WEBVTT - Sharks Don't Sink, with Jasmin Graham 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:07.080 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:14.480 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:17.040 name is Robert Lamb, and this episode of Stuff to 0:00:17.040 --> 0:00:20.600 Blow your Mind, we're going to be chatting with Jasmine Graham, 0:00:20.640 --> 0:00:25.440 a shark scientist and author of Sharks Don't Sink. This 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:27.639 is a great book and it is out right now 0:00:27.680 --> 0:00:31.240 in all formats, So I encourage you if this interview 0:00:31.280 --> 0:00:34.680 grabs you, if the subject matter grabs you, and especially 0:00:34.720 --> 0:00:37.840 if you're interested in sharks, this is definitely some great 0:00:37.880 --> 0:00:40.920 summer reading for you, so pick up a copy, especially 0:00:40.960 --> 0:00:42.520 if you are going to go out to the beach 0:00:42.800 --> 0:00:46.479 or in any way experience the ocean this year. So 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:52.640 without further ado, let's dive right in. Hi, Jasmine, welcome 0:00:52.640 --> 0:00:53.080 to the show. 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:55.240 Thanks for having me. 0:00:55.680 --> 0:00:58.720 The new book, Sharks Don't Sink. Adventures of a Rogue 0:00:58.760 --> 0:01:02.600 Sharks Scientist is out in digital, physical, and audio formats. 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:06.480 I really enjoyed. It's a science book about sharks, but 0:01:06.520 --> 0:01:10.039 it's also a social advocacy book and a personal memoir. 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:12.479 So I wanted to ask you. I'm going to ask 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:14.640 you about all of these aspects, but I guess the 0:01:14.680 --> 0:01:18.280 best place to start is the simple question, how did 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:20.440 you become interested in shark biology. 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:24.360 I was always very interested in the ocean, and I 0:01:24.440 --> 0:01:27.319 grew up fishing with my dad and come from a 0:01:27.560 --> 0:01:30.399 fishing family, and so the ocean was always part of me. 0:01:31.280 --> 0:01:33.880 I didn't really think much about sharks. I wasn't one 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:36.560 of those people that was afraid of them. I wasn't 0:01:36.800 --> 0:01:39.000 super obsessed with them as a kid. They were kind 0:01:39.000 --> 0:01:42.759 of just animals that existed. But whenever I was in 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:46.480 college working on my marine biology degree, I met a 0:01:46.520 --> 0:01:50.200 professor who studied sharks, and I started talking with him 0:01:50.360 --> 0:01:52.960 and doing some research with him, and they kind of 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:55.320 fell in love with sharks. I did a lot of 0:01:55.400 --> 0:01:59.120 different marine science research while I was an undergrad, but 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:01.440 I just kept coming back to sharks because I just 0:02:01.480 --> 0:02:04.760 think they're so cool. They've been here so long, they 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:08.520 have such neat adaptations, and I've always been someone that 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:12.240 roots for the underdog, and they're very misunderstood, so I've 0:02:12.280 --> 0:02:13.760 always enjoyed working with them. 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:17.600 Now. In the book, you discussed the challenges and limitations 0:02:17.600 --> 0:02:20.200 of the academic world. I think a lot of us 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:23.440 outside of academia only have like a surface level understanding 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:28.000 of things like publish or perish, And so I might 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:30.359 ask you to discuss that a little bit for everyone. 0:02:30.400 --> 0:02:33.320 But also, you know, I think it's easy for us 0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:36.480 outsiders to think about science and research as being well, okay, 0:02:36.480 --> 0:02:39.640 this is like a pure logical thing, and we let 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:42.440 ourselves forget that we have all these issues of politics 0:02:42.440 --> 0:02:45.600 and discrimination very much in play in that world as well. 0:02:46.280 --> 0:02:50.280 What are the challenges facing up and coming research scientists 0:02:50.280 --> 0:02:52.080 and scientists of color in particular. 