Exploring Stingrays and Marine Conservation with Chantel Elston

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Welcome back to another episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. On today's

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episode, we have Chantal Elston. She is a postdoc student at

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SIAB. I'll worry about saying what SIAB means during

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the actual episode, so stay tuned. We're talking all about

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stingrays, a lot of research in South Africa. It's

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a great episode. We also talk about her science communication activity

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on YouTube. She has 25,000 subscribers. We have 462 at the time of recording this. She

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is amazing. We talk about her success on there and what she

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likes to talk about all things marine science and marine fun

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and marine careers. We're going to talk about her career on today's episode of

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the Beyond Jaws podcast. Let's start the show. Hey, everybody, welcome back

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to another exciting episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. I am your co-host,

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Andrew Lewin, with my co-host, Dr. David Ebert. Dave, are

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Oh, heck yeah. I love talking about flat sharks. And I love when we

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get people on like Chantel, who's going to talk who focuses mostly on

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the flat sharks. We had as many, you know, we had six months or so ago, we

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had Jalen Myers on there from Australia and who just a

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flat shark fanatic. And we have another one here with Chantel. And

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of course, she's also from South Africa, which you know how I am when we get South African

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people on there. And she did her and she did her Ph.D. She

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worked with my good friend, Paul Cowley, there in South Africa.

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And she she also went to my alma mater, Rose University. And

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she's affiliated with the with SIAB, which stands for the South

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African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity. I should note,

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since I because I'm also I'm also a research associate there

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as well. But now I'm really excited, really excited. She's she's your

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science. She really does. She does good science. And she's married that with

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the science communication. And

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you just said She's got like over 25,000 followers on

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her YouTube channel, and it's awesome. It's

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really great seeing somebody be able to kind of compete

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those two areas and be very successful at it. So definitely

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100%. I'm looking forward to it as well. So let's get into the interview with

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Chantal Elston. Enjoy the interview, and we'll talk to you after. Hey,

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Chantal, welcome to the Beyond Jobs podcast. Are you ready to

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Let's go. That's great. Well, welcome to another episode

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of the Beyond Jaws podcast, where today we have Dr. Chantal Elston,

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another terrific guest from South Africa. And you know me, if anybody's from

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South Africa, it's going to be a terrific show today. So

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Chantal is a marine scientist and conservationist who focuses her

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research on threatened sharks and rays, and especially on

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those lovable rays, which we often refer to as flat sharks. Chantelle

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currently is a consultant for a couple of NGOs, the Wildlife Conservation

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Society and the Oceans Research Conservation Africa Foundation.

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And she's also a research associate at Rhodes University in Grahamstown and

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also at the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity. Chantelle

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is fiercely dedicated to understanding and safeguarding our

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oceans ecosystems. And she's also very passionate about science engagement

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and communication. And she believes that by connecting everybody

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with the ocean, it's the only way to really save it. She manages and engages the

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public through a local shark and ray citizen science project

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called Elmo Africa. And she also shares her marine

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science stories on her YouTube channel, Telly's Marine Tales,

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which you have to check out. And we'll definitely post that. after the

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show to check out. But anyway, we're really happy to have her

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on the show today about her quickly, her education background. She

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went to University of Cape Town where she obtained her bachelor's of

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science degree. She also did an honors there. And then she went

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over to Rhodes University in Grahamstown to complete an MSC and

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Great, great. So we always like to start off with like,

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how did you get interested in marine science, sharks, rays? How'd

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Well, I feel like with most of our stories, it was something

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I wanted to pursue ever since I was a child. I

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don't really know who introduced me to even the

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term marine biologist. I don't know where that passion started

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from, but I just remember as a kid, my

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best friend and I, we had a journal and at the age of seven, I

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was writing in this journal that I wanted to be a marine biologist when

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I grew up. As I said, I don't even

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know where I learned that term from. At the time, my

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dad was, he was pretty passionate about the ocean. You know, he was

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part of our coastal sort of sea rescue institutes.

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And so I would spend my summers on the beach, playing

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around in rock pools and that sort of thing. But that always just fueled that initial

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interest that I had wherever it came from. And then, you

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know, I was lucky enough to grow up on the coast. And then for

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university days, I ended up at the University of Cape Town,

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where at the time I didn't really have much knowledge

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on sharks or rays or elasmobranchs or anything like that. But in my second

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year, one of my lecturers, we were having an

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ichthyology class, and he just mentioned in passing that

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rays were one of the least studied groups of vertebrates on the planet.

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And I was like, all right. I'm there, my ears were pricked

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up immediately and it kind of started a love

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relationship from then onwards and then I was very lucky

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to be able to pursue my master's in stingrays in a

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stingray ecology project. It was one

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of those weirdly serendipitous moments in life where At

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the time, nobody was really actively pursuing research on

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rays in South Africa. You know, I, I knew in my honors year

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that this was something I wanted to do for my post-grad. And so I

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had approached some of my lecturers at UCT. Oh, I

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really want to do a project on rays. You know, will you take me on as a

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student? I have some ideas, but nobody was really willing

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to go forward with that. So I had actually signed up for a

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master's on turtle genetics and I'm kind

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of, I I think my life would have been so different if it ended up

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that way. But luckily at the time, Dr. Paul Cowley,

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who you know very well, Dave, he had this

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amazing project in the Seychelles that was investigating a population

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of stingrays there. And he was just looking for a student who was

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interested in rays. And we managed to get in touch through one

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of my UCT lecturers. And yeah,

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that was the start of the now 10-year journey into

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researching rays. So I'm very grateful that that

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all just seems to kind of like align and come together at

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I'd ask you to back up a little bit. What part of the coastal, coast area

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Oh, okay. Love, people listen to the show and I love Cape Town.

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That's one of my, my like, favorite places in the world, I have to

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say. Yeah, anyway, love there. So So, so

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nice. You grew up in the, grew up there along the coastal area in South Africa, and

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then you find, found Paul Kali, who, as you probably know, worked

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on blue stingrays for his MSc thesis. And that's back

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when him and I were both graduate students at the time. And

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South Africa, for those that don't know, there's a lot you can

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do in terms of ray research. And Chantal can,

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I'm sure, expand even more today on it. But you managed to

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get this job, this position working in your MSC in

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the Seychelles, which is a beautiful place. Can you

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Incredible. You know, at the time I

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had only experienced Cape Town oceans, which for those

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who don't know, are sort of cold water ecosystems, kelp

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forest dominated. And so traveling to the Seychelles was

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for me the first time I had traveled internationally and also

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the first time I had traveled to tropical waters and I could swim in

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the water without freezing to death and

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without having to wear a super thick wetsuit and just experiencing

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the amazing, you know, biodiversity and

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the typical marine megafauna that you associate with.

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warm water tropical reef ecosystems for

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the first time seeing sharks and rays and turtles and

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manta rays and coral reefs and diversity of

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fish and my mind was just completely and utterly blown

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and I still have this vivid memory of going out on the boat the

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one day and it was my first time in the boat and I'm just

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this naive student and there's sort of a turtle that pops its head out

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in the water next to the boat and I'm like what wow there's a turtle and

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everybody's like yeah so what we could see hundreds of them so it

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was just one of those really eye-opening experiences

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So you went there you worked on you worked on the porcupine rays which as

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the name implies or have a porcupine type of skin texture

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and I presume you'd never heard of those before you started your thesis project

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No, none of the species that I worked on I had never heard

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of before. So I worked on three species in the Seychelles in

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this really beautiful shallow water ecosystem known as

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the Saint Joseph Atoll. And what was very special about

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this place is that it's kind of a remote island

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that is privately owned. And so you can only access it as

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a researcher or as somebody working there. And so

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It's this pristine, beautiful ecosystem with

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just an abundance of stingrays. You walk along

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the sand flats and you can't help but almost step on

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them. There are so many of them there. My study was

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trying to understand this population, a

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little bit about how many individuals there were, but mostly trying

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to figure out how they all lived together in the space, you know, their

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movements and their feeding ecology and that sort of

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thing. So it was these three species, but the porcupine ray will

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always hold a special place in my heart because it's kind

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of the only species of stingray that doesn't have the stinger or

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barb on its tail and so as you said Dave it has this

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sort of porcupine texture skin where its back is covered

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in these very sharp almost like rosebush thorn

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type projections and so it's very painful if you stand on

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them or if you put your hand on them But the fact that they don't have

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a stinger or a barb makes them a bit easier to

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catch. And so what we ended up doing in trying to catch these

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individuals was essentially kind of creeping

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up on them as they were hiding out in the sand, buried in the sand, and

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pouncing and grabbing their tails. Kind of

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I heard you came up with quite a novel way to catch those things. And that was basically

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Yeah, we, I mean, we were just in the field and, you know, initially we were using

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this rod and reel and just sighting for individuals and catching

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them with a normal hook and line. And then Paul, you know, one day

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was just like, you know what, we can get so close to these guys. Why don't we just jump

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them and try and catch them? And so that's what we ended up doing. And

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So this is this is really interesting, you know, sneaking up on

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a stingray. So were they like, were they timid? Like, obviously, they weren't

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timid around you, you know, even though they live in a fairly

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secluded area. How did you like

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No, and so we're walking on these sort of knee deep

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sand flat areas, essentially. So it's, you know,

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on these almost intertidal flat type things. And so these rays,

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they're sort of buried in the sand, and they rely on camouflage a

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lot. So they feel like once they're, you know, hunkered down in the sand, that

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they're safe. And so we could, you know, walk quite

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Gotcha. So they're just staying hidden while you're walking close. Hopefully that they don't,

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that you don't see them and then you get them. Okay. I got you. Cause I was like, it must be,

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even if you're like, whether you're scuba diving or whether you're trying to get after them, they

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must hear you or they must feel you coming, you know, just from the water

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being displaced, the waves and stuff like that. I was like, how do you do that? That's like

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It usually took a couple of tries, but eventually we

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Yeah. What

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Sorry, Dave. They had this really fun technique where if

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you would pounce and you didn't catch them the first time, they

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would sort of swim around in a circle and dig

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up the sand a lot and create almost like the sand plume. So they were trying to

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re-hide themselves in the sand plume. So all you had to do

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was kind of like look around you and wait for it to dart out and then you could try again.

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Yeah, that'd be,

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it's almost like they're trying to test you again. It's like, see if you can catch me again, I'm

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going to really hide from you. Yeah. How

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intimidating is it when you start a project like that

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to study three new species that you don't really know

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much about? I think a lot of times when

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we hear about students and people studying

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new species. Dave, you go through this all the time. You've discovered so

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many species. How intimidating is it when you start from

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scratch and you're like, I know nothing about these species. Here I am

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having to learn about three that I've never seen before, never

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even heard of before. What's that like when you

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I mean, yeah, it is very intimidating. And especially

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as a young master student who is experiencing, as I said, all of

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these new things for the first time, not even to mention, just trying

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to understand what these three new species are.

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But I feel like As a ray researcher, that's

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just the way it goes. You know, most of this, actually all

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of the species, I think all of the species that I've worked on, barring the

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blue stingray, which as Dave mentioned earlier on, Paul Cowley, my

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supervisor at the time, did his master's on, they have never been

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researched, scientifically researched before. So, you

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know, these species really, there's, we just don't know anything

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about them. So even now at this, you know, kind

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of later stage in my career, When I start a new project, it means

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I'm again, starting from scratch and trying to understand the

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species. We don't know basic things like what they eat, where

227
00:14:27,125 --> 00:14:30,447
they live, how they move. You know, sometimes even taxonomy is

228
00:14:30,947 --> 00:14:34,108
a bit of an issue. you know,

229
00:14:34,148 --> 00:14:37,452
with these three new species that I did my master's and PhD on, we

230
00:14:37,512 --> 00:14:41,096
had assumed that one of them was a specific

231
00:14:41,136 --> 00:14:44,300
species. And so throughout, while I'm, you know, writing up

232
00:14:44,340 --> 00:14:47,463
my thesis and going through my whole beginning stages of my

233
00:14:47,503 --> 00:14:51,047
project, I had called it this one species. But then thankfully

234
00:14:51,087 --> 00:14:54,449
we had taken some genetic samples and, and somebody had sequenced them

235
00:14:54,489 --> 00:14:57,792
for us and they were literally probably the week before I

236
00:14:57,832 --> 00:15:01,334
was going to hand in my PhD thesis, they were like, uh,

237
00:15:01,394 --> 00:15:07,579
just by the way, that's not that species. It's a different species. So,

238
00:15:07,719 --> 00:15:11,081
um, yeah, it's always, uh, working with rays is

239
00:15:11,461 --> 00:15:14,724
always starting from scratch, but it's, it's exciting. You know,

240
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it opens up a world of possibilities and something I

241
00:15:18,126 --> 00:15:21,568
really enjoy. and why I got into them in the first place.

