Transcript
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Welcome back to another fantastic episode of
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the beyond jaws podcast on today's episode We have dr.
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Chris Lowe from Cal State University, Long Beach the
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shark lab we're gonna be talking about updates from the shark lab
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how they are working with lifeguards with
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outreach with schools and City counselors
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and it's just it's an amazing program talking about great whites We get into
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the deep research that they've been doing not only from a
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shark science perspective but also from psychology of
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people and how they look at great whites how they
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See swimming with great whites and how they are adapting to doing
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that. It's a lot of fun I can't wait to start the show. So here we
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go Hey, everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the Beyond Jaws
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podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, co-host Andrew Lewin, here
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with my co-host, Dr. David Ebert. Dave, are you ready to
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not necessarily go beyond Jaws, but we're going to be talking about a Jaws-like species,
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Absolutely, Andrew. I'm looking so forward to this. We have had Chris on a couple
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of years ago, one of our early episodes. Fantastic guest. He
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shared a lot, having grown up in Martha's Vineyard while they were filming
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Jaws. So he had a lot of intimate knowledge and here he is, you
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know, 50 years later, hate to age ourselves, but he's back
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out here and basically doing the
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same type of thing they're trying to figure out in the movie Jaws, like how to keep the
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communities from going bankrupt by shark activity off the beaches. And
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it's a quite a high tech story. He tells something that he
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didn't really expect on his journey as being a shark researcher, I'm
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really looking forward to it and hopefully anyone listening out
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there, Chris is also looking for some funding to keep the shark lab going
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Absolutely. You can reach out to us. We'll put you in touch with Chris. If
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you are looking to put some money where
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you want to see an application on science, especially with
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white sharks, I think it's going to be great. So here is the episode with Dr.
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Chris Lowe from the Cal State University Long
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Beach Shark Lab. Enjoy the interview and we'll talk to you
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after. Hey, Chris, welcome back to the Beyond Jaws podcast. Are
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Well, we're here to welcome back Dr. Chris Lowe. who's a
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professor of marine biology at California State University, Long Beach,
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and he's also the director of the Shark Lab at Long
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Beach State as well. He's also a former president of the American Alasma
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Brank Society and acquisted his PhD at
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the University of Hawaii. And prior to that, he did his master's at
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California State University, Long Beach under Don Nelson, who was one
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of the real legends in the field of shark research, shark telemetry, and
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was one of the founders of the American Alasma Brank Society.
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And Chris was on episode 15 of ours back
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in February of 2022. And he's here today to catch
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up and see what Chris has been up to. So, Chris, welcome to the show. Thanks
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for having me. It's always fun. Cool. Yeah. So, well,
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so what do you so in the last couple of years, Chris, what have you been up to? with
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I've been keeping very busy. Yeah. So
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I would say the thing that's kept me the most busy is
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the development of the California Shark Beach Safety Program, which is a
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state funded program because there are all these white
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sharks showing up off California beaches. Funny. Yeah.
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And people were a little concerned. So it's actually
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a really cool story because it's a conservation success story for
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California, right? White sharks were protected in 1994. Prior
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to that they were caught and killed in commercial fisheries. People were probably eating
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them and they didn't know it. And then in
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94 protection was put in place and since then we've seen kind of numbers tick
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up. So a lot of people keep telling me where are
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all these sharks coming from. And we've spent years trying
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to figure that out, like what explains this? But
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in reality, the bottom line is protection was key, right?
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The babies weren't being killed anymore in the commercial fisheries because they're
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now protected. But it was also protection of marine mammals that
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was critical. And the recovery of those populations have fed
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the adult population, allowing probably for a lot of this recovery.
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And it's not just California that's seen this. The Northeast has seen this.
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Australia has seen this. So in other places where white sharks are protected
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and their food sources have come back, white sharks have too. So, you
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know, while us conservation people are going, yay, conservation works,
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not everybody was cheering. So the lifeguards who are
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responsible for keeping people safe were coming to us going, what is
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going on with all these sharks on the beach? Is it safe for people to be in
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the water? And that was when we got money
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from the state. So we had been working with all the ocean lifeguards, tagging
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sharks and trying to figure out how much time they're spending off beaches and where
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they're coming from, you know, monitoring the population size.
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But we had no money. We were getting a little bit of money from Monterey Bay Aquarium. And
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when one of our local assembly members found
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out how little money we had, that was when he went to
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Sacramento and we co-authored a bill. And then
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we got $3.75 million to develop the California Shark Beach
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Safety Program. And the whole purpose of that program was
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to work directly with lifeguards to provide them with information they
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would need to keep people safe. But I always had
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to remind them that white sharks are protected in California, and
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we also have to focus on keeping sharks safe as well. So
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the whole program was kind of dedicated to that. So
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we get to ramp up our research program. So we really get to
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focus on questions like, why are these sharks here? How long are
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they going to be here? What are they eating while they're there? How often are they near
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people? When are they going to leave? That's what the lifeguards wanted to know. So
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by using all these combinations of technology, acoustic telemetry, satellite
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telemetry, BRUVs, we were doing stable
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isotopes, we were doing eDNA, we're
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flying drones, we're using all this technology to
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monitor a population from San Diego all the way to Monterey.
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So that program, actually, we
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learned a lot about white sharks from those five years of
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funding that we got. And then, of course, we had an education and outreach program
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that went hand in hand with that. So our education program had
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certain clients, right? So one of our clients in our education program
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were lifeguards. So we have in California some of the best
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lifeguards in the world. They are really some of the most skilled
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lifeguards in the world, but they're not marine biologists. So
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a lot of them have a hard time identifying a lot of the sharks and
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rays that are along our coast. So we developed an education program
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for them. So we teach them how to identify all these animals, how
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to interpret shark behavior, which becomes really important in deciding if
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you're going to close a beach or not. So that education program
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is now instituted statewide. All the ocean lifeguards use that
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program. In addition, we have recreational fishers
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that are fishing off our beaches. And now there's a lot of sharks hanging out
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off our beaches that are actually prohibited, right? So it is
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illegal for them to target them. And sometimes they incidentally
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catch them. So we teach them how to avoid catching them.
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And if they do catch them, how to release them safely for both them and
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the shark. So a lot of these education programs that we put together
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have formal curricula. We work with sport fishing groups, things like that.
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And then of course we have K through 12. So we
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have a whole education program for them. It's called Operation Stem
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Bait Sharks and Robots. And we have four curricula designed
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for different age groups. We go into classrooms, we work with science teachers, and
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they meet California Next Generation Science Standards. And
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basically, our philosophy is to get kids interested using
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sharks and robots in the STEM field. So can we get them interested
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in science, technology, engineering, and math? And
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if you can't use sharks and robots to get kids interested in
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STEM, then we've failed. So that
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program has been so popular, it's literally exploded. So
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I just got money from NOAA to run a one-year pilot, and
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we're paying students to go into classrooms and work with teachers to deliver the
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curriculum. We also have a big outreach program. So during
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the summer I hire a bunch of undergrads that are trained to go out. We call them shark shacks.
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They're pop-ups. And we hit 26 beaches in Southern California
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several times. We go to all the ocean piers and we educate
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the public about beach safety. We talk about stingrays and we
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talk about sea jellies and we talk about sharks and rip currents and all those things. And
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the reason why we do that is we don't want to scare them, just think it's just
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sharks they need to be aware of. It's these other marine
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safety issues. Yeah. And that's really important for our
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Let me ask you this, going back to the beginning when you said
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the counselor noticed how you didn't have, like in LA, didn't
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have a lot of money coming through, what made the counselor, you
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know, start to like perk up and be like, well, we need to have like
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a better you know, a better system. We need
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to have money for this system. Was was he someone that
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you were connected through or she sorry, like was
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it was a person that was interested in sharks? Like how
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Actually, it's kind of funny. He's he lives right across from the
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university. Okay. He was kind of known for his he
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was a teacher before becoming an assembly member. And
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he was kind of known for supporting education. So he would come
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to the university and say, you know, how can I help the university? Can
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we write some legislation that will help the university? And
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they said, well, you know, we have all these programs. And he goes, well, I've been hearing on
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the news about this shark lab group going
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out and studying sharks. And my daughter is in junior lifeguards. And
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she came back and told us all about what she's learned about sharks. So
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he said, and I also heard in the news that there are all these sharks in the
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beaches, but you don't have enough money to tag them. You have
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all the technology, you have the skill, you have the people, you
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just don't have the money. So that was what started
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That's fantastic. Talk about like how things happen just
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through connections, right? Daughter
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was a junior lifeguard learning about the shark program. He sees
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probably you or one of your students on the
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news. Because I know we've talked about this before on this podcast. You
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value science communication. And you've always had
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a bit of a knack for talking
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to the press and going out to the press to bring up
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and be able to talk about stories. So you just never know who's watching and
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Yeah, absolutely. And, and that's something that, you know, as
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Dave, as Dave knows, I'm on the international shark
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attack file board and I, and I investigate shark bites on
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the West coast. So, you know, one of the things that I've
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kind of stepped into is, you know, when these bites occur, they get
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a lot of media attention and it usually goes national or international. If
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those bites occur in spring or summer, the beginning of beach season in
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North America, right? So what
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I've been able to do is educate a lot of these reporters that
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I've built relationships with to get off the story
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of, oh my God, there was a deadly shark bite
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at this beach to, you know, there are a lot of sharks around
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the coast. Why are they there? And why do these things
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occasionally occur? So, you know, I think that's
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one of the things that we focused on is, you know, in terms of educating a
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lot of groups, educating reporters has been a really important mission.
