Oct. 7, 2024

Remembering Dr. Leonard Campagno: A Giant in Shark Biology

Remembering Dr. Leonard Campagno: A Giant in Shark Biology

In this special bonus episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast, co-host Dave Ebert pays tribute to his former advisor, Dr. Leonard Campagno, a prominent figure in shark biology, ecology, and taxonomy, who passed away on September 24, 2024. Dave shares...

In this special bonus episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast, co-host Dave Ebert pays tribute to his former advisor, Dr. Leonard Campagno, a prominent figure in shark biology, ecology, and taxonomy, who passed away on September 24, 2024. Dave shares heartfelt memories and stories from his 40-year relationship with Leonard, reflecting on the impact he had on the field and on his students. Listeners will gain insight into Leonard's influential work, including his groundbreaking classification of sharks, rays, and chimeras.

Join Dave in celebrating the life and legacy of a true giant in marine science.

Connect with us:

Website: https://bit.ly/37TMqeK
Instagram: https://bit.ly/3eorwXZ
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@beyondjawspodcast7591

Dave: 
Website: https://www.lostsharkguy.com/
Instagram: https://bit.ly/3q1J9Q5

Andrew:
Website: https://www.speakupforblue.com/
Instagram: https://bit.ly/37g5WkG

 

Transcript
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Welcome to another episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast, and I'm your co-host Dave

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Ebert. I'm filling in doing what Andrew usually does to introduce an

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episode, a new episode, but today is kind

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of a special one for me. It's a bonus episode where I'm

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going to give a little bit of a talk about my former advisor, Dr.

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Leonard Campagno, who was really a giant in

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the field of shark biology, shark ecology, shark

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taxonomy. It's a little bit of a celebration of life, sort of a little bit

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of a a goodbye from me

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to Leonard. And so I hope you enjoy the show. I'm going to share some memories,

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some stories I've had with Leonard. Some of you may have heard of over the years and

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you can now you have him for posterity. But anyway,

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I hope you enjoy the show and we'll get started

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right now. And

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welcome back to another episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. I'm your co-host,

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Dave Ebert, and here with my co-host, Andrew Lewin. And

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we're going to be talking a little bit. I'm going to be reminiscing a little bit of a Celebration

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of Life episode for my former advisor, Dr. Leonard

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Campagna, who passed away on September

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24, 2024. And so I'm going to

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share some stories with you, talk a little about my experience with him. I

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knew Leonard for over 40 years. And going back to

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when I was a young master student, really starting out

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in the Bay Area in California here. And

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so we'll so we'll get started now. OK, so

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I so I talk about Leonard, he

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was an interesting character and he's. I don't want

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to not can't be overstated, but he really was a giant in the field of

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shark biology, shark taxonomy. He really his

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classification of how we classified sharks

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and rays and chimeras or ghost sharks back

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in his paper he published back in 1973 called

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Interrelationships of Chondrichthyan Fishes really

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laid the groundwork for how we classify sharks and

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rays and that classification is still used today and

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actually molecular research done by

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Gavin Naylor and many others over the years have really found that

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he was his classification really holds

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up well. And back when he did this, he didn't have a lot of

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the modern tools such as genetics that we could use today. And

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so he's quite an interesting character. And he

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grew up in San Francisco in the Little

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Italy section. And he was born in 1943, December

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4th. And a lot of people don't know that because he spent the last 35, almost

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40 years in South Africa. And a lot of people thought he was South African. But

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he did grow up in the Bay Area. He went to San Francisco Community

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College. And he went on to San Francisco State, and from there to

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Stanford University. And some things that people don't often know

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is that Stanford University used to have one

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of the preeminent ichthyology collections in the world. And

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it was only in about 1979, 1980, they finally closed down the ichthyology department. and

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sent all their specimens over to the California Academy of Sciences. Now

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it's kind of funny because most of the people, the professors there, had

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either passed away or retired. And here Stanford

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University had this whole department open for one guy who was

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still a grad student. Leonard, I think, probably had the record for

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one of the longest PhDs. He was a student there for about

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14, 15 years before he finally finished up his PhD. That's

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got to be the longest, for sure. Yeah. And

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he was just kind of squirreled away down in the basement there working

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away. And finally, the biology department chair

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realized that they had this whole department open for a grad student. and

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then a 15 year grad student. And so he went down and he

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just said, hey, Leonard, we're closing up the department. You're going to need to finish up

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and get out or get out. But we're closing the apartment. And Leonard

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told me the story. So I'm just I'm giving you a firsthand account of what

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he told me. And so he he

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went from there over to the Tiburon Marine Lab, which is

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just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco in Marin County.

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And over there, they had some old army barracks. It had become a marine

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lab. Station for San Francisco State University, but it

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was really their old army barracks and was old army bearing Buildings

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from going back to World War two because they had they basically an army army

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Group base there because they were concerned about People

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Japanese ships coming into San Francisco Bay. Anyway, they sat

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vacant and Leonard took over one of these Buildings

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I mean he literally took it over and I

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remember as a young grad student. I first started in the early 1980s

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and My professor at Moss Landing Marine

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Laboratories, Greg Kaye, said, uh,

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you know, you ought to talk up, talk, give Leonard Campagna a call and,

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and, and let him know you're gonna be working up in San Francisco Bay. Cause I, I

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was going to work on seven gill sharks, which are, were very common in San Francisco

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Bay. So, you know, I was a young 22 year old. I didn't know anything. I

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thought, okay, great. I'll give Leonard a call. So I just kind of cold call

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this guy up and I get this answer on the phone. Like, yeah,

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who is this? And I said, like, oh, hi, this is Dave Ebert. I'm a

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graduate student at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, and I'm studying seven

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gill sharks in the bay. I'd like to know if I can come up and talk with you.

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He goes, I haven't got time for this. And he hung up on me. And

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that was my first introduction to. How old were you at this time? I

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That was your first that was your first like any

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kind of response from any kind of interaction with the first interaction with

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And I was like, whoa, that was a pretty cold and abrupt. And

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so I went back to Greg and I said, Greg, I

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said, this is what happened. I explained to him and Greg looks and he goes, well, Leonard

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can be a little eccentric. I thought, yeah, eccentric and

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be kind of rude. But so I went about, so

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I just was like, okay, well, Clary didn't want to talk to

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me or didn't want to talk to anybody. But I knew nothing about him at the time other than what Greg

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had told me. So I went about doing my thesis

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project and probably about About

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a year later, it was the winter time

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and I was, I was using the boat at San Francisco state there going

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out to fish. And so I kind of knew he was based there, but I

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didn't know where he was based at the time. And I came in

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one day, I didn't, you know, we're out fishing and we caught a few spiny dogfish, nothing

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big. It was my brother. It was myself, my brother, and a good friend of mine, uh,

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uh, out there fishing. We came in there and it was just,

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it was just pouring rain, just cats and dogs. And

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so we're trying to clean up the boat, pick up the gear. And this guy walks by

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and he kind of looks in the boat. He sees these dogfish. I mean, nothing special.

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These are spiny dogfish, you know? And and he says, oh,

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yeah. Oh, what do you do with those sharks? I said, oh, I am. You know, I'm

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from Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. I'm I'm studying sharks here in the bay.

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He goes, oh, really? I didn't know anybody was studying sharks in

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the bay. And so clearly

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Well, at this point, I kind of knew I'd never seen Leonard. I didn't know

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what he looked like. Right. And I thought like,

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but I knew he was there. And I thought, like, I wonder if this is Leonard Campagna. And

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then he just started talking. And we spent about

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the next hour. I mean, it was just raining. And

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he never said like, hi, I'm Leonard Campagno. He never said,

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Hey, let's go inside to get out of the rain. We

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stood there. And of course I was like, I was probably, it might've been 23 at

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this time. And I was going like, this is my end with chance to

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talk to Leonard Campagno. And so we stood there for

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about an hour. And then finally my brother and my friend go, uh, Hey

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Dave, can we go get out of the rain? It's raining pretty hard

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here. We're soaked like rats. And I was like,

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yeah, yeah, can I go? And I go, by the

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way, my name is Dave Eber. And he goes, oh, I'm Leonard Campagna. He goes, why don't you

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come over to my office? And I go, where is it? He goes, well, it's that Army barrack over there.

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And this guy would drive his beat up 1964 black Beetle Bug

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VW. Go

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look online if you don't recognize it. Some people of a certain age know what I'm talking about.

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He'd drive it in there and he'd close it. You'd have no idea this

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guy was there. And so we went

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over there and I spent another like two hours talking with the guy.