242
00:15:22,869 --> 00:15:25,990
Yeah, and something I've talked about, and I think you and I have talked about it in the

243
00:15:26,030 --> 00:15:29,292
past, like, you know, that whole Western Indian Ocean, if you're looking for

244
00:15:29,352 --> 00:15:33,154
something to do as a student, just stingray

245
00:15:33,194 --> 00:15:36,515
taxonomy, just trying to identify what species is what

246
00:15:37,015 --> 00:15:40,057
that that's a whole that's a couple of master's thesis or a

247
00:15:40,117 --> 00:15:43,679
PhD thesis just to figure out the species you have there. Because

248
00:15:43,699 --> 00:15:47,207
what Chantal described, I can attest to, You

249
00:15:47,227 --> 00:15:50,489
can be working on something, then all of a sudden you realize like, oh, that's not

250
00:15:50,529 --> 00:15:53,671
the right species. It's this other species here. And that's

251
00:15:53,871 --> 00:15:57,393
I kind of find it exciting in a way, but it's kind of frustrating

252
00:15:57,413 --> 00:16:00,795
if you're about to submit your Ph.D. thesis or a paper and realize

253
00:16:00,815 --> 00:16:03,957
like, oh, it's the wrong species. That could be that could cause some

254
00:16:03,977 --> 00:16:07,138
problems. But it's it's really anyway, it's pretty exciting to be able to to

255
00:16:07,198 --> 00:16:10,300
do that type of stuff. So how many how many years did you

256
00:16:15,648 --> 00:16:18,890
Uh, so my work ran over five years. So I started off with

257
00:16:18,930 --> 00:16:22,432
my master's and then it sort of grew into my PhD. Um,

258
00:16:22,632 --> 00:16:26,074
and so I went on, I spent in total about six months

259
00:16:26,134 --> 00:16:29,235
in the Seychelles across five different trips. And then the rest of

260
00:16:29,255 --> 00:16:32,457
the time based in South Africa, sort of working up the samples and, and

261
00:16:34,658 --> 00:16:40,433
Yeah. How was your, uh, What

262
00:16:40,513 --> 00:16:44,015
aspects of the thing, you did some

263
00:16:44,055 --> 00:16:47,616
tracking studies and what other aspects of your research

264
00:16:50,938 --> 00:16:54,179
Yeah, so we did acoustic telemetry for tracking, so

265
00:16:54,199 --> 00:16:57,972
passive acoustic telemetry, so We stuck some acoustic tags

266
00:16:58,132 --> 00:17:01,295
into, I think we had 60 in total, 20 for

267
00:17:01,355 --> 00:17:04,978
each species. Then we had this really nice array of receivers,

268
00:17:05,899 --> 00:17:09,443
both within the atoll and then further afield along

269
00:17:09,483 --> 00:17:12,986
the bigger bank area that we were working on. So at other different islands

270
00:17:13,046 --> 00:17:16,769
and atolls. if these individuals did disperse from

271
00:17:16,829 --> 00:17:20,211
it and leave this area that we could track them. So that was a really, really

272
00:17:20,532 --> 00:17:23,894
great aspect of the study. And then also looking at dietary stuff.

273
00:17:23,914 --> 00:17:27,456
So we did both stomach contents and stable isotopes.

274
00:17:27,977 --> 00:17:31,219
And stomach contents, we were really one of the, you

275
00:17:31,259 --> 00:17:34,941
know, sort of early people to use gastric lavage for

276
00:17:35,322 --> 00:17:38,664
rays. So it was kind of developing that technique for

277
00:17:41,965 --> 00:17:45,187
So you spent all these times out there in the

278
00:17:45,247 --> 00:17:48,928
Seychelles and stuff and you got your thesis done. So after

279
00:17:48,968 --> 00:17:52,970
you kind of, you got your thesis done, what was sort of your next, the

280
00:17:56,932 --> 00:18:00,335
Um, so, so after my PhD, I affectionately refer

281
00:18:00,375 --> 00:18:03,717
to it as my gap year because I had gone straight from

282
00:18:03,817 --> 00:18:07,420
high school through to, um, you know, undergrad through

283
00:18:07,440 --> 00:18:10,702
to post-grad, uh, all the way up to my PhD, nine

284
00:18:10,722 --> 00:18:14,024
years at university had never really taken a break. So,

285
00:18:14,044 --> 00:18:17,186
um, after, after my PhD, I knew

286
00:18:17,246 --> 00:18:20,669
I just needed to take a step back and take a little bit of a break, but.

287
00:18:21,049 --> 00:18:24,931
I did. I did kind of still stay in the field, but just doing a few other

288
00:18:24,971 --> 00:18:28,592
things. So we have a great NGO here

289
00:18:29,032 --> 00:18:32,494
in Cape Town called the Shark Spotters. So,

290
00:18:32,874 --> 00:18:36,035
you know, they have these amazing people who sit on the

291
00:18:36,055 --> 00:18:39,596
mountainside and monitor the water for the presence of great white sharks.

292
00:18:39,636 --> 00:18:42,898
So it's kind of like an early warning system to get swimmers and

293
00:18:42,938 --> 00:18:46,609
bathers and surfers out the water if there's a great white shark around. So

294
00:18:46,689 --> 00:18:50,351
I spent a bit of time just helping them with some, you know, basic research

295
00:18:50,491 --> 00:18:53,773
and, and data collection. And then I spent six

296
00:18:53,813 --> 00:18:57,055
months in the Philippines, completely different working on,

297
00:18:57,355 --> 00:19:00,857
on coral reef surveys for an NGO, NPA

298
00:19:03,979 --> 00:19:07,561
Wow. Tough, again, tough, tough life. I'm sure it's,

299
00:19:10,842 --> 00:19:13,904
Yeah. Every, every listener at home is gonna be going like, oh God, it's like, so you

300
00:19:13,924 --> 00:19:17,083
got to go to the Seychelles for five years. You gotta go work on

301
00:19:17,163 --> 00:19:20,865
coral reefs in the Philippines. I just really hate this marine biology

302
00:19:21,546 --> 00:19:25,087
Terrible. Now what, so

303
00:19:25,608 --> 00:19:29,089
to do that, like what was the decision behind that

304
00:19:29,129 --> 00:19:33,232
or the rationale for the decision behind that? How did you find that organization?

305
00:19:34,092 --> 00:19:37,414
Why Philippines? You know, why coral reefs when you've been

306
00:19:41,065 --> 00:19:44,749
Yeah, so as I said, I kind of wanted to take a break from academia

307
00:19:44,910 --> 00:19:48,314
and just do a little bit more, I guess, you

308
00:19:48,354 --> 00:19:51,577
know, work based type stuff. And

309
00:19:51,657 --> 00:19:55,322
so I had belonged to this newsletter that

310
00:19:55,362 --> 00:19:58,706
went around where they advertised these sort of jobs in marine

311
00:19:58,726 --> 00:20:02,054
conservation and, And that sort of thing. And so

312
00:20:02,134 --> 00:20:05,336
this position came up and I was like, oh, six months in

313
00:20:05,356 --> 00:20:08,777
the Philippines. Okay. It's a bit of a long time away from home,

314
00:20:09,238 --> 00:20:12,720
but, you know, and it wasn't a paid position. So,

315
00:20:13,100 --> 00:20:16,282
you know, this is one of the things where, especially in this

316
00:20:16,342 --> 00:20:19,444
field, unfortunately, if you're trying to gain work experience and

317
00:20:19,464 --> 00:20:22,683
you're just trying to like develop your CV. Sometimes you have

318
00:20:22,723 --> 00:20:27,005
to take unpaid positions or do these weird and wonderful internships.

319
00:20:27,025 --> 00:20:30,707
So, you know, even though the six month position I was working unpaid,

320
00:20:30,727 --> 00:20:33,968
I got to live and scuba dive for free in the Philippines, which

321
00:20:34,208 --> 00:20:37,590
for me was worth it. And, you know, really working on

322
00:20:38,110 --> 00:20:41,230
coral reefs and specifically You

323
00:20:41,270 --> 00:20:44,733
know, the Philippines is a great example of where marine

324
00:20:44,773 --> 00:20:48,096
conservation happens from the bottom up. So they have these really small

325
00:20:48,136 --> 00:20:51,858
villages called barangays. And the fishermen there,

326
00:20:51,939 --> 00:20:55,321
you know, it's their livelihoods. They know they rely on

327
00:20:55,421 --> 00:20:58,684
fishing as a source of protein and income, but they also

328
00:20:58,744 --> 00:21:02,467
understand that, you know, they need to sustain it for future generations. And

329
00:21:02,507 --> 00:21:06,590
so they have this huge push towards setting

330
00:21:06,690 --> 00:21:10,072
up these marine protected areas in the country,

331
00:21:10,152 --> 00:21:13,414
but there's not a lot of input from government down. And

332
00:21:13,454 --> 00:21:17,076
so these local villages want to put marine protected

333
00:21:17,176 --> 00:21:20,778
areas in, but they just don't have the expertise. They don't have the skills. So,

334
00:21:21,099 --> 00:21:24,521
you know, we would go around and run these surveys and just say, Hey, look, okay,

335
00:21:24,561 --> 00:21:28,263
we've surveyed here and we think this is where you should put your MPA. It

336
00:21:28,303 --> 00:21:31,605
was a lot of community engagements and a lot of involvement with,

337
00:21:31,985 --> 00:21:35,066
you know, local fishers and government officials. And so I really learned a

338
00:21:35,106 --> 00:21:38,508
lot from that project. And I, it was definitely a highlight in my career, even

339
00:21:38,548 --> 00:21:42,070
though it was completely separate from Elasma Branks and completely

340
00:21:42,090 --> 00:21:45,251
separate from what I have gone on to do. I

341
00:21:45,291 --> 00:21:48,573
learned a lot of skills that then transfers, you know, across no matter what

342
00:21:49,894 --> 00:21:53,655
For sure. Do you find your travel to the Seychelles, you

343
00:21:53,675 --> 00:21:57,108
know, during your master's. helped you with traveling

344
00:21:57,168 --> 00:22:00,510
to a place like the Philippines because you mentioned earlier, it's

345
00:22:00,550 --> 00:22:04,172
a far away of home. It's a long time away from home. I don't think we

346
00:22:04,392 --> 00:22:07,814
as marine biologists acknowledge how difficult

347
00:22:07,854 --> 00:22:11,576
it is to work away from home. People get homesick and

348
00:22:11,876 --> 00:22:15,018
you're used to certain ways and how to do things a

349
00:22:15,058 --> 00:22:18,560
certain way. You're going to a completely different country, completely different culture.

350
00:22:18,580 --> 00:22:22,063
Here you're doing a completely different topic But,

351
00:22:22,464 --> 00:22:25,830
you know, which is a benefit to you in all the ways, but it's also very, like,

352
00:22:25,890 --> 00:22:29,216
it could, it could put yourself out of your comfort level. Do you find going

353
00:22:29,236 --> 00:22:32,703
to the Seychelles helped you, you know, prepare for the Philippines?