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and building those relationships and getting them to change the
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tune, right? Right. So it's going from being an
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alarmist to being, you know, these things do
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occasionally occur. Guess what? We're learning about white sharks. And
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I think that's really been instrumental in helping us get this
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money because it's taking pressure off a lot of these communities
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that come from kind of over overly dramatic
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press. And then it's helped them understand that
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the more they learn, the calmer people are when these
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things happen. So I think in terms of protecting
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sharks, that's really important, right? Because we're seeing shark populations come
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back. And the more they come back, the more they're going to be around people.
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And the higher the likelihood for a negative interaction. So
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therefore, we've got to start educating our public on
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to what to expect. So I think dealing
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with the news and reporters has been a really
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important part of that formula. and has enabled us
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to kind of tamp down concerns based
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on, here, look what we're learning. This is why the sharks are there. Shark
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bites are super rare. In fact, this is how rare they are. Sharks
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are around people all the time, and they're not bothering anybody. Look at this amazing
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drone footage of a shark just swimming right by a surfer and not even paying attention.
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When you educate the lifeguards, because
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they're the ones who are interacting with the public directly most of
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the time, have you noticed a difference? Or
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what differences have you noticed? with
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sort of the perception of sharks on the beaches, as well as, like, have
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you noticed any, like, more people going into the water because of these
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programs? Like, or can you, I'm not even sure if you can measure that at that point. What
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type of metrics are you using to see how
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this education program is working, or
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Yeah, actually, and that's been really important for us, right? To quantify, is
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this making a difference? So part of
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that we use lifeguard attitudes, right?
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So for them, that's an important part of their job and they're very worried.
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In the early days, they were very worried about this because if
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there's a shark off the beach and somebody gets bitten and they don't pull people out
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of the water, Are they responsible for that, right? So
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there was a lot of education that needed to be done for them to
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build their confidence in the policies that they started
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to put in place. The other thing is, and we have to remember this,
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every time you close a beach, there's an economic impact to
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those communities. So there's a revenue loss because
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people leave that beach and they go somewhere else and they take their dollars
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somewhere else. And if it's their first time going to that beach and
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the beach is closed because of sharks, they may never go back
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to that beach again. So one of the
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things we're doing right now is I've teamed up with an environmental economist and
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we're trying to quantify what is the cost of a beach closure. And
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remember, we have cities of different sizes. So you close
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Huntington Beach, you know, kind of surf city, you know,
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the economic impact of that community can be really large. You go
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to a smaller beach community where the beach may only be a mile long, and
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a day beach closure may be a fraction of that cost, right? But
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nonetheless, knowing what those costs are really important. Yep. So
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these are the sorts of things that we have made a difference. So lifeguards,
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for example, can tell when our tag sharks are moving along
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our beaches because we've built these cool new buoys that give them real-time
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live data. Tag shark comes along and we kept saying this
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is not an early warning system. We can't tag every shark out there. That
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means there could be 15 sharks swimming around your buoy without
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tags and you wouldn't know it. But you use
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the tag data to understand patterns of behavior. So, for
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example, in the early days when we helped them develop a
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policy, the policy stated if a shark is
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eight feet, as big as a surfboard, you might want to pull people out
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of the water. And our rationale for that in the early days was those
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larger sharks are more likely to approach something its
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size or smaller. Okay, we had no data to
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support that. That was just our hypothesis at the time. So
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we started tagging these sharks and then we found these sharks form
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aggregations and they'll be at these beaches day in day out for weeks to
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months at a time. Shark, there'd be an eight foot shark off this
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beach being detected every hour at this beach for
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months. Lifeguards, according to the policy, would
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be pulling people out of the water every hour. Okay. So they know
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the sharks out there, they're getting detections. No surfers are
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reporting seeing any sharks. So then what they started going is,
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why close the beach? So then what they started to do is post signs. They
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post signs saying, this is shark habitat. Now, as soon as they post the signs,
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people steal them because they're cool signs. People wanted
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So now we've developed permanent signage for
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them. So they're really cool signs. I hired art students to do it.
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We use all the psychology to get people to look at the signs. We don't want them to
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be afraid. If you look at the signs on Cape Cod, they're kind of
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scary, right? Big red letters that say warning and
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the beautiful picture of a white shark. They see people driving and
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see that sign and get in their car and drive out. So we've
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used people's psychology to understand what's
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the best way to do this and not scare scare people. So those
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things are working. They've saved local communities millions
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of dollars in lost revenue from not closing beaches unnecessarily.
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So that's an example, I think, of where we've had success. The
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lifeguards see it, the city council see it, and
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now the public's starting to understand. So I
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would say our drone program is the other one that's been the most influential, right?
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So when we tell people we did this study and we did all
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these analyses and 97% of the
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days that we surveyed aggregation sites, there was a shark within 20 meters
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of a person. You tell that to people and they're like, yeah, but
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that's a white shark, right? But you show them the video and
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they watch this nine foot juvenile white shark swim right underneath
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the swimmer without changing course, changing speed,
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like the swimmer wasn't even there. Swimmer can't see the shark. So
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when they see that footage over and over again, they're like, well, wait a
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minute. This doesn't match what I've been taught on Shark Week.
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And then they go, well, maybe they're not that dangerous. So
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it's funny to see that we have all this really compelling
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scientific data that took years to collect. And that
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has very little influence. What has the best influence is
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people seeing hobbyists post this footage
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online And then they see it over and over and
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over again. And they go, well, seeing is believing. So
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that, I think, has had a huge impact on
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people's attitudes about sharing the water with
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Chris, I've got to ask you this question because you've obviously been down there at
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Long Beach for quite a few years, quite a few decades now. When
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you were a young lad starting out, Did
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you, and you're doing a lot of diving, beach going and stuff, did, how,
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what, how do you, when you think back to those days about,
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Yeah, well, I think there just weren't that many white sharks, Dave.
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I really don't. I think when, when you and
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I were grad students here, you know, the adults were aggregating around
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those adult feeding aggregation sites, but I
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just don't think there were as many. And you know juveniles
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in Southern California fishermen will occasionally catch him off the beaches But
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you know if if a fisherman caught a white shark Don would have heard about
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it, and we would have been right out now It's just
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I just never thought in all my years Dave that I would be
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doing what I'm doing and that I would be seeing what I'm saying Yeah,
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yeah, I do I get it out on cuz up here in Monterey I started spearfishing
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And we'd go out spearing, you know, you go out for halibut at Flounder Flats here.
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And it was just, it's all sand. It's just totally open, totally exposed. You're
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shooting halibut. You got fish, you know, flopping around
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and you just never, you know, never saw sharks. And
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I just, you know, certainly not juveniles were like, you know, once
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in a while during an El Nino, you might see one up here, but
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I got all this, I think back all the spear fishing I used to do free diving. and
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just never saw sharks at all. I think
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back now, I don't think those sharks were there actually. It
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Yes. So we dive these aggregations
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all the time to get our receivers. And visibility is horrible. You're
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lucky sometimes if you can see your hands to undo the receiver. And
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we know there are white sharks all around. When
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we're dropping in, there's a drone up above us. And as the divers
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are dropping in, there's a white shark 10 feet behind us. You can't see
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it. So we've been doing this for years. We
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Like while you're underwater, you've never seen one. They're around, but you've never seen it.
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We have spent hundreds of hours underwater. And no one
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I absolutely could believe that. I totally believe that, Chris. Yeah,
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I totally believe that. You just never see. I
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mean, I've never seen one, thank good God, up here in Monterey in
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all my 50 years of diving up here. I
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just never saw one diving, but boy if you go up in the helicopter with
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a drone off certain beaches up here. I mean I
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tell the story frequently. I'll count 40 sharks along like
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a mile, two mile stretch of beach up there at the cement
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boat there. You just get tired of counting. I'm like okay, there's a
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lot of sharks here. There's people playing in the water, playing in the beach, kayaking. And
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you talk to them, and like, nope, they have no idea there's any
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So there's, like, we know there's sharks around. Like, we know, like, if
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someone's in the water, there are sharks there. Like, there's a white shark,
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like you said, you've gone in 100 hours of diving,
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and there've been sharks around, they've just never come
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up to you while you know, I've never seen it. What's the reason for
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I think, and this is kind of a cool study that my last grad
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student's working on, I think they're used to people now.
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I think they can identify people because these are nurseries. So these
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sharks show up as young of the year and they will hang out at those beaches
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for weeks to months at a time. They may migrate off, but they'll come back. They'll
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return to those aggregation sites until they're about six
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years old. They're about nine to 10 feet by
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that size. And they behave the same way they did when
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they were babies. I think they are used to people. And
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the other thing about people at a beach is we're flotsam. We're
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just floating stuff on the surface. And quite
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often you can't see the sharks. So you're just, whether you're in the lineup,
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you're waiting to catch a wave, you're paddling for a wave, you're swimming outside the
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wave break, doing a nice long beach swim, you
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can't see them. And I think the sharks don't
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want to be seen. I think they largely ignore people.
