Sharks Don't Sink, with Jasmin Graham

a shark scientist and author of Sharks Don't Sink. This is a great book and it is out right now in all formats, So I encourage you if this interview grabs you, if the subject matter grabs you, and especially if you're interested in sharks, this is definitely some great summer reading for you, so pick up a copy, especially if you are going to go out to the beach or in any way experience the ocean this year. So without further ado, let's dive right in. Hi, Jasmine, welcome to the show.

of just animals that existed. But whenever I was in college working on my marine biology degree, I met a professor who studied sharks, and I started talking with him and doing some research with him, and they kind of fell in love with sharks. I did a lot of different marine science research while I was an undergrad, but I just kept coming back to sharks because I just

think they're so cool. They've been here so long, they have such neat adaptations, and I've always been someone that roots for the underdog, and they're very misunderstood, so I've always enjoyed working with them.

But also, you know, I think it's easy for us outsiders to think about science and research as being well, okay, this is like a pure logical thing, and we let ourselves forget that we have all these issues of politics and discrimination very much in play in that world as well. What are the challenges facing up and coming research scientists and scientists of color in particular.

should be in its purest form. But obviously science is conducted by human beings, and human beings all have biases, We have flaws, where illogical sometimes, and so I think it's really hard for people in the science field, not just people outside of the science field, but even people in the science field to come to terms with that that this area of research that we do, you know, we do the scientific method and all of that, and

we like to think of ourselves as being objective. It's really hard for us to admit that our biases come into play in our scientific research. But that's something that we have to deal with because We've seen science be used for some really terrible things. We've seen science be used as an excuse for genocide. We've seen science create atomic bombs. We've seen science do all sorts of really

not great things. And so we have to recognize that we have this responsibility as scientists to try to be objective, but recognize that we are not entirely objective, and so we have to be critical of how we think, how we interact with each other, and all of those things, everything to who gets to present to the scientific conference or who gets to work in somebody's lab, or who's invited to speak at this university, all of that has bias associated with it, and so we have to work

really hard to be responsive to that. What that looks like in terms of scientists from marginalized communities, it often

looks like not getting as much mentorship opportunities. It looks like not being in the club, you know, like a there's a clear these are the cool people in science, and we all hang out together and we all talk, and then there's outside ring of people trying to get into the cool club, into the inner circle, as it will, And so those in the inner circle have to be really mindful of those who are outside the circle trying to get in and making sure that they're accessible pathways

to that. Because science and academia the way that it's set up, has a lot of potential for gatekeepers to solely decide who gets accepted into a PhD program, who gets published. We have this idea of peer review, which is really great if you assume that your peers are objective and going to be fair and just. And yes, there are a lot of people that give fair reviews, but there's a lot of people whose reviews are biased.

They see somebody's name and they say, I don't know that I trust that person just based off of their name, if it's a name that sounds feminine, if it's a

name that sounds quote unquote foreign. You know, I've had people that are in different countries trying to publish work, and they complain a lot of times that they get really unfair peer reviews that basically imply that because they are from a country in the global South, their science isn't as credible as somebody from Europe or North America.

And so that's something that we struggle with. So those are just a few examples, but there's lots of areas where bias can creep in, and because we like to think of ourselves as objective, sometimes we choose to ignore those things and kind of stick our head in the sand. But we have to really confront it in order to make sure that science is actually objective and equitable.

of community. That's what it started out as. We want to create a sense of community where people feel like they belong in science, where people are able to build their science identity in a place where they feel that the rest of their identity can come along and they don't have to leave it at the door in order to be accepted. And so that's sort of where Minorities in Shark Sciences came from. Since then, it's grown to

be so much more than just community. It's grown to be this sort of wave of change in marine science and shark science in particular, where we were astounded at how many people you did an open call of who is trying to get into shark research or marine science and feels like they are the first or the only person like them in the room, come and join us.