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My brother and friend were there. it was the most amazing experience I

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ever had even though I was soaking wet dripping and

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We just he just went in there, and I really I looked in there. I realized like well. He lives here

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He basically was living in there had a cot he had all these stations set

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up the workstations. He was using and For

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again for those in the shark world you'll know what I'm talking about, but he was working on

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the the 1984 Sharks

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of the world book that was published by the Food and Agriculture Organization FAO

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is a classic reference It was published in 1984 and this is probably about

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19 Late 82, you know a winner

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of 8283 right in that time frame and

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At the time is like well, it's kind of cool. He's working on this, you know sure he told me about the

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project he was doing he just been on like this round-the-world tour and everything and

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And so like I had an amazing visit. He said, Oh, come up, stop in anytime

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you're up here. Well, obviously I wasn't going to pass on that because he was just

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like a wealth. And I was literally like having a, uh, uh, an

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audio version of the encyclopedia at the time. This

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guy was just could talk, stock, non-talk, stock, non-stop.

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And So I went up there and I met with, you know, I would go up there when I was up there

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and stop in and visit with them. And for me it was, you know,

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and I've talked about this a little before in some of the earlier episodes, but you

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know, when you're traveling kind of in your journey in life, you're really fortunate

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if you meet somebody who's a fellow traveler on the same road

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you're embarking on. And Leonard was that guy that,

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I mean, it has some great people in my, you know, that had met, you

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know, Greg Kai is the top of the list. John McOsker, if you bet, Leonard

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was that fellow traveler. He was that guy who was on the road that I

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was studying off on. And we just really connected very,

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really well. And I just, it was just, it was an amazing experience.

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And so I got to know him over the next, you know, a couple

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of years going up there and talking with them. And sometimes I just go up

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there and spend like literally my, when I say I've spent a few hours

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with them, they're more like anywhere from three to six hours just talking nonstop.

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And it wasn't just sharks. It would, we talk on rays, we'd talk on,

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Chimeras and I was just like this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to learn I

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did I was was not focused on any one species But

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I was looking I was want to learn about everything and that's really

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Laid the foundation for my search for lost sharks

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Then I really this is going back the early 80s this

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Yeah, I can imagine. When you were talking with Leonard about

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these different species, were you talking more about the ecology,

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distribution, and that sort of aspect? Or

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were you talking more about where to find them, where they are,

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At the time, the whole field of shark research was

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just really, and modern shark research was really The

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groundwork was being laid. And as I've mentioned before, like myself, Lisa

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Natanson, Chris Lowe, Greg Skomal, we were like,

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really that, as I've said, that the Jaws generation of,

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of, of young shark researchers really started in the eighties. And

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we really laid the foundation for what came later in

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the terms of sharks. So I, we talked, so a lot of the stuff people

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talk about, like shark conservation, they throw that term around now. It

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wasn't even a term at that time. There was no, it wasn't even anybody's mind.

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It more had to do with fisheries at the time, but we talked

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about like sharks. We knew at that point that sharks were slow growing and

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long lived, but nobody really knew anything about, you know, how

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old they get or how many young they have or where they go. And so all

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of that was, we were starting, we were starting to lay the groundwork for that. And

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Leonard was that guy who we could talk on all kinds of stuff. We talked on

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taxonomy, talked on ecology, life history. And

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I'll tell you a story in just a moment how just to give you an idea, but Leonard

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was that guy who would think outside the box. I mean, he really would think

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of things that people weren't even, weren't even on the lexicon yet

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at the time. And during, uh,

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as I, as I got to know him and stuff, and he was like, so at the time he was looking for a job. He

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was in his, uh, early, early forties

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at the time. And, uh, he got a

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job. in South Africa, interestingly, at the South African,

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or actually it was nowadays, it's the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity.

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But at the time it was known as the J.L.B. Smith Institute of

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Ichthyology. And for those of you that don't know, J.L.B. Smith

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was the guy who discovered the coelacanth back

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in 1938. Old Four Legs it was called. And

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so he, he was, that was his sort of name recognition. And

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J.L.B. passed away in 1968, but his wife, Margaret

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Smith, which is a whole story I'll tell in just a moment. She actually

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drove and got this whole funding and everything for what was later called

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the J.L.B. Smith Institute of Ichthyology, which opened in about

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1980, 79, 80, I believe it was. Or actually, I think it might've been a couple, it might've

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been 77, 78, late 70s when it opened, when it officially

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opened. But anyway, Leonard got a job at this place,

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and this is in about 1985. Uh,

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you know, I'd finished my master's and I was looking around what I was going to do and I was working

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a few different jobs, but I was still going up there collecting data and still going up there to

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see Leonard. And when he told me he was taking this job, you know,

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I went up there and saw him and, you know, kind of say goodbye. And I've,

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again, I've told this story before, but as I was kind of leaving and

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saying goodbye, I said, well, Hey, you know, Leonard, if, if, if you need anybody to

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carry a suitcase or anything, Give me a call. And,

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you know, it's a complete throwaway line. You think nothing you'll never that, you

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know, Oh, well, you know, good luck on that. You know, maybe see him sometime in 20 years. Well,

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about eight months after he calls me up from South

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Africa and says, you know, Hey Dave, I have a PhD

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position here at the, it was a road university,

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but it was, it was JLB Smith Institute. He goes, I have a PhD position.

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Would you like it? And, you know, It

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took me like a nanosecond to say like, hell yeah, um,

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I'm on the way. And so, uh, and so it

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was just one of those crazy things in life. This

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is, this was in 1985. He called me up and

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I went, I went to South Africa, I went to South Africa in 86. So it

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took, I had to, I had to go through and apply for, uh, apply

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for the school and I had to get all the paperwork together, the visa and all that

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type of stuff, which took me about nine months to do. I

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died actually closer to a year actually, but I so I finally went in 86 and

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it was the most transformative time of my life and Again

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to kind of put perspective into people certain age will understand this

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but it at that time South Africa wasn't a

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place people were generally clamoring to go through because it was on the world stage There's

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apartheid was going on. Yeah, and there's a lot of stuff going

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on at the time And here I am like, sure, I'm

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going to go to South Africa. And I, that was all I knew is I'm going to South Africa.

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I'm gonna go study sharks. That's all I cared about. Cause I

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was really fulfilling a dream. And I had, again, I've shared

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some of these adventures. I won't go into all of them today, but I, I have

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a number of adventures I had at the time that were very, uh,

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life getting sort of life changing. And I kind of tell the story that

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I was on basically like a four plus year camping trip when

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I went to South Africa. So yeah, I

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literally had not been there know anything about it other than what Leonard told me

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and so I just literally got on a plane and I went and

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It was an amazing experience. I Got

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to Graham's town and then you know, I Got set up

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got going right away was out in the field looking for stuff and

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I kind of funny stories and Graham sounds kind of a I

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come from a small town in California. I thought oh great now I'm in another small town in

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rural town in South Africa. And the reason the Institute was

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there is because J.L.B. Smith was based at Rhodes University. And,

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uh, and so now actually another side story of the whole thing is when

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I was first there, my first Christmas there, I was house sitting for

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Margaret Smith, whose husband J.L.B. Smith was

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the guy that did the coelacanth. And of course, Margaret was, Margaret

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was actually 20 years younger than him. And she was a young, uh, she'd

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had been a chemistry student at his, uh, because he

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used to teach chemistry as well back in the 30s when they got married. And

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so she recounted the whole story to me. I was house-sitting for

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her and her sister Flora, who was a vaudeville performer. And

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I had a separate room they had set up for people to live there.

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And I was house-sitting for a couple who

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lived there. And every night about 7 o'clock, Margaret

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and her sister Flora would come next door, literally bring tea and crumpets,

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which is about how English can you get. And we'd sit and talk

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for about a half hour, 45 minutes. And she would share stories

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with me about, about JLB and

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her, uh, do studying fishes in Southern Africa.

