Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Thank you very little. Before webring my special guests, let me just
tell you one quick thing. Ilove diving with sharks. I've done a
lot of diving with sharks. Imissed my one opportunity to be in a
cage with a great white in SouthAfrica because because by the time it got
to be my turn, the sharkhad left. I got to see it
(00:20):
from the boat. This thing wasevery bit of twelve feet. It was
a freaking monster. But I missedthat. And then one other very quick
story, The dumbest thing I've everdone in my life and one of the
greatest things. I and two femalescuba divers. And by the way,
women who are good divers are muchbetter than men who are good divers because
they're so much better with air.We went down two hundred feet, which
(00:43):
you're not supposed to do, andbang on our tanks with our knives.
This was in the Solomon Islands,sort of northeast of Australia, and we
got these two nine ten foot longhammerheads that came to us. Gosh,
that was fun, all right,joining us to talk about sharks in America.
Greg Metzger is the chief field coordinatorfor the Sofo SOFO Shark Program,
(01:10):
the South Fork Natural History Museum andNature Center. That's SOFO and boy Greg's
it's good to have you here,and thanks for doing this on short notice.
Yeah, no worries. It justhappened to work out that I had
a lull in the action here andwas able to get on the radio and
answer some questions for that you mighthave. Okay, come with some experience
and so be fun. Okay.So I saw a piece because my kids
(01:34):
sent it to me at National Geographicabout a great white shark nursery. And
my understanding, I'm not an expert, is that great white shark nurseries are
exceedingly rare or perhaps unknown until now. Yeah. So, as far as
(01:56):
we know, there are three confirmedwhite shark nurseries for the entire world.
Now does that mean that there's onlythree? No, I'm sure there are
more. We just scientists just haven'tbeen able to check the boxes to deem
an area a nursery. We arelucky enough to have the only confirmed nursery
in the entire Atlantic Ocean right now, right off our south shore, and
so it's a pretty special place togo and conduct research and to be able
(02:21):
to put your hands on a whiteshark that might only be a month or
two old. Is a very veryspecial opportunity that we have. So we're
talking about off the south shore ofLong Island, miles from New York City.
Yeah, basically anywhere. Our taggingstudies have shown that the baby white
(02:43):
sharks basically swim back and forth alongthe south shore of Long Island from Manhattan
to Montauk, often several times aseason. And so the season for these
baby white charts they show up midMay and here through mid October. So
from middle of May to the middleof October, that's when those babies are
(03:06):
here in our in our nursery,and they swim south, take about a
month to swim down to the Carolinas, and they overwinter that first winter off
of North Carolina. So other thanpeople from New Jersey, what is the
natural food for great white sharks?Well, just to be clear, as
(03:29):
this is something we're trying to campdown, people are not on the menu
of any shark pretty much as certainlyones that are in New York waters.
It's unfortunate that there is the occasionalnegative interaction. But we can get to
that another another minute or two.So there the sharks are primarily here to
eat the large schools of men Haydenor they're also called bunker. It's a
(03:52):
small fish that they get maybe afoot long, maybe three quarters of a
pound, but they swim in massive, massive schools. There's hundreds of thousands
of these individual fish in any oneschool, and depending on the time of
year, which we're starting to comeinto that, if you were to fly
which I have, from Manhattan toMontauk, you would see hundreds and hundreds
(04:13):
of these schools spotted along the entiresouth shore of Long Island. So that's
really the primary food source for notonly the sharks, but the ospreys and
the seagulls and the whales and dolphinsand stuff like that. All that wildlife
that you see, which was prettyrare you know, ten years ago,
and it's not pretty commonplace. That'sall, you know. A lot of
(04:35):
that is due to those large schoolsof Menhdra. Okay, So we got
about five minutes left, and Iwant to ask you lots of things,
So give me slightly short answers.Okay, So, what exactly is a
nursery? How big is a nursery? Is it a very defined thing,
or is it kind of a largearea. It's a pretty large area.