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:56.600 Yeah, it's interesting that you point out this perception that 0:02:56.720 --> 0:03:00.720 science is objective and without bias, and that's how science 0:03:00.720 --> 0:03:03.560 should be in its purest form. But obviously science is 0:03:03.600 --> 0:03:07.280 conducted by human beings, and human beings all have biases, 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:13.160 We have flaws, where illogical sometimes, and so I think 0:03:13.240 --> 0:03:17.200 it's really hard for people in the science field, not 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:19.160 just people outside of the science field, but even people 0:03:19.160 --> 0:03:22.120 in the science field to come to terms with that 0:03:22.120 --> 0:03:26.440 that this area of research that we do, you know, 0:03:26.480 --> 0:03:28.720 we do the scientific method and all of that, and 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:31.320 we like to think of ourselves as being objective. It's 0:03:31.360 --> 0:03:34.600 really hard for us to admit that our biases come 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:39.160 into play in our scientific research. But that's something that 0:03:39.160 --> 0:03:43.080 we have to deal with because We've seen science be 0:03:43.200 --> 0:03:46.760 used for some really terrible things. We've seen science be 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:50.040 used as an excuse for genocide. We've seen science create 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:54.240 atomic bombs. We've seen science do all sorts of really 0:03:54.480 --> 0:03:59.000 not great things. And so we have to recognize that 0:03:59.400 --> 0:04:03.280 we have this responsibility as scientists to try to be objective, 0:04:04.160 --> 0:04:08.600 but recognize that we are not entirely objective, and so 0:04:08.760 --> 0:04:11.520 we have to be critical of how we think, how 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:14.240 we interact with each other, and all of those things, 0:04:14.840 --> 0:04:19.839 everything to who gets to present to the scientific conference 0:04:20.360 --> 0:04:22.839 or who gets to work in somebody's lab, or who's 0:04:22.880 --> 0:04:26.720 invited to speak at this university, all of that has 0:04:26.839 --> 0:04:29.680 bias associated with it, and so we have to work 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:34.239 really hard to be responsive to that. What that looks 0:04:34.240 --> 0:04:37.719 like in terms of scientists from marginalized communities, it often 0:04:37.760 --> 0:04:42.600 looks like not getting as much mentorship opportunities. It looks 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:46.960 like not being in the club, you know, like a 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:50.200 there's a clear these are the cool people in science, 0:04:50.240 --> 0:04:51.960 and we all hang out together and we all talk, 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:56.360 and then there's outside ring of people trying to get 0:04:56.400 --> 0:05:00.839 into the cool club, into the inner circle, as it will, 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:04.440 And so those in the inner circle have to be 0:05:04.480 --> 0:05:07.120 really mindful of those who are outside the circle trying 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:10.080 to get in and making sure that they're accessible pathways 0:05:10.160 --> 0:05:13.640 to that. Because science and academia the way that it's 0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:17.000 set up, has a lot of potential for gatekeepers to 0:05:18.120 --> 0:05:23.320 solely decide who gets accepted into a PhD program, who 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:27.360 gets published. We have this idea of peer review, which 0:05:27.400 --> 0:05:31.120 is really great if you assume that your peers are 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:35.640 objective and going to be fair and just. And yes, 0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:37.839 there are a lot of people that give fair reviews, 0:05:37.880 --> 0:05:40.640 but there's a lot of people whose reviews are biased. 