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And some of the stuff people would be horrified to hear these stories now, but Margaret,

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when she was a young woman, she was a very good swimmer and stuff. And she

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would go out in the field and JLB was older, 20 years older, and he had some

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health issues. And so stories that tell me is like they'd

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go out on these pristine reefs like in Mozambique and

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this is how they used to do things so don't be horrified about this but they would he

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would dynamite the reefs and all these fishes would float up

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dead and so margaret being a swimmer she

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would swim around she'd go swimming around collecting all the fish And

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she asked me the question, she goes, you know, Dave, there used to be a lot of sharks would

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come in around, swimming around us, collecting the fish. And I kind of look

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at JLB and I said, is it okay here? There's a lot of big sharks swimming

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around. He goes, oh, don't worry about them, they won't bother you. And so the

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guy has his wife swimming around in the water, collecting all

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these dead fish that were coming up. And he said, I don't worry, sharks don't

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bother you, they won't bother you or anything. Which is mostly true, I'm sure. I

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don't know what kind of sharks they were, She said some of them are pretty big, but

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she'd share some of those stories and I really became to appreciate this thought

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like here's this young woman in the 30s

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and 40s and 50s really still going

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out and collecting his stuff and she made

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quite a name for herself and she was very accomplished in

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what she did and she did she illustrated a lot of the the

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fishes that JLB would describe. And,

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but it wasn't, it really, she was kind of in his shadows until after

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he passed away and set up this institute that

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she really kind of came into her own, but she's a very accomplished woman.

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If you ever, again, if you ever want to go look up some of the stuff she did, um, she,

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she, she, but she really helped drive his legacy. Um, so

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anyway, a little bit of a side story there, but this was the kind of, Opportunities I

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talk about like, you know, I went to look for lost sharks, but I had some amazing

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stories like, you know, meeting Margaret Smith and I met several, a number of

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other people. You know, I talk about going to the grocery store and

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standing there getting some groceries and I'm, I got Desmond Tutu standing

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next to me. We're kind of standing in line at the checkout counter, just shooting

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the breeze, very casual and stuff. And, uh, cause

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I was, I was there at a very dynamic time in South Africa's history.

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And if people, again, if they know anything about like, you know, February

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11th, 1990, um, Nelson Mandela was

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released from prison. and came down and gave a speech at the Grand Parade

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in Cape Town. I was there because I, and

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it wasn't, I just, cause it was all this stuff was going on. I thought, Oh,

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it's kind of interesting to experience some of

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this stuff. You know, I was kind of the outsider making right where everybody knew that.

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Yeah. Oh yeah. And I, and where I was based at the South African museum,

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I used to look at, uh, parliament was literally right, right outside

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my front window. And so I would, I have to walk by there

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every day to go to the gym I was going to at the time. And I would see

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all these guys, Mandela, Tutu, several other

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people, you know, de Klerk. They'd be going

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in and out for different parliamentary meetings at the time. And

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so I was there at a very transformative time. And that was some

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of the big rewards I got out of that, working with

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Leonard, you know, having the opportunity to go there and work with Leonard. But

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talking about working with Leonard, that was an interesting experience as

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well. because Leonard

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was an interesting guy. Like if you knew him, like when I knew him in California, he

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was a really good guy. If you got to know him, he'd be very generous. I

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learned a ton of stuff from him. But when I was a

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student, it was a little different in a sense. And I

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won't go into all the details here. It'll be in my forthcoming memoirs.

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But he would, I could go to his office and I'd sit there

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and ask him some questions and stuff. And I'd get like, uh-huh. Yeah.

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Uh-huh. Okay. Yep. Sounds good to me. Very

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little, very little interaction. But then him and I

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would go out and have dinner usually, you know, two, three, four nights a week.

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And, you know, this is when I was in town. And

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then I just wanted to like have a tape recorder going because it would

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just be a complete data dump. He just go

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on about this and that. And just, and I was just going like in,

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in one of the papers that I, I recommend, if you look on

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my Instagram posts and on Facebook, I was

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a 1990 paper he did on alternative life histories, styles

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of, uh, Condric the and fishes through time and space. It

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is, if you are any kind of a serious shark researcher,

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conservationist, this is like a mandatory paper you need to read. And

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you can go into my Instagram and you can find the citation

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there. It's Environmental Biology of Fishes, 1990. But it was

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him and I would spend hours there long after we'd finished a

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pizza and stuff and just talk about this. Because he was bouncing ideas. I realized that

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he was bouncing ideas off me. And I was just like a young PhD

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student. And he's asking me questions about about different,

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different things. And so that was really an exciting time. And again, just

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reinforce with me, like, this was the guy I needed to meet on

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my journey that made the huge difference. And, and one

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of the more direct things. So that was an amazing, that was really amazing. Like

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I said, going out and having a pizza, we'd have lunch. And it was just like, we'd, we'd

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spend hours. I mean, literally like three, four hours would go by, they'd be

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closing down the pizza place. And, and I just, and then

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we'd kind of go for a walk, walk back to the lab. And he was just at that point, he

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was real chatty. Um, for me personally, one

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of the coolest things I experienced there was one of the things that

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people got to know me early on was I did, I

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did a lot of, uh, observational field studies

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on foraging, hunting and hunting, hunting and sharks.

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And one of the things I came on was that big

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sharks will hunt in packs. And the main

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one was seven gill sharks, but I've seen other white sharks and other sharks.

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People don't realize, but they will hunt in groups in coordinated

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groups. Um, I refer to social facilitation and

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I was just trying to, and this is again, the beauty of working with

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Leonard was that I was talking with him. you know, a couple

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nights they were having out having our pizza. And I said, like, you know, Leonard, I'm watching

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these sharks feed. I've seen this all over the world, California, South

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Africa, Namibia. And I go, they're not just randomly,

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you know, random killing machines, as you know, the Jaws movie suggested.

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But there's a coordinated effort that's going on. And it wasn't just this one

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lone marauder shark. That certain types of prey, like

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if, for example, if they were taking a sea lion, that the, that

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the seven gills would gang up on him. And he said, he

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goes, I got a couple of books for you to read. And this is where Leonard was. He's

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known as a shark person, but he could talk to you about wildlife in

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general, birds, all kinds of stuff. And so he said, I

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got a couple of books for you to read. So he went back, went back to his office

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and he gave me a book, um, called the, uh, the spotted

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hyena by, uh, Hans Crook and

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another book, uh, called the Serengeti lion by,

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um, um, George Schaller. And

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I could, I literally went back to my office and I couldn't stop reading.

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I just read through these books in over a couple of days. I just couldn't stop

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reading them. And I was just like, went back to Leonard and said, Leonard, this is it. Because

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in those books, it talked about how lion prides

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and hyena groups work cooperatively within the

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group. And it talked about how they got into a lot of how they hunt

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as a group and, and, and just all the strategies. And

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I was just like going, this is what these sharks are doing. Just the problem is

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because they live in a marine environment that we can't watch them all the

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time. We can't, you know, you can watch like hyenas and

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lions feet. Cause you sit in a land Rover and at a distance and

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watch what they're doing, how they hunt. And I was just like, this is

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what, and again, lions and hyenas will, depending on what they're hunting,

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they will work in a cooperative group to take down large prey. And

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I'm like, this is what the seven gills will do. And other large

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sharks that if we're, if you're taking on a large species that one couldn't do.

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They all work in a cooperative group. And so that

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was one of the most just amazing experiences I had, uh,

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learning stuff. And that was just one example of, of several I could give where

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Leonard was just thinking outside the box, which is where I was going. We're

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like, okay, here's some cool stuff. And he asked about like

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the, where I got onto the lost shark stuff. It was all during

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these, my informative years, um, grad school.

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And because besides people knowing me for doing a lot of that,

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cause my background was really in ecology for, you know, feeding ecology, uh,

428
00:26:11,506 --> 00:26:14,909
reproduction, but, you know, looking at how these sharks hunt. But

429
00:26:14,969 --> 00:26:18,352
one of the other things, uh, people got to know me for

430
00:26:18,412 --> 00:26:21,495
is I was the guy who would find these weird sharks. We

431
00:26:21,535 --> 00:26:25,159
didn't use the term lost shark at the time that came later. But

432
00:26:25,319 --> 00:26:28,742
I was, I was like, if you want to find the weird or the unusual, the

433
00:26:28,762 --> 00:26:32,384
little known sharks, just follow Dave. And cause

434
00:26:32,404 --> 00:26:35,907
I would go out in the field and I'd find these things and I didn't know initially

435
00:26:36,067 --> 00:26:39,249
at first I'd find these sharks, wow, this guy had an interesting one. And I'd

436
00:26:39,269 --> 00:26:42,572
bring it back to the lab and show Leonard and Leonard

437
00:26:42,592 --> 00:26:45,934
would go like, Oh geez, we haven't seen this shark in like, you

438
00:26:45,954 --> 00:26:50,097
know, 80 years. We haven't seen this shark in a hundred years. And

439
00:26:50,157 --> 00:26:54,690
so, you know, again, this is back in sort of the late 1980s. I

440
00:26:54,710 --> 00:26:57,812
was, people were already, I was, so I was, you know, like, oh, wow, this is

441
00:26:57,832 --> 00:27:01,194
kind of cool. I got onto this, like, okay, so there's this need

442
00:27:01,294 --> 00:27:04,636
out here that people are, you

443
00:27:04,656 --> 00:27:07,958
know, these, where I'd go, we're catching sharks that people weren't aware of.