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So my current grad student, what she's doing is, what we can see from the
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drone is that a shark will orient to a person, whether
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it's a surfer or swimmer, from about 60 feet away. And
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there's no way, both being at the surface, that the shark can
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see the person. So our hypothesis is
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that they're using hearing or they're using lateral line vibration to
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detect that person. So what Whitney has done is,
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we got a hydrophone with an accelerometer in it, and then we
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have students swim back and forth between buoys, and she
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records the sounds and the vibrations that they make. So
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then we put them on a surfboard and we have them paddle back and forth, and then we put
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them in a kayak and paddle back and forth. And kayaks are interesting because,
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Dave, you probably heard about this, in the last 10 years, we've seen a big uptick in
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adult white sharks biting kayaks. So
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our hypothesis is that kayaks act like a drum. They really accentuate
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that sound. So what Whitney has found is
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that each signature is different. So a person swimming looks
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and sounds differently from a person paddling a surfboard from
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a person paddling a kayak. And because these sharks
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are around these objects, these floating flotsam
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all the time, we think that they're actually able to identify us
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as non-threatening, non-food. And now
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we've become what I call freeway noise. I live near
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a 405 freeway. People come to visit and they're like, what
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They've kind of habituated, I think, to us. And
397
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that's really kind of a cool concept, right? Because remember in the early
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days, if you saw a shark, you pulled people out of the water.
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You prevented sharks from basically learning that
400
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that's not food and that's not a threat. But
401
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now, because we're sharing these habitats with lots of
402
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these animals, I think they're actually learning how to identify us.
403
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And that may actually lower the incidence of bites
404
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in the future, assuming that some of those bites are a
405
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And that goes to the kayak theory too. It's like
406
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maybe there are more kayaks in the water now because more people are
407
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using the water. And they're just not used to kayaks. So
408
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they're coming in, they're just kind of taking some little, I say little
409
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But that's exactly what they're doing. People aren't getting hammered. They're
410
00:25:57,161 --> 00:26:00,362
not getting launched. Literally, the sharks come over and clamp down
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on the kayak. Now, a lot of those kayakers are doing like what
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00:26:03,584 --> 00:26:06,761
Dave was saying. They're fishing. and they have fish in
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their kayaks, and they have holes, drain holes, so they are
414
00:26:10,482 --> 00:26:14,784
emanating a little extra Q, right? But,
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00:26:14,984 --> 00:26:18,045
you know, a shark is curious of those things, and
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the fact that they come up and just kind of bite on them, you know, people sometimes
417
00:26:21,607 --> 00:26:25,028
get knocked out of the kayaks, you know, they kind of panic, they see the shark there,
418
00:26:25,709 --> 00:26:29,010
and one of the guys I was talking to, the shark clamped down
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on the kayak and held it while he used that
420
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Do you think the shark was helping him? He was
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I'll stabilize this kayak for you. So,
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00:26:53,335 --> 00:26:56,538
you know, these things happen and you're
423
00:26:56,578 --> 00:27:00,120
right. It could be that there's just more kayakers out there now and
424
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that's increased the frequency or that it's odd. It's something unusual.
425
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Something new. We don't see the juveniles act the same way around
426
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kayaks. They tend to ignore them. So,
427
00:27:11,928 --> 00:27:15,251
you know, that's, this is kind of a next step into getting
428
00:27:15,271 --> 00:27:18,353
into white sharks heads to figure out, well, what do you see and what
429
00:27:18,373 --> 00:27:22,600
do you hear and what do you feel and how do you make decisions? This
430
00:27:22,660 --> 00:27:26,081
is kind of where we want our program to go because the more people think
431
00:27:26,161 --> 00:27:29,743
of sharks as being cognitive animals, the
432
00:27:29,783 --> 00:27:33,104
less they fear them. So we actually did a psychology study that showed
433
00:27:33,144 --> 00:27:36,605
that. If people view sharks as
434
00:27:36,645 --> 00:27:39,886
being cognitive animals, decision-making animals, not mindless eating
435
00:27:39,906 --> 00:27:43,167
machines, they actually fear them less and they want to protect them.
436
00:27:44,645 --> 00:27:48,106
So that's another one of our goals in doing this research,
437
00:27:48,206 --> 00:27:51,368
is relating it back to people. You know, they're not that different from you, and
438
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That is so interesting. I think a thing too,
439
00:27:56,990 --> 00:28:00,551
Chris, is that because sharks obviously don't have hands like people do to manipulate
440
00:28:00,591 --> 00:28:03,792
things, their base way to manipulate things is with their jaws. And
441
00:28:03,812 --> 00:28:07,374
a lot of these sort of what they call the bite and spit things, that's
442
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how they're testing something out. Because you know, as
443
00:28:10,615 --> 00:28:14,330
I know, if a white shark goes full on into whether
444
00:28:14,350 --> 00:28:17,572
it's a surfer, I mean, it could do a ton of damage. You
445
00:28:17,612 --> 00:28:20,813
won't survive that. If it really went full on, you're not
446
00:28:20,833 --> 00:28:26,076
gonna survive that. But these sort of grabbing bites, spitting, you
447
00:28:26,296 --> 00:28:30,058
know, it's a different behavior. I don't know
448
00:28:30,098 --> 00:28:34,060
if you've probably noticed this, you spend a lot more time than I have, but you
449
00:28:34,100 --> 00:28:37,862
notice and you think you just kind of touched on this, there's different behaviors, depending
450
00:28:37,882 --> 00:28:41,537
if it's a surfboard or swimmer, a kayak, Um,
451
00:28:41,557 --> 00:28:45,379
you know, that gets into things that I used to look at in terms of foraging strategies, like
452
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depending on they'll approach something, I do a lot with seven gills, as you know, but
453
00:28:49,180 --> 00:28:52,301
they approach something, each thing they'll approach a little differently. And like, okay, that's, I'm
454
00:28:54,582 --> 00:28:57,823
Is that kind of what you're kind of, that's where
455
00:28:57,863 --> 00:29:01,524
drones have really helped Dave, you know, it gives us that bird's eye view. And
456
00:29:01,604 --> 00:29:04,746
even when we're tagging, you know, uh, you know, I always, when you get
457
00:29:04,766 --> 00:29:07,827
really close to him and you startle him, the first thing they'll do is try to
458
00:29:07,847 --> 00:29:11,148
get behind you. And that's that classic predator thing, right?
459
00:29:11,668 --> 00:29:14,849
So we always tell people, look, if you're out in the water and you actually see a
460
00:29:14,889 --> 00:29:18,171
white shark, you know, always keep your eyes on it, let the shark know you see it. If
461
00:29:18,211 --> 00:29:22,453
you lose track of it, the first place you should look is behind you. And
462
00:29:22,493 --> 00:29:25,834
people think, well, it's stalking me. And it's like, no, actually that's
463
00:29:25,914 --> 00:29:29,335
the safest place for that shark to investigate you. It's
464
00:29:29,355 --> 00:29:32,897
not intent on feeding you or stalking you, but it's
465
00:29:32,937 --> 00:29:37,080
thinking of its own safety at that point. So
466
00:29:37,360 --> 00:29:40,661
people always put that sinister thought in their head
467
00:29:40,701 --> 00:29:43,803
like they're out to get me. But when we
468
00:29:43,823 --> 00:29:47,305
start looking at these animals a little differently, like they
469
00:29:47,345 --> 00:29:50,487
feel threatened too. What would you do if you're in that
470
00:29:50,527 --> 00:29:54,949
situation? Then some of these behaviors become explainable,
471
00:29:57,910 --> 00:30:01,352
So I think those are the cool things. That's where drone footage is so amazing.
472
00:30:01,372 --> 00:30:04,554
You know, people can see that and you can say, this is what we think
473
00:30:04,614 --> 00:30:07,816
is happening. And they'll go, well, okay, that kind of makes sense. That's kind
474
00:30:07,836 --> 00:30:11,538
of what it looks like. Um, and that, that's not us saying,
475
00:30:23,135 --> 00:30:26,556
This is incredible. This is like mind-blowing to me right now that you're able to
476
00:30:26,696 --> 00:30:29,998
conduct this research, be able to have the video, to have
477
00:30:30,038 --> 00:30:34,800
the proof, and also like doing the psychology studies
478
00:30:34,980 --> 00:30:38,541
and interacting with lifeguards and people to show them
479
00:30:39,001 --> 00:30:42,363
that, look, although we've all been taught that
480
00:30:42,403 --> 00:30:45,664
these animals are dangerous, it's actually not as dangerous as
481
00:30:45,724 --> 00:31:00,673
we think. And there's a lot of intelligence Have
482
00:31:00,713 --> 00:31:04,638
you had the chance, I know you have a lot of connections around
483
00:31:04,658 --> 00:31:08,183
the world and a lot of colleagues around the world, to
484
00:31:08,223 --> 00:31:11,948
like, you know, when you compare the work that you're doing in Southern California
485
00:31:12,068 --> 00:31:15,853
and the way they manage sharks in Australia
486
00:31:15,933 --> 00:31:19,657
with the shark nets, Have you had a chance to have
487
00:31:20,138 --> 00:31:24,222
discussions with expanding the program? Obviously,
488
00:31:24,242 --> 00:31:28,186
you know, funding is going to be something there, but expanding
489
00:31:28,226 --> 00:31:31,790
it to other places where they take a very different
490
00:31:31,830 --> 00:31:35,293
approach to people and sharks, you
491
00:31:37,438 --> 00:31:40,721
Yeah, so we just had White Shark Global Conference which
492
00:31:40,881 --> 00:31:44,904
was in South Australia last November. Great conference. So
493
00:31:45,045 --> 00:31:48,507
basically all the White Shark researchers from around the world were there and
494
00:31:48,527 --> 00:31:51,990
it was awesome because we got to hear what everybody was doing. So
495
00:31:52,030 --> 00:31:55,734
you generally only get that when somebody publishes, right? Yeah. But
496
00:31:55,774 --> 00:31:58,976
getting everybody together to swap notes and things like that
497
00:31:59,016 --> 00:32:02,618
was great. You know, Australia does a
498
00:32:02,678 --> 00:32:05,839
lot of really amazing shark research. They have some really good
499
00:32:05,879 --> 00:32:09,660
researchers and they've got some incredible data. But
500
00:32:09,740 --> 00:32:13,282
that is funded nationally. So they
501
00:32:13,322 --> 00:32:16,723
get a whole national pot of money to do that work on
502
00:32:16,783 --> 00:32:21,776
both coasts, right? Or even on the south coast. But
503
00:32:21,876 --> 00:32:25,842
their approach to then shark mitigation is
504
00:32:25,922 --> 00:32:29,267
then divvied up into different divisions. And I think what makes
505
00:32:29,348 --> 00:32:32,893
our program different is everything is in one house. It's
506
00:32:32,973 --> 00:32:36,541
all run through the university. And we have no mitigation.