Five hundred people responded. That's a lot of people. And so having this movement build of Okay, now we have a responsibility to all of these people who are sharing their stories, who are pointing out these issues, who want support in their universities, in their academic institutions, in their organizations to bring these issues to the forefront, because what we found is that a lot of people have been experiencing these things and have been trying to draw attention

to them individually. And it's a lot of Oh, I think you're imagining that they maybe don't mean that you know, all of these sort of but but but but but and so that could be really frustrating to have people not believe you whenever you're trying to address something. But you can ignore one person, you can maybe ignore two people, ignoring five hundred people saying the same thing. That's really hard to do, so you got to stick your head

pretty far in that's sand. And so that's sort of what this movement has become is giving voice to people who haven't been able to have their voices amplified before, doing cutting edge research and making sure to elevate people who are doing research that maybe wasn't being respected before and being able to amplify that work and bring attention to it with this collective power that Myths as an

organization has built. And then also getting to bring more people into the fold, making sure that more people get into that inner circle, providing the mentorship experiences. So we do mentorship experiences, we do professional development workshops, we help people build skills, all of these sorts of skills that you don't learn in school but people expect you to

magically know how to do. And then also getting internships and fellowships and things like that, while eliminating the financial barrier associated with that, because that's been a huge problem in the past. Is this pay to play where you have to pay someone to go work for them, which exists in marine science and is super common. But if you went to pretty much any other field of career, if you say wanted to go intern at Google, it would be absurd for you to pay to intern at Google.

Google would pay you to intern at Google. But in marine science, for reasons, lots of reasons, it's flipped where the expectation is you're going to pay for this, and so that makes it really hard for people to access those experiences. But they need those experiences to get the job, to get in that inner circle, to meet those people, and so MISS is all about eliminating those barriers introducing young people to marine science. In the ocean. Early on,

we serve what we call kada gray. So we're really interested in bringing everyone in and making everyone feel connected, whether that means they want to be a scientist or they want to just advocate in their everyday lives. We want to make sure that people have access to the information about what's going on in our ocean ecosystems because it affects all of us.

its rings. This we're talking four hundred million years of time, which I think is really hard for us to grasp as human beings who have been on this planet for a blink of an eye. But they've been here and pretty much not changing that much. The same basic body plan,

same basic in the time that dinosaurs became chickens. Because closest relative to dinosaurs a chicken, it's pretty wild to think that sharks kind of looked the same and we went from a dinosaur to a chicken and the same amount of time, and so it's it's really cool, but it's also something that makes it really alarming when we think about losing them at the rate that we're losing them.

So they've survived every mass extinction event thus far. Supervolcanoes, meteor showers, you know, all of these ice ages, all of these things that other organisms didn't survive. They survived. But we're in the sixth mass extinction that's driven by people, and they're dying at an alarming rate, which we should all be concerned about because we don't know what the world looks like without sharks. Sharks have been here so long that we don't even know what happens to an ecosystem

when they're not there. We have no idea what the consequences of that are. And it's also really upsetting to think that we as a species are more damaging to

the marine environment than super volcanoes and meteor showers. That's pretty bad, and we need to start thinking about how we live sustainably, how do we coexist with all of these creatures that are here inhabiting the planet right now, because we just got here and we might not last very long if we keep going the way that we're going, and so That's something that I think is really important to think about. And sharks have all of these really

cool adaptations that we can really learn learn from. I mean, Michael Phelps had a whole swimsuit designed like the skin of sharks, and it was actually so effective that they banded in the Olympics. Like, just by copying how a shark's skin is designed, you increased your speed so much that it was banned at the Olympics. That's wild. Like nature has some really cool ways of figuring out how to solve problems, and sharks have really solved a lot

of them. And so we can learn a lot from sharks, but not if they're not here.

and dies pretty much within a couple of days. And so you are comparing those two things, and it's not that one is more effective. Mosquitos, you know, are effective at existing. Sequoias are effective at existing until you introduce something like people and all the things that we do that causes these things that are supposed to be living

a long time to not live a long time. And so these these case selected organisms are their strategy is live a long time, produce a lot of young over a long period of time, not just you know, put all of your eggs in one basket right at the beginning. When we have mosquitoes and things like that, there are selected they don't live a long time, but they have a lot of young in that amount of time. And

that's fine. Whatever strategy works until you start cutting down sequoias before they get to live their full life and reproduce as much as they should have if they live their full life. Same thing for sharks. It takes sharks a really long time to mature. So you think about people, we're also long lived don't reproduce very much. If we all died before we hit twenty years old, think about

how many of us wouldn't have had children. Think about what that does to the population we're supposed to live. You know, roughly seventy eighty ninety some people live to be over one hundred years old, and you have time to have multi full children. Not if you die at twenty that's you don't have that opportunity, and so you

can't replace yourself. And so that's what's happening with sharks is their strategy worked for a really long time until we had these other things come about that are now killing them and they're not living their full life expectancy like they should have, and so that's affecting everything. It's