444
00:27:08,338 --> 00:27:12,320
And again, there was no real field of shark conservation at the time. And

445
00:27:12,380 --> 00:27:15,762
so again, people kind of got to know, like, oh, if you want to go find some

446
00:27:16,322 --> 00:27:19,404
weird sharks, go follow Dave. And people would go to

447
00:27:19,444 --> 00:27:22,926
like Namibia, people go to Taiwan, you know, California, and

448
00:27:22,966 --> 00:27:26,308
they'd go like, where's Dave been? because they knew wherever I'd been,

449
00:27:26,368 --> 00:27:30,231
that was where they were going to find the weird sharks, if I haven't found them already. And

450
00:27:30,251 --> 00:27:33,673
so that's kind of how, really, how the whole lost shark thing

451
00:27:33,713 --> 00:27:36,915
started, was just me going out, finding these

452
00:27:36,935 --> 00:27:40,317
things, and Leonard saying, oh, we haven't seen this shark for 100 years.

453
00:27:41,218 --> 00:27:44,580
And then also, I bring back a lot of species that

454
00:27:44,600 --> 00:27:48,140
Leonard would look at and go, well, this is an entirely new species to science. So

455
00:27:48,180 --> 00:27:52,282
I thought, well, this is kind of cool. Cause it was totally something nobody was doing and

456
00:27:52,322 --> 00:27:55,664
nobody really does today. Still goes and looks for these lost

457
00:27:55,704 --> 00:27:58,906
sharks. They don't really, I'm just, I mean, it's been

458
00:27:58,986 --> 00:28:02,167
a process you, you pick up over years to,

459
00:28:02,227 --> 00:28:05,589
you know, decades really to learn this type of stuff. So that

460
00:28:05,629 --> 00:28:08,991
was real, that was a very, you know, really informative thing to

461
00:28:09,051 --> 00:28:12,293
do. And kind of during the course of this thing, I talked to

462
00:28:12,353 --> 00:28:15,700
Leonard about. Villages I'd go to a place I travel around

463
00:28:15,820 --> 00:28:19,422
Africa and about different about you

464
00:28:19,442 --> 00:28:22,783
know I was trying to explain to some of these people like how to identify things

465
00:28:22,823 --> 00:28:26,925
and of course this again is the 1980s so you didn't have Resources

466
00:28:26,965 --> 00:28:30,787
like you do now like PDFs and email and cell phones So

467
00:28:30,827 --> 00:28:33,989
we ended up writing I had some like keys by has some

468
00:28:34,009 --> 00:28:37,390
identification keys that may or may not have been up-to-date Right, right.

469
00:28:37,791 --> 00:28:43,159
So we had so there really was nothing to you. So there's this book called Guide

470
00:28:43,179 --> 00:28:46,641
to the Sharks and Rays of Southern Africa that kind of really

471
00:28:47,001 --> 00:28:50,384
sprung from this need for this field guide. And Leonard

472
00:28:50,444 --> 00:28:53,706
being a birder, we set the book for like a bird

473
00:28:53,746 --> 00:28:58,189
guide to make it simple and easy for the average person to

474
00:28:58,229 --> 00:29:02,292
be able to key through it and to be able to identify the sharks. And Anne

475
00:29:02,332 --> 00:29:05,795
Hecht, who is a wife of another advisor of mine, a key person,

476
00:29:05,835 --> 00:29:09,577
Tom Hecht, who's head of the department, did all the illustrations,

477
00:29:09,617 --> 00:29:13,321
which at the time, They were really,

478
00:29:13,581 --> 00:29:17,402
really amazing. And again, the

479
00:29:17,442 --> 00:29:20,483
thing in this book, because it was published in 1989, I mean, I'm a

480
00:29:20,924 --> 00:29:24,225
grad student. I'm writing my first book. I'm still in my 20s. And

481
00:29:24,385 --> 00:29:27,486
I've talked about this. The one thing that

482
00:29:28,366 --> 00:29:31,568
made it was so good working with Leonard was that on

483
00:29:31,588 --> 00:29:35,349
my own, I probably wouldn't have the confidence at that age to do my own book. But

484
00:29:35,409 --> 00:29:39,245
working with him, I learned how to do a book. And

485
00:29:39,365 --> 00:29:42,568
it really gave me confidence for later on when I went and did my

486
00:29:42,628 --> 00:29:46,112
next book, which ended up being a solo effort years

487
00:29:46,172 --> 00:29:49,315
later. But we were

488
00:29:49,355 --> 00:29:52,659
doing that book and again, this was like Leonard thinking outside the box. We'd start

489
00:29:52,679 --> 00:29:56,062
with him and I'd be having these discussions and we got into this whole

490
00:29:56,203 --> 00:29:59,962
area of talking about like, Uh, you know, I go to these different

491
00:30:00,002 --> 00:30:03,745
villages and places in Africa and I would see things like sharks

492
00:30:03,785 --> 00:30:07,148
being finned, you know, um, sharks being the livers

493
00:30:07,188 --> 00:30:10,370
being taken for oil and right. You

494
00:30:10,390 --> 00:30:13,773
know, nobody was even thinking about shark, you know, you

495
00:30:13,793 --> 00:30:17,096
know, you know, they've been Chinese been using shark fins for soup

496
00:30:17,136 --> 00:30:20,418
for generations, like literally like hundreds of years. But

497
00:30:20,458 --> 00:30:23,603
nobody thought about it. And Leonard grew up in San Francisco. He grew

498
00:30:23,663 --> 00:30:26,967
up near Chinatown, so he'd wander around as a young boy. He'd see

499
00:30:27,007 --> 00:30:30,411
the, he saw the Finns, basically him and I arrived

500
00:30:30,451 --> 00:30:33,555
at the same place, just in different routes and different paths. But

501
00:30:33,575 --> 00:30:36,840
we were, but we thought it was kind of curious. And this led

502
00:30:36,880 --> 00:30:40,295
to a whole discussion on like, well, how many, how many sharks

503
00:30:40,955 --> 00:30:44,257
are killed a year? So we've gotten this whole discussion and,

504
00:30:44,598 --> 00:30:47,920
and like, you know, nobody, I mean, who, nobody in the 1980s

505
00:30:47,960 --> 00:30:51,322
was thinking about like, how many sharks are caught in bycatch and are killed?

506
00:30:51,663 --> 00:30:55,205
No, nobody. And so I ended up writing a section

507
00:30:55,846 --> 00:30:59,028
and I've posted this before on social media, but I'll just

508
00:30:59,348 --> 00:31:02,911
hang it up. I'll show it up here again. Um, if

509
00:31:02,951 --> 00:31:10,297
I can find it here somewhere. Uh, Let

510
00:31:10,337 --> 00:31:13,438
me see here. I should have marked this before we came on the air.

511
00:31:13,478 --> 00:31:16,939
But anyway, in this book. No worries. Now,

512
00:31:22,321 --> 00:31:31,964
Let me see here. OK.

513
00:31:49,337 --> 00:31:52,539
There it is, sorry. There's a section in the back of

514
00:31:52,579 --> 00:31:57,703
this book, if you get a copy of it, it's a classic book now, page 143, called

515
00:31:58,243 --> 00:32:01,826
Conservation and Management. And

516
00:32:03,387 --> 00:32:06,710
that was the first time that I can, I didn't know this at the time, but

517
00:32:06,930 --> 00:32:10,252
that was the first time anybody had ever written anything on the conservation of sharks

518
00:32:10,292 --> 00:32:13,795
and rays. And in that section,

519
00:32:13,815 --> 00:32:17,077
so I mean, that was, I can't explain how revolutionary that was.

520
00:32:17,137 --> 00:32:20,316
Nobody had ever done that. Sarah Fowler, who's been on our

521
00:32:20,336 --> 00:32:23,598
podcast, and she was really one of the really founders that laid

522
00:32:23,618 --> 00:32:27,981
the foundation for future conservation in sharks

523
00:32:28,021 --> 00:32:31,263
and rays. And she was kind of heading in that direction at the same time, but

524
00:32:31,283 --> 00:32:35,025
I don't believe anybody had ever published that. And in that section, I

525
00:32:35,085 --> 00:32:38,428
commented on like, well, how many sharks and rays are

526
00:32:38,468 --> 00:32:41,650
caught a year? And Leonard, being Leonard, went home after our

527
00:32:41,750 --> 00:32:44,950
pizza night and wrote up this whole thing, just some

528
00:32:44,990 --> 00:32:48,592
calculations. And we estimated that between 10 and

529
00:32:49,292 --> 00:32:53,054
63 million sharks a year were caught in bycatch fisheries.