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:45.960 They see somebody's name and they say, I don't know 0:05:46.240 --> 0:05:50.280 that I trust that person just based off of their name, 0:05:50.560 --> 0:05:52.919 if it's a name that sounds feminine, if it's a 0:05:53.000 --> 0:05:57.640 name that sounds quote unquote foreign. You know, I've had 0:05:57.720 --> 0:06:01.440 people that are in different countries trying to publish work, 0:06:01.480 --> 0:06:03.479 and they complain a lot of times that they get 0:06:03.640 --> 0:06:07.800 really unfair peer reviews that basically imply that because they 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:10.039 are from a country in the global South, their science 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:14.400 isn't as credible as somebody from Europe or North America. 0:06:14.920 --> 0:06:18.000 And so that's something that we struggle with. So those 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:21.440 are just a few examples, but there's lots of areas 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:24.120 where bias can creep in, and because we like to 0:06:24.120 --> 0:06:27.039 think of ourselves as objective, sometimes we choose to ignore 0:06:27.120 --> 0:06:29.159 those things and kind of stick our head in the sand. 0:06:29.520 --> 0:06:32.400 But we have to really confront it in order to 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:36.640 make sure that science is actually objective and equitable. 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:41.159 And just thank you for walking us through that. Could 0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:44.160 you talk a little bit about Minorities in Shark Sciences 0:06:44.800 --> 0:06:47.760 or miss how this came together, what sort of work 0:06:47.800 --> 0:06:49.440 it's doing, and where you'd like it to go in 0:06:49.440 --> 0:06:49.920 the future. 0:06:51.480 --> 0:06:55.960 Minorities in Shark Sciences is four years old, so we 0:06:55.960 --> 0:06:59.320 were founded in June of twenty twenty. We actually met 0:06:59.320 --> 0:07:01.560 each other on on Twitter, me and the other three 0:07:01.600 --> 0:07:05.000 co founders, and we really wanted to create a sense 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:07.480 of community. That's what it started out as. We want 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:10.240 to create a sense of community where people feel like 0:07:10.280 --> 0:07:13.119 they belong in science, where people are able to build 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:17.320 their science identity in a place where they feel that 0:07:17.560 --> 0:07:20.040 the rest of their identity can come along and they 0:07:20.040 --> 0:07:22.120 don't have to leave it at the door in order 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:26.360 to be accepted. And so that's sort of where Minorities 0:07:26.360 --> 0:07:31.320 in Shark Sciences came from. Since then, it's grown to 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:36.160 be so much more than just community. It's grown to 0:07:36.240 --> 0:07:40.440 be this sort of wave of change in marine science 0:07:40.480 --> 0:07:45.360 and shark science in particular, where we were astounded at 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:49.040 how many people you did an open call of who 0:07:49.440 --> 0:07:52.400 is trying to get into shark research or marine science 0:07:52.480 --> 0:07:55.200 and feels like they are the first or the only 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:59.360 person like them in the room, come and join us. 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:03.800 Five hundred people responded. That's a lot of people. And 0:08:04.040 --> 0:08:08.040 so having this movement build of Okay, now we have 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:10.680 a responsibility to all of these people who are sharing 0:08:10.720 --> 0:08:14.880 their stories, who are pointing out these issues, who want 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:20.520 support in their universities, in their academic institutions, in their 0:08:20.640 --> 0:08:24.840 organizations to bring these issues to the forefront, because what 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:27.680 we found is that a lot of people have been 0:08:27.720 --> 0:08:31.120 experiencing these things and have been trying to draw attention 0:08:31.200 --> 0:08:35.840 