All The Sharks, filming, science, and stories from the field

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Imagine competing against otherscientists, underwater camera divers,
and all sorts of people who havemade it a career to dive underwater.
Looking for specific animals withonly a few tanks of air, certain
amount of time during the day.
Raging currents and giantpredators around every corner.
My guests today are Dr.

(00:20):
Chris Malinowski and Dr. B Brendan Towar.
They did exactly that as a partof Netflix series, hit series.
All the sharks, and trust me, they'rebehind the scenes stories will.
Definitely surprise.
We're gonna be talking about theirpersonal journeys of going from scientists
to advocates in a way, and trying tofind that line where they can still

(00:42):
speak well about the unbiased science,but also advocate for the environment.
It's something that a lot of scientistsgo through, including myself, trying
to figure out where they should bealong that line, and this is a really
interesting conversation that I had.
On this episode of the Howto Protect the Ocean Podcast.
Let's start the show.

(01:02):
Hey everybody.
Welcome back to another exciting episodeof the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, andthis is the podcast where you find
out what's happening with the ocean,how you can speak up for the ocean,
and what you can do to live fora better ocean by taking action.
On today's episode, we havetwo special, special guests.
They are from the hit series, all thesharks, where people would take tanks,
four tanks a day for eight hours indifferent places around the world, and

(01:25):
they would compete to take pictures ofdifferent species of sharks, each worth
different points in different places.
So a tiger shark in the maldive isworth three points because they're
found all over the place, and when theygo to the Galapagos, they're worth a
lot more like maybe 60 or 75 points.
I forget the number exactly.
But they are worth a lot more becausethey're rare in those areas and these

(01:49):
divers, underwater photographersand underwater videographers,
scientists, conservationists, sciencecommunicators, are all up to compete
against with four prize where theycan give money towards charity.
This was a reality show likewe've never seen before.
The one thing I love about this realityshow is it showed the diversity of sharks.
We got away from just tigers, bulls,great whites, thresher sharks, all

(02:13):
these different types of sharks thatwe see over and over and over again
on different types of like sharkweeks and shark fests and so forth.
It's always good to know those stuff,but after a while we kind of just think
those are the only sharks that are aroundor people who aren't familiar with it.
Don't really get to know a lot ofthe other sharks that are around.
And we saw wgan sharks,we saw old silky sharks.
We saw cat, leopard catsharks in South Africa.

(02:35):
We saw all thesedifferent types of sharks.
Rare as well asinteresting looking sharks.
And we really got to see the passionof the scientists that were on here,
including Chris Malinowski and BrennanTower, who are here to discuss.
Their experience with all the Sharks.
Also their career and how they got to onall the Sharks, like what it was like,
what they were worried about, what theywanted to make sure they got through,

(02:57):
how they were happy with the way thatthey did the show, like the producers
and edited the show and the way theylooked when they came out of the show.
It was really well done.
You know, obviously I have a video thatI'll link to in the show notes where,
you know, I talked about how much Iloved this show and it was just nice
to be able to get Chris and Brendan.
I had Aaliyah on the Beyond Jawspodcast with Dave Ebert and then I

(03:19):
was able to get Chris and Brendan.
Chris just got married.
They both came in from the field like overthe summer that they were there a lot.
And so it was just great to beable to be a part and get to hear
their part and their story behindthe scenes of all the Sharks.
So it was great to hear it.
I'm happy that you get tolisten to this interview.
Enjoy this interview with Chris andBrendan and I'll talk to you after.
Hey Chris.

(03:39):
Hey Brendan.
Welcome to the How toProtect the Ocean Podcast.
Are you ready to talkabout all the sharks?
Absolutely.
Absolutely wonderful.
Excited for it actually.
Wonderful.
Right on.
I'm super pumped because this issomething that we've been wanting
to do for quite a long time.
Uh, when all the sharks was releasedin the summer, uh, you guys were

(03:59):
in the field doing your sciencework, and so it's always difficult.
We have to talk about, we have to talkto production companies, I think of
getting people to be like, look, we havescientists who actually work in the field
in the summers and they need to stayin the field, and they can't do press
when you release it in the summer, sowe'll have to talk to them about that.
Well, so I, I actually had to write intothe contract that I needed to be back by a

(04:21):
certain date because I had a field seasonto get back for, so that wasn't there.
The actual.
An actual consideration.
Yeah, absolutely.
I love it.
Well, this is great.
I'm, I'm super happy to have you, tohave you on because, um, you know, this
is something that I've been wantingto have you guys on for a while.
We've been talking for a while, backand forth, uh, a lot of cool things that
happened to you guys over the summer.
Chris, you got, you gotmarried, which is awesome.

(04:43):
Uh, and yeah, that's fantastic.
Um, so we're going, we're gonna talka lot about all the sharks and, and
how that whole production works.
We had Leon earlier in the summer, and shetalked a little bit about, you know, what,
well, she talked a lot about what she did.
Uh, and, uh, I wanna get your guys'take, you know, we're not gonna, there's
still people who are watching this show,so we're not gonna say who won, right?

(05:05):
But we can say that youguys did pretty well, right?
You guys went pretty far.
So we'll just go as, as that.
But I don't wanna say too many peoplethat you know who won and who not.
You gotta watch the show on Netflix.
All the sharks.
But I wanna get to know, not just your,the, the whole production thing, but
I want to get to know your experience,not only in, you know, all the sharks,
but you know, how you became scientistsand what really got you into scientists

(05:28):
and how this show has potentiallychanged your way of viewing how you do
science communication in the future.
So that's what we're gonnabe talking about today.
We're gonna talk about all sortsof things, so I'm super excited.
But before we do, I wanna get toknow you guys a little bit more.
So Chris, could you just let usknow who you are and what you do?
Well, kind of like you, Andrew.

(05:48):
I grew up far removed from the oceanin, uh, a state called Wisconsin.
Very northern part of the United States.
And what, what state is that?
You've passed through it beforeon your way, on your way up
to Canada, I'm sure of it.
Yeah.
Um, but you know, I mean, I think, Ididn't know what marine biology was

(06:09):
when I was younger, but I had thisfantasy of what I thought it was.
Right.
And, and so I. I grew up just tryingto figure out what I wanted to do.
I knew that I loved to be outside.
I knew that I, I loved to splasharound the ponds and, and lakes and,
and try to basically, um, figureout what my, my curiosity was.
And I go out there lookingfor frogs, looking for lizard,
looking for fish, whatever.

(06:30):
Um, and so sort of as I progressed throughschool, through, through my, my career,
I stayed that track quite, quite firmly.
I, at some point during undergrad waspre-med and thought maybe I'd go the
medical route, but I always had Biologycorn center to what I was interested in.
And I had an internship workingon, um, and, and fish ecology in

(06:52):
the Great Lakes Lake Michigan inundergrad, which then I took a job
in doing that after I, I graduated.
So that really sort oflike got me interested in.
Understanding in that case, invasivespecies impact on native fish
populations, um, was a big one andcontinues to be in the Great Lakes
as it is in the marine environment.
Mm-hmm.
And so I follow that path.
I had an incredible advisor then thatreally got me hooked on fish ecology.

(07:15):
And my background is, by the way, eventhough we're talking about sharks,
my, my background is very broad.
I'm, I consider myself more of amarine biologist fish ecologist.
Right.
Um, and I dabble in a lot of differentthings under the umbrella of sort
of conservation human impacts.
And so I started following that,that path I think in at some point.
And I can remember a few instances during,especially my undergraduate, um, part of

(07:39):
my education where I just really startedto see some things going on around me.
Um, you know, roads being constructed,forest being torn down, um, pollution
that you could very readily see.
And I really started to question whatour impacts were on the environment.
And that's really what.
Uh, inspired me to follow the paththat I'm on, and I've never really
been able to figure out exactly whatmy focus and ecosystem has been.

(08:03):
So I've done wetland research,I've done great lakes research.
I've spent a lot of time now in my, uh,master's, PhD, um, and beyond in, in
the marine world working on big fish.
Uh, my PhD work was on Goliathgrouper, which of course I worked
around sharks most of the timeI was working with that species.
So it was a pretty easy segue intomy, um, my current role, um, where the

(08:24):
last three to four years, I've beenrunning a shark lab now, so I've sort
of done a lot of different things.
Um, but it's always core and centeron, on marine conservation especially.
Yeah, that's, it's, it's,it's super interesting.
I wanna dive in a little bitmore, but Brendan, let's get
to know you a little bit.
Why don't you just let us know whoyou are and what you do and sort of
how you got into this whole game.

(08:45):
Yeah.
Um, well my name's Brendan Towar.
I'm, uh, I'm currently a postdocout at Scripps Institution
of Oceanography, um, at UCSD.
So I'm in San Diego.
Love it out here.
Um, I'm from Kentucky.
Alright.
Chris, couple Midwest guys.
One of the same,
what state is that?

(09:06):
Um, so yeah, pretty similar like,you know, from a landlocked state.
Um, did not grow up on the ocean,at least in the early years.
In like early middle school.
My mom moved to Florida and so thenI started spending summers, spring
breaks, Christmas breaks, all that alongthe Gulf Coast and Pensacola Beach.
Um, and I was already swimming allthe time and fishing all the time.

(09:31):
And so when she moved to Florida, thatall just kind of took the next step
and I was doing that in the ocean,fishing off the kayak and Right.
Um.
You know, fishing off piers a lot too.
There's a big Pensacolabeach fishing pier.
Um, and so I just became more andmore familiar with life in our oceans.
Had a lot of really great, you know,firsthand encounters with wildlife.

(09:53):
Um, definitely I caughta few sharks early on.
Um, and I, I'd see how people wouldinteract with wildlife as well.
You know, like on slow days on thefishing pier there, people sometimes
pull up shark suckers, which arereally cool fish that attach to, to
big animals in the ocean like sharksand get a free ride and a free meal.
Um, and people would catch theseshark suckers and pull 'em up on

(10:15):
the pier and then stick 'em againstthe flagpole at the end of the
pier, and they just dry out and die.
And, you know, you, you start to seestuff like that when you're like 12,
13, you're like, man, I don't knowthat, that's like, that's not right.
Like, why are, why are we treatingother life on our planet in this way?
Um, and so I guess I, I kept fishing.

(10:37):
Um.
For a while, you know, my fishingethics changed a lot over the years
from like fully catch and releaseto then fishing only to eat fish.
Um, and I've definitely, I've gone evenfurther that direction over the years.
Now I do more like, I much preferunderwater photography or spearfishing.
Um, but all that continued and, andled me into a career in biology.

(11:01):
Had some great professors in undergrad.
I went to Furman University in SouthCarolina, um, and one in particular
got me really into wildlife ecologyand management through a program in
New Mexico called the Wild Semester.
So I actually worked with him on MountainLions looking at Mountain Lion ecology.
Um, a lot of camera trap workand looking at their kill sites.