354
00:22:33,970 --> 00:22:37,211
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think, I think when you do it once, it

355
00:22:37,291 --> 00:22:40,872
becomes a little bit easier the next time. But as you say, it's still a

356
00:22:40,912 --> 00:22:44,474
completely different environment, a completely different language, a completely different

357
00:22:44,514 --> 00:22:47,855
culture. But you know, that's an aspect that I love about

358
00:22:47,895 --> 00:22:51,536
it. And I have really enjoyed and especially I feel like in your twenties,

359
00:22:51,576 --> 00:22:55,437
you know, that was happening all in my early and mid twenties. So

360
00:22:55,517 --> 00:22:59,319
you're not like fully settled yet. And you have this more spirit

361
00:22:59,379 --> 00:23:02,959
of adventure. Now I'm in my 30s, would I spend another

362
00:23:02,999 --> 00:23:06,180
six months in the Philippines? I'm not too sure. But at the

363
00:23:06,220 --> 00:23:10,241
time, it was a perfect opportunity for me. And,

364
00:23:10,821 --> 00:23:14,241
you know, it was really roughing it. I think that was the hardest part. So

365
00:23:14,382 --> 00:23:17,622
even within the Seychelles and then in the Philippines, we were living in

366
00:23:17,662 --> 00:23:21,103
this place that didn't have running water, you know, didn't

367
00:23:21,183 --> 00:23:24,703
even have sort of like glass in the windows. It was really open

368
00:23:24,743 --> 00:23:29,052
to the elements. You're completely out of any kind of not

369
00:23:29,112 --> 00:23:32,394
even luxury, but just day to day amenities that you're so used

370
00:23:32,474 --> 00:23:36,296
to. But I think that builds character. And that's part of the experience.

371
00:23:38,817 --> 00:23:42,559
Yeah, and even from like a conservation perspective, too, right? It's

372
00:23:42,699 --> 00:23:46,021
sorry, Dave, even from a conservation perspective, you,

373
00:23:46,722 --> 00:23:50,143
you look at how a lot of local communities have to deal

374
00:23:50,223 --> 00:23:53,765
with the problems that they're having, and to be able to help them, and

375
00:23:53,885 --> 00:23:57,577
probably helps you understand how conservation will work sort

376
00:23:57,617 --> 00:24:00,780
of in the, in like away from academia and out

377
00:24:00,860 --> 00:24:04,362
into, you know, local communities like the Philippines or like the Seychelles and

378
00:24:04,382 --> 00:24:07,765
be like, okay, this is how people, a lot of people live. You know, this,

379
00:24:07,825 --> 00:24:11,208
this kind of brings it into perspective and more of a reality of

380
00:24:15,253 --> 00:24:18,616
Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's very easy to, you know,

381
00:24:18,676 --> 00:24:22,100
we typically as marine biologists and conservationists, we're obviously on

382
00:24:22,120 --> 00:24:25,503
the side of trying to save everything and protect everything

383
00:24:25,543 --> 00:24:28,766
and put marine protected areas everywhere and stop the fishing and stop that.

384
00:24:28,826 --> 00:24:31,969
But as you say, there are these really real people and

385
00:24:32,029 --> 00:24:35,813
communities. whose lives are so affected

386
00:24:35,873 --> 00:24:39,801
by these decisions that we just almost sometimes willy-nilly

387
00:24:39,941 --> 00:24:43,468
try and put out there. And so just having

388
00:24:43,488 --> 00:24:46,785
an understanding of not only

389
00:24:46,845 --> 00:24:51,968
the ecosystems, but the larger scale ecosystem.

390
00:24:52,228 --> 00:24:55,690
We're all part of the ecosystem. We as humans and the people who rely on

391
00:24:55,730 --> 00:24:58,891
these resources and just understanding everything and how it

392
00:24:58,931 --> 00:25:02,713
works together is really important in any conservation

393
00:25:04,414 --> 00:25:08,156
Yeah. We've had this discussion on

394
00:25:08,176 --> 00:25:11,297
some other episodes where people like

395
00:25:11,337 --> 00:25:14,928
yourself go to these areas And you get a really different perspective on

396
00:25:14,968 --> 00:25:18,069
how it is with people that their base, their livelihoods, or

397
00:25:18,089 --> 00:25:21,389
if they can't catch fish or whatever that they don't eat. Basically, there's

398
00:25:21,449 --> 00:25:25,910
no going out to the store. And I think I think a lot of organizations that

399
00:25:25,970 --> 00:25:29,231
don't have people that experience that they tend to

400
00:25:29,271 --> 00:25:32,571
be very think like, oh, well, we just got to stop the fishing here,

401
00:25:32,711 --> 00:25:36,052
stop whatever's going on. And they tend to not

402
00:25:36,772 --> 00:25:39,993
look at the people involved, the human the human element of the whole

403
00:25:40,053 --> 00:25:43,574
thing. And so I think you're going out and experience that

404
00:25:44,154 --> 00:25:47,617
say, as you say, give you a more rounded experience on how people

405
00:25:47,698 --> 00:25:50,981
really live in a lot, in a lot of the world, including of

406
00:25:51,001 --> 00:25:54,344
course, including lots, a lot of Africa as well outside, say

407
00:25:54,384 --> 00:25:57,907
South Africa, where people are not, not fishing or

408
00:25:57,967 --> 00:26:01,230
catching stuff. They, they just don't eat. So yeah,

409
00:26:01,310 --> 00:26:04,433
yeah. So that's, I think it's, I think it's, I think it's important. I think a lot of people, and as

410
00:26:04,453 --> 00:26:08,079
you said, it's, It's good to do it when you're young because after you experience that,

411
00:26:08,219 --> 00:26:11,540
after that, it's kind of like you want to stay at least like a, say a three-star hotel

412
00:26:13,720 --> 00:26:21,722
I've definitely

413
00:26:21,782 --> 00:26:24,923
found as I've got older, my level of

414
00:26:25,003 --> 00:26:28,684
discomfort or my willingness to experience discomfort

415
00:26:31,325 --> 00:26:34,927
Oh yeah, for sure, for sure. You want

416
00:26:34,987 --> 00:26:38,709
glass on your windows now and the regular

417
00:26:40,710 --> 00:26:44,485
Yeah, it's like they ask you, Your

418
00:26:44,505 --> 00:26:47,986
friends ask you to go camping and it's like, what start, what hotel we staying at for

419
00:26:49,166 --> 00:26:53,007
Oh no, I'm always down for a camping trip. Camping

420
00:26:53,127 --> 00:26:57,448
and through hike backpacking, I'm down for. But short time

421
00:27:00,069 --> 00:27:03,289
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. I can,

422
00:27:03,370 --> 00:27:06,590
I can totally, I can, I can understand that and stuff. So, so as

423
00:27:06,610 --> 00:27:10,271
you got along, you've, you've gotten, you've picked up some really good experience going,

424
00:27:10,291 --> 00:27:13,952
uh, obviously in the spending time in the Seychelles and then in the Philippines.

425
00:27:14,666 --> 00:27:17,831
And so when you came back from the Philippines, what was your sort

426
00:27:17,851 --> 00:27:22,358
of next, what was your next step? What was your next plan

427
00:27:26,768 --> 00:27:30,151
Yeah, so I was very fortunate in that, um, you know, Paul Cowley, who

428
00:27:30,191 --> 00:27:33,494
was my supervisor for my master's and PhD, he had kind

429
00:27:33,594 --> 00:27:36,876
of always envisioned me coming on as a postdoc, um,

430
00:27:37,017 --> 00:27:40,319
after that whole process. And so throughout, you

431
00:27:40,359 --> 00:27:43,822
know, my PhD years, actually, he was just tagging a whole bunch of stingrays in

432
00:27:43,842 --> 00:27:47,265
South Africa. He was like, right, I'm going out, I'm fishing, I'm tagging stingrays, the

433
00:27:54,150 --> 00:27:57,532
What you want to know

434
00:28:00,594 --> 00:28:03,756
Yeah, exactly. Did you have

435
00:28:03,796 --> 00:28:07,238
an idea after the Philippines, even

436
00:28:07,338 --> 00:28:10,440
after your PhD, did you have an

437
00:28:10,560 --> 00:28:14,182
idea of what you wanted to do in terms of

438
00:28:14,782 --> 00:28:17,882
marine biology in general? you know, obviously, you have a

439
00:28:17,942 --> 00:28:21,203
lot of you have a lot of likes, which we haven't even gotten into in terms

440
00:28:21,263 --> 00:28:24,904
of, you know, science communication. But just like in general,

441
00:28:25,024 --> 00:28:28,685
like, you know, going to the Philippines doing reef studies compared

442
00:28:28,725 --> 00:28:32,086
to going to the Seychelles doing Laszlo Brank studies and Ray studies,

443
00:28:32,906 --> 00:28:36,507
and doing more application than, you know, compared to academia,

444
00:28:36,527 --> 00:28:39,728
did you have an idea about what type of job you wanted to

445
00:28:39,788 --> 00:28:43,269
work at after that, or even throughout your PhD? Other

446
00:28:46,370 --> 00:28:51,013
Yeah, so I think I think really that year after my PhD, I

447
00:28:51,053 --> 00:28:54,436
kind of came to the realization that I didn't really want to go into

448
00:28:54,516 --> 00:28:58,899
academia, I wanted to be more on the NGO application

449
00:28:59,139 --> 00:29:03,402
based side of the world. And so I

450
00:29:03,522 --> 00:29:06,623
finished up at, in the Philippines towards the end of

451
00:29:06,963 --> 00:29:10,523
2019. And then I came back to South Africa and

452
00:29:10,723 --> 00:29:14,104
I actually got a job where I'm based now in Plettenberg Bay,

453
00:29:14,124 --> 00:29:18,265
which is a small coastal town, heading up the research program

454
00:29:18,505 --> 00:29:21,725
of an NGO based here. But that was, I

455
00:29:22,065 --> 00:29:25,506
think I started February, 2020. And then for everybody who

456
00:29:29,987 --> 00:29:34,021
Just a little thing. So, um, you know, March, 2020 rolled

457
00:29:34,061 --> 00:29:37,224
around and everything here in South Africa was locked down and the

458
00:29:37,264 --> 00:29:40,467
rest of the world. And this NGO that I had just started my

459
00:29:40,527 --> 00:29:43,830
job at relied on international volunteers as their main

460
00:29:43,870 --> 00:29:47,173
source of income. And so I lost my job through

461
00:29:47,213 --> 00:29:50,336
that. And at the time, you know, as

462
00:29:50,376 --> 00:29:53,519
I said, Paul had kind of been setting up this postdoc for

463
00:29:53,559 --> 00:29:56,861
me. And so we had done this sort of funding application or

464
00:29:56,881 --> 00:30:00,363
this fellowship application, which then came through.