to them individually. And it's a lot of Oh, I 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:40.400 think you're imagining that they maybe don't mean that you know, 0:08:40.520 --> 0:08:42.520 all of these sort of but but but but but 0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:45.319 and so that could be really frustrating to have people 0:08:45.360 --> 0:08:50.520 not believe you whenever you're trying to address something. But 0:08:51.120 --> 0:08:54.160 you can ignore one person, you can maybe ignore two people, 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:57.560 ignoring five hundred people saying the same thing. That's really 0:08:57.640 --> 0:08:59.640 hard to do, so you got to stick your head 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:02.640 pretty far in that's sand. And so that's sort of 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:06.200 what this movement has become is giving voice to people 0:09:06.320 --> 0:09:10.320 who haven't been able to have their voices amplified before, 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:14.920 doing cutting edge research and making sure to elevate people 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:19.319 who are doing research that maybe wasn't being respected before 0:09:19.920 --> 0:09:23.400 and being able to amplify that work and bring attention 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:26.120 to it with this collective power that Myths as an 0:09:26.200 --> 0:09:30.160 organization has built. And then also getting to bring more 0:09:30.200 --> 0:09:32.640 people into the fold, making sure that more people get 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:36.960 into that inner circle, providing the mentorship experiences. So we 0:09:37.000 --> 0:09:40.679 do mentorship experiences, we do professional development workshops, we help 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:43.240 people build skills, all of these sorts of skills that 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:45.640 you don't learn in school but people expect you to 0:09:45.679 --> 0:09:50.280 magically know how to do. And then also getting internships 0:09:50.320 --> 0:09:54.280 and fellowships and things like that, while eliminating the financial 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:57.000 barrier associated with that, because that's been a huge problem 0:09:57.040 --> 0:10:00.360 in the past. Is this pay to play where you 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:02.920 have to pay someone to go work for them, which 0:10:02.960 --> 0:10:06.440 exists in marine science and is super common. But if 0:10:06.480 --> 0:10:11.240 you went to pretty much any other field of career, 0:10:11.960 --> 0:10:15.920 if you say wanted to go intern at Google, it 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:19.040 would be absurd for you to pay to intern at Google. 0:10:19.120 --> 0:10:21.880 Google would pay you to intern at Google. But in 0:10:21.960 --> 0:10:26.160 marine science, for reasons, lots of reasons, it's flipped where 0:10:26.200 --> 0:10:28.640 the expectation is you're going to pay for this, and 0:10:28.679 --> 0:10:31.559 so that makes it really hard for people to access 0:10:31.720 --> 0:10:35.240 those experiences. But they need those experiences to get the job, 0:10:35.320 --> 0:10:37.480 to get in that inner circle, to meet those people, 0:10:37.960 --> 0:10:41.679 and so MISS is all about eliminating those barriers introducing 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:45.120 young people to marine science. In the ocean. Early on, 0:10:45.760 --> 0:10:49.360 we serve what we call kada gray. So we're really 0:10:49.400 --> 0:10:53.320 interested in bringing everyone in and making everyone feel connected, 0:10:53.360 --> 0:10:56.120 whether that means they want to be a scientist or 0:10:56.360 --> 0:10:59.760 they want to just advocate in their everyday lives. We 0:10:59.800 --> 0:11:02.280 want to make sure that people have access to the 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:05.480 information about what's going on in our ocean ecosystems because 0:11:05.480 --> 0:11:06.480 it affects all of us. 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:10.720 That's awesome. Now, getting I guess more into sharks again. 