(04:56):
It's the entire south shore of LongIsland. And then if you draw a
line from Montalk Point to Cape meNew Jersey, it forms a triangle,
and that triangle is called the NewYork Flights with several thousand square miles of
area. Nursery is just like whatyou would think, safe place, lots
of food, no predators, noworries, eating and pooping and growing as
fast as you can. Okay,So and I share with you wanting to
(05:21):
tamp down negative views of sharks.I like sharks. I like swimming with
sharks. I might I probably bea little nervous in the water with a
twelve foot great white or a tigershark, but there's not very many kinds
of sharks that would make me nervous. Do you how do you interact if
(05:41):
you do with in the water withbaby white sharks to do your research,
are you scuba diving? How doyou think about interacting with a shark that
does have at least the reputation thatthe white shark has. So all the
work that we do is using traditionalrod and real fish techniques, so it's
nothing special. We fish off asmall boat using hooks and lines, just
(06:04):
like you would go you know,large amount pass fishing, these different sizes
and stuff like that. But we'retrying to get them to take the base
and then we bring them alongside theboat. We put a tail rope around
them so that the hook pops outwhile we're doing our work up, you
know, the animal won't get awayfrom us. And then it takes us
about we're under ten minutes for thescience that we do to them, and
(06:28):
then we let them go. Soand then I'm guessing it's a barbleous hook.
Yeah, yep, so yeah,circle hooks and we crush the barb
so that it's easy to get it'seasier to get the hooks out. And
then are you putting a tracking deviceon them? And if so, how
many tracking devices do you have inthe water now? Yeah, So that's
(06:49):
a different type of tag. Wedon't use ones that give us real time
signals as far as where the sharksare. That's a different questions, a
different type of tag. Okay,we put pop off satellite tags on.
So this stays on the shark fortwenty eight days and it records the temperature
and depth of the shark is atevery ten seconds for those twenty eight days,
(07:09):
and then after twenty eight days itpops off. The shark flows to
the surface and then wow, thesatellite. That satellite emails us all the
data, so we don't have toget that tag back to get the information
off of it. But you don'tknow where it's gone. You just know
how deep it's been, right,you can. There is modeling that's being
done to be able to read,you know, take the speed of the
(07:32):
animal and the depths that are likelyand be able to get a rough idea
of where the shark went. Butthat that's not the primary use of that
type of tag. Those so weknow where the shark, we tag the
shark, we know where that thetag popped off, we don't really know
where it went in between. Okay, this is a very dumb question,
(07:53):
but I'm going to ask you anyway, would you describe a baby great white
as cute? I weed? Theyare a perfect replica of the adults.
So you've been fortunate enough to seeadults which are absolutely tawe inspiring. Yes,
the definition of awesome. They areawe inspiring. And so these little
(08:15):
ones, you know, it's nottheir size that's impressive. It's the fact
that this is a young of yourwhite shark that that you have there.
But they have all the attitude ofthe adults when we let them go.
Most sharks that we let go theyjust take off. Most of the baby
white sharks when we let them go, they roll onto their side and they
just stare at you, and theyslowly swim around the boat, and about
(08:37):
half of them will actually come andfight some part of the boat as like,
don't you know who I am?Hype attitude itself. Even though they're
three four feet long, thirty pounds, they've got all the attitude of the
most iconic plant animal on the planetin opinion, in their minds, they're
gangsters calling you the B word,at least in their mind. Oh yeah,
(09:01):
if you have an opportunity to watchthe next GEO show, you're going
to see just how scrappy an attitudethey they are. They did not like
when I was handling them, andthey tried every way possible to bite me.
Wow. So this is baby Sharksin the City. Is that the
show we're talking about? That's theshow? Yep, It's premiering tonight.
It's on you can stream it nowon Disney Plus, but the premiere is
(09:26):
tonight at eight o'clock. Okay,and that's National Geographics Shark Fest episode called
Baby Sharks in the City. Allright, last quick question for you.
So there has long been some conversationabout Great Whites being maybe not the verge
of extinction, but not doing verywell population wise because of shark hunting and
(09:48):
other things. Is that improving now? Yeah, all of the scients that
has been coming out recently showing thatthere is there is in a slight increase
in the population of white chark.So we've turned the corner and you know,
populations of white Chuk's are filling signsof coming back, which is fantastic.
(10:09):
Greg Metzger is a chief field coordinatorfor the SOFO that's the South Fork
Natural History Museum in New York forthe the SOFO Shark Program. Thanks so
much for your time today, Greg, great conversation, and you know,
I'm a little jealous of your job, I have to say, but I
(10:30):
really I really appreciate your time.We'll talk again, Okay. Bye.