465
00:30:00,383 --> 00:30:03,825
And so then I got offered this postdoc position, even

466
00:30:03,865 --> 00:30:08,248
though I knew I didn't necessarily want to carry on in academia, it

467
00:30:08,308 --> 00:30:11,970
was a great position that came at the right, again, just came

468
00:30:12,010 --> 00:30:15,493
at the right time for me. And Paul had been tagging

469
00:30:15,533 --> 00:30:18,755
these Stingrays, and I knew I'd always kind of

470
00:30:18,835 --> 00:30:21,977
wanted to try and carry on with research in Stingrays. And so

471
00:30:22,777 --> 00:30:26,140
it aligned with my research interests and again right

472
00:30:26,200 --> 00:30:29,523
time and so I ended up doing my postdoc. So I started my

473
00:30:29,583 --> 00:30:32,886
postdoc in March 20 or no I think it was then April

474
00:30:33,847 --> 00:30:37,270
2020 when I officially started. And so for the past four years,

475
00:30:37,290 --> 00:30:41,494
it actually just finished last month, I've been doing my postdoc on

476
00:30:41,554 --> 00:30:45,577
rays here in South Africa which was really a great project for me because It

477
00:30:45,617 --> 00:30:48,798
was the first time that I was really conducting research in South Africa, in

478
00:30:48,818 --> 00:30:52,400
my home country. And so it was just really special

479
00:30:52,420 --> 00:30:56,462
for me and working on stingrays here, again, doing acoustic telemetry

480
00:30:56,582 --> 00:31:00,083
on a couple of different species, adding in these major knowledge gaps

481
00:31:00,123 --> 00:31:03,825
that we still have on these animals. And then through

482
00:31:03,885 --> 00:31:07,325
that, I also managed to set up my own little project here

483
00:31:07,425 --> 00:31:10,946
in Pettenberg Bay in collaboration with that NGO

484
00:31:10,986 --> 00:31:14,387
that I had had a job very briefly with. And

485
00:31:14,427 --> 00:31:17,688
so I got some field work experience setting up a project here on a local

486
00:31:17,788 --> 00:31:20,909
estuary where I was doing some surveys, trying to figure out

487
00:31:20,949 --> 00:31:24,230
what stingrays lived in the estuary. And that turned out to be a really, really

488
00:31:24,290 --> 00:31:28,791
successful project and what I'm hoping to carry on with going forward. I

489
00:31:28,831 --> 00:31:32,813
don't know, my whole career, I kind of feel like has been just right

490
00:31:33,033 --> 00:31:36,494
things at the right time. And I feel like I've just been very,

491
00:31:37,234 --> 00:31:40,315
And yeah, if you know, if I could, if

492
00:31:40,355 --> 00:31:44,337
I can add in like you're one of the few people that

493
00:31:44,837 --> 00:31:48,098
didn't go into the white shark route with things and you got into an

494
00:31:48,258 --> 00:31:51,460
area and you found it, you found you literally found, I say

495
00:31:51,500 --> 00:31:54,541
a niche, but the rate, the bad toys are so diverse. And I

496
00:31:54,561 --> 00:31:59,751
always comment on the, on the program about how you have South

497
00:31:59,791 --> 00:32:03,336
Africa's got one of the five most diverse chondrichthyan shark

498
00:32:03,376 --> 00:32:06,660
and ray faunas in the world, and everybody wants to do white sharks. But you are one of the few

499
00:32:06,720 --> 00:32:10,124
people, you know, and I kind of followed you a little bit through your career,

500
00:32:10,164 --> 00:32:13,348
through Paul, because I've been kind of aware of what you're up

501
00:32:13,368 --> 00:32:16,712
to. And I always thought it was really cool that there was somebody who actually had a

502
00:32:16,792 --> 00:32:20,259
passion for rays. because there's so much to do there.

503
00:32:20,659 --> 00:32:24,181
And you obviously got on to that whole, found that whole niche and been pursuing

504
00:32:24,221 --> 00:32:27,423
that. And it's just, as you've kind of talked about, it's

505
00:32:27,463 --> 00:32:30,545
just, it's kind of wide open what you're doing. And

506
00:32:30,785 --> 00:32:34,487
now you sound like you're trying to raise more awareness to

507
00:32:35,167 --> 00:32:39,549
the public and everything through these different NGOs. What's

508
00:32:39,569 --> 00:32:42,811
this, this one group, this ELMO Africa, what can

509
00:32:42,831 --> 00:32:46,093
you talk, what's that about? Can you talk a little about that?

510
00:32:49,114 --> 00:32:52,616
Yeah, Alma Africa is a little passion project of mine. It's

511
00:32:52,676 --> 00:32:56,319
a citizen science project here in South Africa, and it was actually started

512
00:32:56,379 --> 00:32:59,661
by somebody called Lisa Skruta. And

513
00:32:59,681 --> 00:33:02,783
so back when I was in my master's day, I

514
00:33:02,843 --> 00:33:06,325
kind of came across this citizen science project in South Africa, which

515
00:33:06,365 --> 00:33:10,068
was dedicated to sharks and rays and their conservation. And

516
00:33:10,088 --> 00:33:14,272
so essentially the ethos of this project is that whenever

517
00:33:14,533 --> 00:33:17,936
a member of the public along the South African coastline encounters a

518
00:33:17,976 --> 00:33:21,759
shark or a ray, either through angling, fishing, scuba

519
00:33:21,779 --> 00:33:25,002
diving, boat trips, anything like that, they kind of just let us know. And

520
00:33:25,523 --> 00:33:28,706
then also through collecting their egg cases, which are more

521
00:33:28,726 --> 00:33:31,809
affectionately known as mermaid's purses, people just walking on

522
00:33:31,849 --> 00:33:34,981
the beach, pick up an egg case It's kind of just like this

523
00:33:35,422 --> 00:33:39,585
place where people can send that information through. And so it's this repository

524
00:33:39,685 --> 00:33:43,068
of citizen science shark and ray sightings in South

525
00:33:43,108 --> 00:33:46,351
Africa. And so back in my master's, I kind of, you

526
00:33:46,391 --> 00:33:49,713
know, volunteered for the project and I ran school trips

527
00:33:49,773 --> 00:33:53,136
with local schools and we went on shark egg case hunts, which was really

528
00:33:53,176 --> 00:33:56,517
a lot of fun. And so I kind of like been helping on

529
00:33:56,557 --> 00:34:01,138
and off with the project. And then when I started my postdoc, Lisa,

530
00:34:01,218 --> 00:34:04,959
who, you know, started Elmo, she just didn't have the capacity

531
00:34:05,039 --> 00:34:08,139
to carry on with it anymore. And so I was

532
00:34:08,159 --> 00:34:11,240
like, cool, I'll take it over. So since then I've kind of

533
00:34:11,260 --> 00:34:14,540
been running the project and managing the project and growing it and

534
00:34:14,940 --> 00:34:18,341
working with local NGOs who also run various citizen

535
00:34:18,381 --> 00:34:22,102
science projects along the coastline and just kind of collecting all

536
00:34:22,162 --> 00:34:25,483
of that shark and ray information. into one central database that

537
00:34:25,503 --> 00:34:28,826
then can be used in by various scientists or

538
00:34:32,949 --> 00:34:36,571
Cool. That's awesome. So how did you, so you're,

539
00:34:36,711 --> 00:34:40,134
you're, you're, you're Telly's Marine Tales, which

540
00:34:40,174 --> 00:34:43,536
is your YouTube channel. And I, and I'll, if

541
00:34:43,576 --> 00:34:47,799
you, everyone listens, you got to go check out this, this is an amazing YouTube

542
00:34:47,860 --> 00:34:51,122
channel she runs. Can you, I've got to hear the story about that,

543
00:34:51,382 --> 00:34:54,741
how you got that going. I need to hear more about that.

544
00:34:57,307 --> 00:35:00,508
Well, and before you do, and before you do, I wanted to kind of give

545
00:35:00,528 --> 00:35:03,930
you your flowers on this because like, you know, when

546
00:35:03,950 --> 00:35:07,731
a lot of people, like I have a YouTube channel, you know, we have a YouTube channel

547
00:35:07,871 --> 00:35:11,033
for Beyond Jaws. And, you know, we get happy when we

548
00:35:11,073 --> 00:35:14,254
get a new subscriber and we're like, okay, we're, you know, we're getting up there. We're

549
00:35:14,274 --> 00:35:17,415
almost at 500 subscribers and we're like, oh, this is awesome kind of

550
00:35:17,455 --> 00:35:21,197
thing. And I see a lot of people in marine biology or

551
00:35:21,217 --> 00:35:24,598
in that science communication field with the ocean. You know, you see people with,

552
00:35:24,698 --> 00:35:28,117
you know, a thousand or a couple of thousand. You have

553
00:35:29,558 --> 00:35:32,719
25,000 subscribers. I don't know how many. I think

554
00:35:32,759 --> 00:35:36,741
the channel has 1.9 million views.

555
00:35:37,541 --> 00:35:41,123
That's incredible. From someone who tries and tries

556
00:35:41,163 --> 00:35:44,764
to get views and all that kind of stuff, that's absolutely incredible. Before

557
00:35:44,784 --> 00:35:48,506
you started with that story, I wanted people to get that context before

558
00:35:48,526 --> 00:35:52,428
you started because this is, in my opinion, a highly successful

559
00:35:53,248 --> 00:35:56,489
sort of channel for marine science and marine biology. So

560
00:36:00,170 --> 00:36:03,431
Thank you. I really appreciate that. You know, this is

561
00:36:03,571 --> 00:36:06,992
something that is something that I've been working on for a really, really

562
00:36:07,012 --> 00:36:10,273
long time. Again, since my master's day, which was, I don't

563
00:36:10,293 --> 00:36:13,555
know, even though 10 years ago now. And

564
00:36:13,635 --> 00:36:17,290
so I feel like I

565
00:36:17,330 --> 00:36:21,032
don't know, I have this almost love-hate relationship with my channel where

566
00:36:21,132 --> 00:36:24,374
sometimes I'm all in and I'm go, go, go,

567
00:36:24,414 --> 00:36:27,596
go, and then sometimes I can't even look at it for months on end. So,

568
00:36:29,057 --> 00:36:32,319
you know, I think the reason why it has

569
00:36:32,459 --> 00:36:35,741
become so successful is purely just because I've just been

570
00:36:36,061 --> 00:36:39,503
slowly plodding along for many, many, many years.

571
00:36:39,563 --> 00:36:42,765
It is by no means you know, an overnight success or

572
00:36:43,185 --> 00:36:46,567
anything like that. But yeah, I started it back in my master's day.

573
00:36:47,007 --> 00:36:50,249
At the time, you know, I was doing my research in the Seychelles, but

574
00:36:50,809 --> 00:36:54,431
I was doing the rest of my, you know, in-country work

575
00:36:54,471 --> 00:36:58,153
in South Africa correspondence based. I wasn't based at my university that

576
00:36:58,213 --> 00:37:01,654
I was registered at. And I was kind of just looking for a bit of

577
00:37:02,215 --> 00:37:05,596
a marine biology community to tap into and

578
00:37:05,617 --> 00:37:09,000
to learn from. And at the time, you know, I was looking

579
00:37:09,060 --> 00:37:12,124
for other marine biologists on YouTube and I couldn't find any. So I

580
00:37:12,144 --> 00:37:15,288
was like, okay, well, I guess this is a gap. So I

581
00:37:15,308 --> 00:37:19,914
don't know, I'm going to try. So I tried. Um, and

582
00:37:20,174 --> 00:37:24,079
you know, it took a really, really, really long time for any

583
00:37:24,119 --> 00:37:27,222
kind of subscribers count to start going up or

584
00:37:27,242 --> 00:37:30,365
views to start going up a number of years. And but you

585
00:37:30,405 --> 00:37:33,889
know, it's been great. It's been such a fun learning experience, learning

586
00:37:34,669 --> 00:37:38,073
how to just try and communicate science to a really,

587
00:37:38,153 --> 00:37:41,296
really broad public, how to try and, you

588
00:37:41,336 --> 00:37:44,699
know, it's, sometimes it is a bit of a popularity, well,

589
00:37:44,719 --> 00:37:49,145
not a popularity contest, but you're trying to find topics

590
00:37:49,446 --> 00:37:52,596
or thumbnails or titles that people are going to be interested in and

591
00:37:52,636 --> 00:37:57,112
people are going to click on so it's kind of a bit of a uh,

592
00:37:57,973 --> 00:38:01,436
trying to find the right balance between, you know, having

593
00:38:01,476 --> 00:38:04,698
a more. Scientific balanced, uh,

594
00:38:04,858 --> 00:38:08,181
what you want to talk about, which for me is raised, but most people

595
00:38:08,261 --> 00:38:11,744
don't really care about raise versus trying to attract people

596
00:38:11,784 --> 00:38:15,106
to your channel and trying to get people on board so that then you

597
00:38:15,146 --> 00:38:18,369
can start talking about, you know, some of these other things that people are

598
00:38:18,409 --> 00:38:22,091
not familiar with. So that's kind of been, I think the most challenging part

599
00:38:22,111 --> 00:38:25,174
of the channel. And really it's only been in the last couple of.