507
00:32:36,801 --> 00:32:40,484
What's really cool is, you know, all those other places, South Africa, Australia
508
00:32:40,524 --> 00:32:43,808
have been using shark mitigation for decades, like
509
00:32:44,268 --> 00:32:47,731
60 years in places like South Australia and in
510
00:32:47,832 --> 00:32:51,115
South Africa, right? The only place in the US where they've
511
00:32:51,375 --> 00:32:54,638
ever used shark mitigation was Hawaii. And they only
512
00:32:54,698 --> 00:32:58,293
used it twice and they don't use it anymore. So, despite the
513
00:32:58,333 --> 00:33:01,755
fact that there are more shark bites anywhere in the world, in the U.S.,
514
00:33:02,295 --> 00:33:05,877
and there's never been shark mitigation, really I think speaks
515
00:33:05,997 --> 00:33:10,199
to a couple things. You know, at least our, I
516
00:33:10,259 --> 00:33:13,601
always say Americans are horrible risk assessors, but in this particular case,
517
00:33:14,001 --> 00:33:17,483
they either don't want to spend any money or don't think it's worth the time
518
00:33:17,543 --> 00:33:21,065
to do that. Right. Despite the fact that the sentiment is
519
00:33:21,125 --> 00:33:24,907
the same, right? So we have, you know, we have coastal communities
520
00:33:24,947 --> 00:33:28,603
that are heavily dependent on tourism. You know, those are
521
00:33:28,623 --> 00:33:31,806
the triggers. And we just don't see that.
522
00:33:31,966 --> 00:33:35,930
Now, what we do know is that fatalities really change the
523
00:33:35,971 --> 00:33:39,835
barometer on that, right? So when there are fatalities, that's
524
00:33:39,875 --> 00:33:43,359
a big deal. One of the things we learned, which is really interesting, is
525
00:33:43,419 --> 00:33:47,103
that California has the lowest white shark bite mortality
526
00:33:47,163 --> 00:33:50,660
rate. So when we were talking with our Australian
527
00:33:50,700 --> 00:33:54,682
colleagues and our South African colleagues about why that is, we
528
00:33:55,002 --> 00:33:58,264
were finishing up a case study looking at bites in California. And what we
529
00:33:58,324 --> 00:34:01,747
found is there should have been fatal bites
530
00:34:01,987 --> 00:34:05,069
in Southern California that turned out not to be fatal. And
531
00:34:05,089 --> 00:34:08,296
the reasons were, number one, Coincidentally, they
532
00:34:08,316 --> 00:34:11,738
were in the water with somebody who knew emergency first aid, somebody
533
00:34:11,758 --> 00:34:15,922
who knew what to do, right? Number two, EMS
534
00:34:15,982 --> 00:34:19,645
was notified within minutes of them and they were reported
535
00:34:19,765 --> 00:34:22,927
as shark bites. So that was really critical because what that
536
00:34:22,987 --> 00:34:26,550
meant was they spun up a helicopter, a medevac helicopter
537
00:34:26,590 --> 00:34:30,593
to come to the site. Number three, the most crucial, they
538
00:34:30,613 --> 00:34:33,696
were in a major trauma center within 30 minutes of
539
00:34:33,716 --> 00:34:37,378
being bitten. There's nowhere else in the world where
540
00:34:37,418 --> 00:34:40,580
you can find that. So in Australia, they
541
00:34:40,600 --> 00:34:43,823
were telling me like their average time to a hospital can be two
542
00:34:43,903 --> 00:34:47,085
hours. So for a major bite, if
543
00:34:47,125 --> 00:34:50,348
you don't have the right equipment, you don't have the right trauma set
544
00:34:50,428 --> 00:34:53,870
up, someone's in shock in 20 minutes. They're
545
00:34:53,910 --> 00:34:57,013
not going to make it. And again, when we're
546
00:34:57,053 --> 00:35:00,696
talking about big sharks and little bites from a tiger or a white, that
547
00:35:00,736 --> 00:35:03,837
can do a lot of damage. So this is why we
548
00:35:03,877 --> 00:35:07,439
do every year we do a lifeguard workshop where we update
549
00:35:07,479 --> 00:35:10,680
them on all the cool new data that we're finding. But
550
00:35:10,700 --> 00:35:14,521
I also I bring in an ER doc and a trauma surgeon to
551
00:35:14,561 --> 00:35:17,882
talk to the lifeguards about what are the key things you need to do
552
00:35:18,582 --> 00:35:22,324
to save someone's life. So, they go through everything.
553
00:35:22,384 --> 00:35:26,006
Like, you know, tourniquets, they all have tourniquets now. But now they're like, you
554
00:35:26,026 --> 00:35:29,247
need to have combat gauze. You need to have quick clot in
555
00:35:29,287 --> 00:35:32,449
your kits. You need to have a full-out trauma kit. And then
556
00:35:32,509 --> 00:35:36,210
these are the things you need to do. You've got to make sure that sand
557
00:35:36,230 --> 00:35:39,697
does not get in the wound. So this is a huge deal. Yeah.
558
00:35:40,097 --> 00:35:43,358
You're on a beach. Debriding these wounds can
559
00:35:43,418 --> 00:35:46,739
take hours. Yeah. They can't close those
560
00:35:46,799 --> 00:35:50,339
wounds until they get all the sand out. So you imagine they're
561
00:35:50,379 --> 00:35:53,820
dragging somebody up on the beach who's been bitten and they're dragging them through the sand. Or
562
00:35:53,840 --> 00:35:57,280
a helicopter's coming to land and it's swirling all the sand. So
563
00:35:57,340 --> 00:36:00,601
now they have drapes to cover people to make
564
00:36:00,661 --> 00:36:04,081
sure that they're minimizing all those things. All of these things have mattered.
565
00:36:09,912 --> 00:36:13,814
I was going to say too, Chris, I know up here in Northern California where pretty much everybody
566
00:36:13,854 --> 00:36:16,996
wears a wetsuit in the water. It's just too cold or you're going to be nuts to
567
00:36:17,036 --> 00:36:20,177
go in with just a bathing suit. And I know people have been bitten up
568
00:36:20,217 --> 00:36:23,559
here and they'll comment that the wetsuit probably helped
569
00:36:23,619 --> 00:36:26,800
save them because even though the wetsuit was damaged, it
570
00:36:26,840 --> 00:36:30,222
was still help provide some, keep things
571
00:36:30,262 --> 00:36:33,543
together, keep sand and stuff from getting over,
572
00:36:33,583 --> 00:36:37,220
you know, getting too much into the wound and stuff. So I know that's, I
573
00:36:37,240 --> 00:36:40,882
think down in Southern California, we have more people just
574
00:36:40,922 --> 00:36:45,765
in bathing suits without wearing wetsuits
575
00:36:45,805 --> 00:36:48,827
and stuff. But up here, if you're surfing, you're doing any kind of dive, and you're wearing a
576
00:36:53,690 --> 00:36:57,072
We still wear wetsuits. Well, I
577
00:36:57,112 --> 00:37:01,555
was thinking about that, but I'm a NorCal guy,
578
00:37:01,595 --> 00:37:04,897
so I didn't want to have our guests on from SoCal. No,
579
00:37:07,658 --> 00:37:11,640
But Chris, when you went to the White Shark Conference last
580
00:37:11,720 --> 00:37:15,241
year, I assume this was a big topic
581
00:37:15,281 --> 00:37:18,722
for you to discuss. What was the reaction when you started
582
00:37:18,762 --> 00:37:21,963
to talk about bringing in trauma doctors and
583
00:37:22,023 --> 00:37:25,264
surgeons and talking to lifeguards and having these types
584
00:37:25,304 --> 00:37:29,107
of programs? Was that something that they're
585
00:37:29,167 --> 00:37:32,249
considering, or is this something that could be, I know every place is unique in
586
00:37:32,289 --> 00:37:35,772
terms of distance to hospitals and things like that, but it
587
00:37:35,812 --> 00:37:39,454
sounds like the more prepared you are and the people are, the better,
588
00:37:40,255 --> 00:37:43,698
Yes, and I think that was what was the consensus, right? So
589
00:37:43,818 --> 00:37:47,540
it's done in certain locations, it's not done in others. And in
590
00:37:47,580 --> 00:37:51,581
some of those locations, some of those those provinces.
