred million years of time,
which I think is really hard for us to grasp
as human beings who have been on this planet for
a blink of an eye. But they've been here and
pretty much not changing that much. The same basic body plan,
same basic in the time that dinosaurs became chickens. Because
(12:23):
closest relative to dinosaurs a chicken, it's pretty wild to
think that sharks kind of looked the same and we
went from a dinosaur to a chicken and the same
amount of time, and so it's it's really cool, but
it's also something that makes it really alarming when we
think about losing them at the rate that we're losing them.
(12:43):
So they've survived every mass extinction event thus far. Supervolcanoes,
meteor showers, you know, all of these ice ages, all
of these things that other organisms didn't survive. They survived.
But we're in the sixth mass extinction that's driven by people,
and they're dying at an alarming rate, which we should all
(13:05):
be concerned about because we don't know what the world
looks like without sharks. Sharks have been here so long
that we don't even know what happens to an ecosystem
when they're not there. We have no idea what the
consequences of that are. And it's also really upsetting to
think that we as a species are more damaging to
(13:26):
the marine environment than super volcanoes and meteor showers. That's
pretty bad, and we need to start thinking about how
we live sustainably, how do we coexist with all of
these creatures that are here inhabiting the planet right now,
because we just got here and we might not last
(13:47):
very long if we keep going the way that we're going,
and so That's something that I think is really important
to think about. And sharks have all of these really
cool adaptations that we can really learn learn from. I mean,
Michael Phelps had a whole swimsuit designed like the skin
of sharks, and it was actually so effective that they
(14:10):
banded in the Olympics. Like, just by copying how a
shark's skin is designed, you increased your speed so much
that it was banned at the Olympics. That's wild. Like
nature has some really cool ways of figuring out how
to solve problems, and sharks have really solved a lot
of them. And so we can learn a lot from sharks,
(14:32):
but not if they're not here.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
You talk about sharks as k selected animals rather than
are selected animals, and how that plays into their vulnerability.
Can you can you walk us through that real quick?
What does it mean to be a K selected organism?
Speaker 3 (14:47):
Sure? So, when we think about the term k selected,
and that's a term that's been used for a long time,
people are starting to transition away from it, but I
think it's really good for this concept. You have an organism,
think like a sequoia grows for a really long time,
gets really big, and that's that's great, you know, lives
(15:11):
a long time, super long life, which is a strategy.
And then you think of like a mosquito that lives
and dies pretty much within a couple of days. And
so you are comparing those two things, and it's not
that one is more effective. Mosquitos, you know, are effective
(15:33):
at existing. Sequoias are effective at existing until you introduce
something like people and all the things that we do
that causes these things that are supposed to be living
a long time to not live a long time. And
so these these case selected organisms are their strategy is
(15:55):
live a long time, produce a lot of young over
a long period of time, not just you know, put
all of your eggs in one basket right at the beginning.
When we have mosquitoes and things like that, there are
selected they don't live a long time, but they have
a lot of young in that amount of time. And
(16:16):
that's fine. Whatever strategy works until you start cutting down
sequoias before they get to live their full life and
reproduce as much as they should have if they live
their full life. Same thing for sharks. It takes sharks
a really long time to mature. So you think about people,
we're also long lived don't reproduce very much. If we
(16:40):
all died before we hit twenty years old, think about
how many of us wouldn't have had children. Think about
what that does to the population we're supposed to live.
You know, roughly seventy eighty ninety some people live to
be over one hundred years old, and you have time
to have multi full children. Not if you die at
(17:02):
twenty that's you don't have that opportunity, and so you
can't replace yourself. And so that's what's happening with sharks
is their strategy worked for a really long time until
we had these other things come about that are now
killing them and they're not living their full life expectancy
like they should have, and so that's affecting everything. It's
(17:26):
affecting how many young are in the next generation. It's
affecting the health of those young because we also have
things like maternal offloading, which is where a mother shark
has so much toxins, think mercury, think all of those
things in her body that it starts being detrimental to her.