600
00:38:25,995 --> 00:38:29,564
years that it's seen any kind of real success. And I

601
00:38:29,624 --> 00:38:33,092
had quite a crazy video go really

602
00:38:33,152 --> 00:38:37,513
viral a couple of months ago, which I still boggles

603
00:38:37,593 --> 00:38:41,215
my mind. Um, it's just, it's

604
00:38:41,255 --> 00:38:45,096
been fun. I haven't taken it with any kind of seriousness or

605
00:38:45,116 --> 00:38:49,658
I don't have a very strict scheduling, you know, uh, thing

606
00:38:49,698 --> 00:38:53,259
that I stick to just whenever I have some time and whenever

607
00:38:53,319 --> 00:38:56,820
I'm feeling into it, I post some stuff online and then whoever

608
00:38:56,880 --> 00:39:00,042
watches it, watches it. That's kind of the ethos I have

609
00:39:01,528 --> 00:39:05,072
And I do I do like I respect that because I know

610
00:39:05,172 --> 00:39:08,595
the amount of work it takes and the amount of time it takes to

611
00:39:08,695 --> 00:39:12,619
put, you know, a YouTube channel together, you

612
00:39:12,639 --> 00:39:15,822
know, even even like consistently posting, you know, weekly and things like that. So

613
00:39:15,882 --> 00:39:18,985
I know, I know how difficult that is. And

614
00:39:19,085 --> 00:39:22,589
even just to be able to put a video together, and you know, doing the editing and

615
00:39:22,689 --> 00:39:26,072
the you know, whatever it's the scripting or talking or whatever

616
00:39:26,092 --> 00:39:29,815
you come up with the idea all the way to the publishing takes

617
00:39:30,015 --> 00:39:33,177
a long time. And I do love the fact that you're just kind of like, yeah,

618
00:39:33,197 --> 00:39:36,420
when I have an idea, I'm going to, I'm going to talk about it. And I think it's, I think it's going

619
00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:39,863
to be, it's going to be great. And every once in a while, like

620
00:39:39,903 --> 00:39:43,065
I'm looking at, as you were talking, I was looking at your channel and some

621
00:39:43,085 --> 00:39:46,139
of the views and you're just like, It's interesting because I

622
00:39:46,159 --> 00:39:49,342
was like, you're right, there's not a lot of marine biologists and probably more now than there

623
00:39:49,362 --> 00:39:53,385
were when you first started, but there's not a lot of marine biologists that are on. And

624
00:39:53,866 --> 00:39:57,189
it's interesting to see, I assume like your target audience

625
00:39:57,249 --> 00:40:00,712
is sort of like the public who wants to know more about

626
00:40:00,852 --> 00:40:05,656
like there's stingrays, there's like ocean discoveries, stuff

627
00:40:05,716 --> 00:40:08,818
on PhD life. You had one go, I

628
00:40:08,838 --> 00:40:12,560
don't know if it went viral that day, but you have 197,000 views

629
00:40:13,080 --> 00:40:16,262
on software apps I used as a

630
00:40:16,302 --> 00:40:19,383
PhD student. Did you expect that to

631
00:40:19,464 --> 00:40:23,906
get that many views? I don't think anybody did. Was

632
00:40:23,926 --> 00:40:27,128
that right off the bat or has that been over, because this was five years ago, was

633
00:40:30,358 --> 00:40:33,561
Yeah, definitely accumulated. When I, when I first published that, it

634
00:40:33,641 --> 00:40:37,125
really did nothing. And I think it took about a year and then, I don't

635
00:40:37,145 --> 00:40:40,448
know, for some other reason it kicked off and then it kind of blew

636
00:40:40,508 --> 00:40:44,752
up a little bit, but it took a long time and it has been this sort of gradual growth

637
00:40:46,542 --> 00:40:49,783
This is not like I love the fact that these go because it's like

638
00:40:49,863 --> 00:40:53,483
if that's a helpful video, I would imagine for a lot of PhD students,

639
00:40:53,523 --> 00:40:56,764
people starting what what what software do I use? What kind of tools

640
00:40:56,804 --> 00:40:59,925
do I use it? I think it's really helpful. You

641
00:40:59,965 --> 00:41:03,125
had one go. I'm not sure if this is the one you were talking about that went viral. That was

642
00:41:03,185 --> 00:41:07,366
really interesting. But it was about six months ago. Why

643
00:41:07,426 --> 00:41:11,207
marine biologists know dolphins are scarier than sharks. And

644
00:41:11,227 --> 00:41:14,950
I have to admit, the thumbnail, there was some really interesting

645
00:41:15,811 --> 00:41:18,993
thumbnail. You talk about thumbnails being such a big part of it. It

646
00:41:19,033 --> 00:41:24,217
has demon dolphins on it, and it has little horns on the dolphin.

647
00:41:24,517 --> 00:41:27,739
These eyes, these devilish eyes. And normally, you see

648
00:41:27,779 --> 00:41:30,941
a dolphin, you expect it to be smiling or something. And

649
00:41:30,981 --> 00:41:34,164
you got it really going. I can

650
00:41:36,045 --> 00:41:39,686
Yeah, the whole point of that video was really, you know, because that's

651
00:41:39,806 --> 00:41:43,406
the perception that people have, right? That dolphins are these friendly,

652
00:41:43,526 --> 00:41:47,607
smiley animals and sharks are these bad things

653
00:41:47,667 --> 00:41:51,048
with sharp teeth that are out to get me. But actually, you know, the

654
00:41:51,088 --> 00:41:54,748
reality is oftentimes reversed and dolphins are causing

655
00:41:54,808 --> 00:41:58,089
injuries and, and having these negative effects more

656
00:41:58,149 --> 00:42:01,729
so than sharks. And so it was just really just a fun play

657
00:42:05,330 --> 00:42:09,392
I like it. Have you ever read the – there's a deepseanews.com article

658
00:42:09,572 --> 00:42:13,113
on dolphins and it was like 10 reasons why dolphins are a-holes

659
00:42:13,273 --> 00:42:16,355
I think is the title of the thing. It

660
00:42:16,375 --> 00:42:20,337
went viral back then. That was I think like early 2010s or maybe even

661
00:42:20,377 --> 00:42:23,598
earlier than that. But that went viral back then. I think a lot of people

662
00:42:23,638 --> 00:42:27,319
are always wondering like why are dolphins like so mean and why do marine biologists

663
00:42:27,360 --> 00:42:30,761
not like dolphins? But that's a thing. There's a

664
00:42:34,834 --> 00:42:38,178
In doing the research for that video, even I was shocked at some of the stories that

665
00:42:41,941 --> 00:42:45,565
Yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure. I know

666
00:42:45,585 --> 00:42:48,748
if you ever talk to anybody that does, I don't know if they have any place

667
00:42:48,768 --> 00:42:51,911
where they maintain dolphins in captivity, because I know it's not a

668
00:42:52,051 --> 00:42:55,475
big thing anymore, but people used to handle

669
00:42:55,495 --> 00:42:58,584
them in aquariums and stuff. you know, where they when they put on

670
00:42:58,604 --> 00:43:02,206
the shows, if they would tell you that each one has its own personality, there's

671
00:43:02,246 --> 00:43:05,568
like different people. Some are really fine. You can be OK with others

672
00:43:05,588 --> 00:43:08,769
are just really a-holes. Basically, they just can be

673
00:43:08,810 --> 00:43:11,911
really bad. And it's almost like it's very each one

674
00:43:11,951 --> 00:43:15,353
has a very distinct personality, which I thought was really interesting to

675
00:43:16,974 --> 00:43:20,216
deal with. I don't know if you do ever talk. I've just got a side note.

676
00:43:20,236 --> 00:43:23,478
Did you ever talk with anybody that handles marine mammals when you're doing

677
00:43:23,498 --> 00:43:27,241
like that, that video or do you just kind of do your own research and when

678
00:43:27,942 --> 00:43:31,243
No, not for that one. I just ended up doing my

679
00:43:31,324 --> 00:43:34,585
own research. But yeah, I think that would have been an interesting spin to

680
00:43:36,447 --> 00:43:39,689
For sure. Now, the other one that I wanted to talk about, and I think this was

681
00:43:39,729 --> 00:43:43,431
the actual one that you went viral that you weren't expecting. And I'm not surprised

682
00:43:43,551 --> 00:43:46,693
at this video going viral at all. David, not sure if you had a chance to see

683
00:43:46,713 --> 00:43:50,348
this one. It was done three months ago. It was

684
00:43:50,388 --> 00:43:53,891
marine biologist weighs in on farm salmon versus wild

685
00:43:53,971 --> 00:43:57,134
salmon debate. Now, this is always a contentious issue, especially I

686
00:43:57,174 --> 00:44:02,157
live in Canada, BC, open salmon farms.

687
00:44:02,798 --> 00:44:06,161
It gets nasty when you start talking to people, depending on

688
00:44:06,201 --> 00:44:09,423
how you look at which side of the debate and things like that.

689
00:44:09,903 --> 00:44:13,386
That had almost a million views, and I'm sure it's going to hit. Right

690
00:44:13,446 --> 00:44:18,150
now, Dave, it's at 922,000 views. That's

691
00:44:18,250 --> 00:44:21,694
huge. So what made you talk about

692
00:44:21,974 --> 00:44:25,618
that subject matter? Because when you look at, you cover a wide variety

693
00:44:25,658 --> 00:44:29,561
of issues and subject matters. What was the reasoning behind

694
00:44:29,602 --> 00:44:33,005
that? And I'm sure I'm going to ask, but I'm sure you didn't expect this many

695
00:44:36,106 --> 00:44:39,547
Yeah, so I was just trying to think of

696
00:44:39,588 --> 00:44:43,109
a couple of topics that are more relevant to

697
00:44:43,169 --> 00:44:46,731
people, you know. So obviously we get people who are interested

698
00:44:46,811 --> 00:44:50,132
in science and who are interested in marine biology and conservation for

699
00:44:50,172 --> 00:44:53,473
what it is. But at the end of the day, if you want to try and

700
00:44:53,573 --> 00:44:56,795
reach a wider audience, you have to talk about

701
00:44:56,855 --> 00:45:00,318
things that are relevant to people. what

702
00:45:00,378 --> 00:45:03,440
is more relevant to people than the fish that they eat, right? This is

703
00:45:03,480 --> 00:45:06,822
something that, you know, is a part of almost, you

704
00:45:06,862 --> 00:45:10,184
know, their daily lives and, and it really has

705
00:45:10,264 --> 00:45:13,466
a huge impact. And so while I am not

706
00:45:13,546 --> 00:45:17,029
necessarily a fisheries expert or a I'm definitely

707
00:45:17,089 --> 00:45:20,331
not a salmon expert. At the time, I also just

708
00:45:20,371 --> 00:45:23,893
wanted to do my own research because I didn't know much about salmon.