591
00:37:51,601 --> 00:37:55,287
Some of them are
592
00:37:55,747 --> 00:37:59,072
more remote, so therefore you might need to have
593
00:37:59,172 --> 00:38:02,538
better trained people. They might need to have specific trauma kits with them.
594
00:38:03,696 --> 00:38:07,019
to make sure that if you have a two-hour transit time, you have all
595
00:38:07,039 --> 00:38:10,582
the things you need to keep somebody alive, right? And personnel
596
00:38:10,642 --> 00:38:13,905
trained to do that. Those are things that they can do, right? Those
597
00:38:13,945 --> 00:38:17,489
are modifications they can make. And those are not, you
598
00:38:17,509 --> 00:38:20,632
know, we're going to go out and kill a bunch of sharks. Those are, what do
599
00:38:20,652 --> 00:38:24,255
we do to keep people alive? Because again, the fatalities
600
00:38:24,315 --> 00:38:27,659
are really the triggers. Those are the ones that get communities upset.
601
00:38:29,343 --> 00:38:32,744
They get people worried about economic loss, tourism loss,
602
00:38:32,784 --> 00:38:37,587
things like that. So if you can reduce those, that's huge, right?
603
00:38:38,267 --> 00:38:41,929
And that's aside from what churches are doing. So there's
604
00:38:41,949 --> 00:38:45,291
a lot of great research being done there, and it was cool to
605
00:38:45,371 --> 00:38:48,693
see how much similarity there is. Now,
606
00:38:48,813 --> 00:38:52,375
unfortunately, South Africa doesn't have the same funding that Australia and
607
00:38:52,515 --> 00:38:55,837
US has. So quite often their research isn't
608
00:38:56,017 --> 00:38:59,221
up to the same level, technology-wise. It's not
609
00:38:59,261 --> 00:39:02,904
that they don't want to, it's that they can't afford to quite often. So
610
00:39:02,924 --> 00:39:06,347
I think those are some of the limitations, but at least we're
611
00:39:06,387 --> 00:39:10,009
sharing all those ideas and going, oh, that would be great for
612
00:39:10,390 --> 00:39:14,132
where we are. We need to adopt something like that. So
613
00:39:14,152 --> 00:39:17,555
I think that's the cool thing about getting everybody
614
00:39:17,595 --> 00:39:20,757
together to do that, not just from a research standpoint, but
615
00:39:20,817 --> 00:39:23,960
also from how do white sharks interact with people? How do we
616
00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:27,198
deal with that? Because that's quite often where the
617
00:39:28,938 --> 00:39:32,359
Oh for sure Yeah, it's a
618
00:39:32,379 --> 00:39:35,520
Christian, you know, obviously I can speak to South Africa. I know you've been down there
619
00:39:35,540 --> 00:39:38,861
too But it's a lot of the areas you go. It's it's remote. They're just it's
620
00:39:39,021 --> 00:39:42,722
just you know, you're you're a couple hours away potentially from
621
00:39:42,822 --> 00:39:46,003
anything and then that's I mean It's it's just remote you get
622
00:39:46,043 --> 00:39:49,364
away from any of the city centers, which is where most people go
623
00:39:50,985 --> 00:39:54,460
It's remote and so Yeah, and I can remember a number of shark attacks
624
00:39:54,480 --> 00:39:58,123
when I used to live down there. And, you know, people just expired
625
00:39:58,163 --> 00:40:02,225
just because they couldn't get them to any kind of a trauma center. And anytime
626
00:40:02,245 --> 00:40:05,407
soon, they'd be there and they just would bleed out, essentially. They just had
627
00:40:05,487 --> 00:40:08,789
no stuff to go on. It was it was just really hard to
628
00:40:09,649 --> 00:40:13,032
do. I can really understand that. Yeah, that is. That
629
00:40:13,132 --> 00:40:16,534
is. So let's go. That sounds really good. We had just people out
630
00:40:16,554 --> 00:40:20,196
there listening. We had Charlie Huveniers and Lauren Myers on the podcast last
631
00:40:20,276 --> 00:40:24,314
year around the white shark. I
632
00:40:24,414 --> 00:40:27,815
think we had Charlie on just before and Lauren on afterwards to
633
00:40:27,855 --> 00:40:31,217
talk about. So if anyone out there wants to find out more about the White Shark
634
00:40:31,257 --> 00:40:35,799
Conference from last year, go check out those episodes there. So
635
00:40:36,299 --> 00:40:40,561
Chris, so as far as your future, your program, how
636
00:40:42,562 --> 00:40:45,924
Yeah. So our funding is expiring. So
637
00:40:45,964 --> 00:40:49,405
we were kind of set up to get refunded, but
638
00:40:49,445 --> 00:40:53,132
the state budget is poor. So California
639
00:40:53,192 --> 00:40:56,933
has made some tax code changes. We had some natural disasters that
640
00:40:57,614 --> 00:41:00,995
put us kind of in a bad spot. So our
641
00:41:01,055 --> 00:41:04,257
funding disappeared. So legislators that were champions of
642
00:41:04,337 --> 00:41:07,618
us, which we have plenty, wanted to see us funded. They
643
00:41:07,658 --> 00:41:10,999
just couldn't. And I totally get it, right? But
644
00:41:11,080 --> 00:41:14,341
unfortunately, it came at a bad time. So I
645
00:41:14,381 --> 00:41:17,702
was notified in December, last December, that the
646
00:41:17,742 --> 00:41:21,290
state couldn't fund me. We were going to try to find some agency money
647
00:41:21,630 --> 00:41:24,911
to see if they had some money that would keep us alive. And then
648
00:41:24,971 --> 00:41:28,292
that got clawed back. So right now I'm looking for private
649
00:41:28,332 --> 00:41:32,913
money. So I have enough money to make me through, to get me to January. Unfortunately,
650
00:41:32,933 --> 00:41:37,254
I've already had to lay off half my staff. So
651
00:41:37,674 --> 00:41:40,974
we're in a slow period right now. This is our off
652
00:41:41,014 --> 00:41:44,155
season, right? Which is good. But the
653
00:41:44,175 --> 00:41:47,316
bad thing is I have to prepare for summer and
654
00:41:47,336 --> 00:41:51,229
I'm going to have to rebuild my program. and I need money to do that. So
655
00:41:51,289 --> 00:41:54,551
right now I'm trying to find private money because that's the fastest source of
656
00:41:54,591 --> 00:41:57,734
money that could get us operational again or
657
00:41:57,774 --> 00:42:01,137
working with big foundations. The tricky part is this program is
658
00:42:01,177 --> 00:42:05,300
not cheap, right? It costs about $900,000 a
659
00:42:05,341 --> 00:42:08,503
year, but we operate from Monterey all the way
660
00:42:08,663 --> 00:42:11,966
to the Mexican border. So that's a lot of territory to cover.
661
00:42:14,710 --> 00:42:18,751
Yeah, sorry you have to go through that. That's never
662
00:42:18,831 --> 00:42:22,552
fun, you know, when you're laying off staff and going
663
00:42:22,572 --> 00:42:26,273
through tough times. You
664
00:42:26,293 --> 00:42:30,355
know, it seems as though the program, from
665
00:42:30,415 --> 00:42:33,535
a funding standpoint, It's crucial. I
666
00:42:33,855 --> 00:42:37,237
think a lot of people have trouble figuring out how to fund projects where you're looking at genuine
667
00:42:37,257 --> 00:42:51,466
academic research where there's no application. I
668
00:42:51,506 --> 00:42:54,927
feel as though this program, there's a lot of application. There's
669
00:42:54,967 --> 00:42:58,327
obviously a lot of technology that's involved in this, but
670
00:42:59,228 --> 00:43:02,468
you need it to be able to, I mean, you've talked about a lot
671
00:43:02,508 --> 00:43:06,429
of stuff already today that requires a lot of technology. Drones,
672
00:43:06,469 --> 00:43:09,690
those are not cheap. You're looking at sort
673
00:43:09,710 --> 00:43:13,011
of instrumentation that vibrates and things like that. This is
674
00:43:13,051 --> 00:43:16,211
not cheap. Boat operations is not cheap. And
675
00:43:16,271 --> 00:43:20,292
so I think, though, because this is so applicable to The
676
00:43:20,312 --> 00:43:23,854
beaches along that stretch you're talking about, that huge stretch, and
677
00:43:23,974 --> 00:43:27,657
you talked a lot about how it affects the economy. I feel like there's
678
00:43:27,757 --> 00:43:32,240
definitely a crucial need for this program. And
679
00:43:32,320 --> 00:43:35,842
so I feel as though this is a part where people
680
00:43:35,882 --> 00:43:39,164
need to pony up and say, hey, look, we need to keep these
681
00:43:39,224 --> 00:43:43,434
beaches safe. And it sounds like what you're learning is
682
00:43:44,235 --> 00:43:47,500
mind-blowing to me, you know, like in terms of what we're learning and
683
00:43:47,520 --> 00:43:51,225
what we're discovering about these sharks and what we can do more of
684
00:43:55,228 --> 00:43:58,451
I do. And you know, I've always said is,
685
00:43:59,271 --> 00:44:02,513
you know, when Dave and I were grad students, it was hard to study
686
00:44:02,553 --> 00:44:06,096
sharks because there weren't many sharks to study. Right. And
687
00:44:06,136 --> 00:44:09,258
then the problem was, if they started to find them
688
00:44:09,278 --> 00:44:13,001
in numbers, we didn't have the technology, right? We just didn't
689
00:44:13,021 --> 00:44:16,263
have the tools. So now we have the sharks and we have
690
00:44:16,283 --> 00:44:19,746
the tools, amazing technology, but it's expensive, right? And
691
00:44:19,786 --> 00:44:22,958
then the problem was, then we didn't have the money. And if
692
00:44:22,998 --> 00:44:26,220
you tag one or two animals, that doesn't really get you
693
00:44:26,240 --> 00:44:29,601
where you need to go data-wise. So you really need
694
00:44:29,641 --> 00:44:33,363
quite a bit of money. And I think that's the thing that this program
695
00:44:33,383 --> 00:44:37,505
has taught me, was that if you're properly funded, because
696
00:44:37,545 --> 00:44:41,226
of all the tools that we have available to us now, we can answer questions
697
00:44:41,266 --> 00:44:44,504
that I thought were impossible 10 years ago. So
698
00:44:44,864 --> 00:44:48,286
I think this is exciting. My students that get to participate in
699
00:44:48,306 --> 00:44:51,468
this, in a way, kind of get spoiled, right? Because they think, you
700
00:44:51,508 --> 00:44:55,211
know, every master's student should have $400,000 to answer
701
00:44:57,932 --> 00:45:01,134
But they do get to see, when you have the
702
00:45:01,174 --> 00:45:04,656
right resources, the sorts of things you can do. And
703
00:45:04,696 --> 00:45:08,058
I think that is kind of the way we need to think about this,
704
00:45:08,138 --> 00:45:11,910
right? And more importantly, The
705
00:45:11,950 --> 00:45:15,051
science is fun and we find it really exciting because this is
706
00:45:15,091 --> 00:45:18,993
what we love, right? But if mom and pop can't
707
00:45:19,113 --> 00:45:23,014
understand why it's valuable, then why would they fund it? And
708
00:45:23,054 --> 00:45:26,495
I think what's satisfying for me is
709
00:45:26,535 --> 00:45:31,297
that we've found ways of making everybody appreciate why
710
00:45:31,337 --> 00:45:34,818
we do what we do and how it's valuable to everyone. And
711
00:45:34,838 --> 00:45:38,599
I think that's the key to sellable science
712
00:45:38,659 --> 00:45:42,970
these days, number one. And number two, it
713
00:45:43,010 --> 00:45:46,433
would be easy for us to just ignore all those things and just focus on
714
00:45:46,473 --> 00:45:49,836
doing the science and say, look, Dave, Dave, you're my
715
00:45:50,077 --> 00:45:53,680
colleague. Look at all these cool things we found at Davigo. Chris, that's awesome.