530
00:32:53,495 --> 00:32:56,716
And, and, and we figured on average, there's probably around

531
00:32:57,336 --> 00:33:01,419
38 million somewhere in there. Well, this is 1989. It

532
00:33:01,439 --> 00:33:04,800
was in the early 2000s, like 12, 15 years later

533
00:33:04,820 --> 00:33:09,343
that a colleague, Shelly Clark actually did a more quantitative estimate

534
00:33:09,383 --> 00:33:12,802
and calculated that about 73 million sharks were caught

535
00:33:12,842 --> 00:33:16,083
a year. Average was around, you know, I

536
00:33:16,123 --> 00:33:19,284
think she came up with a similar average of that's around 38 million or so as

537
00:33:19,304 --> 00:33:22,685
well. I don't remember the exact number, but I know her numbers were almost

538
00:33:22,745 --> 00:33:27,187
spot on with what Leonard and I had calculated back in 1989. And

539
00:33:27,247 --> 00:33:31,068
so that was pretty good, but that was really the first estimate ever

540
00:33:31,168 --> 00:33:34,734
published on the number of sharks caught a year. And that was in 1989. Again,

541
00:33:35,295 --> 00:33:38,716
people weren't even, I can't even explain this to young people. It wasn't even on the radar.

542
00:33:39,337 --> 00:33:43,019
And also in that section, we talked about the whole shadowy, referred

543
00:33:43,039 --> 00:33:46,601
to as a shadowy fishery of shark finning. And

544
00:33:46,641 --> 00:33:50,142
again, nobody was really talking about that until 20, 30 years

545
00:33:50,223 --> 00:33:54,037
later. Nowadays, people talk about shark finning and Shark

546
00:33:54,077 --> 00:33:57,159
liver oil, but here we were writing on this. It was more from a

547
00:33:57,739 --> 00:34:00,941
how's this impacting shark populations? We didn't know but we put it

548
00:34:01,041 --> 00:34:04,603
out There's a question and we wrote up that this was going on and

549
00:34:04,643 --> 00:34:08,306
species like again I would see these like sawfish for example, you

550
00:34:08,326 --> 00:34:11,908
know, they were kind of a nuisance if they were caught in African villages But

551
00:34:11,948 --> 00:34:15,530
also at the same time, you know, it'd be food for the for the community

552
00:34:16,210 --> 00:34:19,612
but also like they could they you know, you have these Chinese buyers

553
00:34:19,652 --> 00:34:22,829
would go around buying up the fins and And so with the

554
00:34:22,909 --> 00:34:26,510
fins, with these fins that were being, uh, landed,

555
00:34:27,830 --> 00:34:31,471
uh, they impacted because then there's worth a lot more money. And

556
00:34:31,571 --> 00:34:34,692
so that was, again, that was some of the stuff with Leonard. I shared a lot of these

557
00:34:34,712 --> 00:34:38,152
different stories, but that was the, that was the uniqueness with Leonard.

558
00:34:38,172 --> 00:34:42,033
That's what set him apart. And that's the kind of stuff that really

559
00:34:42,053 --> 00:34:45,414
made him a giant in the field. And I don't say that lightly.

560
00:34:45,514 --> 00:34:48,895
He really was a, okay. He was a big guy personally, but physically he

561
00:34:48,915 --> 00:34:52,135
was a big guy, but he was, um, But he was just

562
00:34:52,456 --> 00:34:56,518
really that guy that's thinking in a different plane. And,

563
00:34:56,538 --> 00:34:59,740
you know, I finished and eventually I finished up my PhD. We did

564
00:34:59,780 --> 00:35:03,363
a lot, a lot of stuff at Leonard's. One of the, I've very heavily published

565
00:35:03,383 --> 00:35:06,565
with Leonard and kind of a cool thing years later, as

566
00:35:07,405 --> 00:35:10,788
I mentioned earlier, when he was doing the sharks of the world, the FAO

567
00:35:10,808 --> 00:35:13,950
guide was published in 84. I always thought like, well, that'd be kind

568
00:35:13,990 --> 00:35:19,831
of cool to do a, do my own book on the sharks of the world. Well, in 2013, you

569
00:35:19,851 --> 00:35:23,454
know, Leonard and I co-authored a book with Mark Dando and Sarah Fowler

570
00:35:23,554 --> 00:35:26,796
on the sharks of the world. And so that was kind of brought

571
00:35:26,836 --> 00:35:30,039
my journey full circle in a way with

572
00:35:30,079 --> 00:35:33,161
Leonard. At that point, Leonard was kind of on his way out in his career and he

573
00:35:33,201 --> 00:35:36,424
didn't really do a heck of a lot, but he was

574
00:35:36,484 --> 00:35:39,586
pretty much retired. He was starting to have a lot of health issues at

575
00:35:39,646 --> 00:35:42,989
that time, but it was just kind of nice to have that one little

576
00:35:43,773 --> 00:35:47,214
You know having done that and of course I've gone on a lot of other things now,

577
00:35:47,314 --> 00:35:50,755
but it was nice And I have just a lot of good Memories

578
00:35:50,795 --> 00:35:54,396
it was a lot of funny stories that are probably a little off-color to tell on the podcast But

579
00:35:54,416 --> 00:35:57,517
I'll put that somewhere else catch me at a conference over a

580
00:35:57,557 --> 00:36:01,598
beer. I'll tell you some some other ones, but he had He

581
00:36:01,638 --> 00:36:05,759
had some some interesting stuff one story. I will share I think

582
00:36:05,799 --> 00:36:09,517
I've shared this before I know Andrews heard this one, but Paul

583
00:36:09,557 --> 00:36:12,619
Callie, and I want to make give a mention to Paul Callie who was kind of

584
00:36:12,659 --> 00:36:16,242
my partner in crime with the At the time we were co-grad

585
00:36:16,262 --> 00:36:19,384
students together and Paul and I just had some

586
00:36:19,444 --> 00:36:22,646
amazing experiences With Leonard and stuff. But

587
00:36:22,726 --> 00:36:26,108
one of the things I talked about some of my public presentations is

588
00:36:27,009 --> 00:36:30,171
Paul and I'd go off to Namibia And at that time there

589
00:36:30,191 --> 00:36:33,800
was nothing there. There's no communications. No GPS no cell phone And

590
00:36:33,820 --> 00:36:37,021
so I'd tell Leonard, which is a little sketchy, and tell other people that we're going

591
00:36:37,041 --> 00:36:40,162
to be gone for eight weeks. And if you didn't hear from us in 10 weeks, you

592
00:36:40,182 --> 00:36:43,644
might send somebody to look for us. And off we'd go. Well,

593
00:36:43,664 --> 00:36:48,226
again, this is back in the late 80s. And you didn't have things like

594
00:36:48,606 --> 00:36:52,767
when you had your student bursary would come through each month. Nowadays,

595
00:36:52,827 --> 00:36:56,129
it's automatically deposited. Well, back then, you had to physically go pick

596
00:36:56,189 --> 00:36:59,610
up your check. Well, when you're gone for eight weeks in the field,

597
00:37:00,501 --> 00:37:03,682
there's nobody there to deposit your check. And on our

598
00:37:03,702 --> 00:37:06,743
first trip to Namibia, we literally, we wound up in

599
00:37:06,783 --> 00:37:09,964
a place called Luderitz, which is literally like the end

600
00:37:10,004 --> 00:37:13,185
of the world. If you want to get lost, go to Luderitz. Um,

601
00:37:13,745 --> 00:37:17,426
and, uh, it was a, at that time it was a wild West town.

602
00:37:17,906 --> 00:37:21,428
Literally. It was like a, why they'd be like drunken bar fights. There'd be people

603
00:37:22,248 --> 00:37:25,589
passed out in the street. It was, it was a wild West town, but

604
00:37:25,609 --> 00:37:29,050
there was a, there's thousands of seven gill sharks in the lagoon there.