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:13.920 You spend a great deal of the book discussing the 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:17.080 elegance of sharks. You know from broad strokes about their 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:22.640 appearance and evolution to biological specifics and species level details. 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:25.400 You know, I'm not going to ask you to go 0:11:25.480 --> 0:11:27.960 through all of that here. I encourage listeners to go 0:11:28.080 --> 0:11:31.559 check out the book. But in brief, why are sharks 0:11:31.559 --> 0:11:34.280 such an evolutionary success story? Why have they done so 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:36.679 well and why have they changed so little? 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:41.239 That's a great question and something that we as evolutionary 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:44.800 biologists are really interested in, and we don't have all 0:11:44.800 --> 0:11:49.800 the answers. But something that's really unique about sharks is 0:11:49.920 --> 0:11:53.200 that they've been around on this planet a really long time. 0:11:53.520 --> 0:11:55.520 And when I say a really long time, I mean 0:11:55.840 --> 0:12:00.200 before the dinosaurs, before we had trees, before Saturn had 0:12:00.200 --> 0:12:03.280 its rings. This we're talking four hundred million years of time, 0:12:03.320 --> 0:12:05.400 which I think is really hard for us to grasp 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:07.480 as human beings who have been on this planet for 0:12:07.520 --> 0:12:11.360 a blink of an eye. But they've been here and 0:12:12.760 --> 0:12:16.800 pretty much not changing that much. The same basic body plan, 0:12:17.280 --> 0:12:22.760 same basic in the time that dinosaurs became chickens. Because 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:26.640 closest relative to dinosaurs a chicken, it's pretty wild to 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:28.600 think that sharks kind of looked the same and we 0:12:28.640 --> 0:12:31.040 went from a dinosaur to a chicken and the same 0:12:31.080 --> 0:12:35.880 amount of time, and so it's it's really cool, but 0:12:36.080 --> 0:12:39.920 it's also something that makes it really alarming when we 0:12:39.960 --> 0:12:42.600 think about losing them at the rate that we're losing them. 0:12:43.160 --> 0:12:47.760 So they've survived every mass extinction event thus far. Supervolcanoes, 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:52.800 meteor showers, you know, all of these ice ages, all 0:12:52.800 --> 0:12:57.319 of these things that other organisms didn't survive. They survived. 0:12:57.960 --> 0:13:01.560 But we're in the sixth mass extinction that's driven by people, 0:13:01.800 --> 0:13:05.280 and they're dying at an alarming rate, which we should all 0:13:05.280 --> 0:13:08.480 be concerned about because we don't know what the world 0:13:08.520 --> 0:13:11.400 looks like without sharks. Sharks have been here so long 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:14.760 that we don't even know what happens to an ecosystem 0:13:14.960 --> 0:13:18.400 when they're not there. We have no idea what the 0:13:18.440 --> 0:13:22.880 consequences of that are. And it's also really upsetting to 0:13:22.960 --> 0:13:26.200 think that we as a species are more damaging to 0:13:26.240 --> 0:13:31.400 the marine environment than super volcanoes and meteor showers. That's 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:34.679 pretty bad, and we need to start thinking about how 0:13:34.720 --> 0:13:40.480 we live sustainably, how do we coexist with all of 0:13:40.480 --> 0:13:43.440 these creatures that are here inhabiting the planet right now, 0:13:43.559 --> 0:13:47.760 because we just got here and we might not last 0:13:47.880 --> 0:13:50.199 very long if we keep going the way that we're going, 0:13:50.720 --> 0:13:54.199 and so That's something that I think is really important 0:13:54.240 --> 0:13:58.120 to think about. And sharks have all of these really 0:13:58.120 --> 0:14:01.400 cool adaptations that we can really learn learn from. I mean, 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:06.280 Michael Phelps had a whole swimsuit designed like the skin 0:14:06.400 --> 0:14:09.959 of sharks, and it was actually so effective that they 0:14:10.200 --> 0:14:13.920 banded in the Olympics. Like, just by copying how a 0:14:13.960 --> 0:14:17.320 shark's skin is designed, you increased your speed so much 0:14:17.360 --> 0:14:20.640 that it was banned at the Olympics. That's wild. Like 0:14:20.800 --> 0:14:24.560 nature has some really cool ways of figuring out how 0:14:24.600 --> 0:14:29.320 to solve problems, and sharks have really solved a lot 0:14:29.360 --> 0:14:32.280 of them. And so we can learn a lot from sharks, 0:14:32.280 --> 0:14:33.280 but not if they're not here. 0:14:33.720 --> 0:14:37.400 You talk about sharks as k selected animals rather than 0:14:37.440 --> 0:14:41.360 are selected animals, and how that plays into their vulnerability. 