(11:22):
We had a, a couple animalscollared and so Nice.
You know, he, he dropped meoff at a wildlife refuge in
the middle of New Mexico.
I was probably 19.
Yeah.
Um, he dropped me off.
I got a Chevy Blazer from theFish and Wildlife Service and a
trailer, and I was just there forlike two months, three months.
Basically looking at all the kill sites,like looking at all the GPS points of

(11:44):
mountain lions from the night before,and then in the morning going and
finding the places where they'd killedsomething and breaking every rule, like
crawling up to a dead animal killedby mountain lion in the last 12 hours,
dear God, by myself, taking samples ofthe, of whatever it was, identifying
it and looking at prey habitat use.
So it, yeah, weirdly enough, allthose skills and all those tools that

(12:08):
I've built out there in the desert,looking at mountain lions, a lot of
those same questions you can apply tosharks and so I knew that whole time.
This is fun, but I'm not,not into the mosquitoes.
I'm not that interested in the desert.
Um, I gotta get to theocean as soon as I can.
Um, love it.
But it, it made me, you know, a lot of,again, a lot of the same issues apply
that face big terrestrial predators.

(12:31):
Um, you know, whether that'swildlife conflict with people or
what, whatever else, there's so manyhunting and fishing, all these things.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and so that it really made meinterested in management and the, the
intersection between like wildlifeecology and management and how humans
interact with the natural world.
And so that's really guided all theresearch I've done in the marine

(12:52):
environment, um, on sharks ever since,you know, primarily looking at bycatch.
Um, my master's was on deep seabycatch mortality, uh, lots and
lots of time spent in The Bahamas.
Um.
I'm studying everything fromlike shallow shark species in the
mangroves to some really cool deepsea species Cuban dogfish and guer
sharks offshore, like 800 meters down.

(13:14):
Um, and so that'sreally, that's continued.
That led to a PhD at FloridaInternational, uh, focused
on silky sharks primarily.
Yeah.
Um, and that was a perfect segue intomy postdoc here at Scripps where I,
the first year was looking at silkyshark population structure in the
Pacific, um, kind of split betweenScripps and the Nature Conservancy.

(13:34):
Yeah.
Um, and working with an RFMO, the, theInner American Tropical Tuna Commission.
Um, and then since then, the next postdocis looking at, uh, toxins in commercially
important seafood in Southern California.
So focused on DDT and PCBs.
So similar to lots of overlap withChris in all these weird ways.
Um, but you know, you, youbounce all over the place.

(13:57):
There's nothing boring about this career.
But it's actually pretty insane.
And Brendan, I can talk at some pointabout how we got to know each other, but
it's the same kind of parallel story thata lot of people tell, a lot of people that
get into marine biology don't end up Yeah.
Or, or, sorry, don't startin, in origin of the ocean.
They just have this fantasy and they,they kind of live it out and figure out
what that is throughout their career.

(14:18):
'cause working in the Great Lakes,same as Brendan, I was doing fish
ecology stuff with a lot of the samegear that I ended up applying to then
my masters when I got to The Bahamas.
Um, and a lot of the same questionsapplied, and then I went back from my
postdoc, um, at, at Purdue Universityafter my PhD and applied a lot of the
same things that I learned from freshwaterto marine, back to freshwater again.

(14:38):
So it really, um, you know, thequestions, I'm always a very
question oriented person, right?
Because like at the end of theday, you can ask very similar
questions in different places.
Well, and and that's what a, thatwas my next question to both of you.
Um.
And, and Chris, we can start off withyou in terms of what, what is, what are
the, the, I know it probably changesas you evolve as a scientist, but for

(15:00):
now, like what is your driving question?
You know, you've, you've, you'veinvestigated multiple realms.
Um, Brendan, you have two.
What's your, and, and especiallylooking at predators, um, what's your
driving question that, that allows youto experience all these different, uh,
investigations and realms and scienceand realms, like fresh water and, and

(15:22):
salt water to like, continue to drive?
Like, I wanna know more about thisquestion, but maybe with different species
or maybe in a different environment?
It's a great question and I, whenI reflect on that and which I
do often, it really comes downfor me to living in a healthy,
sustainable world ecosystem, right?

(15:42):
So trying to, askingquestions surrounding.
What makes a healthy ecosystem?
What is a baseline that wecan, that we can compare to?
Do we have a good baseline?
Do we need to develop thatbaseline in order to compare?
Um, and those sorts of questions canbe asked in terrestrial marine and
in fresh water aquatic environments.
You know, what, what has been introducedto this environment that has changed it?

(16:06):
Um, a lot.
You know, I've done a lot ofwork with invasive species.
I've done work with pollution.
Um, my PhD was all, um, onmercury toxicity and how does that
impact the health of an animal?
And then how do you scale that up?
How does that affect the population?
How does that affect the ecosystem?
And so you can kind of tackle thesequestions from different avenues.
Right.
Um, you know, overfishing iss a big one.

(16:26):
I know Brendan, uh, focuseson that a lot for his work.
Yeah.
And, and as a i, but also in specieslike the Goliath grouper that up until
recently was closed to, to fishing.
What is the cause oftheir population changes?
Early on, we know it was overfishing,but then it's habitat loss and
destruction and it's pollution.
Um, so oftentimes we can point to whatthe major impact is, but then there's

(16:49):
multiple other ones that trail from there.
And trying to get backto some equilibrium.
But we can live sustainably withinour environment, but also we're
stewards of the environment.
We don't own it.
We're part of it.
Right, right.
And, and we need to also, um, wehave the responsibility to manage
ourselves is really what we're managing.
And to do that responsibly, but youneed to understand the baseline ecology,

(17:11):
um, side of things from an animalin order to then build that up to
ecosystem to how we, how we manage it.
So, um, I think I've answered yourquestion, but generally those are
the sorts of things that I thinkabout as healthy ecosystems and
how do we, how do we understand it?
How do we get there?
That's amazing.
And Brendan, how about yourself?
Same question to you.
Yeah, very similar.
I think I've, uh, I think because of.

(17:34):
My start as a fisherman.
I think that's all.
Fishing has always been the focus.
Mm-hmm.
Um, you know, the main missionbeing sustainable fishing.
Um, so I'm, you know, I'm notanti fishing by any means.
Um, but if we could find the balancethat Chris is talking about, where
we've got health ecosystems thatsupport people and allow for abundant

(17:55):
wildlife, you know, that's, mm-hmm.
That's the dream.
And if you start there and workbackwards, what's the information that
you need in order to achieve that?
And so, for me, again, I thinklike the, the personal experiences
really drove this early on.
Like, bycatch seemed like an issuethat we could really focus on with a

(18:15):
lot of people in agreement that we canget rid of it, you know, like mm-hmm.
Nobody likes catching the wrong species.
Right.
It takes up time, it ruins your gear,you know, it's, you're not gonna eat it.
There's no point.
And so when I learned, I, Isaw that firsthand growing up.
You know, like you're fishing for.
Whatever it is.

(18:35):
Like the slot limit red fish on theflats in Pensacola, and you catch
something outta season and you throwit back and you're like, well, I
didn't wanna ruin that animal's day.
You know?
Right.
And sometimes it doesn't make it,sometimes it dies because you caught it.
Yeah.
And when you then extrapolate that outto the enormous scale at which fisheries
take place globally, and you're like,man, we're killing so many sharks in

(18:56):
particular, um, and marine mammalsand all these species that aren't well
suited to being caught in large numbers.
Mm-hmm.
And they're dying accidentally.
No one wants this to happen.
How can we solve that problem?
And then as you go back, you'relike, all right, well, we need
to know where these sharks go.
Where do they spend time?
What are the places Yeah.
Where we should be protecting them?
How do they react whenthey're caught on a hook?

(19:18):
Why?
Mm-hmm.
Why do some species die when others don't?
Then you get, like, you canget really, really fine scale.
And, and I did in some studies gettingdown into the physiology of it.
Um, and then, you know, you're alwayslike zooming in, zooming out, maybe one.
One year you're focused on blood chemistryand physiology to figure out like, how can
we predict mortality in this one speciesbased on how long it's on the hook.

(19:42):
Yeah.
And then the next year you're lookingat like extinction risk criteria across
all these species in the Caribbean.
And so it's, it's, it's beenchallenging for me and still is,
I think, to find exactly where myknowledge and skills like best apply
to solve some of these problems.
Um, I'm definitely still in the earlycareer stage where I'm still trying

(20:05):
to accumulate lots and lots of tools.
Um, but looking forward, I'm muchmore now than ever trying to think
about how I can apply the things I'vepicked up to have the most impact,
um, for the benefit of the animalsand people and, and fisheries as well.
I love it.
I love it.
Those, those challengesthat Brendan speaks of.
I, we, we talk about this a lotand, and trying to figure out how to

(20:28):
navigate this space that we're in.
I mean, it's literally like,like Brendan, I'm, I'm having
some, uh, some conservation, youknow, minded issues right now.
Like, you know, it almost becomesthis, this all encompassing thing
that you can't sleep you, becausewe're, we're putting all of our energy
and effort into these questions.
Of course.
And then at the end of the day, whatactually moves the needle, you know,
um, it becomes a major challenge.

(20:49):
'cause we could have all the science inthe world and then oftentimes we have way
more than we need to make good managementdecisions, but then you have to start
playing this politics game or this, orin the case that we might talk more about
today, maybe it's storytelling that, thatwe need to delve more into because, um,
you know, science is one major componentof this, um, this puzzle, this challenge.
But there are so many otherthings that I think we're both

(21:10):
exploring in early career scienceas early career scientists now too.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think, I thinkthat's really interesting.
It's just, it's funny, we're on the samewavelength here because, um, I was gonna
ask, my next question was gonna be like,you know, once you get the science and
you understand the, you know, whateverscale you're at, whether you're looking at
blood physiology or whether you're lookingat ecosystem dynamics, is the goal,

(21:31):
what's the goal of doing the research?
Obviously it's to get that understandingand to get, uh, a complete understanding
of what the, of what the topic is.
But is there, when you look atconservation as a whole, 'cause both
of you're quite conservation focused,is there, uh, is the goal of each
research paper, not only to answer thequestion, but also to help drive policy?

(21:52):
Like, are you working with nonprofitorganizations or policy makers
to be like, Hey, what do you,what information do you need?
I'll go, I'll go, like,I have the same question.
I'll go find it in this study.
Like, are, is that the goal or is thateven now, like, now that you guys are,
have been in, in the, in the game fora little bit and you're like, okay.

(22:14):
Like, I, I wanna do more.
I want my study to have more ofan impact than it already has.
How do I do this?
Is that where you're at?
Or like, is, is policy?
Are you, are you looking at policy?
Are you looking at, you know, youtalked about politics, uh, talk
about science, communication.
Like where, like what avenue are you at?
And, and do you find this happeningwith other colleagues of yours?

(22:35):
I'm happy to answer that first, butI've got an answer for that for sure.
But I, I don't wanna keeptalking first before Brenda.
Oh yeah.
We'll, Brenda, I feellike I, we'll go Brendan.
This Brendan, did you wanna respondto that first or do you want me to go?
Sure.
I'm excited to hear about yourexperience with Goliath Gruber.
I assume that's what you're gonnaYeah, but I'll, I'll start it off.
It's an easy one for me 'causeI've been in that Good job.