(17:48):
And the strategy for a case selected individual is I'm
going to get rid of these toxins and my next
litter of pups. I'm just gonna dump it all into them,
and they might not survive, but I will keep living
and I will have more pups. So I will make
the sacrifice of these pups so that I can keep
living and continue to have pups, which is a great strategy,
(18:11):
except for if you then are always accumulating mercury and
now all of your pups are not healthy and you're
continuing to live and reproduce, but the pups that you're
reproducing aren't as viable because they have all these toxins
in them. And so those are sort of things that
(18:32):
you don't start to think about until you kind of
dive deep into the ecology and how sharks work. And
that's sort of what I like to talk about in
the book so that people can understand, hey, conservation of
the oceans involves conserving sharks.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
I think are some of the most I guess winnable
problems with shark conservation right now, like what are the
areas where that are the most easily addressable that maybe
we're not addressing yet.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
So fishing is a big problem we have overfishing, which
is where they're taking more out of the population than
can replace themselves. But then we also have by catch
and by catches where they're not actually targeting sharks. Sharks
are not the goal. Sharks are accidentally being caught. And
(19:35):
so that I feel like is something that's we can address.
Is it's not a matter of how do we feed
these people, how do we make sure that these people
have their economies stabilize. They don't actually want these sharks.
They don't want the sharks. We don't want them to
catch the sharks. This is a perfect way for us
(19:56):
to come together and think how do we keep sharks
out of your gear? And so that's a lot of
what I start thinking about is bycatch reduction, how do
we keep these species that people don't want. They don't
want to eat them, they don't need them for anything.
That's a huge problem where they're dying for no reason
at all. We're not even using them. And so that's
(20:19):
one area. Another area with overfishing is a bit more
complicated but still doable, is how do we cut down
on the amount of products that we need. So we
think about squaling, squalling, and it's the oil in sharks livers.
A lot of it's used in cosmetics and lotions and
(20:41):
things like that. Whilst scientists have figured out a way
to manufacture synthetic squaling, so we replace all of the
squaling that's coming from sharks with synthetic. We've already cut
out a good number of sharks deaths and so little
things like that, simple switches that we can make in
(21:02):
order to cut down on the amount of products that
we use. I think people tend to focus on other
people as a means to change. So we think about
shark fin soup. That's what a lot of people like
to focus on, is well, we need to stop the
(21:23):
Asian people from eating shark fin soup. This is not
an Asia problem. This is an everyone problem. And it's
really easy for you to point at somebody else and say, well,
it's their fault. We need to start thinking about what
can I do, what can we do here to make changes.
(21:43):
It's not about pointing fingers at people, and I think
it's a very slippery slope. It's really easy to fall
into racism and xenophobia and be like, these people that
are not like me are the problem. Fishermen are the problem,
Asian people are the problem, Indigenous people are the problem.
It's never I'm the problem. We have to start thinking
(22:05):
about how we are contributing to the problem, because we
all are, and we can't just go pointing fingers at people,
especially because the people that tend to have the fingers
pointed at them are marginalized communities who don't have a
seat at the conservation table when these discussions are going on.
It's really easy to blame someone when they're not there
to defend themselves, and so I always like to tell
(22:26):
people just be mindful of that when you're starting to
think about conservation, start with yourself first before you start
pointing fingers at other people.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Now in the book, you bring up the topic of
beach renourishment. Is this something that threatens sharks in the wild.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
Beach renourishment is something that's really interesting because as we
have people living on coastlines, we have kind of two
I guess groups of people living on coastlines. We have
people who are living on the coastlines because they don't
have anywhere else to go. And we have people that
(23:05):
are living on coastlines because they want beachfront property and
they want to look at the ocean. And so these
are two groups of people that are often in conflict
with each other because there's the people that have the
beachfront property, have money and power, and the people who
(23:27):
do not and are there because that's where they've been pushed.