0:14:41.840 --> 0:14:43.680 Can you can you walk us through that real quick? 0:14:43.880 --> 0:14:46.520 What does it mean to be a K selected organism? 0:14:47.520 --> 0:14:51.440 Sure? So, when we think about the term k selected, 0:14:51.480 --> 0:14:54.600 and that's a term that's been used for a long time, 0:14:55.520 --> 0:14:57.760 people are starting to transition away from it, but I 0:14:57.760 --> 0:15:01.760 think it's really good for this concept. You have an organism, 0:15:02.080 --> 0:15:05.920 think like a sequoia grows for a really long time, 0:15:06.360 --> 0:15:11.360 gets really big, and that's that's great, you know, lives 0:15:11.400 --> 0:15:16.240 a long time, super long life, which is a strategy. 0:15:17.080 --> 0:15:21.520 And then you think of like a mosquito that lives 0:15:21.920 --> 0:15:25.920 and dies pretty much within a couple of days. And 0:15:26.000 --> 0:15:29.560 so you are comparing those two things, and it's not 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:33.400 that one is more effective. Mosquitos, you know, are effective 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:39.160 at existing. Sequoias are effective at existing until you introduce 0:15:39.240 --> 0:15:42.600 something like people and all the things that we do 0:15:43.040 --> 0:15:46.800 that causes these things that are supposed to be living 0:15:46.800 --> 0:15:49.480 a long time to not live a long time. And 0:15:49.560 --> 0:15:55.320 so these these case selected organisms are their strategy is 0:15:55.440 --> 0:15:58.960 live a long time, produce a lot of young over 0:15:59.000 --> 0:16:03.720 a long period of time, not just you know, put 0:16:03.720 --> 0:16:06.240 all of your eggs in one basket right at the beginning. 0:16:07.280 --> 0:16:09.680 When we have mosquitoes and things like that, there are 0:16:09.760 --> 0:16:11.960 selected they don't live a long time, but they have 0:16:12.120 --> 0:16:16.080 a lot of young in that amount of time. And 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:21.040 that's fine. Whatever strategy works until you start cutting down 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:25.520 sequoias before they get to live their full life and 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:29.280 reproduce as much as they should have if they live 0:16:29.360 --> 0:16:32.920 their full life. Same thing for sharks. It takes sharks 0:16:32.960 --> 0:16:35.680 a really long time to mature. So you think about people, 0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:40.400 we're also long lived don't reproduce very much. If we 0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:43.800 all died before we hit twenty years old, think about 0:16:43.840 --> 0:16:47.000 how many of us wouldn't have had children. Think about 0:16:47.000 --> 0:16:50.840 what that does to the population we're supposed to live. 0:16:51.280 --> 0:16:55.320 You know, roughly seventy eighty ninety some people live to 0:16:55.320 --> 0:16:58.840 be over one hundred years old, and you have time 0:16:59.040 --> 0:17:02.000 to have multi full children. Not if you die at 0:17:02.000 --> 0:17:06.040 twenty that's you don't have that opportunity, and so you 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:09.040 can't replace yourself. And so that's what's happening with sharks 0:17:09.280 --> 0:17:13.960 is their strategy worked for a really long time until 0:17:14.840 --> 0:17:17.480 we had these other things come about that are now 0:17:17.560 --> 0:17:21.160 killing them and they're not living their full life expectancy 0:17:21.240 --> 0:17:26.000 like they should have, and so that's affecting everything. It's 0:17:26.040 --> 0:17:32.040 affecting how many young are in the next generation. It's 0:17:32.080 --> 0:17:35.720 affecting the health of those young because we also have 0:17:36.000 --> 0:17:41.359 things like maternal offloading, which is where a mother shark 0:17:41.560 --> 0:17:44.840 has so much toxins, think mercury, think all of those 0:17:44.880 --> 0:17:48.080 things in her body that it starts being detrimental to her. 