(22:57):
Perfect.
Yeah.
Well that's, it's a perfectcase study and yeah, this exact
question, but I would say I've gone,
I've always struggled, I thinkwith being motivated by doing
conservation, relevant work.
Or work leading towardssustainable fishing.
I think as a grad student, especiallyearly on, it's very easy to see a

(23:21):
potential project, realize you canget funding for it, you can do it
in the right place, and you just,you hit the ground running so fast.
Mm-hmm.
You do it and then you publish it,and then you're like, well, two
years later, what has this done?
Really?
I don't know, you know?
Right.
Like, did I achieve my initial objective?
That's really hard to say.
You might put a tiny piece ofuseful information out there

(23:43):
if the need arises for it.
Like I'm thinking, my masters was allon discard mortality of these deep
seed bycatch species, and the sharkI focused on, well, a couple of 'em,
but the main one was a Cuban dogfish.
It's the number one bycatch speciesin a couple of fisheries among Dogfish
in the southeastern United States.

(24:04):
Now there's a discard mortality ratebased on a long line capture scenario.
Has anyone used it?
No.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
It's there.
If someone wants to use it, ifsomeone ever does like a stock
assessment for Cuban Dogfish in thatregion, I'd assume that they would.
It's been used in other studiesto inform this general problem

(24:26):
globally of deep sea shark bycatch.
But I, it's very difficult to pinpoint,like, I, I asked this question, I
answered it to the best of my ability,and now it's achieved this thing.
And so I think now I'm trying to comeat things from the opposite direction
of like, if you wanna inform the policyof some fishery management council,

(24:48):
go to their meeting this year, seewhat their research priorities are.
I promise they've published themin some convoluted PDF somewhere.
Find that PDF and, and read it.
And then say like, Hey, I'll, I'llanswer this question that you guys need.
'cause nobody's got enoughtime and, and funding.
So if grad students can.
There.
I think that's a missingconnection in a lot of cases.

(25:10):
Yeah.
Where like those management bodies needto almost put out a call every year of
like, we'd love for people to tacklethese questions and we've got all this
data, but that's almost a whole job thatsomeone would have to create, you know?
Um, in a way.
Yeah.
Co completely agree.
I mean, it's, it's definitely needed.
Um, and it's something you'd learn.
I completely agree.
Like when I did my master's, youknow, I never thought about any

(25:32):
kind of implications afterwards orhow it would be used afterwards.
I was part of a larger project like inat, for World Wildlife Fund, so that was
just where my project was, but I didn't,I didn't know what was gonna happen next.
I never asked the questions becausethat was more focused on just doing my
masters and doing that little thing.
And I think it would've been goodif I started to like open, like,
and you're young, you just wanna dothe work, but you gotta open your

(25:54):
mind a little bit and just be like.
What's going on in the world?
Why am I doing this?
Mm-hmm.
And just ask those overarchingquestions, those very high level
questions where you're just like,where is this gonna impact and how
is this gonna impact in the, in thereal world after, after I leave?
Or, or, you know, is this gonna helpsomewhere in an island community or is
this gonna help somewhere in Canada orthe US or in Europe or Africa or wherever?

(26:16):
Uh, and then be able to do it that way.
Um, but yeah, that was afantastic, fantastic answer.
Chris.
I, I want to hear the, the Goliath grouperstory because you, I, I assume you've
been working on that for quite some time.
Yeah, I, um, I think it's interestingthe point that, that Brendan brings up.
'cause I think ultimately what we allwant as scientists, as students, as

(26:37):
whatever, when we publish a paper,it's almost always aligned in a paper.
Like, you know, this, we're tryingto push this towards management,
like management implications.
Yeah.
We all use these lines in our papers,but do they actually get used for that?
That direct, uh, managementapplication, um, oftentimes, no.
You know, right.
A lot of times we put years ofwork into a paper and we're lucky

(26:57):
to have it read a dozen times.
You know, if, if you havehigher impact work yeah.
It'll get cited a bunch.
Um, but that, that's the question.
Right.
And, um, in terms of like thinkingabout funding and projects, before
I get into goth grouper, that'salways been a big question for me.
And when I was in my PhD, Iapplied for a lot of grants.
Mm-hmm.
Got good marks and didn't getfunding for, for the big ones I

(27:19):
applied for mostly through Noah.
But what I was trying to do, and I thinkmy, what I was missing then was I was
trying to take the project that I reallywanted to work on and fit it into the,
into the mold of what they were funding.
Right.
And, and that you can be a good writer,have good questions, and oftentimes
it doesn't, doesn't quite make it.
So the opposite of that,that Brendan brought up is.
You know, you see what's being fundedor you go to these meetings and then you

(27:42):
develop questions, projects around that.
Oftentimes those are probably, that'sprobably a better recipe for funding.
Um, just as an example with Goliathgrouper, I never sought out to, to
keep working with, you know, largemegafauna, um, charismatic species.
But it's kind of just beena path that I've followed.
And Goliath gruper to me, becamesuch a, a giant in the, um, policy

(28:07):
conservation ecology world becausewe didn't know much about them.
Mm-hmm.
Um, a lot of contention around the speciesand big fisheries implications and, and a
lot of stakeholder involvement between thedive community, um, and, and fishermen.
Um, and, and I can give some examples,but, but to me, why I got so excited
and, and why I was worked so hardin my PhD was because it fit all of

(28:30):
these things that I was interested in.
And to Goliath group, it becamethe model organism, um, model
species for me to really.
Hone in on a lot of these questionsthat have plagued me my entire career.
And so I, I, I took that to task anddid what I could and learned from
some two incredible, um, PhD advisors,Dr. Um, Felicia Coleman and Dr. Chris
Koenig, who were giants in the field.

(28:50):
Our giants in the field.
Yeah.
Um, and so to keep it brief, you know,what was really going on is the, they're
over fish to extinction and, um, to newextinction levels and, um, throughout
their entire range, right from, yeah.
Um, the Atlantic down, theCaribbean, down, um, all the
way from Florida to Brazil.
Theoretically to the west coastof Africa, even though, um, only

(29:11):
anecdotal, only anecdotal reportsexisted, they still occur there.
So this giant fish that formsthese large fishing aggregations,
and we all know fishingaggregations often get fished down.
Um, and so they were targets of that.
And on top of that, they're large,they don't move much and they
have very high site fidelity.
So they're really easy to spear fish,really easy to target for fishers.

(29:32):
And they got, theirlevels got driven down.
Well, the work that Chris Konik Andiahad done as I was leading into that lab
was they were basically discovering andworking towards just understanding the
basic biology of this fish that almostnothing was known about before 1990.
And, and as that the population startedto rebuild once they were completely
closed off, 'cause there was no sensein having a fishery for them anymore,

(29:54):
you got all these major conservationimpacts that started coming in.
Um, you know, fishermen, um, disgruntledover catches being stolen, um, as
especially the larger adults off on reefs.
Um, you know, you have all theissues of habitat loss destruction.
They use mangrove habitats.
You've got, um, constant commissionFWC meetings to talk about whether

(30:17):
or not to reopen this fisherythat's been closed for 30 years.
So that's where I start to insert, I,I'm working on the population levels
of the, of these fish as they recover.
I'm looking at mercury toxicity, howthat affects their, their, um, their
reproductive capacity, their, theirindividual health and population health,
and tying this all into management.
So, and then I'm also bringing theseto, to commission meetings with

(30:38):
my advisors and we'd go in and wewould, we would talk about the, the
biology of the animal that they can'twithstand heavy fishing pressure.
But you've got all these voices coming in.
You've got, you know, fish, somevery conservative fishing, um mm-hmm.
Members of the community coming in andsaying, we need to call these animals.
We need to kill 'em.
They're ruining the reefs,they're stealing our catches.
And then you've got the divecommunity saying, we need these.

(31:00):
They're driving, you know, millionsof dollars of revenue for our, for us.
And then I'm coming in as ascientist being like, okay,
how do you dance this line of?
Mm-hmm.
And I know, Andrew, you've talked aboutthis before in, um, in an earlier podcast.
How do you dance this line asa scientist, staying unbiased,
but also speak up for science?
Yeah.
And that's really the directionthat I found myself going
in more and more and more.
And we've written marine policy pieces.

(31:22):
We've written open lettersto the commissioners.
I've met with individual commissionersto talk about the biology, how they
can't withstand catches, why allthe misinformation being brought
to them by the public is untruth.
They're not destroying the reefs.
Yeah.
They're actually increasing diversityand abundance of other fishes.
Um, but these negative interactions thatpeople have, just like they do sharks,
which is why that's such a parallel is thedepredation issue going on with sharks.

(31:44):
And the keys right now is the samething that I've been dealing with
Goliath Cooper my entire career.
Yeah.
And so trying to dispel misinformation,misperceptions, bring this to the
commission, write publications thatdeal with the policy pieces speaking
on top, on, on behalf of, um, you know,conservative management policies being

(32:05):
looking at the best available science.
'cause not all science is the same either.
Right?
Keep that in mind.
No, for sure.
Um, and, and so that, I foundmyself in the middle of that a
lot and, and trying to navigatewhere my energy was best suited.
So going to the commission meetingsand giving talks there, it's been
good, but also exhausting and of,and oftentimes maybe not worth
the energy and effort that takes.

(32:26):
So I think as Brendan and I considerour path moving forward, um, and, and
other colleagues as well, and even inmy position as director of research.
In conservation for Ocean First Institute,it's like, how much time do you spend
doing this versus that, versus educationversus research, versus trying to
walk this tight policy line and notlose your credibility as a scientist.
And by the way, get into Netflixseries and try to talk about science

(32:48):
and, and be a public communicator.
Trying to basically have this positiveconservation impact going all these
different directions, like what is worththe energy and effort that it takes.
And it also reality tv.
Chris the Bachelor baby, wegotta get into the Bachelor.
That's the way you do it.
Love Island.
I think it's interesting because like,you know, the way, the way you just

(33:09):
talked about it and, and Brandon wetalked, you guys have talked both
about this is you, you're one persontrying to do all these one, all these
things like we're scientists, we studyscience, we study the ocean, we look
at trends, you know, whether they'repositive or negative or, or just neutral.
That's what we're doing.
And here we are finding ourselvesand doing, trying to, doing,

(33:30):
trying to do everything else.
And I think the biggest pushback, I knowwhen I speak to scientists is there's
no financial incentive to do all this.
It's the passion that we havebecause of the way we grew up.
You know, bringing fishing, you know,Chris being around the Great Lakes and
seeing the changes that have happened.
This is what we care about.
I think we're very, it is a very differentfield when you go into wildlife, oceans,

(33:54):
whatever that might be compared to likemaybe finance, where, you know, your
passion is really shown through, uh, this,in, in a way of like, we need to protect,
not try and make the most money possible.
It's, we need to protect, but youalso have to do your basic job.
And sometimes that's just science.
It's considered science.
So it's, it's a very differentthing that, because we always

(34:15):
just like, well, we gotta do this.
Like, we gotta help.
But it's, it's almost like.
There's a lot of organizations outthere that, you know, they are,
they do amazing things with a smallteam, uh, just like Ocean First.
Uh, but they, you know,you can't do everything.
You know, you've gotta do what youcan do because of a small team.
And, and, uh, and obviously I'm notpicking on, on Ocean First, this is a,

(34:36):
this is nonprofits in any kind of wildlifemanagement is, you can't do everything.
You can't do the, thescience communication.
You can't do the, the lobbyingor, or working with policy makers.
You can't, and doing thescience and everything, it's
like, it's a hard thing to do.
And then getting funding tobuild an organization like
that is not, uh, easy as well.
It's, it's, it's a difficult thing to do.
So I think it's really interestingthat we've identified that.