Thinking about Indigenous communities in Louisiana, a lot of Indigenous
communities got pushed to Louisiana and those parishes that are
coastal that are now going underwater, and that is not
where they intended to be, that is not where their
(23:50):
native lands are, that is where they were pushed. And
then we have people you know that want to come
and live in Miami and you know, have their beaches
and stuff. And so we have to think about this
from like two perspectives because there are reneurishment things where
we're trying to keep land available for people who have
(24:10):
nowhere else to go. And that's one issue, and there
are lots of ways that we can think about, how
do we keep people where they are, how do we
help them decide where they want to go and give
them a place to go if that's what they choose
to do. Then we have this other group of people
who are like, I want white fluffy sand in a beach.
(24:33):
That is a different situation, and that's what I'm talking about.
Just to clarify. That's what I'm talking about when I
talk about renourishment projects being a problem renourishing a beach
because you want your nice beach. You're a hotel, and
your private beach is disappearing. That's do we need to
(24:54):
do that? I don't know, that's debatable. And so we
have this issue where we put this fake sand or
not fake sand, but sand that's not supposed to be
there in an area where the ocean wants to move it,
like mother nature has decided this beach ink won't be
here no more. And when mother nature decides something, it's
(25:15):
really hard to counteract that, and you need to have
a really good reason for doing that because it's going
to be really expensive and it's probably not gonna work,
or it will work, and it won't last very long.
And so what we have, like in Myrtle Beach where
my family is from, is we have these hotels and
these owners of beachfront property saying, well, my beach is
(25:37):
disappearing and that's a natural process, but we're trying to
stop it for economic reasons, and we put this sand
here and then a hurricane comes, like Hurricane Ian came
and they had just done a beach y nourishment project.
Guess we're all of that sand that they spent millions
(25:57):
of dollars putting on that peachment. Whoop, the mother nature
took it away. Mine. No, not supposed to be here.
But where does that sand go? It gets dumped off shore,
it covers up reefs, it covers up sea grass beds,
it covers up all of these habitats where fish are living,
(26:18):
and all of the sand just this whole beach just
shifted into the water. And that's where we have an issue.
Is the ocean giveth and the ocean taketh away. Like
you can put all the sand there you want to.
If the ocean does not want that sand to be there,
it is not going to stay there, and it's got
(26:38):
to go somewhere, and that somewhere is often covering important habitats.
We have fishermen that I've talked to that say, immediately
after a storm, after a renewished area gets swept away,
they can't catch fish. And that's just terrible because that
(26:59):
means all of these where do all these fish go?
All of these fishermen that are relying on this, all
of these communities relying on this for food, it's gone.
They can't access it until the sand starts moving further
and further offshore, which who knows how that's how long
that's going to take. And so these are things we
have to take into consideration. We make these decisions as
humans because we are part of the environment. The environment
(27:21):
is part of us. Every decision we make has an
equal and opposite reaction. So we need to be making
decisions based on necessity, not on I want my beach
to look at ice.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Now, coming back to just sort of like the character
of Sharks, the being in the water with sharks. You know,
the book is coming out in the summer, this episode
is publishing in the summer. A lot of people are
getting in the water. Sometimes people are getting in the
water maybe in the vicinity of sharks for the first
time or for the first time in a while. Do
you think there are key things that like the average
(27:56):
person getting in the water with the sharks might need
to learn about them or unlearn about them, Like what
do folks often just maybe not seem to understand or
need to understand a little better before they get in
there with them.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
Yeah, there's just a lot of fear surrounding the ocean
and sharks in particular. And I mean, there are tons
of people that will not get in the ocean because
they are that afraid of sharks. And I mean I
can give numbers and figures and statistics, and maybe that
affects people, maybe it doesn't. You have this fear that's
(28:31):
been built by years of watching these shark movies and
hearing these news stories and all of the sensationalized things,
and that's something that takes time to get over. And
I think some of the best ways to overcome that
is to do it you just exposure therapy, get in
(28:54):
the water, see that you're fine, and then you're like, Okay,
that wasn't so bad. I'll go a little deeper next time.