affecting how many young are in the next generation. It's affecting the health of those young because we also have things like maternal offloading, which is where a mother shark has so much toxins, think mercury, think all of those things in her body that it starts being detrimental to her. And the strategy for a case selected individual is I'm going to get rid of these toxins and my next litter of pups. I'm just gonna dump it all into them, and they might not survive, but I will keep living

and I will have more pups. So I will make the sacrifice of these pups so that I can keep living and continue to have pups, which is a great strategy, except for if you then are always accumulating mercury and now all of your pups are not healthy and you're continuing to live and reproduce, but the pups that you're reproducing aren't as viable because they have all these toxins in them. And so those are sort of things that you don't start to think about until you kind of

dive deep into the ecology and how sharks work. And that's sort of what I like to talk about in the book so that people can understand, hey, conservation of the oceans involves conserving sharks.

have their economies stabilize. They don't actually want these sharks. They don't want the sharks. We don't want them to catch the sharks. This is a perfect way for us to come together and think how do we keep sharks out of your gear? And so that's a lot of what I start thinking about is bycatch reduction, how do we keep these species that people don't want. They don't want to eat them, they don't need them for anything. That's a huge problem where they're dying for no reason

at all. We're not even using them. And so that's one area. Another area with overfishing is a bit more complicated but still doable, is how do we cut down on the amount of products that we need. So we think about squaling, squalling, and it's the oil in sharks livers. A lot of it's used in cosmetics and lotions and things like that. Whilst scientists have figured out a way to manufacture synthetic squaling, so we replace all of the

squaling that's coming from sharks with synthetic. We've already cut out a good number of sharks deaths and so little things like that, simple switches that we can make in order to cut down on the amount of products that we use. I think people tend to focus on other people as a means to change. So we think about shark fin soup. That's what a lot of people like to focus on, is well, we need to stop the Asian people from eating shark fin soup. This is not

an Asia problem. This is an everyone problem. And it's really easy for you to point at somebody else and say, well, it's their fault. We need to start thinking about what can I do, what can we do here to make changes. It's not about pointing fingers at people, and I think it's a very slippery slope. It's really easy to fall into racism and xenophobia and be like, these people that

are not like me are the problem. Fishermen are the problem, Asian people are the problem, Indigenous people are the problem. It's never I'm the problem. We have to start thinking about how we are contributing to the problem, because we all are, and we can't just go pointing fingers at people, especially because the people that tend to have the fingers pointed at them are marginalized communities who don't have a seat at the conservation table when these discussions are going on.

It's really easy to blame someone when they're not there to defend themselves, and so I always like to tell people just be mindful of that when you're starting to think about conservation, start with yourself first before you start pointing fingers at other people.

they want to look at the ocean. And so these are two groups of people that are often in conflict with each other because there's the people that have the beachfront property, have money and power, and the people who do not and are there because that's where they've been pushed.

Thinking about Indigenous communities in Louisiana, a lot of Indigenous communities got pushed to Louisiana and those parishes that are coastal that are now going underwater, and that is not where they intended to be, that is not where their native lands are, that is where they were pushed. And then we have people you know that want to come and live in Miami and you know, have their beaches

and stuff. And so we have to think about this from like two perspectives because there are reneurishment things where we're trying to keep land available for people who have nowhere else to go. And that's one issue, and there are lots of ways that we can think about, how do we keep people where they are, how do we help them decide where they want to go and give them a place to go if that's what they choose

to do. Then we have this other group of people who are like, I want white fluffy sand in a beach. That is a different situation, and that's what I'm talking about. Just to clarify. That's what I'm talking about when I talk about renourishment projects being a problem renourishing a beach because you want your nice beach. You're a hotel, and your private beach is disappearing. That's do we need to

do that? I don't know, that's debatable. And so we have this issue where we put this fake sand or not fake sand, but sand that's not supposed to be there in an area where the ocean wants to move it, like mother nature has decided this beach ink won't be

here no more. And when mother nature decides something, it's really hard to counteract that, and you need to have a really good reason for doing that because it's going to be really expensive and it's probably not gonna work, or it will work, and it won't last very long.