(34:59):
Um, but then we also do these things,which is like, kind of crazy, like
all the Sharks, you know, the, theNetflix special that both of you're in.
And one of the reasons why you'rehere is, is you, you do this as a,
like, what was the reason why you,like, were you approached to do
this and who was approached first?
And um, and like how did this all happen?
Well, first, first there are,well, I'll just add to the point

(35:20):
that you were just making, they'reblurred lines between our personal
lives and our, and our work lives.
Absolutely.
And those, that is the biggestdifficulty, I think, for any of us Yeah.
Is like, where do I draw theline with just OFI, ocean First
Institute and what I do personally.
Yeah.
And what's worth theeffort and to continue on.
So that becomes the sortof exhaustion that happens.
Um, 'cause yeah, with, with, with limitedfunds and in small operations, you have to

(35:43):
limit what you're doing or you burn out.
And, and that's what we'reall a victim of a lot.
Um, for sure for the showthough, as, oh, go ahead Brendan.
I'll just add that we also have tobe very careful with the line between
scientific credibility and thenmore advocacy style work, you know?
Mm-hmm.
And Chris and I come from, like, ouracademic training has been very parallel.

(36:08):
Like we've come fromlabs that are heavy on.
Um, you know, I'd say all of our advisorsare like naturalists before anything else.
Like true I theologist type folks.
Yeah.
Um, and so we wanna stay true to thescience at all times, but also like
at, at times, like Chris said, youdo have to advocate for the science.

(36:28):
And so that's been a challengeas well, is trying to figure out
where our best place is among thosedifferent genres of, um, I guess
science or conservation more broadly.
And the Netflix show is, uh, that'sa whole new, a whole new genre.
Yeah.
And so with that, well, it's kinda likereality tv if you really think about it.
It's, it's an absolute from a realitytv it was actually quite refreshing,

(36:53):
uh, from a reality TV perspective.
Uh, I thought that was cool,which I'll go to a bit, but Yeah.
Chris, sorry, go ahead.
I cut you off.
I apologize.
No, I mean, that's whythese are fun conversations.
We've all got something to say.
Um, we, you know, Brendan and I.Made a decision to, after we had
been contacted by the producer of theshow, um, we had both been interviewed
separately and, and together.

(37:14):
And we had a long deliberation after this.
'cause we, you know, we asked, it almostbecame our interview of 'em, right?
And that's how I, it felt, and I thinkthat makes for a good conversation.
Part of why we trusted the producerson this, as they were willing to, um,
let us arrow out all of our concerns.
You know, Brendan and I, um,were very concerned with our,
uh, scientific reputations.
We're not quick to sign upfor these sorts of things.

(37:36):
Um, but it was clear that they wantedtwo people with, you know, credibility
in the science field to be a partof the show, namely with their PhDs.
Hence our name, shark Docs.
We, we set ourselves apartwith that, um, purposely.
And we wanted to bring that to thetable, but we had to do it appropriately.
And we had to really figure outfor ourselves how much we were
willing to, to put ourselves outthere in this reality style TV show.

(38:00):
Um, and what that might mean forus personally, for our careers.
Um, it was a real consideration and,and a lot of it we doubted, right?
And, and we got this long contract thatwas basically a, a carbon, um, print
of what the Bachelor would see, right?
Mm-hmm.
You know, basically this veryscary document saying We own you.
And, and we pushed back a lot.

(38:21):
We pushed back for, for a long, longtime for, and not that we got a huge
amount of ground with it, but enoughwhere we were comfortable, right.
Because it was, we wereup against Netflix, right?
Yeah.
Um, but they've gotta protect theirown too, and, and their production.
Yeah.
Um, concept.
So we, we understood that.
So we, we worked withit as much as we could.
Um, weren't really sure.

(38:42):
Up until, I think like weeksbefore, like what we were gonna do.
Like we literally didn't sign thecontract till before, but, um, I, I think
we got, it was a week, A week before.
Before the first flight.
It was.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Did you guys, the flight, was thatclose, like you, like it was upcoming,
you're like, do we do, like, whatwas your biggest, um, like sticking
point of, of actually doing the show?

(39:02):
Like what was the big worry for you guys?
For me it was credibility.
Just like we're saying.
Yeah.
I mean in, yeah.
In our fields.
Your credibility is kind of everything.
Like your reputation is worth a lot.
And Chris and I are, we're still, Idon't know, in the first third of our
career, maybe, um, maybe I still callmyself an early career researcher,

(39:28):
so I don't know when that ends.
And it feels like, yeah, I think I'm,I'm teetering at the edge of that.
More than you're Yeah.
Just a few years ahead.
Yeah.
But it's still, it's, that's funnybecause like all of our friends
obviously are like senior peoplein their companies or whatever.
Meanwhile it's like, oh,I'm a postdoc at Scripps.
Like, yeah.

(39:49):
You know, uh, but like realityis I've been doing this same
job since I was like 19.
Mm-hmm.
You know, like it's, we have a lotof experience and we've invested
our entire lives into this career.
And so at a time when ourcareers are going well.
We're like, yeah, we're publishing,like we're hitting all the benchmarks
to, I don't know, a couple yearsfrom now in my case, like, I don't

(40:12):
know, maybe I want to be a professor.
Okay.
Three years from now, maybethat's attainable somewhere.
Yeah.
Do I wanna risk everything on?
Yeah.
Like some show that Ihave no control over.
Like they can just, for example,each, each place, right is three days
of filming from morning till nightwhere you're searching for sharks.
And at any given time there's likemultiple cameras on every team.

(40:36):
And so you're looking at just hundredsof hours of footage per location that get
whittled down to the 45 minute episode.
And so you can imagine the breadth ofhumanity that's experienced across four
teams and like eight weeks of travelingthe world with one group of people.
Like imagine a family vacationgoing for eight weeks, you know?
Oh yeah.

(40:56):
You're people have verystrong personalities.
Yeah.
Like interacting with other people,getting that everything's filmed.
Right.
And um.
And we just didn't knowwhat this was gonna be.
This is also the first of its kind, right?
We like a reality show, competitionshow shark education, friendly.
Like everything they pitchedto us we're like, sounds great.
Yeah.

(41:16):
But what, we have no example of whatthis is actually going to look like.
So we still in the end, had to takea massive leap of faith and trust
the producers and be like, okay.
And then Brendan and I were like,okay, we, we stay true to ourselves.
We don't try to act 'cause we'renot actors, we're scientists, right?
And, um, and we just, you know, we'reourselves and we, we stick to within

(41:37):
guidelines of like, you know, trying notto lose our cool and, and, and all the
things we would do in our normal lives.
And I think that's what we,we stuck to and did very well.
Um, not that we didn't falterat times, but that was human,
you know, nature for us too.
Um, but at the end westayed true to ourselves.
I think, you know, we didn't try topush any narrative or do anything,
um, and in, and in some ways it maybemade us less interesting on screen.

(42:00):
But that's what we are willing todo and that's what we, we stuck to.
Well, I'll tell you like the one thingthat I, when I first heard about it, um,
was I was like, this is a reality show.
So is this gonna be like everyother reality show where there's
like these storylines thatplot you against each other?
You know what I mean?
And we're like, things can get,as we know from other reality

(42:22):
shows, things can get pretty nasty.
What I loved about this show, and Iguess it's just the characters of the
people that were on this show, so like,just not only the both of you, but all
the other teams people look so niceand supportive, you know what I mean?
Like people, I don't know if that'show it, how it happened, but like I'm
sure there was a bit of competition'cause like the whole point of the
show was to get as many picturesas possible of certain species

(42:44):
when you're in this different area.
So there's a bit of that competitionwhere you don't want to tell, you know,
certain people where you're gonna go andall this kind of stuff, but like people
seem generally like happy to be thereand it wasn't as if you're trying to, um.
Like there, there wasn't apart where you're not diving.
Like I think there was one partin the show where they showed you
guys all eating dinner together.
And at first I thought, oh,this is where it's gonna happen.

(43:06):
Like if it's gonna happen anywhere,this is where it's gonna happen.
But it was pretty cool.
Like it was pretty chilledout for a reality show and I
was like, this is really nice.
It's a, it's refreshing to haveRasha where the focus is literally
on all the sharks, like youguys going out and finding this.
Um, and I thought that was pretty cool.
Like, were you, after it was all saidand done and you watched the show,

(43:28):
like did you have a chance to watchthe episodes before it came out or did
you watch it like everybody else did?
Yeah.
Watch it like everybody else did.
At end of the day, wedidn't know what to expect.
We didn't know how they were gonna,I know they were probably up and, um,
trying to do all the post-production andon a tight timeline, so they probably
didn't have a big gap between that.
And when it came outfrom what we gathered.

(43:49):
So, no, we didn't really know.
And, and, and you're right Andrew,I think like this could have gone
in a bunch of different directions.
Yeah.
But mostly like everybodygot along very well.
We had fun together.
Yeah.
We're, we still have maintainedfriendships we're Yeah.
Doing some of these posts, um,show, um, events together, going
and doing Q and a's together.
Nice.
You know, Brendan's been prettyclose with Randy on the west coast.

(44:10):
I've had Rosie Oh, nice.
Um, and MJ out here, um,out of the Miami area.
So we've done some stuff togetherand, and I, yeah, I think, you
know, we've developed relationshipsthat'll, that'll probably last, you
know, forever, so That's awesome.
I think that was pretty cool.
But there was a lot of stuff thatwe filmed out at dinners doing
various things that would'vebeen kind of cool for camera.
But I think, yeah, they stucktrue to this being about the

(44:32):
sharks, not about the people.
And so I think, you know, one of thecomplaints I've gotten from people
is that they never really got to knowus that well or any of the groups.
Yeah.
Which, okay, I can see that.
Fair enough though, because I, I thinkthey had so much time and, and it really
highlighted the sharks and it wasn'tabout the people as much in the end.
And I think that's okay.
Yeah, and I think I, I, I agree.

(44:53):
I think I, I agree with the criticriticism that it wasn't a lot about
you guys, but it's also, it was likea six episode, you know, sort of arc.
So it's not as if it's goes on theother reality shows can go on for like,
you know, 20 episodes for all we know.
And so that's a, there, that's whenyou really get into the characters and,
and it's not all all about the 'cause.
I mean, if you did that with yours,it'd be, you know, in South Africa for

(45:17):
a long time, in Japan for a long time,which could have been really cool.
But I'm sure they had specific episodesto fit timelines into and, and so I
thought, I thought they did a great job.
I, I, I definitely, as you know, I,I spoke highly about it when I did
my first, uh, episode on it, and thenI've been telling people all about
it, um, which I thought was great.
But like for you guys as scientistsgoing through the process.