709
00:45:24,013 --> 00:45:27,135
I mean, I knew a little bit about salmon farming and I'd watched a

710
00:45:27,175 --> 00:45:30,678
couple of documentaries. And so I had this very one-sided view

711
00:45:31,138 --> 00:45:34,360
of salmon and salmon farming, but I wanted to do a bit more

712
00:45:34,400 --> 00:45:37,662
of a deeper dive and do all of this research and kind of come to my own

713
00:45:37,722 --> 00:45:41,245
conclusion about whether I would want to be eating salmon

714
00:45:41,285 --> 00:45:44,727
going forward. sharing that message to a

715
00:45:44,767 --> 00:45:48,229
wider audience. And for that video in particular, because

716
00:45:48,609 --> 00:45:51,890
I'm not necessarily a salmon expert, I didn't want to come at

717
00:45:51,930 --> 00:45:54,992
it from a science says this, I wanted it to

718
00:45:55,072 --> 00:45:58,394
come from a more personal perspective and my thoughts and,

719
00:45:58,754 --> 00:46:02,056
and my journey and why I came to that decision. And so,

720
00:46:02,196 --> 00:46:05,257
I mean, I, I knew that the video would do well, because it

721
00:46:05,337 --> 00:46:08,539
would, it would reach a wider audience, but never in

722
00:46:13,278 --> 00:46:16,881
Yeah, I could imagine. Yeah, I could. Yeah, I

723
00:46:16,921 --> 00:46:19,984
saw that. I haven't watched it, but I did. I did see. I did see it just. But I

724
00:46:20,024 --> 00:46:23,167
go. I worked for I worked for several years in aquaculture, so

725
00:46:23,187 --> 00:46:26,770
I've got a lot of opinions on the whole aquaculture industry

726
00:46:27,270 --> 00:46:30,833
and from like developed countries to developing countries and

727
00:46:30,853 --> 00:46:34,116
a gamut in between, because it's it's sort of like going

728
00:46:34,156 --> 00:46:37,999
into artisanal fisheries in developing countries

729
00:46:38,039 --> 00:46:41,415
versus first world countries. There's a whole gamut in

730
00:46:41,435 --> 00:46:44,696
between, but I'll have to check it out because I saw

731
00:46:44,716 --> 00:46:48,018
the topic there and I thought, oh, that's going to be an interesting one to check out. So

732
00:46:50,218 --> 00:46:56,841
Obviously very controversial with lots of different opinions.

733
00:46:56,921 --> 00:47:00,442
6,014 different comments on that.

734
00:47:00,482 --> 00:47:04,848
And that's an interesting thing, too, because a lot of scientists you

735
00:47:04,888 --> 00:47:08,053
know, when I first started going through science communication, you know,

736
00:47:08,093 --> 00:47:11,739
in the early 2010s, it still wasn't a

737
00:47:11,900 --> 00:47:15,746
thing where we, you know, scientists would really talk publicly

738
00:47:15,926 --> 00:47:20,090
about their work in terms of like trying to you

739
00:47:20,110 --> 00:47:23,311
know, educate people and make people more aware of their own work or even other work.

740
00:47:23,331 --> 00:47:26,692
There were there were a few people who were doing before, obviously, but it wasn't necessarily like,

741
00:47:27,012 --> 00:47:30,093
you know, my advisor would not like advise me to say, hey, why

742
00:47:30,113 --> 00:47:33,954
don't you go out and talk about your things? Because we'd always get comments.

743
00:47:33,994 --> 00:47:37,475
And especially nowadays, you can get some pretty nasty comments

744
00:47:37,515 --> 00:47:40,795
that can cause you know, you see you see creators all the time, you

745
00:47:40,835 --> 00:47:44,116
know, going through mental health issues with the comments they receive and

746
00:47:44,136 --> 00:47:47,929
things like that. Now, with a hot topic such as this, You're

747
00:47:47,949 --> 00:47:51,371
going to get 6,000 comments. Not all of them are going to be. I'm looking through

748
00:47:51,391 --> 00:47:54,814
a few of the top ones, and they're actually pretty good. They're pretty tame.

749
00:47:54,834 --> 00:47:58,056
Do you ever worry when you post a video like

750
00:47:58,136 --> 00:48:01,378
that that some of those comments are

751
00:48:01,418 --> 00:48:05,061
going to be against you? Because I know any time

752
00:48:05,101 --> 00:48:08,383
I post anything about climate change on any social media site,

753
00:48:08,403 --> 00:48:11,665
it's like a bot comes right away, hits you with it. This

754
00:48:11,725 --> 00:48:15,368
is denial. Watch this YouTube video. This tells you everything. Scientists

755
00:48:15,428 --> 00:48:18,670
are wrong. This and that. Blah, blah, blah. And it just kind of gets me

756
00:48:18,750 --> 00:48:22,814
sometimes. You're just like, man, like I wish people would stop doing this. Do you ever worry

757
00:48:22,834 --> 00:48:25,996
about that when you post a video and then when you get this amount of views, do

758
00:48:26,016 --> 00:48:29,199
you ever go through the comments or do you just kind of be like, I'm just going to stay away,

759
00:48:29,279 --> 00:48:32,502
let people have their own sort of a platform to air

760
00:48:34,964 --> 00:48:38,166
Yeah, so this, this again is kind of why I said I have

761
00:48:38,206 --> 00:48:42,190
a love hate relationship with my YouTube channel, because, you

762
00:48:42,210 --> 00:48:47,157
know, there are these really, really awful comments

763
00:48:47,197 --> 00:48:50,520
that come out of things. And actually the first time I had any kind of real

764
00:48:50,580 --> 00:48:54,283
experience with that was a couple of years when, uh, you

765
00:48:54,303 --> 00:48:58,206
remember the documentary Seaspiracy? Oh, yes.

766
00:48:58,406 --> 00:49:01,488
So, um, so I made a video just kind of,

767
00:49:01,669 --> 00:49:05,372
again, just airing some of my opinions about that and why I disagreed with

768
00:49:05,412 --> 00:49:09,404
a lot of what was said in the documentary. And

769
00:49:09,444 --> 00:49:12,831
that was the first time that I really experienced that, you know, really,

770
00:49:12,911 --> 00:49:16,318
really mean side of YouTube and a lot of really awful

771
00:49:16,359 --> 00:49:19,501
comments that came my way. And at the time I

772
00:49:19,581 --> 00:49:22,884
just shut myself off from it. I was like, I, you know, it's, I'm not

773
00:49:22,904 --> 00:49:25,987
going to read through these comments because as you say, it really, it

774
00:49:26,027 --> 00:49:29,110
can take a big toll on your mental health. And at

775
00:49:29,150 --> 00:49:32,253
the end of the day, there's almost kind of no point because those bots or

776
00:49:32,273 --> 00:49:35,576
those trolls or whatever you want to call them, there ain't no way you're

777
00:49:35,596 --> 00:49:39,620
going to change their mind or have any kind of meaningful

778
00:49:39,660 --> 00:49:42,983
and productive conversation in the comment section of

779
00:49:43,003 --> 00:49:46,345
a YouTube video. So. I just completely step

780
00:49:46,385 --> 00:49:49,886
away from it. And I kind of did the same thing with the salmon video. So,

781
00:49:50,266 --> 00:49:53,528
you know, in the beginning, I started looking at comments. And as you said, actually for

782
00:49:53,568 --> 00:49:57,209
that video, for the level of controversy around

783
00:49:57,249 --> 00:50:01,191
that topic and different opinions and different

784
00:50:01,251 --> 00:50:04,372
views and the amount of comments that I got, It was

785
00:50:04,512 --> 00:50:08,413
actually surprisingly positive, a lot of the comments, which

786
00:50:08,493 --> 00:50:11,634
I really enjoyed. But again, I kind of just

787
00:50:11,874 --> 00:50:15,055
got a bit scared. And so when I when it really started going viral, I

788
00:50:15,075 --> 00:50:18,236
just take a step back and I don't even read the comments. So on a video like

789
00:50:20,214 --> 00:50:23,798
And what's interesting, I'm kind of reading through quickly as we go through. What's interesting

790
00:50:23,838 --> 00:50:27,261
though is a lot of people are just kind of telling their own experiences. Somebody went

791
00:50:27,281 --> 00:50:30,564
to a restaurant, asked if it was wild or farmed, if

792
00:50:30,584 --> 00:50:34,108
it was fresh. Other people who grew up in the industry and

793
00:50:34,128 --> 00:50:38,151
sort of looking at how it's changed. It's actually It's

794
00:50:38,191 --> 00:50:41,693
a very interesting context when you look at the comments here.

795
00:50:41,934 --> 00:50:45,276
Obviously, there's going to be some that are probably going to be horrible, but I'm

796
00:50:45,316 --> 00:50:48,878
surprised. It's a lot of just sort of like personal stories of

797
00:50:49,038 --> 00:50:52,258
their involvement or their I guess, personal views of

798
00:50:52,278 --> 00:50:55,822
whether they eat salmon or not, you know, one said they read a David Suzuki book,

799
00:50:55,842 --> 00:50:59,066
and ever since then, they haven't touched salmon, which that's their opinion, right? They've,

800
00:50:59,466 --> 00:51:02,830
you know, they've been they will, they did their research, and they looked at it and, but

801
00:51:02,870 --> 00:51:06,034
doesn't look like there's as many nasty comments as I thought it would be, which is kind of

802
00:51:07,335 --> 00:51:10,519
Yeah. It was nice and refreshing, for

803
00:51:11,460 --> 00:51:14,642
Well, I think that that's the one thing like with the social media, because you can

804
00:51:14,902 --> 00:51:18,924
people can literally sit in their little basements downstairs

805
00:51:18,964 --> 00:51:22,285
and just like go on there and just be anonymous and just put out all kinds of

806
00:51:22,326 --> 00:51:25,427
stuff. And you don't really know. Like I think sometimes people are

807
00:51:25,447 --> 00:51:29,889
just like they're just looking to cause controversy somewhere. And I

808
00:51:29,909 --> 00:51:33,051
know people at Andrew and I've had on the shows that, you know,

809
00:51:33,071 --> 00:51:36,513
like we had Forrest Galani on there and he has obviously gets a lot of people comment

810
00:51:36,533 --> 00:51:39,734
on his. He just goes, I just he just ignores it. He goes because he

811
00:51:39,754 --> 00:51:43,701
found out early on as soon as you As soon as you engage with somebody to

812
00:51:43,741 --> 00:51:46,941
try to give you a give, it just goes bad. So

813
00:51:46,981 --> 00:51:50,382
he just stopped doing it. And other people have said the same thing. They just don't.

814
00:51:51,462 --> 00:51:54,543
It's hard to engage because as soon as you engage and you start really kind of

815
00:51:54,603 --> 00:51:58,764
almost stir the pot, make it make it a nothing

816
00:51:58,824 --> 00:52:02,165
to into something. So, yeah, it's unfortunate you can't

817
00:52:02,725 --> 00:52:06,166
you can't have a respectful conversation. But

818
00:52:06,326 --> 00:52:09,787
I think that's just the the Internet and the social media realm

819
00:52:09,847 --> 00:52:13,294
right now. Probably because it's also so new,

820
00:52:13,374 --> 00:52:16,598
people haven't really figured it out. A lot of elements to it

821
00:52:16,819 --> 00:52:20,664
as well. For sure. But so I

822
00:52:25,314 --> 00:52:29,177
No, just one last comment on this topic. You know, for me, you

823
00:52:29,197 --> 00:52:33,181
know, I've learned how to deal with these sort of like negative comments and internet

824
00:52:33,221 --> 00:52:36,604
trolls and things like that. But I think oftentimes the

825
00:52:36,624 --> 00:52:40,047
scariest thing for me when I post a YouTube video or

826
00:52:40,087 --> 00:52:43,490
something like that is how my scientific peers

827
00:52:44,050 --> 00:52:47,212
will think like, think of me or view me, right? Cause I

828
00:52:47,252 --> 00:52:50,814
don't really care what some internet troll says

829
00:52:50,874 --> 00:52:54,596
or thinks about me, but when it comes to my scientific peers

830
00:52:54,656 --> 00:52:58,079
who are looking at this, and as you said, there's not very many people

831
00:52:58,159 --> 00:53:01,441
doing this. And so what will they think of me? Do they think I'm being

832
00:53:01,541 --> 00:53:05,203
silly? Do they think this is a complete waste of time? Am I just like,

833
00:53:05,343 --> 00:53:09,165
am I no longer a real scientist because I do YouTube? And so there's

834
00:53:09,185 --> 00:53:12,487
a lot of those thoughts that go through my mind. And that actually is

835
00:53:12,627 --> 00:53:15,869
for me, the scariest part of my whole

836
00:53:18,009 --> 00:53:22,131
I completely agree on that. Sorry to just step in. I

837
00:53:22,151 --> 00:53:25,632
was the same way when I first started. I actually didn't talk a lot about my podcast, the

838
00:53:25,652 --> 00:53:29,182
How to Protect the Ocean podcast when I first started because I was worried about what

839
00:53:29,222 --> 00:53:33,684
my peers were going to say, what my advisor would say, and people

840
00:53:33,704 --> 00:53:37,026
like himself. Even somebody like Dave, who's perfectly fine with science

841
00:53:37,046 --> 00:53:40,848
communication, loves it. I mean, we were doing a project together. This

842
00:53:41,028 --> 00:53:44,890
is what we do now. But you worry about people who have been your

843
00:53:44,970 --> 00:53:48,612
mentors, the people that you see as heroes,

844
00:53:48,652 --> 00:53:51,894
and you worry about what they'd say. And then I went to a conference, and

845
00:53:51,934 --> 00:53:55,576
everybody was like, I really love what you're doing. And you're just like, oh, OK.