Thank you very little. Before webring my special guests, let me just
tell you one quick thing. Ilove diving with sharks. I've done a
lot of diving with sharks. Imissed my one opportunity to be in a
cage with a great white in SouthAfrica because because by the time it got
to be my turn, the sharkhad left. I got to see it
(00:20):
from the boat. This thing wasevery bit of twelve feet. It was
a freaking monster. But I missedthat. And then one other very quick
story, The dumbest thing I've everdone in my life and one of the
greatest things. I and two femalescuba divers. And by the way,
women who are good divers are muchbetter than men who are good divers because
they're so much better with air.We went down two hundred feet, which
(00:43):
you're not supposed to do, andbang on our tanks with our knives.
This was in the Solomon Islands,sort of northeast of Australia, and we
got these two nine ten foot longhammerheads that came to us. Gosh,
that was fun, all right,joining us to talk about sharks in America.
Greg Metzger is the chief field coordinatorfor the Sofo SOFO Shark Program,
(01:10):
the South Fork Natural History Museum andNature Center. That's SOFO and boy Greg's
it's good to have you here,and thanks for doing this on short notice.
Yeah, no worries. It justhappened to work out that I had
a lull in the action here andwas able to get on the radio and
answer some questions for that you mighthave. Okay, come with some experience
and so be fun. Okay.So I saw a piece because my kids
(01:34):
sent it to me at National Geographicabout a great white shark nursery. And
my understanding, I'm not an expert, is that great white shark nurseries are
exceedingly rare or perhaps unknown until now. Yeah. So, as far as
(01:56):
we know, there are three confirmedwhite shark nurseries for the entire world.
Now does that mean that there's onlythree? No, I'm sure there are
more. We just scientists just haven'tbeen able to check the boxes to deem
an area a nursery. We arelucky enough to have the only confirmed nursery
in the entire Atlantic Ocean right now, right off our south shore, and
so it's a pretty special place togo and conduct research and to be able
(02:21):
to put your hands on a whiteshark that might only be a month or
two old. Is a very veryspecial opportunity that we have. So we're
talking about off the south shore ofLong Island, miles from New York City.
Yeah, basically anywhere. Our taggingstudies have shown that the baby white
(02:43):
sharks basically swim back and forth alongthe south shore of Long Island from Manhattan
to Montauk, often several times aseason. And so the season for these
baby white charts they show up midMay and here through mid October. So
from middle of May to the middleof October, that's when those babies are
(03:06):
here in our in our nursery,and they swim south, take about a
month to swim down to the Carolinas, and they overwinter that first winter off
of North Carolina. So other thanpeople from New Jersey, what is the
natural food for great white sharks?Well, just to be clear, as
(03:29):
this is something we're trying to campdown, people are not on the menu
of any shark pretty much as certainlyones that are in New York waters.
It's unfortunate that there is the occasionalnegative interaction. But we can get to
that another another minute or two.So there the sharks are primarily here to
eat the large schools of men Haydenor they're also called bunker. It's a
(03:52):
small fish that they get maybe afoot long, maybe three quarters of a
pound, but they swim in massive, massive schools. There's hundreds of thousands
of these individual fish in any oneschool, and depending on the time of
year, which we're starting to comeinto that, if you were to fly
which I have, from Manhattan toMontauk, you would see hundreds and hundreds
(04:13):
of these schools spotted along the entiresouth shore of Long Island. So that's
really the primary food source for notonly the sharks, but the ospreys and
the seagulls and the whales and dolphinsand stuff like that. All that wildlife
that you see, which was prettyrare you know, ten years ago,
and it's not pretty commonplace. That'sall, you know. A lot of
(04:35):
that is due to those large schoolsof Menhdra. Okay, So we got
about five minutes left, and Iwant to ask you lots of things,
So give me slightly short answers.Okay, So, what exactly is a
nursery? How big is a nursery? Is it a very defined thing,
or is it kind of a largearea. It's a pretty large area.