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:52.920 And the strategy for a case selected individual is I'm 0:17:52.920 --> 0:17:55.080 going to get rid of these toxins and my next 0:17:55.240 --> 0:17:58.040 litter of pups. I'm just gonna dump it all into them, 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:01.600 and they might not survive, but I will keep living 0:18:01.720 --> 0:18:04.240 and I will have more pups. So I will make 0:18:04.280 --> 0:18:08.000 the sacrifice of these pups so that I can keep 0:18:08.080 --> 0:18:11.400 living and continue to have pups, which is a great strategy, 0:18:11.880 --> 0:18:16.800 except for if you then are always accumulating mercury and 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:21.480 now all of your pups are not healthy and you're 0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:25.440 continuing to live and reproduce, but the pups that you're 0:18:25.480 --> 0:18:29.600 reproducing aren't as viable because they have all these toxins 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:31.800 in them. And so those are sort of things that 0:18:32.320 --> 0:18:35.480 you don't start to think about until you kind of 0:18:35.520 --> 0:18:39.480 dive deep into the ecology and how sharks work. And 0:18:39.520 --> 0:18:41.919 that's sort of what I like to talk about in 0:18:41.960 --> 0:18:46.840 the book so that people can understand, hey, conservation of 0:18:46.920 --> 0:18:58.840 the oceans involves conserving sharks. 0:18:57.320 --> 0:19:02.879 I think are some of the most I guess winnable 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:06.919 problems with shark conservation right now, like what are the 0:19:06.960 --> 0:19:10.679 areas where that are the most easily addressable that maybe 0:19:11.359 --> 0:19:12.600 we're not addressing yet. 0:19:13.160 --> 0:19:18.720 So fishing is a big problem we have overfishing, which 0:19:18.800 --> 0:19:22.479 is where they're taking more out of the population than 0:19:22.560 --> 0:19:25.560 can replace themselves. But then we also have by catch 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:31.560 and by catches where they're not actually targeting sharks. Sharks 0:19:31.600 --> 0:19:35.679 are not the goal. Sharks are accidentally being caught. And 0:19:35.760 --> 0:19:39.480 so that I feel like is something that's we can address. 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:42.879 Is it's not a matter of how do we feed 0:19:42.920 --> 0:19:45.280 these people, how do we make sure that these people 0:19:45.560 --> 0:19:50.080 have their economies stabilize. They don't actually want these sharks. 0:19:50.119 --> 0:19:51.960 They don't want the sharks. We don't want them to 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:55.960 catch the sharks. This is a perfect way for us 0:19:56.000 --> 0:19:58.160 to come together and think how do we keep sharks 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:01.360 out of your gear? And so that's a lot of 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:05.280 what I start thinking about is bycatch reduction, how do 0:20:05.359 --> 0:20:08.560 we keep these species that people don't want. They don't 0:20:08.600 --> 0:20:10.600 want to eat them, they don't need them for anything. 0:20:11.400 --> 0:20:15.000 That's a huge problem where they're dying for no reason 0:20:15.080 --> 0:20:19.200 at all. We're not even using them. And so that's 0:20:19.640 --> 0:20:25.240 one area. Another area with overfishing is a bit more 0:20:25.280 --> 0:20:28.679 complicated but still doable, is how do we cut down 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:34.280 on the amount of products that we need. So we 0:20:34.400 --> 0:20:38.560 think about squaling, squalling, and it's the oil in sharks livers. 