605
00:37:29,664 --> 00:37:32,725
And so we spent some time there and we ran out of

606
00:37:32,785 --> 00:37:36,445
money. I mean, literally neither of us had a penny

607
00:37:37,085 --> 00:37:41,026
in our accounts. And so I had to, we had like 3000 kilometers

608
00:37:41,046 --> 00:37:44,347
to get home. So I bumped some money off one

609
00:37:44,367 --> 00:37:47,587
of the guys there we knew. And, you know, just

610
00:37:47,627 --> 00:37:50,848
like there was like three Rand, which was like, you

611
00:37:50,868 --> 00:37:54,329
know, two us dollars at the time. And I made a phone call

612
00:37:54,369 --> 00:37:57,784
back to ask Leonard if he could put in a couple hundred like literally like

613
00:37:58,124 --> 00:38:02,126
300 Rand, so we had gas to get home. And

614
00:38:02,166 --> 00:38:06,028
I got a hold of Leonard. He asked, of course, Leonard, brevity

615
00:38:06,068 --> 00:38:09,250
was not synonymous with Leonard. He could talk. And so

616
00:38:09,310 --> 00:38:12,512
he would share all the, he'd say, oh, how's it going, blah, blah. I'd say, oh, yeah, it's going really

617
00:38:12,532 --> 00:38:17,555
good, Leonard. But if we ran out of money, can you put

618
00:38:17,575 --> 00:38:20,837
some money, a few hundred Rand, maybe 300 Rand, so I can get home, just for

619
00:38:20,897 --> 00:38:24,031
gas, not even for food. And he's like, well, you

620
00:38:24,071 --> 00:38:27,197
know, money's kind of tight. And he hung up on me. And that was

621
00:38:27,217 --> 00:38:30,603
the second time he hung up on me. I told the story earlier. And so

622
00:38:30,643 --> 00:38:35,352
here you got a couple of your two grad students at the time, 3,000 kilometers

623
00:38:35,372 --> 00:38:39,436
from home in the a hole of the world place.

624
00:38:39,577 --> 00:38:43,019
And I don't want to say that to be disrespectful, but it wasn't, it was a tough place

625
00:38:46,141 --> 00:38:49,464
It was a rough, it was a rough place. And so I, here I have to go back

626
00:38:49,524 --> 00:38:53,366
and bum another few Rand and I called Tom Heck back

627
00:38:53,867 --> 00:38:57,147
at, who was the head of the department at the time. And said, Hey,

628
00:38:57,167 --> 00:39:00,808
Tom, I, um, I need some money to get home. And he's

629
00:39:00,828 --> 00:39:04,009
like, well, did you talk to Leonard? I said, yeah. And

630
00:39:04,029 --> 00:39:07,510
he says, what happened? I said, well, he hung up on me. And

631
00:39:07,630 --> 00:39:10,971
you know, Tom being German, he's like, there's silence at first. He's

632
00:39:10,991 --> 00:39:14,131
like, no, no problem, Dave. I'll put, I'll put 500 bucks in

633
00:39:14,171 --> 00:39:17,279
your account tomorrow morning. You'll be able to withdraw it. you

634
00:39:17,299 --> 00:39:20,721
know, welcome home, have a safe drive. And so, but

635
00:39:20,761 --> 00:39:24,163
that was like, that was like Leonard. He just had, didn't have like a lot of empathy, like,

636
00:39:24,643 --> 00:39:28,025
oh, well, you're stuck. You know, oh, well, you know, good luck.

637
00:39:28,625 --> 00:39:32,047
See you back. See you sometime. Hope

638
00:39:32,067 --> 00:39:35,368
you get home. And, um, but I had, yes, but

639
00:39:35,388 --> 00:39:38,770
that was kind of the, some of the funny stories we'd have. Paul and I just had

640
00:39:38,810 --> 00:39:42,012
an amazing experience. We'd go, Leonard and I would go out. We used to go a lot of times.

641
00:39:43,072 --> 00:39:47,274
just wildlife looking. We'd go out to game, we'd take a couple days. Leonard

642
00:39:47,314 --> 00:39:50,656
liked to bird, I liked to look at the game animals. We'd go out to a lot

643
00:39:53,757 --> 00:39:57,199
Yeah, we were definitely fellow explorers. And

644
00:39:57,999 --> 00:40:01,341
as I say, it was an amazing time in my life. And Leonard

645
00:40:01,361 --> 00:40:04,582
and I remained good friends. But the last sort

646
00:40:04,622 --> 00:40:09,724
of 10 years of his life, he declined a lot health-wise,

647
00:40:09,884 --> 00:40:13,064
physically and mentally. And, uh, so I, you know, I didn't get,

648
00:40:13,144 --> 00:40:16,405
we kind of really lost touch there just cause he was just, he

649
00:40:16,445 --> 00:40:19,945
was in South Africa and wasn't in good health. The last time I saw him was about 10 years,

650
00:40:20,786 --> 00:40:24,086
years ago. Um, but you know, even though

651
00:40:24,106 --> 00:40:27,187
he's, he's gone now, I have just a

652
00:40:27,227 --> 00:40:31,107
lot of very fond memories working with them. We published a

653
00:40:31,227 --> 00:40:35,008
lot together. Um, we coauthored about 10 species

654
00:40:35,048 --> 00:40:40,393
together and, um, it was an amazing, It

655
00:40:40,413 --> 00:40:43,894
was an amazing time. And it was just, you know, I kind of, if

656
00:40:43,934 --> 00:40:47,556
I had to impart anything off to any, any young people there, you should

657
00:40:47,576 --> 00:40:50,937
be so lucky when you're early in your career to find someone who's that real

658
00:40:50,977 --> 00:40:54,299
fellow traveler, because, you know, he, he, he just, he, he, he

659
00:40:54,359 --> 00:40:57,640
wasn't just an advisor, you know, he was a mentor and above

660
00:40:57,720 --> 00:41:00,942
all, he was a friend. And, um, you know, his,

661
00:41:01,222 --> 00:41:06,019
his late, his late wife, Martina, probably one of the Biggest

662
00:41:06,059 --> 00:41:09,201
compliments I ever received was we're out. I was

663
00:41:09,221 --> 00:41:12,823
showing her here out visiting California one time before she passed away

664
00:41:13,603 --> 00:41:17,385
in 2006 and we're talking at a restaurant and

665
00:41:17,425 --> 00:41:20,927
Leonard went to go use the bathroom and I kind of apologized to

666
00:41:20,967 --> 00:41:24,109
her because she was a cephalopod biologist. But I kind of said, oh,

667
00:41:24,129 --> 00:41:27,271
I'm really sorry, Leonard. I just blabbing away nonstop. And

668
00:41:27,311 --> 00:41:31,140
she goes, Dave, don't worry about it. She goes, Leonard. Everybody

669
00:41:31,160 --> 00:41:34,643
at Cogtex Leonard wants something from him. You're like

670
00:41:34,683 --> 00:41:38,046
his one of his few true friends out there and

671
00:41:39,166 --> 00:41:42,689
I just that really touched me a lot and it was very You know

672
00:41:42,729 --> 00:41:45,991
very nice to hear that because you know, and that's true Leonard had a lot of people

673
00:41:46,031 --> 00:41:49,894
were not always looked out You know for his best interest and

674
00:41:50,034 --> 00:41:54,318
just hearing that from him was very much was very it was very genuine and

675
00:41:54,898 --> 00:41:58,260
And I know, you know, and I know other people could share similar stories. I

676
00:41:58,300 --> 00:42:01,441
have a whole bunch of stories. One of the things I think we got a little clip we'll

677
00:42:01,461 --> 00:42:04,602
have with Gavin Naylor here. And Gavin was

678
00:42:04,622 --> 00:42:08,304
a young PhD student. In fact, Gavin had finished before me. And he'd

679
00:42:08,324 --> 00:42:11,532
come to South Africa when I was still there. Which

680
00:42:11,592 --> 00:42:14,835
I won't go into the stories today because it's just a bonus episode may all share in

681
00:42:14,855 --> 00:42:18,178
some other future episodes But he came to South

682
00:42:18,318 --> 00:42:21,921
Africa in 1989 he was there for about six

683
00:42:22,001 --> 00:42:25,404
weeks and we had It was an we had just as some incredible

684
00:42:25,424 --> 00:42:28,906
experience with Leonard and Gavin and I still to this day laugh at

685
00:42:28,926 --> 00:42:32,149
some of the stories that took place that time work with Leonard because I say he

686
00:42:32,169 --> 00:42:35,512
was Leonard was a character if you if you had the chance

687
00:42:35,552 --> 00:42:39,091
to meet him He was a character is the best way I could describe it And,

688
00:42:39,451 --> 00:42:42,853
uh, as I say, uh, Gavin, uh, we're both young

689
00:42:42,893 --> 00:42:46,275
students at the same time. And I know he had also had a profound effect

690
00:42:46,375 --> 00:42:49,957
on him as well. And, uh, in fact, Gavin's done a lot of the genetic work