(45:39):
Traveling to all these different places.
Oh, well, I guess the first, didyou know where you were gonna go?
Like, uh, like so you started off,uh, in, in the Maldives Not a bad
place to start off, let's be honest.
Like, that's a pretty cool place to go.
It was all right.
Yeah.
Did you know where you were gonna go next?
Like, did you know all the differentregions where you were gonna go?
We didn't.

(45:59):
We had, um, I'd say two weeksbefore the first flight, we got
a list of possible locations.
Oh, okay.
'cause the, you know, the producershad our backs and wanted, they wanted
everyone to say good things thatwere like, relevant and accurate
and would help advance the story.
Yeah.
And so, but they also didn'twant anyone to have a big leg up.

(46:20):
So they said, all right, here's whatever,10 or 12 possible locations, like go
do your homework before we leave andonce we hand you your plane ticket,
then you'll know where we're going.
Um, and so Chris and I, in truescientist fashion, we've got these
like enormous PowerPoints of likespecies ID for every possible location.

(46:41):
Even the ones we didn't go to.
Yeah.
We have a Google Earth file withlike sightings locations of anyone
we've ever met who's like donea PhD at a particular place.
They're like, all right, here's a GoogleEarth file drop pins where you would
spend your time to find sharks and rays.
Um, phenomenal.
I think that was the, that'show we were able to, that's

(47:02):
how we were able to nerd out.
And, and Brendan, you hadaccess to reef data too, so you
made like hotspot maps right?
Of like even more likely tofind things in this area.
We had literally heat maps of that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We use, we use the tools available to us.
The reef, uh, reef EnvironmentalEducation Foundation is one of
the two charities that we donated.
Uh, some money too.

(47:24):
That's awesome.
That's awesome.
I would say because ithelped how we got the money.
Yeah.
But, uh, we got some money and halfof it went to them and half went
to Ocean First and, and Perfect.
And the Reef databaseis publicly available.
Uh, you just have to request it, butit's got all this amazing citizen
science data around the world.
And so anywhere that theyhad data, we would Yeah.

(47:45):
Create hotspot maps.
Um, one that comes to mind is, isin the Gala Galapagos at Darwin.
And no surprise, the hotspotfor everything was right at
Darwin's arch or Pillars.
Um, but it was, it was very helpful,like a combination of reading
all the papers for each location.
Mm-hmm.
And then the Google Earth file from all ofour personal contacts and everyone else is

(48:08):
doing this too, in their own communities.
Of course.
Maybe it's more like.
The social media like Yeah.
Underwater photographer communityor whoever it is for us, it's,
it's folks who are scientists.
Um, yeah.
But yeah, all those differentlayers come together.
So once you land in a place, you'relike, all right, we've got three days.
The weather looks like this,the tides are at these times.
If we plan this out perfectlyand everything goes well, then

(48:31):
we'll hit all these spots.
Yeah.
And the last day we'll spend, you know,just racking up these points that we
know are gonna be there the whole time.
And so every team wouldhave their approach.
Um, and ours was informed by allof that information and like took
the scientific approach for sure.
But also just, I think what we did areally good job of was time management.

(48:54):
It, it really became a game oftime management and budgeting
resources, whether that's bait time.
Yeah.
Air, air on, you know, your four scubatank tanks, eight hours of air on what?
Four tanks?
Like that's, yeah.
That's what they gave you.
That's, that's, that's what I thoughtthey could focus on a little more.
I it would've be cool ifthey had like a meat Yeah.
Of like how much air you have left and howmuch time that'd be, you know what I mean?

(49:18):
I may put that, put that, yeah.
Put that comment into the next season.
Right.
Yeah.
I would've loved to have seen that.
Yeah.
Well, I think the, the cool part forus that Brendan has, has described is
that we approach this like we would thefield, field work as scientists, right?
So we, we strategize as much with as muchtime as we had, um, and really put a plan

(49:38):
together, and then we're willing to adaptwhen things would change as we always do.
So just being comfortable with,with, with changes being thrown
at us or, or issues or weather.
And, and yeah.
And then putting on these full facemasks too, that we were wearing the
whole time talking about air consumption.
Yeah.
Well, they suck up air.
And so those are things Oh, interesting.

(49:59):
You have to, you have to start toapply to your, your strategy is like,
okay, we know we've only got so muchbottom time now, which is different
than how we would normally be.
Yeah.
And just trying to figure that out.
And then having the four takes perday, the rules and the guidelines
that we have to stick to immediately.
Brendan and I both gravitatedtowards, oh, surface time.
What are people doing during their surfaceintervals when they have to off gas?

(50:22):
Oh, we're not taking a break.
We're gonna jump in the water andsnorkel because we can do that.
And so we really started bustingour butts and just with our time
management, figuring out thedepths we wanted to go to early on.
And, and if going for more abundantor rare species first was always
sort of the, the big question.
And then it's like, yeah, oh, let'sgo into the shallows in our off
time and just time that really,well, okay, we got five minutes,

(50:44):
get back on the boat, get back in.
And we did that the whole time and that,and we started doing really well early on.
And then other people kind of pickedup on our strategy and started to
sort of mimic that a little bit is,is kind of how we saw that going.
But um, generally that'sjust how we approached it.
We just worked our buttsoff and just worked.
We stayed wet the entiretime that we could.
I, I love it.
I did, I did love your strategy, um, goinginto it because you, you guys definitely

(51:09):
had a good, I think it was you guys inthe Maldives where it's like, okay, 'cause
though just for the audience who haven'tseen it, I highly recommend you go see it.
But there were, uh, points awardedfor every picture you get, uh, in
specific spots, but sharks in onespot, like say Tiger Sharks in
one spot might be a lower value.
Like in the Maldives, I think there werethree points compared to like somewhere
in The Bahamas it might be worth.

(51:30):
Yeah.
Or Galapagos.
It might be worth a lot more.
'cause they're harder to find.
It was based on how much they see it,but it was, it was, it was your team that
said, well, look, they might only be worththree points in, in Maldives, but we know
we're gonna see a lot of them, so we'regonna take as many pictures as possible.
And you know, you ended up doing prettywell in that, in that first, in that first
one and, and because of that strategy.

(51:51):
So I just love it.
Uh, it reminds me of you guys the wayyour approach reminds me of that film,
the Martian, where Matt Dame's like,I'm gonna science the shit out of this.
Uh, you know, and that's essentiallywhat you guys, it sounds like
what you guys did, you know?
And, and I think that's, uh.
I think that was, that's, that'spretty cool because that's what you do.
You look, you take like an analyticalapproach, look up databases, get
your networks, like find where youcan go and what's gonna be there.

(52:15):
And then you have 12 and it getsto shrunken down to six or however
many, and you're like, okay, likelet's go, let's go out and do this.
And then you guys did a lot.
Sorry, go ahead.
Oh, sorry.
And then from a diving perspective,you know, visibility currents, tide.
Yeah.
So then those are the things thatyou don't necessarily know and
you're researching a place you'venever been without a dive guide.
The, the divers could be in the waterwith us, but they couldn't guide us.

(52:37):
So you're also navigating aplace that you've never been.
You don't, you know, about thisreef, but you don't know where to go.
And so they're misses in there,um, with that sort of thing.
Um, and some of that was, was stressful.
Like, and you're, you know.
Having a local guide who knowsexactly where to expect the
raging current is pretty helpful.
And when you're, when you're divingan at hole in the Indian Ocean

(53:01):
at like the convergence point ofmajor currents, yeah, that's great.
For lots of sharks and rays, you know?
Yeah.
That's also really challengingwhen you just hop in the water
and look around like, all right,where, you know, where do I find
the cleaning station with the thres?
It's like, and I don't think there's anytwo people like, or in terms of us, like
I would've, there's probably no one elseI would've gone with over Brendan just

(53:22):
because I knew he was a good scientistand he is a shark biologist, um, much
more so than I am, and he's a good diver.
Like those, that combination isa winning combination, right?
I mean, you've gotta be a very experienceddiver to go to the locations we did to be
able to do them well without strugglingand, and to be able to stay focused
on the objectives while also divinglike that's not to be taken lightly.

(53:43):
There was some very difficultconditions we were in.
Absolutely.
And, and that's what I was gonna ask.
I was, what I was wonderingthrough watching this show is.
Did they, did the production companyrequire a certain level of diving
or a certain number of hours?
Like did you have to have like yourdive master or instructional, or did
you have to have like your scientificdivers, like I know in the US they do
scientific diving, like the, was it the,the aaas SI think is, is the, the does

(54:06):
scientific diving, did you have to havea certain accreditation accreditation
for diving to even be on the show?
They definitely asked everybodyfor their level of expertise and
had some sort of a metric for that.
Um, I think everybody came in withsomething slightly different 'cause
like, okay, I think Brendan toot, Iwas, I was A-A-A-U-S is what it is,

(54:28):
American Science, a water science.
So I was that all through my PhD.
Um, and then that, but that ex thatexpires six months after course, you,
you don't keep, um, keep that up.
And so, um, yeah, I mean I think theyused a loose justification for it.
Everybody had to be confident and say,you know, I'm, I'm confident diver.
Um, but there was.

(54:49):
Certainly various levels of, of yeah.
Experience and comfort inthese different environments.
And, and again, other than like onelittle breath thing that we can't
figure out what happened to Brendan.
We, we think we have a reason Oh, right.
Why it happened to Maldi.
Yes.
But that was the only slight,which is almost nothing difficulty
we had in the entire time.
And that wasn't 20 feet of water.

(55:09):
There was no real risk thereother than the tiger sharks.
Right.
Right.
I mean, well, I thinkthat's the other thing too.
A lot of people would be like,well, yeah, you're diving and you're
diving in these amazing spots.
The cinematography was amazing.
Mm-hmm.
But you're also diving with sharks.
Like you have to be comfortable having,like, you guys had, what, how big were
the tiger sharks when, when you saw them?
They were what, 10, three and a meters?

(55:30):
Probably.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They're most, they're mostly, um.
Pregnant females, they get alot of pregnant females in the
day, or females in general.
So they're definitely adultreproductively capable, um, sharks
and so they're all very large.
Yeah.
So you have to be comfortablewith seeing those in the water.
'cause like everybody, it wasreally cool 'cause everybody who
saw, like all the divers who sawsharks, like, oh, I got a shark.

(55:51):
'cause they were so in tuneto winning this contest.
But then like I, I've watched it with somepeople like, like, but that's a tiger.
Like that's a tiger shark in there.
That's a bull like in Bimini when,when you get like the bull sharks,
like there's bull sharks there.
Like, what are you guys doing?
Or there's like a hammerhead there.
But I thought it, it also showed.
That wasn't the focus of the showwas being afraid of the sharks.

(56:13):
Mm-hmm.
Right.
There were a few spots where peoplewere concerned and, um, there was, I, I
forget the, the, the name of the womanwho had previously been bitten by a lemon
shark, uh, in, in bi Sarah, yeah, Sarah.
And then she did the brave thing ofgoing back in, like even my anxiety
was up, you know, watching her go andbeing like, wow, that, that takes a lot
of guts to, to go back in after that.