846
00:53:55,616 --> 00:53:58,878
This is really good. And then I've changed it to, you know, why am

847
00:53:58,959 --> 00:54:02,626
I actually doing it? Is it for

848
00:54:02,746 --> 00:54:06,815
the scientific community? No, because I'm preaching to the choir there. To

849
00:54:06,855 --> 00:54:10,059
be honest, I look at the people who I talk

850
00:54:10,079 --> 00:54:13,401
to, I'm not talking to the trolls, because there's no point. I'm talking to

851
00:54:13,421 --> 00:54:16,644
the people who want to know more and just can't find that information on

852
00:54:16,704 --> 00:54:20,107
YouTube, or for me, it's podcasting, right? And I think that's the

853
00:54:20,147 --> 00:54:23,329
views that you're getting, or you're getting people who want to know more

854
00:54:23,389 --> 00:54:26,572
who want to share their story. They may not always agree with you, and that's

855
00:54:26,592 --> 00:54:29,994
fine. But they want to know more. And I think that's what

856
00:54:30,094 --> 00:54:33,417
I like, that's how what I focus, what I learned to focus on instead of, because if

857
00:54:33,477 --> 00:54:36,699
not, it's scary to like, talk in front of your peers and just be

858
00:54:36,719 --> 00:54:40,061
like, and talk it at a level that you're talking at, right?

859
00:54:40,101 --> 00:54:43,243
And to be like, is this right? Is this, people are going to agree with this? Are people going to like me after

860
00:54:46,405 --> 00:54:50,308
Yeah. You know, if I could, I can jump in here cause I'm, I'm a little different generation

861
00:54:50,368 --> 00:54:53,550
than each of you, but you know, like when I was coming up,

862
00:54:53,850 --> 00:54:57,072
it was, you know, there was no internet or anything like that, but

863
00:54:57,492 --> 00:55:00,714
you were definitely, it was, you were not encouraged to do like any

864
00:55:00,774 --> 00:55:04,378
kind of science communication. It wasn't even a thing really. but

865
00:55:04,418 --> 00:55:07,680
you were all, you know, go to professional conferences, but it was, if

866
00:55:07,700 --> 00:55:11,102
you kind of did anything, try to sort of step out

867
00:55:11,142 --> 00:55:14,825
and do stuff. It wasn't really like viewed really

868
00:55:14,905 --> 00:55:18,027
well, um, from, from our, my advisors, you

869
00:55:18,067 --> 00:55:21,449
know, whether, you know, for most of my, and what the one guy, the one

870
00:55:21,489 --> 00:55:25,051
exception at the time, and I've mentioned him a few times as, uh, as Dr. John

871
00:55:25,091 --> 00:55:28,313
McCosker, who is the director at the Steinhardt aquarium, who's

872
00:55:28,333 --> 00:55:31,575
from that generation. He was a mentor of mine, but

873
00:55:31,636 --> 00:55:34,837
he was doing, Again, they didn't call it science communication, but he did

874
00:55:34,857 --> 00:55:38,421
that. He would go on like popular shows and communicate. And

875
00:55:38,461 --> 00:55:41,704
he and he was an excellent scientist, really top scientists. But

876
00:55:41,744 --> 00:55:45,048
he could break things down very simple. So the average person

877
00:55:45,068 --> 00:55:48,271
on the street got understood it. And a lot of that was a lot

878
00:55:48,291 --> 00:55:51,634
of people in that generation. And even in going into my generation,

879
00:55:51,975 --> 00:55:56,087
they they would talk a too technical of terms and people wouldn't get it. And,

880
00:55:56,368 --> 00:55:59,830
uh, and so they would, but there was a lot of discouragement. Um,

881
00:56:00,211 --> 00:56:03,733
and I gave, I've told this story before, but I, there used to be a program

882
00:56:03,853 --> 00:56:07,216
on in South Africa. Maybe you might remember Chantal called top

883
00:56:07,236 --> 00:56:10,438
sport. This was years ago. I

884
00:56:10,458 --> 00:56:13,581
don't know when it was, you may not have heard, might've been before your time, but

885
00:56:14,201 --> 00:56:17,744
I used to be on that quite a bit, uh, just as a fluke talking

886
00:56:17,804 --> 00:56:20,947
about doing like quote science communication, but that

887
00:56:20,987 --> 00:56:24,389
would get, that was used to get frowned upon. And, and I would just, and

888
00:56:24,409 --> 00:56:27,801
it was literally, I would go to angling competitions. And they

889
00:56:27,821 --> 00:56:31,684
used to cover all kinds of sporting activities in South Africa. It was like an ESPN thing.

890
00:56:32,104 --> 00:56:35,487
And they used to cover competitive fishing competitions. And

891
00:56:35,507 --> 00:56:38,649
at that time, I was sort of, this is the late 1980s, there was this

892
00:56:38,709 --> 00:56:41,991
American student going to competitions. And so

893
00:56:42,011 --> 00:56:45,153
they would start asking me just like couple minute interview, and it got to

894
00:56:45,193 --> 00:56:48,495
be a regular segment on there. But that got kind

895
00:56:48,515 --> 00:56:52,617
of to your point, Andrew, is that that was kind of frowned upon by

896
00:56:52,657 --> 00:56:55,719
a lot of it, you know, and I thought it was like, well, I'm just kind of

897
00:56:55,759 --> 00:56:59,280
communicating to the average person out there that was interested in

898
00:56:59,621 --> 00:57:02,962
they caught a stingray or a shark, just just some trivial stuff

899
00:57:03,022 --> 00:57:06,764
about it. But people found it really interesting. But it was it was definitely discouraged.

900
00:57:06,804 --> 00:57:10,026
It was definitely like, oh, what are you doing that while you're selling out your science? And I'm like

901
00:57:10,526 --> 00:57:14,084
telling somebody about a copper shark's not really selling out my science, you

902
00:57:16,568 --> 00:57:19,833
But anyway, I'm sorry, I did. It's an interesting way, like,

903
00:57:19,853 --> 00:57:23,318
it's an interesting evolution that science communication has made,

904
00:57:23,378 --> 00:57:26,683
especially as it evolves with the technology, and it makes it easier,

905
00:57:26,703 --> 00:57:30,094
although it's still a lot of hard work. not to take away from anybody who's doing

906
00:57:30,154 --> 00:57:34,017
it, it's still easier to do it than it was back

907
00:57:34,677 --> 00:57:38,300
30, 40 years ago, even 20 years ago. So I think that really helps in

908
00:57:38,520 --> 00:57:41,662
getting people to talk about it. I love it.

909
00:57:41,843 --> 00:57:45,605
I love seeing it. I love seeing the passion that people have doing that science communication,

910
00:57:45,705 --> 00:57:49,248
and I think it's great. So with that said, Chantal, as

911
00:57:49,268 --> 00:57:52,921
we kind of wrap up the interview here, know,

912
00:57:53,061 --> 00:57:56,124
you what Dave said at the beginning, you know, as he's introducing you, it

913
00:57:56,164 --> 00:57:59,347
seems like you have, like you're a consultant, and you work with, you

914
00:57:59,367 --> 00:58:02,790
know, WCS, and you work with other organizations, and,

915
00:58:03,111 --> 00:58:06,754
you know, working on your own research and your own nonprofit organization. So

916
00:58:07,535 --> 00:58:10,938
was this always the vision in terms of when you like,

917
00:58:11,018 --> 00:58:14,341
as you went through marine biology, through your undergrad, through your graduate work,

918
00:58:14,381 --> 00:58:17,824
and post grad work, that you would be a consultant working

919
00:58:17,964 --> 00:58:21,447
for different organizations? And just from a logistical standpoint, like

920
00:58:21,507 --> 00:58:24,829
how do you do it? You know, like a lot of people go, okay, I'm going

921
00:58:24,849 --> 00:58:28,232
to get a job with one organization, work with them for a little bit. Sometimes

922
00:58:28,292 --> 00:58:31,474
it's contract work, sometimes it's not, you know, try and get a full

923
00:58:31,514 --> 00:58:34,737
time job. But this is we're in a very different situation when we speak about your

924
00:58:34,797 --> 00:58:38,299
career. So was this always the plan? And then sort of, are

925
00:58:38,319 --> 00:58:42,062
you happy with this plan? And is this like, how do you manage

926
00:58:44,233 --> 00:58:48,139
It was definitely not the plan. So,

927
00:58:48,159 --> 00:58:51,925
you know, you, you always kind of have this idea of your typical career

928
00:58:51,985 --> 00:58:55,910
path from like one position to the next. But

929
00:58:55,930 --> 00:58:59,540
I don't know, things just always. for

930
00:58:59,600 --> 00:59:02,923
me have kind of just evolved as it goes along. And so

931
00:59:03,524 --> 00:59:06,626
towards the end of my postdoc, you know, I talked a

932
00:59:06,786 --> 00:59:10,429
little bit about it early on where I had set up this, you

933
00:59:10,469 --> 00:59:13,912
know, my own little project here in the estuary where we

934
00:59:13,972 --> 00:59:17,135
have a year round population of stingrays, which we had

935
00:59:17,215 --> 00:59:20,298
no idea that they lived in the estuary here. So again, I just kind of

936
00:59:20,338 --> 00:59:23,601
like, landed in the right place, did this project where

937
00:59:23,702 --> 00:59:26,805
it's the first estuary in South Africa where we've identified that we

938
00:59:26,825 --> 00:59:30,229
have a year-round population of stingrays. And it's a super great place

939
00:59:30,269 --> 00:59:33,513
to work because it's like really shallow water. It's very clear. You can

940
00:59:33,593 --> 00:59:36,877
hop on the boat. I hop on my SUP board, my standard paddle board

941
00:59:36,917 --> 00:59:40,441
on the weekends, and I like SUP around stingrays. As

942
00:59:40,521 --> 00:59:43,865
a stingray ecologist, landing in this place where there's just

943
00:59:43,925 --> 00:59:47,148
this amazing population of stingrays, again, I've

944
00:59:47,188 --> 00:59:50,531
just been very lucky. And so for me, I really want

945
00:59:50,571 --> 00:59:54,174
to carry on with my research here because I feel like I can really

946
00:59:55,378 --> 00:59:58,621
try and understand these species a lot

947
00:59:58,681 --> 01:00:02,084
more and add to this knowledge that we just don't have in our country.