691
00:42:49,997 --> 00:42:54,019
that show that Leonard's 1973, uh, classification really

692
00:42:54,039 --> 00:42:58,021
has held up over the last 50 years. And so, um,

693
00:42:58,722 --> 00:43:01,904
anyway, I just, um, appreciate people listening to

694
00:43:04,943 --> 00:43:09,127
I was just going to say before we kind of end off here, like, you know, from

695
00:43:09,427 --> 00:43:12,549
some of the stories you mentioned, I didn't know, you know, with with

696
00:43:12,569 --> 00:43:15,712
the relationship you had with him, but also he's the reason why you're the

697
00:43:15,752 --> 00:43:19,215
lost shark guy. I think that's pretty cool. You would go to him to, like, bring back

698
00:43:19,275 --> 00:43:22,416
the specimens that you had. And you would be like, what is

699
00:43:22,456 --> 00:43:25,857
this? And he'd be like, oh, we haven't seen this in like 10 years. And it's kind

700
00:43:25,897 --> 00:43:29,138
of interesting, because before we recorded, we were talking about how people come to

701
00:43:29,178 --> 00:43:32,819
you now to be that person, that

702
00:43:32,859 --> 00:43:36,599
authority to come in and say, hey, I found this. What

703
00:43:36,659 --> 00:43:39,740
is it? And you'd be like, oh, well, we actually haven't seen that in five years. Or we

704
00:43:39,780 --> 00:43:42,901
haven't seen that in 10 years. Or we haven't seen that in 20 years. Or this is a new

705
00:43:42,941 --> 00:43:46,501
species. Let's work on this together. And I think that it

706
00:43:46,541 --> 00:43:50,102
just goes to show that you're kind of like, continuing the

707
00:43:50,162 --> 00:43:53,384
legacy that Leonard had in terms of

708
00:43:53,404 --> 00:43:56,786
just knowing the species so much and being so interested in

709
00:43:57,166 --> 00:44:00,848
all the species, not just the iconic sharks,

710
00:44:00,888 --> 00:44:04,090
not just the great white shark, which there's nothing wrong with that. It's just he

711
00:44:04,130 --> 00:44:08,032
just had this impeccable knowledge of and detailed

712
00:44:08,072 --> 00:44:11,314
knowledge of all the sharks, hence the book, The Sharks of the World,

713
00:44:11,354 --> 00:44:14,476
and what you have lived on in terms of that legacy and

714
00:44:14,496 --> 00:44:17,898
continued on with that legacy and built your own legacy as the lost shark

715
00:44:17,938 --> 00:44:21,099
guy. For a reason because you're the one you're

716
00:44:21,119 --> 00:44:24,460
the one who continues on that curiosity That you

717
00:44:24,481 --> 00:44:27,722
both had and you both shared and I think you know it's it's really funny because

718
00:44:27,762 --> 00:44:31,163
there is this relationship with a Supervisor and and a student

719
00:44:31,223 --> 00:44:34,905
that a lot of people have and sometimes it's good and sometimes it's bad But

720
00:44:34,925 --> 00:44:38,066
you got to see him in two lights you got to see him at work and in the office But you

721
00:44:38,086 --> 00:44:41,208
also got to see them outside of work where he was seemed to be a little bit

722
00:44:41,268 --> 00:44:44,930
more relaxed and a little bit more in like He's interested

723
00:44:45,050 --> 00:44:48,152
in talking about science. He's interested in talking about sharks that

724
00:44:48,192 --> 00:44:51,595
he'd had a genuine interest birds, whatever species game

725
00:44:51,655 --> 00:44:54,878
species. And I think that's, that's really interesting to

726
00:44:54,918 --> 00:44:58,721
hear, to see like a supervisor who has that kind of relationship

727
00:44:58,761 --> 00:45:01,903
with student where you guys were not only colleagues or not even student, like

728
00:45:01,983 --> 00:45:05,386
mentor student, but you were genuine friends. And I think that's, that's

729
00:45:06,167 --> 00:45:09,770
Yeah, no, he laid the foundation for, let's

730
00:45:09,790 --> 00:45:13,603
say we didn't use it back in the eighties. I didn't think about the term lost shark. guy

731
00:45:13,643 --> 00:45:16,925
or any or lost sharks, but he really laid the foundation. And if

732
00:45:17,005 --> 00:45:20,547
I hit, if I impart some of the young people listening to shows like be knowledgeable

733
00:45:20,567 --> 00:45:23,769
about all the sharks and rays, don't focus on one species, you know,

734
00:45:23,829 --> 00:45:27,112
just be knowledgeable. You know, the, the wider, the broader with

735
00:45:27,132 --> 00:45:30,333
the knowledge you have, the better, you know, the, the more you'll know, and

736
00:45:30,354 --> 00:45:33,535
the more you learn, the more questions you could ask. And

737
00:45:33,575 --> 00:45:36,617
as I say, I just, you know, I mean, I never thought I

738
00:45:36,657 --> 00:45:39,739
was going to, you know, the direction I've gone, I'm kind of a

739
00:45:39,759 --> 00:45:43,104
direction I never thought about. But when he's learned more

740
00:45:43,124 --> 00:45:46,546
about all the different species and I started bringing back these different

741
00:45:46,586 --> 00:45:50,468
things that people hadn't seen I thought well That's kind of a cool thing. Nobody else is doing this and

742
00:45:50,489 --> 00:45:53,891
it just was Larry says I've been started doing that

743
00:45:53,951 --> 00:45:57,173
and I started focusing I didn't focus in on him because I just go look for what was there

744
00:45:57,213 --> 00:46:00,575
and document stuff but then when Leonard started telling me like a

745
00:46:00,635 --> 00:46:04,237
number of these species had not been seen for decades and

746
00:46:04,257 --> 00:46:07,558
You know 20 30 years or more Then I started like going like,

747
00:46:07,658 --> 00:46:11,219
okay, I, and I started paying attention to and started, you know, keeping a database of

748
00:46:11,259 --> 00:46:14,701
like, well, how long are these, some of these sharks haven't

749
00:46:14,721 --> 00:46:18,022
been seen. And there were sharks that I'd saw. I can tell you there were sharks I

750
00:46:18,062 --> 00:46:21,743
found back in the eighties that haven't been seen since I found them. I

751
00:46:21,763 --> 00:46:24,944
mean, I know where to go back to find them, but you know, it's

752
00:46:24,984 --> 00:46:28,185
like, you don't, cause I know where they are. And I think that they're, I call

753
00:46:28,205 --> 00:46:31,326
them lost, but I think if you just bother, if someone bothers to go

754
00:46:31,366 --> 00:46:34,527
look for them, you know where to go, but I've just kind of carried on

755
00:46:34,547 --> 00:46:37,718
with that. And that led to my. sort of moniker my

756
00:46:37,758 --> 00:46:43,044
brand now, The Lost Shark Guy, you know,

757
00:46:44,585 --> 00:46:48,009
over the last couple of decades, that's really what it was led to.

758
00:46:48,089 --> 00:46:51,312
And, you know, I get, I have such a network now, I get, I

759
00:46:51,332 --> 00:46:54,720
get people all over the world contact me every week.

760
00:46:54,760 --> 00:46:58,565
I go a few days a week. I get emails from people asking

761
00:46:58,585 --> 00:47:01,908
me to identify stuff from them. And you know, a lot of times it's like,

762
00:47:01,988 --> 00:47:05,372
Oh, this is, this is this, this is that and stuff. But sometimes they get some really cool

763
00:47:05,412 --> 00:47:09,216
stuff that, Hey, we haven't seen this species in 40 years. And

764
00:47:09,236 --> 00:47:12,420
they show up here and I'm like, so then I can, I can help them

765
00:47:12,520 --> 00:47:15,851
out and provide them some more information. So It's kind of cool. And

766
00:47:15,871 --> 00:47:19,194
you know, one of the thing with Leonard is like he always, and I think people

767
00:47:19,214 --> 00:47:23,538
listen to podcasts or hear me talk, you know, I still have that enthusiasm,

768
00:47:23,578 --> 00:47:26,901
that passion. I had it when I was five years old and Leonard was the same

769
00:47:26,961 --> 00:47:30,564
way. He was like eight. Leonard was, he would have been 81 this December.