(56:34):
I mean, obviously that's a, that's avery significant injury that she had.
And then to go backin, it was really cool.
But what the focus wasn't necessarilyon how dangerous these sharks are.
The focus was like, oh, this is amazing.
I'm gonna get this many points.
Or what I loved is thediversity of sharks.
I don't think we've ever seen thaton a, on a program in one program.
So one of the, one of the things, andI'll let Brendan add onto this, but you

(56:57):
know, we, we had two things going on.
You've mentioned before, Andrew, theTiger shark was worth three points
in the Maldives, worth a lot morepoints and say Bi Eve or Galapagos.
Right.
One of the cool things.
In regards to that is that the,you know, a species that's circum,
tropical, you know, that you cansee in all these different places.
It's cool.
We're dropping in here, we're dropping inthere, we're seeing the same species, but

(57:18):
in a completely different environment.
Versus the other thing that youjust brought up was the diversity of
sharks and a lot of endemic speciesthat occur only in South Africa only.
Um, right.
You know, in this area, that area.
And so being able to see those thingsjuxtaposed as scientists, especially
dropping in from one part of, uh, theworld to another in rapid succession.
'cause we, we filmedall this in two months.

(57:39):
Like there was no break.
And I think people haveasked that question.
So we were just dropping infrom one extreme to the next.
Um.
And that, that to me was the focus.
Like there was conditions that were,you know, Brendan and I had discussions,
especially like South Africa of thingsbeing a little sketchy at times.
Low visibility white shark highway.
Um, so we, we had to make some of those.
I love that.
That was third.

(58:02):
I mean, they all, they all takepart, but that was like, that
was like, it's white shark.
Like this is cold.
And then white sharks.
And then white sharks.
Yeah.
So we had to consider all that.
Like there's a healthy respectfor, for the environment that we're
in sharks as part of that, theconditions a major part of that.
Um, and all that had to betaken into consideration, well

(58:23):
above some competition, right?
Our wives are not worth television.
And, and that was also a concessionthat we, you know, that we had.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
No, that's, that's amazing.
Go ahead.
Uh, Brendan, you were gonna say something?
I'm just, I, I completely agree.
We always had that at the forefrontof our minds is like looking
after ourselves and the, the.

(58:45):
The teams in the water were so strong.
Like all the underwatercamera operators are amazing.
Yeah.
And so on any given dive, you know, itwould be the two teammates, the underwater
camera person, and then usually a localdive master who, like Chris said, is kind
of just hanging off in the background.

(59:05):
Um, right.
They're there, but they'renot able to guide you.
Um, and so a lot of this was,it wasn't just like me and
Chris relying on each other.
It would be like, yeah.
We felt a very strong bond withthe underwater cameramen as well.
Um, because also in some of theseplaces, you might not speak the same
language as the dive master, and solike, there's a communication barrier

(59:27):
and, and you're in a new place.
And so it's nice to be with thatthird person where like, you really,
you're doing it together and we, yeah.
We got better at this.
If any of them are listening, they'relaughing right now because we were, we
were just absolute menas to them becausewe were like sprinting through, like we'd
swim an entire bay on scuba, hop out, dropthe gear, get back in the boat, go swim.

(59:51):
You guys were like, I wanna win this.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
We were, we were militant about it.
Yeah.
Whatever we were doing, theywere working twice as hard.
'cause they're pushing a giant camerarig and trying to get, not only like,
they don't just need a photo, theyneed us in the frame with the animals
that's swimming away, you know?
And so I think we got better.

(01:00:12):
Hopefully they'd agree.
I think we got better at like tryingto coordinate better with them.
Yeah.
Keeping, keeping the show in mind andwhat was needed for the show in mind.
Mm-hmm.
Whether that was like, you know,maybe we don't need to give an
underwater lecture at this site.
Maybe they just need like a shortsoundbite that wraps it up in a sentence.

(01:00:33):
Or if we position ourselves here, thenthey can get the shark with us behind it.
And so it was, there was likevery much a team atmosphere,
at least within each boat.
Uh, yeah, as we went fromlocation to location.
That's great.
And, and you probably neededthat cameraman too, right?
To be like, I need you to get thisshark, because let's be honest, like
they probably slowed a lot of thestuff down that, that you guys saw

(01:00:56):
when you were taking the photographs.
But that doesn't happen in the ocean.
Some of these sharksare moving quite fast.
If they see you, boom,they, they might be gone.
Uh, things happen a lot faster than wethink when, when you're in the ocean,
uh, and when you see it on, on camera.
Yeah.
So that's, and that was a big thing too.
I mean, we're, we're in a competition.
We're like super hyper-focused on that,but at the same time, recognizing that.

(01:01:17):
We are here to produce a show, sowe can't do one without the other.
Sure.
And and a lot of times, like you seesomething awesome and it'd be like,
we gotta get the cameraman over here.
'cause it's not that Brendanand I didn't separate at times.
Right.
We tried to stay close,but currents and, and yeah.
You know, um, wanting to explore and,and see things differently, you know?

(01:01:39):
Um, yeah, for sure.
And, and then also just the, in termsof how they did it, they also rotated
the production teams, the cameramen,they, they rotated in between the teams.
So that one team got stuck withthe same group, our production
team the entire time, which I thinkalso benefited, uh, the producers.
Right.
So again, for sure, they had to putcertain people with us that wanted to
chase us for, for eight hours a day.

(01:02:00):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was like, these guys are known.
They, we know what they're doing.
We gotta go after we were well known.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
You're gonna have Olympic swimmersfollowing you with, you know, just
to get to catch up to you guys.
Yeah.
Well even that's awesome.
It was a lot of fun.
A lot of fun with them too, becausewe almost had our own little side
games with them each day where theirgoal was to get shots of sharks with

(01:02:21):
us in the foreground that we didn'tsee or take pictures of, you know?
Right, right.
'cause like Chris and I talked about thisin advance, like the team that we fear the
most in a competition like this would beif you took like two of these cameramen
and made them a team, and so Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Because they have eye.
Right.
They know what to whatthey're looking for.

(01:02:42):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which is why when we, we were asked earlyon who we feared the most and or who we
thought would, would take the competition.
We, we said Dan and Sarah,and part of that for me is
Dan's a underwater cameraman.
We're like, yep.
He, he's got a lot of experiencein the water looking for sharks.
We, we knew they were gonna be, youknow, one of the top teams for sure.
Absolutely.
And the irony, the irony of howaudiences feel about dam's, Dan's

(01:03:05):
camera work in those first few episodes.
It is.
Oh yeah.
I, I think it's really funny.
It, like, it's great comic relief, but Danis actually a great underwater camera man.
Right, right.
'cause what happens when you'reso hyper-focused on your, your
craft is that becomes your focus.
Whereas for us, we were, we'renot underwater photographer, so

(01:03:25):
we were just clicking and shootingwith our GoPro or whatever.
We didn't care how it turned out.
We just cared that we got the shot.
He's looking at lighting, trying to geta good, he's looking at lighting light.
We don't care about that.
We're here to win a showand not best picture.
Can you see it?
Can you see it there?
Yeah.
Okay.
Perfect.
Count that one.
That's good.
I love it.
Look, I have, I, you know, as I mentioned,I was a big proponent of the show.
Uh, I wanted to spread it aroundjust even locally in, in my own city.

(01:03:48):
I have good friends of mine whohave recently watched this, and
one of the, one of the, the, theyoung girl is watching it right now.
Um, hence why I'm not giving,we're not gonna do any kind
of spoilers, but they did.
I asked them, I said, if youhave questions, let me know.
'cause I'm talking to two, two of thepeople who were on the, on the podcast.
So, uh, one, uh, uh, is is Evan, he's,he's, uh, an 11-year-old and he said, uh,

(01:04:10):
he want to know if the two of you wereever scared while in the water, whether
it be sharks or just in the water itself.
You, you dove in some pretty.
Beautiful places, but as youmentioned, some challenging areas.
You know, I remember Japanhad the, the current, right.
That was like, that was crazy.
Even the host went in after tocheck it out and be like, yeah,
this is, this is pretty dangerous.
Were there, was there any part inlike any of the, the, um, the, the

(01:04:33):
places where you were, uh, did the,were you ever scared at any point?
Credible?
There's one that comes to mind for me.
Yeah.
Uh, the, the first thing that jumped tomind was one particular shark, actually.
Um, and this goes back to the riskwe were talking about earlier.
Like Chris and I have, there's, Idon't know, there's a weird, there's

(01:04:56):
a weird trajectory that you take,I think in a career like this from
going, I find like students that youjust get in the water the first time,
they'll hop in with a tiger shark andjust think it's the most fun ever.
And they're not a, because theyhaven't seen what an animal like that
is actually capable of when it wantsto, that there's not enough respect.
Mm-hmm.
And then.
It, it just changesthroughout your career.

(01:05:17):
And I think both of us atthis point are like, there's a
very healthy level of respect.
'cause when you see a tiger sharktake down like three giant poly
balls, it's the amount of power someof these animals have is Oh yeah.
You cannot overstate like they can move.
Right.
We're nothing to them, you know?
Yeah.
They just don't choose to ever behave thatway in normal circumstances with people.

(01:05:40):
Right.
Which is great for us as peoplewho like to die with them.
But once in a while you find ananimal that is not in good shape and
it's, you know, it's in dire straits.
And it, there's one, one Galapagos shark.
And just to be clear, this isafter diving, we were, I don't
know, there were, we maxed out onGalapagos Sharks on every dive.
Like I think you did.
Yeah.
There's, there's 50 of 'em on everydive in the Galapagos and none

(01:06:02):
of them gave us a second look.
Right.
And then we were snorkeling around,uh, Darwin's pillars in the shallows.
We spent a lot of timesnorkeling there and it was.
Just go like I, it's so beautiful.
There's so much life.
Yeah.
And it's really cool to see.
Like the, the hammerhead and theGalapagos are awesome when you're on
a wall and they're off in the blue,but then in the shallows around those

(01:06:24):
big kind of rocky outcrops mm-hmm.
They'll just come in and cruisein like threes and fours along the
sandy kind of sand rocky bottom.
Um, and they're in maybe 20, 30 feet ofwater and they'll turn and look up at you.
And so it's just a whole, it's acompletely different perspective.
So we, yeah.
In all these places, we tried forpoints or not to just explore,

(01:06:44):
like, we'll never go back.
Mm-hmm.
And so we were doing that swimmingaround the island, and this one
Galapagos shark just startedtracking us from the sea floor.
Um, and it had, it was very, like,it had a misshapen pectoral fin.
I think it had some trailing wireleader, like it had been caught,
maybe it hadn't been able tosuccessfully catch prey in a while.