716
00:45:54,080 --> 00:45:57,343
I love it. But if other people don't
717
00:45:57,403 --> 00:46:00,726
see the value in it, then how
718
00:46:00,766 --> 00:46:04,029
will I keep getting funding to keep doing more? So I
719
00:46:04,069 --> 00:46:07,773
think that's been the key. You know, I've had to spend a lot of time thinking
720
00:46:07,813 --> 00:46:11,675
about those things and marketing those things and showing people, here's
721
00:46:11,715 --> 00:46:15,016
how we evaluate that this is working. This is how we know this
722
00:46:15,537 --> 00:46:18,678
This is making a difference. You know, Chris, you
723
00:46:18,698 --> 00:46:21,919
know, you talk last time you're, you know, you grew up right there in Martha's Vineyard when
724
00:46:21,939 --> 00:46:25,121
they felt we're filming Jaws when you're a kid and you, you know,
725
00:46:25,141 --> 00:46:28,362
the, obviously the big part of the movie was like, they couldn't shut
726
00:46:28,382 --> 00:46:32,064
the beaches because of the money. And now here you are, let's
727
00:46:32,104 --> 00:46:35,205
say about 50 years later, uh, watching the, uh,
728
00:46:35,823 --> 00:46:39,026
almost going through the same thing, a real life situation where you
729
00:46:39,066 --> 00:46:42,209
do, you know, you're looking at a financial impact in
730
00:46:42,229 --> 00:46:45,652
these communities, but you actually have the technology now to do something
731
00:46:45,692 --> 00:46:52,978
about it. And really, $900,000 to cover half the California coast In
732
00:46:53,018 --> 00:46:56,060
California, I don't want to say it's chump change, but it's not really a lot of
733
00:46:56,121 --> 00:46:59,403
money when you look at the economic impact. So if any of the city
734
00:46:59,443 --> 00:47:04,007
council people are out there listening or county supervisors, give Chris
735
00:47:04,027 --> 00:47:07,529
a call, throw a few bucks into his tip jar there, and maybe
736
00:47:07,589 --> 00:47:11,512
you can help him out there because it's really not a
737
00:47:11,552 --> 00:47:15,415
lot of money when you think about it to basically be monitoring
738
00:47:15,455 --> 00:47:18,918
half the California coast. for white sharks,
739
00:47:18,938 --> 00:47:22,644
and you're learning stuff about the sharks too. And so you're educating
740
00:47:22,664 --> 00:47:26,049
the public. So you're hitting on all the
741
00:47:26,109 --> 00:47:29,394
marks as far as I can see. So
742
00:47:32,247 --> 00:47:37,351
Can I ask you something too? I know Surfrider has a big
743
00:47:37,431 --> 00:47:40,554
presence in Southern California. Obviously that's where they
744
00:47:40,574 --> 00:47:44,818
were formed and their headquarters are. Have
745
00:47:44,838 --> 00:47:48,661
you collaborated with other organizations such as Surfrider to
746
00:47:49,302 --> 00:47:52,464
extend some of these projects or create new
747
00:47:52,544 --> 00:47:55,606
ones. Obviously, surfers are a big user of the ocean. They would be
748
00:47:55,666 --> 00:47:59,548
very interested in this type of work. Has there
749
00:48:03,307 --> 00:48:06,829
So we are, we're always trying to find partners, right.
750
00:48:06,949 --> 00:48:10,091
To help share some of the costs and, and actually do a lot of
751
00:48:10,111 --> 00:48:13,253
the outreach. So we, we
752
00:48:13,313 --> 00:48:16,534
do give a lot of talks to Surf Rider. We, we, you
753
00:48:16,634 --> 00:48:20,136
know, financially they're, they're not as wealthy as
754
00:48:20,517 --> 00:48:23,838
some of the other groups, but, um, they do, they do promote our
755
00:48:23,878 --> 00:48:27,060
stuff and, you know, we, they become, uh, kind of like
756
00:48:29,121 --> 00:48:32,682
They're terrific. Yeah, you know, we've had discussions
757
00:48:32,722 --> 00:48:37,862
with surf line and things like that. There are a lot of. Technology
758
00:48:37,902 --> 00:48:41,124
that surfers use, whether it's digital technology or
759
00:48:41,204 --> 00:48:44,766
information, we're always looking for ways they want information
760
00:48:44,786 --> 00:48:48,088
about sharks. Of course. Our new buoy system, that's our
761
00:48:48,188 --> 00:48:51,350
next phase, is to make those data publicly available. Right now,
762
00:48:51,430 --> 00:48:54,852
only lifeguards get those data. Okay. And our fear
763
00:48:54,932 --> 00:48:58,274
is we don't want the public to think this is an early warning system, because it is not.
764
00:48:58,454 --> 00:49:01,756
Right, right. But with proper education, the public
765
00:49:01,796 --> 00:49:05,138
is interested in this, and they can start to learn about the patterns of these sharks.
766
00:49:06,078 --> 00:49:09,542
We priced out, you know, to make an app, it cost about $300,000 and
767
00:49:10,302 --> 00:49:14,026
then to maintain it, you know, probably $20,000 a year. But
768
00:49:14,066 --> 00:49:17,490
the system's set up so that it's automated. You know, data gets
769
00:49:17,590 --> 00:49:20,933
pushed and people can see it every day. They can see when detections come in.
770
00:49:20,953 --> 00:49:24,617
I think something like that would be popular. Yes.
771
00:49:25,678 --> 00:49:30,156
And people would feel like, you know, they're learning something at the same time. So
772
00:49:30,176 --> 00:49:33,919
these are the sorts of things we want to do. We just need money.
773
00:49:34,460 --> 00:49:37,882
And that's not just like fishers and surfers and
774
00:49:37,902 --> 00:49:42,485
stuff. You can roll this out to your K to 12 programs
775
00:49:42,565 --> 00:49:46,048
and have people learn about, you know, even data gathering and so
776
00:49:46,088 --> 00:49:49,691
forth. I think it's a fantastic idea, again, that
777
00:49:49,711 --> 00:49:52,913
has multiple applications and getting more and
778
00:49:52,953 --> 00:49:56,436
more people connected to the ocean without sometimes not
779
00:49:56,476 --> 00:49:59,798
even being able to go to the ocean. I really like
780
00:49:59,878 --> 00:50:03,722
I would play with that app for sure and I'm in Canada, so you
781
00:50:03,742 --> 00:50:06,945
know So yeah, I think that's I think that would be that
782
00:50:06,965 --> 00:50:10,088
would be very handy But again it caught things cost money, and then you
783
00:50:10,128 --> 00:50:13,531
have to get those those funded now. I gotta ask Chris like
784
00:50:16,057 --> 00:50:19,198
You put this program together, you help run this program, you have some
785
00:50:19,378 --> 00:50:23,159
fantastic staff members and students that have helped you out through
786
00:50:23,199 --> 00:50:28,681
the years, but you're now balancing academic
787
00:50:28,761 --> 00:50:34,863
research, studies, outreach programs, education
788
00:50:34,923 --> 00:50:38,465
programs. How
789
00:50:38,505 --> 00:50:42,307
do you do this all? I know your
790
00:50:42,347 --> 00:50:45,648
students, it's a small staff and small
791
00:50:49,650 --> 00:50:53,031
Good question. I don't sleep very often and if you ask
792
00:50:56,093 --> 00:50:59,714
Well, you're out on the ocean all the time. It's kind of like a vacation, right? Yeah, sure.