And so what we have, like in Myrtle Beach where my family is from, is we have these hotels and these owners of beachfront property saying, well, my beach is disappearing and that's a natural process, but we're trying to stop it for economic reasons, and we put this sand here and then a hurricane comes, like Hurricane Ian came and they had just done a beach y nourishment project. Guess we're all of that sand that they spent millions of dollars putting on that peachment. Whoop, the mother nature

took it away. Mine. No, not supposed to be here. But where does that sand go? It gets dumped off shore, it covers up reefs, it covers up sea grass beds, it covers up all of these habitats where fish are living, and all of the sand just this whole beach just shifted into the water. And that's where we have an issue. Is the ocean giveth and the ocean taketh away. Like you can put all the sand there you want to.

If the ocean does not want that sand to be there, it is not going to stay there, and it's got to go somewhere, and that somewhere is often covering important habitats. We have fishermen that I've talked to that say, immediately after a storm, after a renewished area gets swept away, they can't catch fish. And that's just terrible because that means all of these where do all these fish go?

All of these fishermen that are relying on this, all of these communities relying on this for food, it's gone. They can't access it until the sand starts moving further and further offshore, which who knows how that's how long that's going to take. And so these are things we have to take into consideration. We make these decisions as humans because we are part of the environment. The environment is part of us. Every decision we make has an

equal and opposite reaction. So we need to be making decisions based on necessity, not on I want my beach to look at ice.

time or for the first time in a while. Do you think there are key things that like the average person getting in the water with the sharks might need to learn about them or unlearn about them, Like what do folks often just maybe not seem to understand or need to understand a little better before they get in there with them.

and that's something that takes time to get over. And I think some of the best ways to overcome that is to do it you just exposure therapy, get in the water, see that you're fine, and then you're like, Okay, that wasn't so bad. I'll go a little deeper next time. I'll go a little deeper next time. And once you get in the ocean, you discover all of these amazing

things that the ocean has to offer. Once you start snorkeling and looking underneath the water and seeing all of these fish that are swimming around you and all of that stuff, hopefully the fascination with the ocean will start to outweigh that fear. And I like to kind of remind people we say things and our language affects people's perceptions and so you know, media all of that. Just being mindful of the way that we portray sharks. So saying things like shark infested waters, the waters are not

shark infested. That's where they live. It's if anything, they're people infested, because we're the ones that aren't supposed to be there. You wouldn't say that the sky is bird infested, like they live there. That's where they are. And you know, the pictures that we choose to use when we have a story. I mean, someone will get nibbled by like a little tiny leopard shark and they'll be like shark attack off La Hooia Shores. It'll be like a great

white shark. No, it was like the little tiny, two foot little leopard shark and the person needed a band aid. We don't need like this whole thing. And yes, there are people who have bites. They have negative encounters with sharks, it does happen. But we have negative encounters with all sorts of wild animals. They are animals. We have negative

encounters with each other. We you know, it's it's a fact of life that if things are in proximity to each other, eventually there will be a negative encounter, and it's it's something that I hope that with the love of the ocean and this increased desire to be in the ocean, similar to how we still get in cars even though we know that we could get in an accident. That's because our necessity are a desire to get from one place to another quickly and not have to walk

outweighs our fear of getting in an accident. And that's sort of where we're going with kind of exposing people to how cool the ocean is, how exciting it is, and then that fear is kind of downplayed a little bit. And am not saying that there's like a zero percent chance that you're gonna get bit by a shark. What I am saying is, wouldn't you rather experience this amazing thing rather than be cut off from it because you're afraid of this thing that's really not gonna happen happening.

And I also like to remind people, like I work with sharks for a living. I'm like around them all the time, I'm touching them all the time, doing things that they don't exactly want, Like you don't like for your dentists to be in your mouth. You don't like for your nurse to draw your blood. You don't like these things. They're like good for you, and like the sharks. Don't understand that sharks can't think like people and be like, oh,

this person's trying to help me. Look they're removing a parasite. How nice of them. They're like, ah, why are you touching me? Ah? And so I haven't had any issues with sharks. If I haven't, I have like way higher probability than the average person. So you're fine, Like you just walking in the water up to your waist, It's like, you're fine.

goes back to how cool sharks are. We have this one dimensional view of sharks because you hear the word shark and you think great white jaws, mindless killing machine. But there's so much diversity that actually white sharks are the exception and not the rule. Most sharks are small. Most sharks are less than four feet long. A lot of sharks live in the deep sea. Some of them grow glow in the dark. Some of them have hammers for heads, some of them eat plants, some of them

are pretty colors, some of them are filter feeders. It's just there's so much variety, and we're really doing sharks at disservice by only thinking of them in this one way. That would be like us thinking that all humans are I don't know, six ' five or like I don't know yao ming or something like that, like where they're not like, we're not all like that. We had a

lot of varieties. Some of us have different hair colors, we're different shades, we're different sizes, we have different interests, and it would be doing humans a disservice to narrow us down to like one type of person. So we shouldn't do that to sharks.

