The marvelous and misunderstood world of sharks

Sharks are full of secrets, despite being some of the oldest creatures on the planet. Marine biologist Jasmin Graham has spent a decade studying them — and trying to bring more women of color like her into the field.

Jasmin Graham, marine biologist currently specializing in smalltooth sawfish and hammerhead sharks. Co-founder and president of the organization Minorities in Shark Sciences, or MISS. Host of PBS’ “Sharks Unknown with Jasmin Graham." Her new book is “Sharks Don’t Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist."

Part I

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: Jasmin Graham comes from a fishing family. Her dad's side has deep roots in the South Carolina Lowcountry, and she grew up learning all the Creole dialect names for the fish she and her dad and her grandmother would catch. Lowcountry culture is deeply influenced by the Gullah Geechee people.

And then Jasmin fell in love with sharks. She became a marine biologist who now hosts PBS's Sharks Unknown with Jasmin Graham. And her new book is Sharks Don't Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist. And she joins us from Columbia, South Carolina. Jasmin Graham, welcome to On Point.

JASMIN GRAHAM: Hello, thanks for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: Can you tell me the story of the first time you ever held a shark in your hands?

GRAHAM: Yeah. So I was actually in Charleston, South Carolina, in the Intracoastal waterway fishing with South Carolina Department of Natural Resources. And the first shark I ever held was a bonnethead shark. And it is now, to this day, my favorite species of shark.

It was so cool. I was amazed at, first of all, how that skin felt. Because I thought it was going to feel like smooth, like, I don't know, a dolphin or something like that. But it ended up feeling more like sandpaper. That was really surprising. And just how it was a very small shark, but it was so strong and powerful and also a little bit silly looking, because I don't know if you've ever seen a bonnethead.

CHAKRABARTI: I'm looking at one right now, thanks to Google.

GRAHAM: Yeah. They're real silly looking. They looked like they got little tiny hats on. So it was, oh, this is not what I imagined a shark to be like. But it was a super cool experience to this day, my favorite animals, and I'm so fortunate to get to work with them as a job now.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. Tell me, how did you feel, first of all, how did that moment come about? And then when you were actually holding it and observing the bonnethead. Like, how did you feel? Because what I'm trying to wonder is what is it about that moment that, as you said, led you to this wonderful career as a shark scientist?

GRAHAM: So I actually ended up on that boat, because I was doing research with Dr. Gavin Naylor, who was at College of Charleston at the time, and we were doing a project looking at how hammerheads are all related to each other. A lot of people think there's just one species of hammerhead.

There's actually 10, which is surprising to a lot of people, but I was studying that. But I was looking all at museum specimens and CT scanning these sharks that had been pickled in jars for decades. And these little bits of skin and looking at their genetics. And so my professor was like, I feel like at some point you should go see a real live hammerhead. So he arranged for me to go out with Brian Frazier and his crew at the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources.

And I went out on one of their regular shark surveys. And so that's how I ended up on the boat. And for me, what really clicked was the peace that I always felt being out on the water mixed with this experience of holding this majestic animal and getting to commune with nature in a way that a lot of people don't. Because people have such fear surrounding sharks and to be able to see one up close, and hold it and see just how vulnerable they are. And how much in need of protection they are and be part of the process of conserving them and making sure that they're protected, was just really moving and life changing for me. And I decided that's what I want to do for the rest of my life.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah you mentioned the skin of the bonnethead. And I think last year I was reading a bunch of articles just out of curiosity about the fact that the shark skin is actually quite an inspiration for material scientists.

Cause they're trying to make materials that replicate some of the things that shark skin does. Right, in terms of reducing drag, and there's a company that's like making a sharkskin mimic that supposedly has antibacterial properties. So it's like we have so much to learn from these creatures and yet we know so little about them.