793
00:51:00,434 --> 00:51:03,736
I was spending way too much time on the computer making phone calls
794
00:51:06,943 --> 00:51:10,184
Yeah. So, I think the good thing and Dave knows this very
795
00:51:10,224 --> 00:51:13,544
well. There's a really good group of people out there,
796
00:51:13,684 --> 00:51:17,685
well-trained people who are dying for jobs, right? And
797
00:51:17,725 --> 00:51:20,925
they would kill for a job to work in the Shark Lab on something like
798
00:51:20,945 --> 00:51:24,126
this. And they're very skilled. I just need
799
00:51:24,146 --> 00:51:27,447
the money to hire them, right? So, that's the thing.
800
00:51:27,967 --> 00:51:31,607
Whether it's my own students that I cultivate or whether they're from
801
00:51:31,647 --> 00:51:34,888
other labs, they're out there and they need work, right?
802
00:51:35,868 --> 00:51:39,451
And they're looking specifically for projects like
803
00:51:39,511 --> 00:51:42,833
this that give them the same satisfaction that I get, that you're working on
804
00:51:42,853 --> 00:51:46,696
a project that makes a difference. It's not just cool science. It's
805
00:51:46,776 --> 00:51:50,459
something that makes a difference for the public, right? And
806
00:51:50,779 --> 00:51:54,041
there's lots of those people out there, and they're really good at what they do,
807
00:51:56,643 --> 00:52:00,305
Yeah. You just need money to do that. You have the work and
808
00:52:00,345 --> 00:52:03,546
you have the passion and they have the skills. It's just
809
00:52:03,606 --> 00:52:07,088
a matter of getting that funding, which is always the
810
00:52:08,949 --> 00:52:12,430
And I think the other fun thing about my job is that I get to collaborate
811
00:52:12,490 --> 00:52:16,512
with engineers, computer scientists, artists, journalists, filmmakers,
812
00:52:17,592 --> 00:52:21,882
psychologists, environmental economists, that's
813
00:52:22,002 --> 00:52:25,585
the good part. I'm just this dumb shark biologist
814
00:52:25,965 --> 00:52:29,247
and I get to learn about all these cool other fields that
815
00:52:29,327 --> 00:52:32,610
sometimes I used to make fun of and now I'm eating my words, right? So
816
00:52:32,690 --> 00:52:36,213
psychology, I was like, psychology, what is that? Now I've
817
00:52:36,253 --> 00:52:39,675
learned so much about that and I'm like, this is so
818
00:52:40,136 --> 00:52:43,819
And these guys are hardcore scientists. They are hardcore. For sure. Yeah.
819
00:52:47,545 --> 00:52:50,787
I was just going to say, you know, I used to think about my dream
820
00:52:50,827 --> 00:52:54,509
was like being able to get in the shark's head and understand how they make decisions. And
821
00:52:54,529 --> 00:52:57,810
I'm thinking, how hard is this compared to, we can
822
00:52:57,890 --> 00:53:01,052
talk to people and we still have a hard time understanding what
823
00:53:01,072 --> 00:53:04,634
people are thinking. So, you know, I'm thinking, wow,
824
00:53:09,516 --> 00:53:12,818
I love it. I was, you know, Chris, I was going to, I was going to say, Chris, I, uh,
825
00:53:13,799 --> 00:53:17,091
and I'm sure you had the same experience to be like, when you start, we started out to, You
826
00:53:17,111 --> 00:53:20,653
know, at the same time, it's like you think like, well, I'm just going to go study sharks and
827
00:53:20,754 --> 00:53:23,996
all this other stuff you're exposed to now, people you meet. I'm
828
00:53:24,016 --> 00:53:27,418
just going like, I never, this was never on the drawing board
829
00:53:27,458 --> 00:53:30,660
at all. I just, how do I, how do I wind up in these places and meeting these
830
00:53:30,720 --> 00:53:34,042
people and talking to these guys? And it's just, it's just, it's been,
831
00:53:34,423 --> 00:53:37,845
I don't, I look at it like it's just been a fantastic journey. And I'm sure you feel the same way
832
00:53:37,885 --> 00:53:41,067
of the places you've been able to go, people you meet, things you've
833
00:53:41,127 --> 00:53:44,192
learned, uh, It's it's great. I
834
00:53:46,933 --> 00:53:50,055
I think you're absolutely right, Dave. And the thing is, is that it was a matter of
835
00:53:50,155 --> 00:53:53,336
my opening myself up to it. Right. You know,
836
00:53:53,496 --> 00:53:57,417
it's a little scary sometimes when you start working with somebody who's not in your field and
837
00:53:57,437 --> 00:54:00,919
you feel like I have no idea what these people are talking about. So
838
00:54:01,119 --> 00:54:04,320
there's this trust that has to be there. But but it
839
00:54:04,380 --> 00:54:07,521
also comes from the shared enthusiasm. Right. So I have
840
00:54:07,561 --> 00:54:10,803
this great engineer, roboticist colleague that I've worked with
841
00:54:10,823 --> 00:54:14,391
for 10 years. And this guy is like one
842
00:54:14,431 --> 00:54:18,492
of the best roboticists in the country. He
843
00:54:18,512 --> 00:54:21,913
just loves being in the ocean. He loves
844
00:54:21,953 --> 00:54:25,394
surfing. He loves diving. He loves snorkeling. He loves rain
845
00:54:25,454 --> 00:54:29,315
animals. That's the thing that brought us together. And
846
00:54:29,375 --> 00:54:33,195
we've made this awesome team. We've made shark tracking robots
847
00:54:33,435 --> 00:54:36,596
funded through National Science Foundation, things that I never thought were
848
00:54:36,636 --> 00:54:39,837
possible. But we did that because we had
849
00:54:39,877 --> 00:54:43,129
that shared interest, right? And all
850
00:54:43,169 --> 00:54:46,532
the people that I've been able to get to collaborate with me, I suck
851
00:54:46,632 --> 00:54:49,774
in because they're like, you know, I think sharks are so cool and I
852
00:54:49,874 --> 00:54:53,116
love going on the ocean. I don't get to do that but now I get to do that.
853
00:54:53,837 --> 00:54:57,279
You know, that's the common thread, right? That
854
00:54:57,399 --> 00:55:00,721
has brought all these people together. And for me, it
855
00:55:00,902 --> 00:55:04,143
opens up these lines of communication and gets
856
00:55:04,163 --> 00:55:07,446
me to open and think, okay, maybe I can learn something about this thing
857
00:55:07,466 --> 00:55:10,908
that I know nothing about. These people have spent their entire lives doing it.
858
00:55:11,989 --> 00:55:15,331
But it leaves you in awe, but then you walk away going, wow, I've learned
859
00:55:18,773 --> 00:55:22,716
Yeah. That's great, Chris. That's
860
00:55:22,756 --> 00:55:25,958
really terrific. Well, if anybody's listening to the show
861
00:55:25,998 --> 00:55:29,689
out there, any city council people, any wealthy donors, please
862
00:55:29,729 --> 00:55:32,831
contact Chris. They need some money to keep the shark program going. It's
863
00:55:32,851 --> 00:55:36,053
a phenomenal program. I can tell you it's, it's, it's really, it's, it's
864
00:55:36,073 --> 00:55:39,815
an amazing state of the art type of program. Yeah. And
865
00:55:39,895 --> 00:55:43,097
so I hope, uh, hopefully somebody out there will catch it, catch the podcast here
866
00:55:43,157 --> 00:55:46,359
and maybe, and give you a shout. Uh, if you have any trouble getting hold
867
00:55:46,399 --> 00:55:49,801
of Chris, you get hold of Andrew and I, we can direct you where to go. And, uh,
868
00:55:50,301 --> 00:55:53,703
let's see if we can get some funds in there for Chris to keep his program going.
869
00:55:54,264 --> 00:55:57,481
And Chris, uh, Just want to thank you for coming on the show again today.
870
00:55:57,521 --> 00:56:01,223
It's been a long time, a couple of years since you're on. We'll have to not
871
00:56:01,264 --> 00:56:04,665
let so much time go between having you on the next time. And
872
00:56:07,127 --> 00:56:10,329
That would be great. And yeah, we'll just
873
00:56:10,369 --> 00:56:13,771
keep hunting for money. And remember, our ultimate goal
874
00:56:15,992 --> 00:56:19,374
Absolutely. Absolutely. Great words to leave
875
00:56:22,193 --> 00:56:25,454
Thank you. Thank you, Chris, for joining us today on the
876
00:56:25,474 --> 00:56:28,615
Beyond Jaws podcast. It was great to be able to, I mean, not
877
00:56:28,655 --> 00:56:32,175
only great, it was mind-blowing. The type of research
878
00:56:32,435 --> 00:56:36,016
that you do, the all-encompassing research that his lab has
879
00:56:36,056 --> 00:56:40,257
been doing from science communication, outreach, education,
880
00:56:40,717 --> 00:56:44,118
shark science and distribution and ecology, and then looking at
881
00:56:44,298 --> 00:56:47,659
the application of keeping beachgoers safe, working
882
00:56:47,699 --> 00:56:50,920
with lifeguards, It's changing the perception of
883
00:56:51,040 --> 00:56:54,741
sharks from people, taking us away from that programming of
884
00:56:55,101 --> 00:56:58,582
the movie of Jaws. And like you said at the beginning of this episode,
885
00:56:58,622 --> 00:57:02,043
Dave, when he starts and he sees people filming
886
00:57:02,063 --> 00:57:05,424
the movie Jaws when he was a kid, now taking them
887
00:57:05,624 --> 00:57:08,865
out of that sort of thought process and bringing it back to a,
888
00:57:08,905 --> 00:57:12,106
hey, white sharks are pretty cool, and they're not as dangerous as we thought to
889
00:57:12,166 --> 00:57:15,467
humans. They're around us all the time. We need to embrace that.