I'll go a little deeper next time. And once you
get in the ocean, you discover all of these amazing
things that the ocean has to offer. Once you start
snorkeling and looking underneath the water and seeing all of
these fish that are swimming around you and all of
(29:15):
that stuff, hopefully the fascination with the ocean will start
to outweigh that fear. And I like to kind of
remind people we say things and our language affects people's
perceptions and so you know, media all of that. Just
(29:36):
being mindful of the way that we portray sharks. So
saying things like shark infested waters, the waters are not
shark infested. That's where they live. It's if anything, they're
people infested, because we're the ones that aren't supposed to
be there. You wouldn't say that the sky is bird infested,
like they live there. That's where they are. And you know,
(29:58):
the pictures that we choose to use when we have
a story. I mean, someone will get nibbled by like
a little tiny leopard shark and they'll be like shark
attack off La Hooia Shores. It'll be like a great
white shark. No, it was like the little tiny, two
foot little leopard shark and the person needed a band aid.
We don't need like this whole thing. And yes, there
(30:21):
are people who have bites. They have negative encounters with sharks,
it does happen. But we have negative encounters with all
sorts of wild animals. They are animals. We have negative
encounters with each other. We you know, it's it's a
fact of life that if things are in proximity to
(30:42):
each other, eventually there will be a negative encounter, and
it's it's something that I hope that with the love
of the ocean and this increased desire to be in
the ocean, similar to how we still get in cars
even though we know that we could get in an accident.
That's because our necessity are a desire to get from
(31:03):
one place to another quickly and not have to walk
outweighs our fear of getting in an accident. And that's
sort of where we're going with kind of exposing people
to how cool the ocean is, how exciting it is,
and then that fear is kind of downplayed a little bit.
And am not saying that there's like a zero percent
(31:24):
chance that you're gonna get bit by a shark. What
I am saying is, wouldn't you rather experience this amazing
thing rather than be cut off from it because you're
afraid of this thing that's really not gonna happen happening.
And I also like to remind people, like I work
with sharks for a living. I'm like around them all
(31:47):
the time, I'm touching them all the time, doing things
that they don't exactly want, Like you don't like for
your dentists to be in your mouth. You don't like
for your nurse to draw your blood. You don't like
these things. They're like good for you, and like the sharks.
Don't understand that sharks can't think like people and be like, oh,
(32:08):
this person's trying to help me. Look they're removing a parasite.
How nice of them. They're like, ah, why are you
touching me? Ah? And so I haven't had any issues
with sharks. If I haven't, I have like way higher
probability than the average person. So you're fine, Like you
just walking in the water up to your waist, It's like,
you're fine.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
So if chips are down. What's your favorite shark species?
Speaker 3 (32:43):
My favorite shark species is the bonnet head shark because
they're adorable. It's also the first shark that I got
to work with, and they were the first shark to
be discovered to be omnivorous. So they eat plants and animals.
Seagrass makes forty to sixty percent of their diet actually,
which is pretty wild that this little shark is eating
(33:08):
potentially more plants than they are eating animals and getting
more nutrition from plants. And so, I mean that just
goes back to how cool sharks are. We have this
one dimensional view of sharks because you hear the word
shark and you think great white jaws, mindless killing machine.
(33:28):
But there's so much diversity that actually white sharks are
the exception and not the rule. Most sharks are small.
Most sharks are less than four feet long. A lot
of sharks live in the deep sea. Some of them
grow glow in the dark. Some of them have hammers
for heads, some of them eat plants, some of them
are pretty colors, some of them are filter feeders. It's
(33:49):
just there's so much variety, and we're really doing sharks
at disservice by only thinking of them in this one way.