species that I'm interested in working with right now. I still am a part of the sawfish research right now. Sawfish are experiencing a unprecedented die off in in the South Florida area where they're exhibiting this weird spinning behavior

and washing up dead. We've lost quite a number of them, especially considering how small the population is already, because they're critically endangered, so there's not a lot of them, and so that's been a big concern, and so I've been kind of just helping where I can, giving my expertise where I can, since I have worked with them for a number of years. Because it's all hands on deck right now. No one knows why this is happening, how to stop it, what's going on, and so we're all

just kind of lending support where we can. So that's sort of an ongoing side project of mine, built more out of necessity, where we're trying to deal with this unprecedented.

lot of support. So, as I mentioned, there are scientists in countries in the global South that are doing work, and that work is happening, but it's not making it into the mainstream publication system because of these biases that exist. So we have that issue where there are sharks species that are being studied by someone, but we don't get to hear about it that much because their work is

being suppressed or undervalued. And so that's one thing. And then there's also some species that just aren't as glamorous, Like there are some species where people are like, ah, yes, whales, sharks, I will give money to fund ail shark research. If you're like, I want to study I don't know, the shy shark or something random, people are like, okay, you know, there's not as much flashy money people want to spend money on things that are cool and glamorous and they're

like really excited about. People aren't really like investing as much money in sharks that are like just like super cash. So there's definitely like a not equitable distribution of funding, and so that also drives what people choose to study, because if they can't get funding to study that animal, then they have to go and try to study something else. And so there are some of the less charismatic i'd say shark species that are not being studied as much.

But I mean there's also like tons of people that are working with sharks, but like I said, aren't making headlines, they're not making it into the mainstream. And so that's part of what MISS is trying to do is amplify the work that's being done on some of those lesser known researchers and areas where people are doing work.

not any smarter other people. That is not true, because what does smart even mean. I don't know, Like I think there's a there's a famous quote and I can't remember who said it, but it was, and i'll paraphrase. Everyone is intelligent, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid. And you know, we're

not any smarter than anyone else. And so if you're like, oh, I want to do science, but I don't think I'm smart enough, throw that out, because let me tell you, there are some not why scientists out there, and some of them are like really high up their big shots, and they're they do some things that are illogical. So just because someone is a scientist doesn't mean they're smart. And so you shouldn't think like I don't think I'm smart enough to be a scientist. That's a myth. Scientists

aren't any smarter than other people. I say, as a scientist, I can tell you right now I am not smarter than anyone else. And then people have this this fear of well, if I've become a scientist, I gotta do math, and math is scary. And I struggled with math a lot when I was in school. It was like my hardest subject and I actually had to get through some of my math classes. I basically was in my teachers class after school every day, getting tutoring to make it through.

And so like, you don't have to be good at everything to be a scientist. All sciences is asking questions and trying to figure out the answer. That's all it is. People put all this flare and handwaving and whatever, and that's all it is asking questions trying to figure out the answers. You can do that now, and wherever you are, whoever you are, you can ask questions and try and figure out the answers. You can do science. That's all science is. Everything else is just flair. Doesn't matter what

alphabet is after your name, doesn't matter. If you have a degree, doesn't matter, if you even know how to read, you can do science. I have seen children, toddlers do science where they see ants walking and they go, where are those ants going? And I say, I don't know, why don't you follow them and find out? And they will follow the ants and figure out where they're going. Guess what, that's science. They just did science. Can't spell their own name, but they did science, and so that's

all it is. So don't be intimidated by it. Don't think that you have to be somebody special to do it. We're not special. We're just like anyone else people that do science. And if there's a scientist that thinks that they're special, they're just a little too over confident in themselves. They are not any more special than anyone else. So anyone can do science. Don't let anyone tell you that you can't.

your books, and it's available now in all fourmats. Thanks as always to the excellent Jjpossway for producing this show and if you would like to get in touch with us, if you have suggestions for future episodes of Stuff to blow your mind, comments on past episodes, or just any other comments you want to share with us well, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.