(01:07:07):
Um, it looked prettyemaciated and very banged up.
And it just tracked us in a way that.
The, you know, the hair on your neckstands up, you feel like a prey item.
Hmm.
Wow.
And it's very important, I thinkonce you've been in the water
enough, you encounter those animals.
Yeah.
And then I think is when you're at likea healthy level of respect of like,

(01:07:27):
yeah, 99% of the time there's no problemhere, but there's always the chance.
You never know what is in thewater with you on a particular day.
And recognizing that animal asdifferent from all the others,
we all got out and we moved.
Right.
And I think that's where like all theexperience we've had comes into play.
And, and I just, anytime we talk to anyonelike, or with the public, I just, it's

(01:07:50):
very important to emphasize like thosescenarios exist, you know, and those, it's
good to know when to get outta the water.
So I was, yeah, I was shakenup a little by that animal.
I didn't wanna be in with them anymore.
Brendan and I both looked at, weboth looked at each other and just
kind of like understood, you know?
Yeah.
Like, we're out, thatwe needed to get out.
And, and then in that same relativeenvironment, the shallows is, and I

(01:08:12):
don't think the, the filming of thatquite did it justice, but the massive
tiger shark that we encountered in, inabout six feet of water in the Galapagos,
um, likely feeding along the shores.
And it came out in, youknow, just head up on me.
Brendan was a little bit off to the side.
Um, and it really caught me by surprise.
Like, people don't regularly seetiger sharks in the Galapagos.

(01:08:33):
That's why there werea crap ton of points.
Right, right.
And we didn't, we didn't expect to, we,that's not what we were there looking for.
And all of a sudden, like, oh God.
So I had two things going through my mind.
One was like, oh crap.
Like that's a freaking massive tiger sharkthat was likely just feeding and, and
like this is a way different experiencethan the Maldives where they're.
Seemingly a bit more controlled.
And then the next part of me islike, I gotta get a picture of this.

(01:08:55):
This is worth a lot of points.
We still got a game to play here.
So we got a picture of that, had a momentwith it and we got out too because that
was another one that was a bit off.
Um, and that, that scenario,it was like that shark was
just doing normal shark things.
It was entirely right.
It was us recognizing we are in thisplace where it doesn't expect us and it's

(01:09:20):
probably feeding, like probably huntingturtles or maybe maybe this fur seals
that are kind, there's a lot of bubbles.
The environment's very turbulent.
It was just like, this is the tigershark was the most scarred up.
Shark I've ever seen.
Like it looked like it had been insome battles, this thing was gnarly.
Um, when I talk about it, Ireferenced Scar from Lion King.
Is it just looking?
I've been through somestuff and like, interesting.

(01:09:42):
And it was just a waydifferent experience.
But yeah, again, it's that respect andthat knowledge thing we're running like,
okay, well, and, and we're in one of themost remote places in the world, right?
Yeah.
Out in the middle of EcuadorianWaters in the Galapagos.
And, um, you know, you don't wannamess around in a place like that where
you're so far away from any absolutely.
Medical treatment ifsomething does happen.

(01:10:03):
So, no, absolutely.
Yeah.
So yeah, I think, I think our experience,we, and I think the thing with the
experience in, in these areas too, um,there's never really a sense of panic.
It's kind of like, okay, now we, we canreact to this and then figure out our
best path, but it's never a panic, right?
Yeah.
So that, so fear, I don't know ifI would ever use the word fear, but
definitely like awareness and respect.

(01:10:23):
Yeah.
Um, to get out when it,enough to know to get.
Yeah.
Um, 'cause we also had some incredible,you know, experiences with other
things that were unexpected, likeorcas and, um, humpback whales.
Yeah.
So we were known as the mammal people,and Dan made a comment, I think in the
last episode, like, oh, they're gonna getdistracted by, by, you know, orcas again.
Like that, that's what we were known for.
And, and Herron Island, um, youknow, these humpback wells that

(01:10:45):
were over wintering there in,in the, um, on, on the reef.
Brendan and I were able to headthem up and this didn't make the
show, but we, um, we were able toswim right alongside with them.
We took time outta the dayduring the competition.
We're like, screw it.
This is again, once in awhile, bucket list, just like
the orcas bucket bucket list.
So, swam along with two humpbackwells for a while, just like we
did the orcas for like 30 minutes.

(01:11:05):
Um, yeah, a little, little, youknow, the humpback wells was
its own beast of an experience.
Yeah.
Orcas.
We had a little baby and two likelyfemales, um, come up and, and just.
Check us out for, I don't know.
I mean, it felt like 30 minutes,it might've been five minutes, but
it, it was like, doesn't matter.
Those were two experiencesbeyond the sharks that yeah,
I will never, ever forget.

(01:11:26):
And I was so happy to do it withBrendan too, in, in these places
because it was just awesome.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
That's, that sounds amazing.
That was actually one of my otherquestions was like, what was the
coolest thing you saw other than sharks?
Would you put those two experiencesas probably the coolest things?
Oh, I mean, absolutely.
Brendan and I, we couldn't stoptalking about the whales afterwards

(01:11:47):
and the producers like, stop talkingabout the whales, sharks, sharks.
And by the time we got to theGalapagos where we saw the orcas,
we were chasing a bait ball.
Um, and they happened to be there.
So we, we were, um, at Darwin because it'smore likely to see whale sharks there.
That's why we both, you know, we knowDan and Sarah went there, that episode
two and gave up while we're, we're prettyconfident that the reason the whale sharks

(01:12:10):
weren't there is because these orcas ofthe orcas, they were known shark predator.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so, you know, we had anincredible time with 'em.
Um, I mean, there's nothing in the worldmore incredible than having these animals
that are the apex predators in the, in,in, in an environment, in an ecosystem.
Come and check you out withinlike a foot of you having a, a, a

(01:12:30):
juvenile, um, orca come and, andjust having have a moment with you.
'cause they're looking at you just as muchas you're looking at them in curiosity.
This is a while there.
They probably haven'tseen a lot of people.
If, if any, your heart must havebeen beating out of your chest.
Beating out of our chest.
And, and you know thatthey can see that too.
They can feel that too.
They're like, yeah, thisis pretty cool for us too.
And then mom comes up underneathfrom the depths of the blue,

(01:12:52):
like, okay, you guys are safe.
We won't do anything.
Yeah, we won't, we won't discipline,you know, our, our young here.
Um, but Brendan and I,we made the decision.
We saw these ORs we're like.
Once in a lifetime, man.
Like, I'm we're you got it.
We get in the water and westay with it for quite a while.
Yeah.
So those are things I think, um,you know, we talk about being
scientists and in the field and stuff.

(01:13:14):
There's certain things where youjust can't, you can't pay you enough.
No.
Not to be out there forthese types of things.
Right.
Like, it's just, it's the memoriesthat you'll have for, for life.
You'll be telling, you know, childrenand grandchildren and nieces and
nephews and everybody who you seelike, yeah, I got to dive with
humpbacks and, and orcas and, uh, youknow, orcas around a bait ball too.
That's pretty, that's pretty cool.

(01:13:34):
Even just being around a bait ball.
That, that was prettyincredible, uh, to be around.
So I just thought, uh, that was cool.
Now getting back to the sharks, like youguys got to see a lot of cool sharks.
What was your favorite, we'll start,Brendan, we'll start with you.
What was your favorite shark that you saw?
Favorite shark species would'vebeen, I'd say this, South Africa

(01:13:55):
was the most surprising locationfor me because I'd never.
I've been to South Africa, but onlydiving in a place called Wan Bay, which
is like up in the northeastern corner.
And South Africa's really interestingbecause there's this warm water current
that comes from the tropics down alongthat, uh, eastern side of Africa.
So warm water coming down, and thencold water coming north from Antarctica.

(01:14:17):
And so you have so many differentecosystems in close proximity.
So even though I'd been there,I'd only been diving on like
clear, warm, tropical reefs.
So then when we get to PortElizabeth, it's not that at all.
You know, it's like rugged coastlines,rocky reefs, bad visibility, cold water

(01:14:39):
that makes for very abundant marine life.
You know, it's just packed with nutrients.
There's animals everywhere.
There's penguins, there's also humpbackwhales, like right off the beach.
Um, there are obviously whitesharks hanging out there.
Yeah, but the coolest for me, therewere the endemics, like the little shy
sharks and cat sharks that don't occuranywhere else that are just so beautiful.

(01:15:02):
Um, and they were so interested in thebait that we were offering them, that
they'd come just out of the woodwork.
Like when you find them without bait theirface into a ledge, you know, just kind
of hanging out quietly during the day.
Often stacked up likethree to 10 in a pile.
Um, but as soon as there's a littlebit of sardine oil in the water, they

(01:15:26):
smell it and they all come rushing.
And so then you've got just all these tinylittle like one to two foot long catch
sharks and shy sharks cruising around.
Um, that's pretty cool.
And yeah, so for me, the leopard catchshark just absolutely beautiful species.
I think the cool, I mean, I love seeingit, but I think also it speaks to

(01:15:46):
the point of the show, like mm-hmm.
Sharing that species withpeople as a shark that.
I'd never seen a photo of, I probablydidn't know it existed before going
there, and then suddenly we're bringingthat to people on their couches in
a place like Wisconsin or Kentucky.
Um, you know, that is,that's pretty awesome.
Very happy with that one.
And I'll, I'll keep mine short.

(01:16:07):
I, I just, I feel like I answeredthis question differently.
Everyone, every time someone askedme, because I, you remember different
sharks that you've seen right?
Re remember different sharks.
Every, every place we went tohad its own magical appeal.
I mean, we were going to some of themost biodiverse, many times protected
areas for sharks and rays on the planet.
So we're seeing the best of the best andit's really hard to compare and contrast.

(01:16:31):
So for me, yeah, I, I bring up SouthAfrica quite often too because of all
the endemics, the puff had a shy sharkwas one I was really excited to see.
Um, and again, like Brendansaid, a lot of times people
don't even know these are sharks.
I ones that I had never seen andI had only recently read about.
Right.
Um, as, as our, um.
Are planning into the trip.
So yeah, some of the animals that Iwould've never seen or knew existed as

(01:16:53):
much as that probably appealed to thepublic, also appealed to us as scientists.
Mm-hmm.
In, in this field.
And then, you know, as the wedge fish in,in, um, in Australia there's the, the wbe
I had been in Australia 20 years prior to,and then saw quite a few wabe gongs in a
completely different part of Australia.
And, and I think when, when Brendanfound this one, the tased wabe gong

(01:17:13):
on our dive, I'm just, that I couldhave spent all day just there.
Right.
Um, just watching that, that little dude.
Um, and then, and then there's alsothe favorite dives and then there's
like the, the tiger shark and theGalapagos honestly was like a, as
kind of freaky as that experience was.
It was one of my favorite moments.
'cause it was so exciting.
It was a, a, a, you know, we're ina competition, so it's not just the

(01:17:37):
sharks, it's also like, oh my God.
Like this is where so many points, so yourstart heart starts racing because of that.
So that emotional attachment endsup being part of your experience.
On top of the fact that you'reseeing cool animals in cool places.
So hard for me to answerthat, but, um, no, for sure.
I mean, you guys got to like, everyplace that I kept hearing them say,
I was like, oh man, that is so cool.

(01:17:58):
Like, oh really?
Oh, that's awesome.
Like, it's, it's, uh, it'sa, it's a trip of a lifetime.
Uh, an experience of a lifetime.
Let me ask you this.
When it was all said and done, afteryou had watched the show, I'm sure
a sigh of relief kind of came out'cause you knew how it came out.
Uh, were you, were you happywith the way it turned out?
I should ask that first.
Um, I can start Brendan.