890
00:57:16,107 --> 00:57:19,428
And here's a little education on that. I just think that's the
891
00:57:19,449 --> 00:57:23,030
way we do science in today's day in the modernized day. What
892
00:57:24,431 --> 00:57:27,652
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, he's really he's kind of
893
00:57:27,912 --> 00:57:32,474
really brought that marriage of science and science communication and
894
00:57:32,514 --> 00:57:35,695
also some business skills to the to the field. And
895
00:57:35,755 --> 00:57:38,856
that's something that really in this day and age, you need to be able to
896
00:57:38,896 --> 00:57:42,458
do. It wasn't like, you know, probably when Chris and I started out, it wasn't such a big issue.
897
00:57:42,478 --> 00:57:45,719
Of course, you didn't have that. You didn't have the technology to do today. And I think that was
898
00:57:45,759 --> 00:57:49,448
a that was another point Chris really hit on was just the technology
899
00:57:49,468 --> 00:57:52,869
today versus when him and I started out in the eighties, you
900
00:57:52,889 --> 00:57:56,190
know, you just kind of have these really cool ideas, but you couldn't really do anything as
901
00:57:56,631 --> 00:58:00,132
drones and GPS and these, uh, advanced, uh,
902
00:58:00,352 --> 00:58:03,513
tags. Now you put out used to, that wasn't even, you
903
00:58:03,553 --> 00:58:07,214
know, you didn't even have that type of stuff. And Chris started working with Don Nelson,
904
00:58:07,234 --> 00:58:10,955
who is a legend in the field for doing early, early telemetry
905
00:58:10,995 --> 00:58:14,636
work. But I mean, even Don would be blown away today. Um, at
906
00:58:14,656 --> 00:58:18,918
the technology that that's, uh, that's out there now just to just be mind-blowing
907
00:58:19,539 --> 00:58:22,883
To think that the amount of information you
908
00:58:22,903 --> 00:58:26,267
can get just from tagging and setting up a buoy system where
909
00:58:26,287 --> 00:58:30,672
you can find out where these sharks are, where they've been in close
910
00:58:30,752 --> 00:58:34,176
range, is phenomenal compared to 35 plus years
911
00:58:34,316 --> 00:58:37,760
ago, 40, 50 years ago. and the amount of information
912
00:58:37,780 --> 00:58:40,983
that we've been able to get in terms of distribution, how far these
913
00:58:41,023 --> 00:58:44,566
animals can actually travel, where they're going, how they're feeding,
914
00:58:44,646 --> 00:58:48,690
all that kind of stuff, not only just from tags, but other technology, drones. Just
915
00:58:48,730 --> 00:58:52,133
talking about how Chris was discussing how sharks
916
00:58:52,373 --> 00:58:55,676
orient when they see or when they detect somebody in
917
00:58:55,716 --> 00:58:59,119
the water or something in the water, and they orient themselves to
918
00:58:59,159 --> 00:59:02,442
there, probably using their lateral line to feel the vibrations in
919
00:59:02,482 --> 00:59:05,687
the water. and just what he's talking about in terms of the vibration you've seen
920
00:59:05,747 --> 00:59:10,473
people, a person in a kayak and a person swimming. It's
921
00:59:10,513 --> 00:59:13,898
a very interesting time for shark science
922
00:59:13,958 --> 00:59:18,990
and just science in general, but especially ocean science and understanding what
923
00:59:19,030 --> 00:59:22,771
we thought was this mindless killer, understanding how intelligent
924
00:59:23,872 --> 00:59:28,173
and how in tune with the water and its surroundings sharks
925
00:59:28,233 --> 00:59:31,815
really are, especially the white sharks. It's just an
926
00:59:32,135 --> 00:59:35,496
impressive time that we're at when we're when
927
00:59:35,516 --> 00:59:38,937
we're looking at shark science these days. It's got to be so much different.
928
00:59:39,437 --> 00:59:42,759
Yeah, no, I think, you know, I've kind of touched on this in other
929
00:59:42,819 --> 00:59:46,973
episodes, but the sharks, they all have a different personality,
930
00:59:47,334 --> 00:59:50,796
especially some of these larger species like white sharks. And I worked a lot on seven gill
931
00:59:50,816 --> 00:59:54,178
sharks, but they all have personalities. And there's actually a, we
932
00:59:54,198 --> 00:59:57,600
talked about, I think talked about this in another episode recently, there was a classic
933
00:59:57,680 --> 01:00:01,222
paper by Sonny Gruber, another shark legend,
934
01:00:02,002 --> 01:00:05,625
back in the mid 1970s, I want to say about 1975 or
935
01:00:06,725 --> 01:00:10,127
76, where he looked at a group of bonnet head sharks
936
01:00:10,588 --> 01:00:13,909
in Florida, And he kept the population of them
937
01:00:14,049 --> 01:00:17,151
in a tank. And he documented how each one of
938
01:00:17,191 --> 01:00:20,814
them had a different personality. And these are sharks that get about a meter,
939
01:00:20,874 --> 01:00:24,377
three feet, or three to five feet in length. And
940
01:00:24,397 --> 01:00:27,699
he talked about that. And I remember when I was a grad student
941
01:00:27,719 --> 01:00:30,801
in the 80s, I thought that was just a fascinating paper. And Chris is
942
01:00:30,881 --> 01:00:34,144
actually, we didn't even bring up that. I know Chris would be well aware
943
01:00:34,164 --> 01:00:37,366
of that paper. But it was just, they started talking about
944
01:00:37,386 --> 01:00:40,764
how these sharks have personalities. With the white sharks,
945
01:00:40,804 --> 01:00:45,588
you're seeing that, where they have this sort of interesting personality,
946
01:00:45,608 --> 01:00:48,811
the behavior towards different things. And I think his comments on
947
01:00:48,851 --> 01:00:52,294
how these sharks have become kind of habituated towards, you
948
01:00:52,314 --> 01:00:56,157
know, whether it's a kayak, a surfer, a swimmer, they kind of get
949
01:00:56,197 --> 01:00:59,600
that because these sharks have been here since they were young, and
950
01:00:59,640 --> 01:01:02,903
they've just sort of grown up here. And they understand what those different
951
01:01:02,943 --> 01:01:06,098
signals are. And I think that's fascinating work, and that's going to It's
952
01:01:08,879 --> 01:01:12,120
Agreed. It's going to be very
953
01:01:12,160 --> 01:01:15,662
interesting to see how this, not only this lab progresses, but also
954
01:01:16,062 --> 01:01:19,823
just the field of shark science is going to progress. So, you
955
01:01:19,843 --> 01:01:23,164
know, again, Chris, thank you so much for joining us on
956
01:01:23,204 --> 01:01:26,506
today's episode. We're going to put all the links that people can go check out the shark lab
957
01:01:26,546 --> 01:01:29,747
and the work that they do. Check out their YouTube channel. They've got some pretty cool mini
958
01:01:29,767 --> 01:01:33,428
documentaries that Ava Dominicelli, who's been on this program as well, has
959
01:01:33,528 --> 01:01:36,810
produced and shot herself and edited. They're fantastic. I highly
960
01:01:36,850 --> 01:01:39,993
recommend that you check those out. And of
961
01:01:43,036 --> 01:01:47,940
It's Lawsharkguy on social media, on Instagram, Lawsharks
962
01:01:48,040 --> 01:01:51,263
on Facebook, and yeah, LinkedIn and all the
963
01:01:53,256 --> 01:01:56,698
Awesome. And then I'll put the links into the show notes where you
964
01:01:56,738 --> 01:02:00,661
can find our YouTube channel, as well as our Instagram, beyondjawspod. And
965
01:02:00,941 --> 01:02:04,043
feel free to connect with us. We'd love to hear from you. If you are interested and
966
01:02:04,083 --> 01:02:07,826
you have the means to be able to fund or partly fund the
967
01:02:07,866 --> 01:02:11,088
Shark Lab, feel free to connect with us. We'll put you in touch with
968
01:02:11,128 --> 01:02:14,811
Chris. So thank you so much, Dave, for joining us again. And thank
969
01:02:14,831 --> 01:02:18,493
you so much for Chris for giving us all those great
970
01:02:18,633 --> 01:02:21,855
updates on the lab. And thank you, everybody, for listening. We really
971
01:02:21,895 --> 01:02:25,536
appreciate you coming in each and every time we put out an episode. It's
972
01:02:25,576 --> 01:02:28,718
a lot of fun. We've been getting some great feedback. Keep it coming. We'd love to
973
01:02:28,758 --> 01:02:32,079
hear from you. And thank you so much for joining us on today's episode of the Beyond