That would be like us thinking that all humans are
I don't know, six ' five or like I don't
know yao ming or something like that, like where they're
not like, we're not all like that. We had a
(34:09):
lot of varieties. Some of us have different hair colors,
we're different shades, we're different sizes, we have different interests,
and it would be doing humans a disservice to narrow
us down to like one type of person. So we
shouldn't do that to sharks.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Now that you pointed out it. It does feel like
even in like science reporting, a lot of times, like
the shark diversity stories that kind of end up poking
their head up or ones about like gnarly looking teeth.
You know, it'll be like, oh, look at the goblin shark.
It's it's gnarly looking, you know, and and maybe less
so on Well, here's a shark that eats. It is omnivorous.
(34:47):
So that's a great point. Now in terms of your research,
what shark or race SPECIs are you working with the
most right now?
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Right now, my work is mostly on understanding the effects
of a harmful alcol bloom called Florida red tide on sharks,
and so I'm doing that work here in Sarasota Bay
and Tampa Bay, and so a lot of the sharks
that I'm working with are black tips, black noses. I
(35:16):
still am working with bonnet heads a little bit, although
not as much. And then we have scalloped hammerheads and
great hammerheads as well, and so those are the main
species that I'm interested in working with right now. I
still am a part of the sawfish research right now.
(35:38):
Sawfish are experiencing a unprecedented die off in in the
South Florida area where they're exhibiting this weird spinning behavior
and washing up dead. We've lost quite a number of them,
especially considering how small the population is already, because they're
critically endangered, so there's not a lot of them, and
(36:00):
so that's been a big concern, and so I've been
kind of just helping where I can, giving my expertise
where I can, since I have worked with them for
a number of years. Because it's all hands on deck
right now. No one knows why this is happening, how
to stop it, what's going on, and so we're all
just kind of lending support where we can. So that's
(36:21):
sort of an ongoing side project of mine, built more
out of necessity, where we're trying to deal with this unprecedented.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Event now in the shark science is obviously they're going
to be species that are hard to get to or
rare in number, But in general, are there are there
any shark species that are considered like understudied, not so
much because of their remoteness, just because like we just
don't know, don't don't pay as much attention to them.
Are there any stories like that in the shark sciences?
Speaker 3 (36:52):
I feel like there are tons of understudied species, and
you ask a different scientist and they will give you
a different answer, like the I mean, there's so many
species of sharks. There's about five hundred species of sharks,
so we're not studying all of them. Some of them
are in the deep c we can't get to them.
Some of them are in areas where there's not a
(37:12):
lot of support. So, as I mentioned, there are scientists
in countries in the global South that are doing work,
and that work is happening, but it's not making it
into the mainstream publication system because of these biases that exist.
So we have that issue where there are sharks species
(37:36):
that are being studied by someone, but we don't get
to hear about it that much because their work is
being suppressed or undervalued. And so that's one thing. And
then there's also some species that just aren't as glamorous,
Like there are some species where people are like, ah, yes, whales, sharks,
(37:58):
I will give money to fund ail shark research. If
you're like, I want to study I don't know, the
shy shark or something random, people are like, okay, you know,
there's not as much flashy money people want to spend
money on things that are cool and glamorous and they're
(38:20):
like really excited about. People aren't really like investing as
much money in sharks that are like just like super cash.
So there's definitely like a not equitable distribution of funding,
and so that also drives what people choose to study,
because if they can't get funding to study that animal,
(38:41):
then they have to go and try to study something else.
And so there are some of the less charismatic i'd
say shark species that are not being studied as much.