770
00:47:31,364 --> 00:47:35,288
Um, but he was, he was, he was just that perpetual kid. Um,

771
00:47:35,408 --> 00:47:38,631
or he was just, he never lost his enthusiasm. And

772
00:47:38,671 --> 00:47:42,074
I had that same thing where I still feel today. Like, you know, I'm going to keep going until,

773
00:47:43,104 --> 00:47:46,505
I can't, which, you know, will probably be when they drop me in the ground. And I

774
00:47:46,525 --> 00:47:50,167
love it, you know, and that's

775
00:47:50,347 --> 00:47:53,488
not anytime soon. Well, if you listen to the recent podcast I

776
00:47:53,508 --> 00:47:56,709
did on my trip to Indonesia and Timor Leste, you can,

777
00:47:56,729 --> 00:48:00,091
you can tell that, you know, and I have a, I think one thing with the Lost Shark stuff

778
00:48:00,131 --> 00:48:03,532
now is I really, I enjoy working with a lot of the young people,

779
00:48:04,052 --> 00:48:07,894
you know, like the crew I was just working with in, in, in Indonesia, Timor

780
00:48:07,934 --> 00:48:11,872
Leste. I love working with young people and passing along. Because

781
00:48:11,892 --> 00:48:15,014
now it's my turn to pass on that information to all these young people. And they'll hopefully be

782
00:48:15,034 --> 00:48:19,418
the new Lost Shark guys and gals in

783
00:48:19,438 --> 00:48:24,021
the future. And that would be my biggest legacy is to leave impart

784
00:48:24,041 --> 00:48:27,604
my knowledge to a lot of these really up-and-coming people, many of

785
00:48:27,644 --> 00:48:33,288
whom we've had on the podcast. So I just keep

786
00:48:33,308 --> 00:48:36,670
going on. And all that was instilled with me with Leonard. You

787
00:48:36,690 --> 00:48:40,052
know Leonard some of these days we'll I'll see in that big shark park in the sky

788
00:48:40,192 --> 00:48:43,534
one day and we'll I'm sure be back having a pizza and

789
00:48:43,574 --> 00:48:47,757
a coca-cola even though I don't really like coca-cola I was talking and

790
00:48:47,777 --> 00:48:52,239
talking so um but yeah it was phenomenal

791
00:48:52,279 --> 00:48:55,341
experience and uh if you're and I'll just one last shout out if

792
00:48:55,361 --> 00:48:59,163
you ever see you guys particularly young people if you see me at a conference sometime

793
00:48:59,843 --> 00:49:03,227
just come up and say hi I'm pretty approachable and Just

794
00:49:03,247 --> 00:49:06,728
want to talk about Leonard stories and some of the stuff born

795
00:49:06,768 --> 00:49:10,248
happy to share sharks shark and sharks. Yeah, and just Talk

796
00:49:11,549 --> 00:49:15,089
to you about stuff. And so so anyway Andrew,

797
00:49:15,109 --> 00:49:18,490
I appreciate it. I everybody I just listened to the show and

798
00:49:19,010 --> 00:49:22,671
thanks for having a chance to part some of my stuff because It

799
00:49:22,691 --> 00:49:25,872
was a really a big thing in my life met

800
00:49:25,912 --> 00:49:29,246
Leonard and getting to know Leonard and I I

801
00:49:29,306 --> 00:49:33,112
just hope to see him again sometime in the sometime

802
00:49:33,132 --> 00:49:36,337
in the next life. So anyway, thank you very much. Thank you

803
00:49:36,357 --> 00:49:39,723
everyone for listening and keep

804
00:49:43,589 --> 00:49:46,632
I love it. Well, Dave, thank you so much for sharing these stories. I

805
00:49:46,692 --> 00:49:49,874
know this is a hard time for you. You know, you can tell in your

806
00:49:49,894 --> 00:49:53,037
voice, you can tell that Leonard had such an impact on your life as

807
00:49:53,117 --> 00:49:56,559
well as others. You know, when you posted in the American Alasdair

808
00:49:56,579 --> 00:50:00,302
Brank Society the notice of that he had passed, there

809
00:50:00,342 --> 00:50:03,485
are so many amazing things that people have said about him,

810
00:50:03,505 --> 00:50:06,727
you know, recounting stories and how much of a legend that

811
00:50:06,767 --> 00:50:10,651
he was in this industry and in this field. So

812
00:50:10,671 --> 00:50:14,554
you're not the only one who feels this but definitely you had a different relationship

813
00:50:14,614 --> 00:50:17,757
with him because you were his student and you did

814
00:50:17,797 --> 00:50:21,020
his PhD with him and obviously a lot more than that. So we

815
00:50:21,060 --> 00:50:24,783
appreciate you being vulnerable with us and you letting us know more

816
00:50:24,823 --> 00:50:29,247
about Leonard and I appreciate it definitely as a friend and we

817
00:50:29,287 --> 00:50:32,830
hope for the best. And like you said, one day you'll be reunited and having

818
00:50:32,850 --> 00:50:35,972
a having a coke, having a pizza and talking shows. It's awesome. So thank

819
00:50:38,054 --> 00:50:42,697
Thank you. David has asked me to comment

820
00:50:43,878 --> 00:50:47,161
on the contributions of Leonard

821
00:50:47,201 --> 00:50:52,304
Campagnolo, who passed away last week. I've

822
00:50:52,344 --> 00:50:56,948
known Leonard since I was a graduate student. And

823
00:50:57,892 --> 00:51:02,996
He's certainly a very unusual person. He

824
00:51:03,896 --> 00:51:07,059
was frankly obsessed with sharks and

825
00:51:07,119 --> 00:51:10,861
rays. He wanted to understand

826
00:51:11,422 --> 00:51:15,385
everything about them. He wanted to understand their anatomy,

827
00:51:15,845 --> 00:51:20,549
their behavior, their life history, their taxonomy, and

828
00:51:20,649 --> 00:51:24,471
he would pursue any avenue to

829
00:51:24,511 --> 00:51:27,791
learn more about them. We're familiar with

830
00:51:27,831 --> 00:51:32,775
Leonard because of his influential publication record. But

831
00:51:32,815 --> 00:51:37,839
I put it to you that that really is the tip of the iceberg. What

832
00:51:37,959 --> 00:51:41,542
Leonard published was a tiny fraction

833
00:51:42,723 --> 00:51:47,687
of what he knew. Instinct

834
00:51:48,347 --> 00:51:52,391
is nothing more than a capacity

835
00:51:52,991 --> 00:51:57,184
to access a huge amount of context-sensitive

836
00:51:57,244 --> 00:52:00,866
information. And it seemed that Leonard

837
00:52:00,926 --> 00:52:04,588
had tremendous instinct for understanding

838
00:52:04,628 --> 00:52:08,791
these animals, and that's because he had huge knowledge about

839
00:52:08,911 --> 00:52:12,413
these animals from all of his work. On a daily

840
00:52:12,513 --> 00:52:16,916
basis, he would be trying to find out more about them. As

841
00:52:16,976 --> 00:52:21,058
a person, he was fairly diffident, fairly shy, and really,

842
00:52:25,314 --> 00:52:29,037
uncomfortable in public settings. But

843
00:52:29,277 --> 00:52:34,662
if you were somebody who was

844
00:52:34,722 --> 00:52:37,885
interested in the same things as Leonard was, he

845
00:52:37,925 --> 00:52:41,247
was amazing. Whenever I would meet with Leonard,

846
00:52:41,588 --> 00:52:45,051
I'd really look forward to it. Because just

847
00:52:45,111 --> 00:52:48,954
a few minutes with Leonard would provide tremendous insights.

848
00:52:49,634 --> 00:52:52,737
He would make these casual observations about sharks and rays as

849
00:52:52,817 --> 00:52:56,104
if everybody knew about them. but they

850
00:52:56,164 --> 00:53:00,245
might be casual for Leonard, but there'd be profound

851
00:53:00,325 --> 00:53:03,866
statements to the rest of us. So

852
00:53:03,886 --> 00:53:08,227
I'm particularly sad that

853
00:53:09,007 --> 00:53:12,308
Leonard passed away because he carries with him

854
00:53:12,508 --> 00:53:16,529
so much knowledge of these animals. And

855
00:53:16,589 --> 00:53:20,509
also, I don't think that he's as

856
00:53:20,609 --> 00:53:23,916
widely appreciated by young scientists as he

857
00:53:24,116 --> 00:53:27,538
is by all the colleagues. Many young

858
00:53:27,578 --> 00:53:31,360
scientists I've talked to never even heard of Leonard, but

859
00:53:32,120 --> 00:53:35,602
he's somebody to look up to, to aspire to be like.

860
00:53:36,642 --> 00:53:41,065
He was primarily deeply

861
00:53:41,145 --> 00:53:45,207
curious and I for one will

862
00:53:45,227 --> 00:53:48,848
miss him. It's a huge loss to Ik Theology