948
01:00:02,104 --> 01:00:05,707
So I'm really passionate about carrying on with my own personal research

949
01:00:06,068 --> 01:00:09,191
here in Plettenberg Bay. And so I have an

950
01:00:09,351 --> 01:00:12,794
NGO who's kind of like supporting me and funding

951
01:00:12,834 --> 01:00:16,617
me and I'm heading up their research program, but you know, how

952
01:00:16,677 --> 01:00:20,341
it is in marine biology, you know, there's oftentimes not enough

953
01:00:20,421 --> 01:00:23,723
money from you know, that sort of side of things. And

954
01:00:23,763 --> 01:00:27,125
so that's kind of where the whole consultancy thing came

955
01:00:27,205 --> 01:00:30,526
in. And I was very lucky with my colleague, Rhett Bennett, who

956
01:00:30,546 --> 01:00:33,708
kind of brought me on board with WCS. And, you know,

957
01:00:33,768 --> 01:00:36,989
he just said they have a whole bunch of data that they're trying to work through and he

958
01:00:37,029 --> 01:00:40,491
knows I, I'm a strong data analyst and I love analyzing data.

959
01:00:40,531 --> 01:00:43,653
So I'm just analyzing a whole bunch of

960
01:00:43,673 --> 01:00:47,054
data for WCS as a consultant there. And, and so just

961
01:00:47,114 --> 01:00:50,556
trying to. have a couple of these different things going on

962
01:00:50,636 --> 01:00:53,837
so I can financially support myself, but also carry on with the

963
01:00:53,877 --> 01:00:57,178
research that I'm passionate about. And that's kind of how I've ended up

964
01:00:57,498 --> 01:01:00,679
now where I am with a few different consultancies. And I'm

965
01:01:00,759 --> 01:01:04,340
still trying to figure out how to manage it all. You know, I just started

966
01:01:04,421 --> 01:01:07,862
really, um, this last month. Um, and so just

967
01:01:07,882 --> 01:01:11,143
trying to like figure out how to manage my time in the best way

968
01:01:11,183 --> 01:01:14,784
possible and how to get everything done and prioritize. And so

969
01:01:18,952 --> 01:01:22,475
Yeah, and I think it's interesting because a lot of people look from the outside

970
01:01:22,595 --> 01:01:25,877
in and are like, oh, this is really cool. Chantal is being able

971
01:01:25,917 --> 01:01:29,160
to do the projects that she wants, which it's amazing to

972
01:01:29,180 --> 01:01:32,482
be able to drive your career with the questions that you have and

973
01:01:32,742 --> 01:01:36,145
the questions you want to answer and working these

974
01:01:36,185 --> 01:01:39,827
different consultancies. But it's also it can be logistically

975
01:01:39,867 --> 01:01:43,410
challenging to be able to manage all of these projects. Consultancies is

976
01:01:43,770 --> 01:01:47,111
A lot of times it's like boom or bust. And so it can be challenging at

977
01:01:47,612 --> 01:01:50,853
that time. But would you say like the fact that you've been able to,

978
01:01:51,073 --> 01:01:54,794
what it sounds to be, you've been able to network and use your connections and

979
01:01:54,815 --> 01:01:58,136
your skillset to be like, hey, I could be advantageous in

980
01:01:58,176 --> 01:02:01,797
this process or with analyzing data

981
01:02:01,877 --> 01:02:05,259
here. And then I want to do this project here. So you

982
01:02:05,459 --> 01:02:09,851
must have had some sort of, you know, relationship

983
01:02:09,911 --> 01:02:13,273
with that NGO that's that's supporting that project. So would you find

984
01:02:13,293 --> 01:02:16,556
that the networking is a super important part to

985
01:02:19,639 --> 01:02:23,162
Super duper, duper important. I think every opportunity that

986
01:02:23,602 --> 01:02:27,065
I have come across has been through networking from

987
01:02:27,871 --> 01:02:31,273
you know, just starting out my master's project where I went to

988
01:02:31,473 --> 01:02:34,855
all the, every single lecture at UCT. And I was like, Hey,

989
01:02:34,975 --> 01:02:38,717
I want to do this project. Do you know of anything to, um,

990
01:02:38,977 --> 01:02:42,639
like networking at conferences and meeting people

991
01:02:42,879 --> 01:02:46,581
in, you know, working in different spheres and, um, and.

992
01:02:47,702 --> 01:02:51,044
Different countries, you know, I just had this incredible experience. I

993
01:02:51,084 --> 01:02:54,400
was able to go across to Florida for six weeks. and work

994
01:02:54,460 --> 01:02:58,162
with a scientist, Kim Bassos-Hall, who does work on white-spotted

995
01:02:58,182 --> 01:03:01,564
eagle rays in, you know, in the Gulf of Mexico. And that

996
01:03:01,604 --> 01:03:04,885
whole relationship came about through networking at a conference. And so

997
01:03:05,385 --> 01:03:08,867
it really is just about putting yourself out there and really just

998
01:03:09,567 --> 01:03:12,989
talking to people and saying, Hey, I'm available. I

999
01:03:15,150 --> 01:03:18,972
That's awesome. That's

1000
01:03:19,032 --> 01:03:22,171
amazing. That's terrific. Well, I don't want

1001
01:03:22,191 --> 01:03:25,534
to take up all your time. This has been an amazing interview, Chantel, and we'd sure like

1002
01:03:25,574 --> 01:03:29,356
to have you back on to pick up the next part of your life's journey

1003
01:03:29,937 --> 01:03:33,119
on this here. And can't thank you enough. This is this has

1004
01:03:33,139 --> 01:03:36,381
been I knew it'd be a good, good episode here, especially talking about stingrays. And

1005
01:03:38,062 --> 01:03:41,464
so anyway, thank you so much for coming on and say, well, we're definitely

1006
01:03:41,484 --> 01:03:44,567
going to have you back here on at some point. And definitely keep us

1007
01:03:44,627 --> 01:03:47,869
posted as you're doing your your different posts and stuff, because we're

1008
01:03:47,909 --> 01:03:52,035
happy to repost on our our fledgling channel

1009
01:03:52,075 --> 01:03:55,579
and social media as well to

1010
01:04:01,046 --> 01:04:04,551
Thank you for having me. It was a fantastic conversation. I love chatting Raze.

1011
01:04:11,112 --> 01:04:14,775
Thank you, Chantal, for joining us on the Beyond Jaws podcast. Dave,

1012
01:04:15,055 --> 01:04:18,257
what a fantastic interview. What a quite like

1013
01:04:18,277 --> 01:04:21,400
just a unique individual with a unique career path, you know, in

1014
01:04:21,420 --> 01:04:24,802
that she just kind of lets things follow her, you know, one after

1015
01:04:24,862 --> 01:04:28,144
the other, and it just kind of opportunities open up. And she doesn't

1016
01:04:28,184 --> 01:04:31,346
have necessarily a traditional path in terms of like a

1017
01:04:31,426 --> 01:04:35,829
nine to five type of conservation job. She does a lot of consulting. She's

1018
01:04:35,849 --> 01:04:39,150
doing a postdoc. You know, it's a very interesting way

1019
01:04:39,391 --> 01:04:42,893
of doing things, you know, in today's world. And I think it's, you know, driven

1020
01:04:42,993 --> 01:04:46,154
by what she's interested in. I thought that was that was really interesting. What

1021
01:04:47,815 --> 01:04:51,077
Yeah. You know, she's like, you know, a lot as we those as

1022
01:04:51,097 --> 01:04:54,179
we know, and anyone listening to the podcast can hear, you know, we don't have a

1023
01:04:54,239 --> 01:04:58,712
lot of There's not like a lot of jobs in the field. And if you're going to really pursue

1024
01:04:58,752 --> 01:05:01,994
the field, you need to figure out a way to do it because, you know, the chance to

1025
01:05:02,014 --> 01:05:05,276
get a job or are really remote. And so she's

1026
01:05:05,296 --> 01:05:08,458
just figured a way to do it, to, you know, build it, to do

1027
01:05:08,518 --> 01:05:11,800
consulting for a number of different groups. She's also gotten

1028
01:05:11,860 --> 01:05:15,563
on with her, with her social media or science communication. So

1029
01:05:15,583 --> 01:05:18,645
she's kind of hitting in two very different areas. And, you know, as

1030
01:05:18,665 --> 01:05:21,987
you say, she's got 20 over 25,000 followers. Is

1031
01:05:22,007 --> 01:05:25,744
she hopefully able to monetize some of her? her science communication

1032
01:05:25,764 --> 01:05:29,487
there, but she's also been able to hook up with a number of groups to

1033
01:05:29,507 --> 01:05:32,649
do the science and to consult on them. And I think with

1034
01:05:32,689 --> 01:05:35,791
her, because she does raise and not a

1035
01:05:35,831 --> 01:05:39,334
lot of people do the raise and she works in other species that are, let's say,

1036
01:05:39,374 --> 01:05:42,756
not the charismatic ones. She's created a niche for herself where

1037
01:05:42,776 --> 01:05:45,958
she can, you know, she's in demand to do consulting there. And

1038
01:05:45,998 --> 01:05:49,361
so I think that's really good. She's very, very entrepreneurial, which

1039
01:05:49,401 --> 01:05:52,627
I think you have to be in this field these days. to get around, in addition to

1040
01:05:52,647 --> 01:05:56,369
doing the science, you've got to have a bit of an entrepreneurial bent. And it

1041
01:05:56,409 --> 01:05:59,630
was a fascinating interview. I just really, you know, I've known her for a little bit.

1042
01:05:59,650 --> 01:06:03,032
I don't know her real well, but I've known her for a while. And it was just, yeah, I

1043
01:06:03,052 --> 01:06:06,354
was really, really excited to have her on and to hear about her

1044
01:06:06,434 --> 01:06:09,656
journey, which is, as we find out more and more, it's like, it's never a

1045
01:06:09,736 --> 01:06:13,018
straight line from having that passion to where you

1046
01:06:13,928 --> 01:06:18,372
Yeah, well, and it's just what I love is the fact of, you

1047
01:06:18,412 --> 01:06:21,875
know, she, like you said, marries that science communication, follows the

1048
01:06:21,935 --> 01:06:25,198
questions that she wants to answer what's interested in her. You know, she's

1049
01:06:25,298 --> 01:06:29,042
really discovered sort of a unique research interest.

1050
01:06:29,462 --> 01:06:32,944
that people don't have and that they need. And

1051
01:06:32,964 --> 01:06:36,206
I think that's really great. I think she's going to be in a great position for her

1052
01:06:36,306 --> 01:06:40,088
career. And I'm looking forward to seeing how that just continues to blossom, not

1053
01:06:40,128 --> 01:06:43,290
only from the science communication point of view, but also from the scientific point of

1054
01:06:43,330 --> 01:06:47,152
view as well. So I think that's just a great way to do

1055
01:06:47,172 --> 01:06:50,433
an episode. Right. And tell us all about her career. So Chantal was

1056
01:06:50,473 --> 01:06:53,933
great. So again, thank you very much, Chantal. We'll put any links that she has

1057
01:06:54,654 --> 01:06:57,954
to her in her social media and of course, her YouTube channel. So you can check that

1058
01:06:57,994 --> 01:07:01,155
out. You can subscribe. Speaking of subscribing, you can subscribe to

1059
01:07:01,215 --> 01:07:04,656
our YouTube channel at Beyond Jaws podcast on YouTube. We'll

1060
01:07:04,676 --> 01:07:07,757
put a link in the show notes as well. And Dave, if people want to get a hold of

1061
01:07:10,577 --> 01:07:13,855
You can follow me on Instagram at Lost Shark Guy. Lost

1062
01:07:13,895 --> 01:07:17,498
Sharks on Facebook and Lost Shark Guy on X,

1063
01:07:17,618 --> 01:07:21,161
Twitter, and also on LinkedIn. So any of those main

1064
01:07:25,385 --> 01:07:28,828
I love that. That's fantastic. And everybody

1065
01:07:28,868 --> 01:07:32,111
else, thank you so much for joining us on today's episode of the Beyond Jaws

1066
01:07:32,171 --> 01:07:35,293
podcast. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time. And