But I mean there's also like tons of people that
(39:02):
are working with sharks, but like I said, aren't making headlines,
they're not making it into the mainstream. And so that's
part of what MISS is trying to do is amplify
the work that's being done on some of those lesser
known researchers and areas where people are doing work.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
In the book, you write so passionately about like what
attracted you to marine biology in the ocean, as well
as the challenges you've faced. What advice do you have
for any young people out there who maybe feel the
same attraction to the ocean into marine biology and are
considering a career in science.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
I would say, if you're considering a career in science,
you should one hundred percent go for it and don't
let anyone tell you that you can't do that, and
don't doubt that you can. A lot of people think,
you know, whenever I say, oh, I'm a scientist, people's
first reaction, like nine times out of ten is oh, wow,
(40:00):
you must be really smart. And that's because we have
this perception that scientists are smarter than other people. And
I'm gonna let you in on a secret. We are
not any smarter other people. That is not true, because
what does smart even mean. I don't know, Like I
(40:22):
think there's a there's a famous quote and I can't
remember who said it, but it was, and i'll paraphrase.
Everyone is intelligent, but if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its
whole life believing it is stupid. And you know, we're
not any smarter than anyone else. And so if you're like, oh,
(40:42):
I want to do science, but I don't think I'm
smart enough, throw that out, because let me tell you,
there are some not why scientists out there, and some
of them are like really high up their big shots,
and they're they do some things that are illogical. So
(41:03):
just because someone is a scientist doesn't mean they're smart.
And so you shouldn't think like I don't think I'm
smart enough to be a scientist. That's a myth. Scientists
aren't any smarter than other people. I say, as a scientist,
I can tell you right now I am not smarter
than anyone else. And then people have this this fear
of well, if I've become a scientist, I gotta do math,
(41:24):
and math is scary. And I struggled with math a
lot when I was in school. It was like my
hardest subject and I actually had to get through some
of my math classes. I basically was in my teachers
class after school every day, getting tutoring to make it through.
(41:49):
And so like, you don't have to be good at
everything to be a scientist. All sciences is asking questions
and trying to figure out the answer. That's all it is.
People put all this flare and handwaving and whatever, and
that's all it is asking questions trying to figure out
the answers. You can do that now, and wherever you are,
(42:12):
whoever you are, you can ask questions and try and
figure out the answers. You can do science. That's all
science is. Everything else is just flair. Doesn't matter what
alphabet is after your name, doesn't matter. If you have
a degree, doesn't matter, if you even know how to read,
you can do science. I have seen children, toddlers do
(42:33):
science where they see ants walking and they go, where
are those ants going? And I say, I don't know,
why don't you follow them and find out? And they
will follow the ants and figure out where they're going.
Guess what, that's science. They just did science. Can't spell
their own name, but they did science, and so that's
all it is. So don't be intimidated by it. Don't
(42:54):
think that you have to be somebody special to do it.
We're not special. We're just like anyone else people that
do science. And if there's a scientist that thinks that
they're special, they're just a little too over confident in themselves.
They are not any more special than anyone else. So
anyone can do science. Don't let anyone tell you that
(43:16):
you can't.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
All right, well, this has been delightful. Before we close
out here, remind everybody again that the book is out
now in digital, physical, and audiobook. Right did you you
read for the audiobook? Correct?
Speaker 3 (43:30):
I did? I did read for the audiobook.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Awesome. So it's out in all formats. And then as
far as Minorities and Shark Sciences goes, where can people
go to learn more about MISS, to get involved with
MISS or donate to MISS.
Speaker 3 (43:43):
Yes, So we have a website. It's Miss Elasmo dot
org m I s s E l A s m
O dot org. Elasmo short for alasmobrank which is sharks,
skates and rays. So if you were wondering what that was, Elasmo.
And we're also on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and
(44:07):
LinkedIn so you can look us up there.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Awesome. Well, thanks for taking time out of your day
to chat with me here today.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Thanks thanks for having me, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
Thanks once more to Jasmine Graham for coming on the
show again. You can pick up that book right now,
Sharks Don't Sync. You can find it wherever you get
your books, and it's available now in all fourmats. Thanks
as always to the excellent Jjpossway for producing this show
and if you would like to get in touch with us,
if you have suggestions for future episodes of Stuff to
(44:40):
blow your mind, comments on past episodes, or just any
other comments you want to share with us well, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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