(01:18:19):
Um, yes.
I, I think ultimately wewere, we were very pleased.
I was very pleased with theway the, the show came out.
I mean, two major goals, you know, forthis one, have an adventure of a lifetime.
Yeah.
One of my best friends, like, there'snothing else that I could have
spent two months doing that would'veprobably been better than this

(01:18:39):
adventure that we were on together.
And then as a, as a second thing isthe reason why we probably really did
it, especially in in our busy livesand careers, is we wanted to have
a, a bigger conservation platform.
You know?
Mm-hmm.
We continued to do things as sharkdocs after the fact, and, um, yep.
We encourage people to, to follow usand check that out because we're, yeah.
We'll put that link in the,to, in please do show notes.
Yeah.
We're continuing to build onthat conservation platform,

(01:19:00):
which is one of our intentions.
We both do a lot of good work throughour, um, our current positions in our,
in our jobs, but we wanted to havesomething different, and so for us,
this was storytelling in a way thatwe couldn't do it on our own, and
the whole edutainment sort of, yeah.
Concept that we've learned about,as, you know, feeding people
accidental knowledge when they'renot expecting it, kind of a concept.
So I think we've just been really tryingto figure out what our next move is

(01:19:24):
to, to keep building off of that, youknow, the, the peak of the show and, and
probably like the excitement around itis starting to wane a little bit, but
we're trying to continue to build offof that and, and figure out, you know,
what else we can do to continue to, yeah.
Explore and really push positiveconservation messaging as we both feel.

(01:19:44):
We have a lot to, to offer in that field.
How about you, Brendan?
Were you happy with the overallturnout and then your experience after?
Yeah, I was, you know, none ofus knew, none of the contestants
knew during filming that this wasgonna turn into a family show.
Um, it sounds like the producers hadthat in mind and it, it's a genius move.

(01:20:10):
You know, shark Week, shark Festoften have a lot of like more dramatic
scenes and some blood and stufflike that and it's scary for kids.
Yeah.
And so the folks at Netflix realized,like, you know, how great would it be for
families to be able to watch a show aboutsharks where they don't have to be afraid?
Where every encounter is positiveand people are excited about it.

(01:20:31):
Yeah.
And so I. I didn't knowthat that was coming.
And so the response we've had fromkids, like, like these kids that you
know, who are asking some of thesequestions, um, has just been amazing.
Like if, if we have a fan base atall, it's, it's like 11 to 13-year-old
boys who are just pumped aboutsharks and, and science and diving.

(01:20:55):
And, um, I think the, the currentstatistics that I've heard is that it
was number, the show was number one inNetflix, family in like over 50 countries.
Um, so if you had told mes that that'swhat would happen if we participated, or
like, if that's how good the show woulddo when we had that initial contract,
I would've just signed it on the spot.

(01:21:17):
Yeah.
You know, so, yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
We, I know different people havelike different criticisms of
it, and a lot of 'em are valid.
Like we, yeah, you can, you canpoke holes in anything but overall
like forest through the trees.
Incredible job.
We're so thrilled tohave been a part of it.
Um, and hopefully this is just anotherlike, contribution among all these

(01:21:39):
random things that we do that's onthe positive side of the equation.
Would you do, would you both, uh,do show similar or other shows like
documentaries, uh, say like fromShark Fest or even Shark Week again or
something new, like do a television showagain, but in like a different type.

(01:22:00):
Like if, I guess if all the Sharks askedyou to do it again, would you do it again?
All the sharks, yes.
'cause now we want to, totrust the producers right.
To us.
I think it's gonna be more of the same.
Like, um, we're gonna be very carefullyvetting any opportunity that comes our
way because we're not going to, of courseI'm not, I don't wanna speak for Brendan.
I'm not gonna be quick to, tojump into something without
really understanding what it is.

(01:22:21):
Um.
And I'll take any role that's offered.
Yeah.
Right.
That is not the Yeah, right.
Well, if it's, well, if it's somethingthat ridiculous like sharknato, you
know, that it's, oh, I think, you know,people know not to take it seriously.
It's this fine line between somethingthat could be be real in something that's

(01:22:42):
not, that really, you've gotta be careful,you've gotta be careful with that.
So, yeah.
I mean, ultimately there's a major, um,the excitement that, that surrounded
this over a, a paper that, you know,I've published is way different.
Right.
Um, you just, you gain the attentionof a whole new audience that you
wouldn't get in just the science field.
So I think things likethis are necessary Yeah.

(01:23:05):
To reach a broader audience.
But again, it has to be done carefully.
And I think these, the,the producers of this show.
Did it Well, and, and I, Ihope there's a future for this.
'cause I, I think, yeah,it was well received.
Um, but, you know, it's a, it'sa game of, um, of money to a
lot of these major networks too.
And, and so if they can't, I don't know.
I'm, I'm hopeful that, that thingslike this, if not this show in

(01:23:26):
particular, uh, will have more seasons.
But I think they're going ina good positive direction that
both Brendan and I mm-hmm.
Can, um, align with.
I agree.
I was very, uh, relieved to see.
This show come out on Netflix.
They've had a couple of other programs,uh, that we will not be mentioning.
I've mentioned on this, on this programbefore that I have, you know, as

(01:23:48):
scientists, we haven't been, I haven'tbeen very happy with in the past.
I can't speak for, for everybody, but,uh, I know other scientists who haven't.
Uh, and so it's nice to havesomething that's positive.
It's nice to have something familyoriented, especially about sharks to
really change that narrative, especiallyfor, for young kids about sharks and
really bring back that curiosity.
A lot of sort of like the voicesthat you guys were saying.

(01:24:10):
Uh, you know, every time you sawa shark, every time you see an
overhang or like, oh, this is cool.
I've never seen one of these before,and all this kind of stuff, I think.
That really helped bring that, itshowed that passion that, that all
of you had, um, especially the twoof you to, to be able to get to this.
And I think the strategy thatyou had, I think was fun.
'cause it really gamified it, youknow, it showed that, yeah, this was
still a competition and uh, I thoughtyou guys did, uh, a very good job.

(01:24:33):
Uh, everybody, all the contestantsdid a very good job at, at coming
around and getting the, themotion across that science is fun.
It's all about curiosity, it's aboutexploring, um, using that scientific mind
of yours and, and really getting into it,but also using that creative mind and, and
doing a big, like a, it is a fairly bigproduction and so it's a really cool thing
that you guys got to do and I'm reallyhappy you, you were able to do that and.

(01:24:54):
Being a part of a showthat shows so many sharks.
I thought that was really cool.
So I appreciate all this and, andI'm, I'm not a shark scientist.
I do have another podcast beyond John.
We'll have to have you guys onindividually get your full careers on
with, with, uh, David Ebert, um, who issomeone that if, if, if they're having
another season, I don't know if they'rehaving another season, that's the guy
you call because he knows where everyshark is everywhere, so, absolutely.

(01:25:17):
You know, that's the Well, we'realso scared of who else they would
bring in for a second season.
Somebody like him might be verydangerous to, to see the kids seen.
Yeah.
I had the same conversation with, withMike Hit house and, um, Yas Papa too.
And I'm just like, if youguys were part of the show.
That's gonna be Oh yeah.
I told, I told David he was on there.
He goes, oh, he goes, he goes, ifI could scuba dive like I used to,

(01:25:37):
he's like, I would be on that showin a second, you know, but he'd be
too busy, like identifying them all.
He'd be like going, he'd probablyfind a new species out there.
Exactly.
He wouldn't care aboutthe competition anymore.
He's like, just get to these locations.
Yeah.
Every location he goes.
He is just, that's new.
I don't know what that is, but that's new.
I'm gonna tell you that.
Right.
I can see the, the, the cameramanjust being like, I don't know.

(01:26:00):
I don't know what this is.
We'll just get shark.
So, we'll, well, you know, the quickwork to, um, the quick work of the
production team too, keep in mind likeall these, um, species that we identified
and had and had to get validated orverified, um, they were going off to
experts to, and turning those around.
In a very quick period of time.
So there was a lot ofplanning that went into that.

(01:26:21):
Yeah.
If we're gonna new areas and, andspecies that a lot of us had not
experienced and we had to get thoselike, oh, we think that's what it is.
We're sure that's what it is.
But they had to verifythat to give us points.
So that was, it was abig job on their part.
And I did love the cards, like of the,the, the post editing, uh, team did the
cards of like showing what species iswhere it is and all that kind of stuff.
I thought that was, uh, that was reallycool what they were able to do and,

(01:26:44):
and provide that educational source.
Don't tell 'em, but Istill have a couple cards.
Oh, that's awesome.
That is so cool.
That is so much fun.
Right on.
Don't tell 'em I have those.
But guys, this has been fantastic.
It's really been funto get to know you all.
I really appreciate you comingon and giving us your experience.
Um, and I just thinkit's, it's phenomenal.
I'd love to have both of you back ontogether individually to share the

(01:27:07):
science that you guys do, um, andget to know a little bit more about
that as we go, as we go forward.
So thank you so much for,for coming on the show.
Thanks for having us.
Awesome, Andrew.
Yeah.
Appreciate you.
You bet.
Thank you, Chris.
Thank you, Brendan, for joiningus on today's episode of the How
to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
It was really great to be ableto, you know, get a peek into
the journey and behind thescenes of a production like this.

(01:27:27):
This is something that is pretty newto a lot of people, including myself.
Not necessarily TV production, but alsolike looking at a reality show that has
a positive outcome that looks at positivethings, and that is very challenging
from a diving perspective, I am not anexperienced diver, to say the least.
I've gone diving a number of times,but I wouldn't say that I've seen a
lot of different scenarios like theydid in these challenging waters where

(01:27:51):
there, you know, Japan was a lotof currents we saw in South Africa.
It was cold as well as thevisibility wasn't that great.
As you can see, it was green water, butvery productive as Brendan mentioned.
It was just really cool and I thinksomething that we should all check
out sometime if you're divers andsomething to look out for if you're
a diver or scientist or underwaterphotographer, underwater camera person.

(01:28:12):
I would love to hear what yourthoughts were about the show.
Did you love the content?
Did you love the diving experience?
Did you love the cinema photography?
Did you not like it?
Love to hear your thoughts.
Let me know in the comments below ifyou're listening to this on YouTube, or
you can hit me up through my email bygoing to speak up for blue.com/contact,
and then you can DM me on Instagramat How to Protect the Ocean.

(01:28:32):
And obviously I will have all thelinks so you can connect with Chris
and Brendan in the show notes.
So check those out and check out allthe sharks if you have it on Netflix.
It's a really great show, a lot of fun.
Six episodes I binged in one night,and it was a lot of fun to see.
So that's it for today's episode.
Thank you again to Brendan and Chris.
We really appreciate you guys forlistening to this and we'd love to
have you back for more episodes.

(01:28:54):
To learn more about the ocean, I wannathank you for joining me on this episode
of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
I'm your host, Andrew Lewin fromthe True Nord Strong and Free.
Have a great day.
We'll talk to you next timeand happy conservation.

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