(04:56):
It's the entire south shore of LongIsland. And then if you draw a
line from Montalk Point to Cape meNew Jersey, it forms a triangle,
and that triangle is called the NewYork Flights with several thousand square miles of
area. Nursery is just like whatyou would think, safe place, lots
of food, no predators, noworries, eating and pooping and growing as
fast as you can. Okay,So and I share with you wanting to
(05:21):
tamp down negative views of sharks.I like sharks. I like swimming with
sharks. I might I probably bea little nervous in the water with a
twelve foot great white or a tigershark, but there's not very many kinds
of sharks that would make me nervous. Do you how do you interact if
(05:41):
you do with in the water withbaby white sharks to do your research,
are you scuba diving? How doyou think about interacting with a shark that
does have at least the reputation thatthe white shark has. So all the
work that we do is using traditionalrod and real fish techniques, so it's
nothing special. We fish off asmall boat using hooks and lines, just
(06:04):
like you would go you know,large amount pass fishing, these different sizes
and stuff like that. But we'retrying to get them to take the base
and then we bring them alongside theboat. We put a tail rope around
them so that the hook pops outwhile we're doing our work up, you
know, the animal won't get awayfrom us. And then it takes us
about we're under ten minutes for thescience that we do to them, and
(06:28):
then we let them go. Soand then I'm guessing it's a barbleous hook.
Yeah, yep, so yeah,circle hooks and we crush the barb
so that it's easy to get it'seasier to get the hooks out. And
then are you putting a tracking deviceon them? And if so, how
many tracking devices do you have inthe water now? Yeah, So that's
(06:49):
a different type of tag. Wedon't use ones that give us real time
signals as far as where the sharksare. That's a different questions, a
different type of tag. Okay,we put pop off satellite tags on.
So this stays on the shark fortwenty eight days and it records the temperature
and depth of the shark is atevery ten seconds for those twenty eight days,
(07:09):
and then after twenty eight days itpops off. The shark flows to
the surface and then wow, thesatellite. That satellite emails us all the
data, so we don't have toget that tag back to get the information
off of it. But you don'tknow where it's gone. You just know
how deep it's been, right,you can. There is modeling that's being
done to be able to read,you know, take the speed of the
(07:32):
animal and the depths that are likelyand be able to get a rough idea
of where the shark went. Butthat that's not the primary use of that
type of tag. Those so weknow where the shark, we tag the
shark, we know where that thetag popped off, we don't really know
where it went in between. Okay, this is a very dumb question,
(07:53):
but I'm going to ask you anyway, would you describe a baby great white
as cute? I weed? Theyare a perfect replica of the adults.
So you've been fortunate enough to seeadults which are absolutely tawe inspiring. Yes,
the definition of awesome. They areawe inspiring. And so these little
(08:15):
ones, you know, it's nottheir size that's impressive. It's the fact
that this is a young of yourwhite shark that that you have there.
But they have all the attitude ofthe adults when we let them go.
Most sharks that we let go theyjust take off. Most of the baby
white sharks when we let them go, they roll onto their side and they
just stare at you, and theyslowly swim around the boat, and about
(08:37):
half of them will actually come andfight some part of the boat as like,
don't you know who I am?Hype attitude itself. Even though they're
three four feet long, thirty pounds, they've got all the attitude of the
most iconic plant animal on the planetin opinion, in their minds, they're
gangsters calling you the B word,at least in their mind. Oh yeah,
(09:01):
if you have an opportunity to watchthe next GEO show, you're going
to see just how scrappy an attitudethey they are. They did not like
when I was handling them, andthey tried every way possible to bite me.
Wow. So this is baby Sharksin the City. Is that the
show we're talking about? That's theshow? Yep, It's premiering tonight.
It's on you can stream it nowon Disney Plus, but the premiere is
(09:26):
tonight at eight o'clock. Okay,and that's National Geographics Shark Fest episode called
Baby Sharks in the City. Allright, last quick question for you.
So there has long been some conversationabout Great Whites being maybe not the verge
of extinction, but not doing verywell population wise because of shark hunting and
(09:48):
other things. Is that improving now? Yeah, all of the scients that
has been coming out recently showing thatthere is there is in a slight increase
in the population of white chark.So we've turned the corner and you know,
populations of white Chuk's are filling signsof coming back, which is fantastic.
(10:09):
Greg Metzger is a chief field coordinatorfor the SOFO that's the South Fork
Natural History Museum in New York forthe the SOFO Shark Program. Thanks so
much for your time today, Greg, great conversation, and you know,
I'm a little jealous of your job, I have to say, but I
(10:30):
really I really appreciate your time.We'll talk again, Okay. Bye.
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