0:20:38.880 --> 0:20:41.600 A lot of it's used in cosmetics and lotions and 0:20:41.640 --> 0:20:45.080 things like that. Whilst scientists have figured out a way 0:20:45.119 --> 0:20:49.960 to manufacture synthetic squaling, so we replace all of the 0:20:50.000 --> 0:20:53.240 squaling that's coming from sharks with synthetic. We've already cut 0:20:53.240 --> 0:20:58.879 out a good number of sharks deaths and so little 0:20:58.880 --> 0:21:02.199 things like that, simple switches that we can make in 0:21:02.359 --> 0:21:06.240 order to cut down on the amount of products that 0:21:06.280 --> 0:21:11.640 we use. I think people tend to focus on other 0:21:11.720 --> 0:21:15.800 people as a means to change. So we think about 0:21:16.760 --> 0:21:19.280 shark fin soup. That's what a lot of people like 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:22.960 to focus on, is well, we need to stop the 0:21:23.000 --> 0:21:26.560 Asian people from eating shark fin soup. This is not 0:21:26.640 --> 0:21:29.840 an Asia problem. This is an everyone problem. And it's 0:21:29.880 --> 0:21:35.320 really easy for you to point at somebody else and say, well, 0:21:35.359 --> 0:21:37.840 it's their fault. We need to start thinking about what 0:21:37.920 --> 0:21:42.800 can I do, what can we do here to make changes. 0:21:43.200 --> 0:21:46.880 It's not about pointing fingers at people, and I think 0:21:46.920 --> 0:21:49.960 it's a very slippery slope. It's really easy to fall 0:21:50.000 --> 0:21:54.040 into racism and xenophobia and be like, these people that 0:21:54.080 --> 0:21:57.800 are not like me are the problem. Fishermen are the problem, 0:21:58.400 --> 0:22:01.680 Asian people are the problem, Indigenous people are the problem. 0:22:01.760 --> 0:22:05.040 It's never I'm the problem. We have to start thinking 0:22:05.080 --> 0:22:07.879 about how we are contributing to the problem, because we 0:22:08.000 --> 0:22:11.600 all are, and we can't just go pointing fingers at people, 0:22:11.840 --> 0:22:14.240 especially because the people that tend to have the fingers 0:22:14.280 --> 0:22:18.040 pointed at them are marginalized communities who don't have a 0:22:18.040 --> 0:22:21.040 seat at the conservation table when these discussions are going on. 0:22:21.400 --> 0:22:23.800 It's really easy to blame someone when they're not there 0:22:23.840 --> 0:22:26.280 to defend themselves, and so I always like to tell 0:22:26.320 --> 0:22:28.879 people just be mindful of that when you're starting to 0:22:28.920 --> 0:22:33.639 think about conservation, start with yourself first before you start 0:22:33.680 --> 0:22:35.000 pointing fingers at other people. 0:22:35.760 --> 0:22:37.760 Now in the book, you bring up the topic of 0:22:37.920 --> 0:22:43.119 beach renourishment. Is this something that threatens sharks in the wild. 0:22:43.600 --> 0:22:49.480 Beach renourishment is something that's really interesting because as we 0:22:49.600 --> 0:22:55.000 have people living on coastlines, we have kind of two 0:22:55.760 --> 0:22:59.760 I guess groups of people living on coastlines. We have 0:23:00.000 --> 0:23:02.600 people who are living on the coastlines because they don't 0:23:02.600 --> 0:23:05.560 have anywhere else to go. And we have people that 0:23:05.600 --> 0:23:08.679 are living on coastlines because they want beachfront property and 0:23:08.720 --> 0:23:12.920 they want to look at the ocean. And so these 0:23:12.920 --> 0:23:16.560 are two groups of people that are often in conflict 0:23:16.600 --> 0:23:22.280 with each other because there's the people that have the 0:23:22.280 --> 0:23:27.359 beachfront property, have money and power, and the people who 0:23:27.760 --> 0:23:31.920 do not and are there because that's where they've been pushed. 0:23:32.520 --> 0:23:37.240 Thinking about Indigenous communities in Louisiana, a lot of Indigenous 0:23:37.240 --> 0:23:42.920 communities got pushed to Louisiana and those parishes that are 0:23:42.960 --> 0:23:46.879 coastal that are now going underwater, and that is not 0:23:47.080 --> 0:23:49.919 where they intended to be, that is not where their 0:23:50.160 --> 0:23:53.280 native lands are, that is where they were pushed. And 0:23:53.320 --> 0:23:56.320 then we have people you know that want to come 0:23:56.359 --> 0:23:59.400 and live in Miami and you know, have their beaches 0:23:59.440 --> 0:24:01.960 and stuff. And so we have to think about this 0:24:02.040 --> 0:24:07.360 from like two perspectives because there are reneurishment things where 0:24:07.400 --> 0:24:10.879 we're trying to keep land available for people who have 0:24:10.920 --> 0:24:16.400 nowhere else to go. And that's one issue, and there 0:24:16.440 --> 0:24:18.360 are lots of ways that we can think about, how 0:24:18.359 --> 0:24:21.280 do we keep people where they are, how do we 0:24:22.359 --> 0:24:25.480 help them decide where they want to go and give 0:24:25.520 --> 0:24:27.600 them a place to go if that's what they choose 0:24:27.640 --> 0:24:30.159 to do. Then we have this other group of people 0:24:30.400 --> 0:24:33.000 who are like, I want white fluffy sand in a beach. 0:24:33.560 --> 0:24:37.880