GRAHAM: Yeah, for sure. Sharks have amazing adaptations, and the sharks have dermal denticles. Dermal meaning skin, denticles meaning teeth, so they have tiny teeth all over their bodies, which is such a weird adaptation, to just have teeth all over your body. And yeah, it reduces drag, keeps things from growing on it, makes them really rough. So it's hard for things to grab onto them, and they also have amazing immune systems, and the way that their skin heals and recovers is remarkable, and even Michael Phelps got inspiration to design a swimsuit based off of shark dermal denticles, and it was actually so effective that they banned him using it in the Olympics, because he was too fast. (LAUGHS)

So it's pretty cool. So I want to spend some of the time in this hour talking with you about the, just the cool, the biological coolness of sharks, but I also want to get to know you better. Because in the beginning of the book, actually, you talk about, like right at the beginning, you talk about how your whole life was changed, not just by this moment of holding the bonnet head, but you talk about a single photograph that you encountered, and I would love for you to tell that story.

GRAHAM: Yeah, so it was 2020. The world was feeling like it was falling apart. I don't know if other people felt like that, but it felt like the world was falling apart at that time. And I was, like many others, just scrolling through the internet.

There was a hashtag Black in Nature that was going around as part of the Black Birders Week movement that had been started by the Christian Cooper incident in Central Park. And I saw that Carlee, who later became a co-founder of Minorities in Shark Sciences with me, she had a photo of her doing shark research.

And this was huge and momentous for me because I had never seen anyone that looked like me doing what I do. In 2019, there was one Black member of the scientific society for people that study sharks and rays in this part of the world, the American Alaskan Society, and I was it, I was the one, and so being able to see, hey, there's somebody else out here, another Black woman studying sharks, and so I immediately responded to her photo via a comment on Twitter, and I said, Wow, another Black girl in shark science?

This is amazing! And then what was even more wild is that then Jada came in, and then Amani came in with, 'Me too, Me three.' And then suddenly I had gone from thinking that I was the only one to having four total. And I was like, wow, this is wild. We just quadrupled the amount of Black girls in shark science that I know of.

It was really incredible. And so we started talking, and at first it started out as a joke of, Oh, we should start a club. And then somewhere along the line, it got real serious and then we decided, Hey, no, we actually should do this. And that club turned into a nonprofit. And now we have about 500 members all around the world, representing 33 different countries.

And it's incredible when you make the call of, Hey, are there other people of color out there that feel alone? Come join us. And the call was answered, and it was answered in a big way.

CHAKRABARTI: Wow. So we should just give the full name and full props to these other women that you're talking about, right?

Carlee Jackson, she's a shark conservationist and a marine turtle specialist, right?

GRAHAM: Yes.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. And then Amani Webber-Schultz and Jada Elcock. What are their areas of specialty?

GRAHAM: So Amani is at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and she studies the biomechanics of sharks. So how they swim, how they move, how they work.

And Jada is at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the MIT Joint Program. And she is studying the movements of sharks. She looks mostly at filter feeding sharks, so basking sharks and whale sharks.

CHAKRABARTI: Capital N nerds. I love it. I love it. You're gonna make me cry. I just, I have a very deep soft spot for nerdy women of color. So tell me, let's go back in time. Because I want to take a couple of different paths to where you are now and not only your work with sharks, but as you talked about your work, trying to open up the world of marine biology to the entire diversity of people out there who already love the oceans, know a lot about it, and whom we need to include in order to make conservation truly effective, especially for various species like sharks who are under so much pressure from human activity.

But take me back to where actually I opened the show, which is when you were with your dad and his deep roots in South Carolina's low country. Can you tell me more about that?

GRAHAM: Yeah, so my dad's family is from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. And we will always say as a point of clarification, Myrtle Beach.

Myrtle Beach, not somewhere else in Horry County, Myrtle Beach, proper. So yeah, they're from Myrtle Beach and my mom was in the Air Force, so we moved around a lot. And so Myrtle Beach was like my home base. Where we would go every summer and spend time with, my dad's family, and we are some fishing folk, let me tell you. My grandma, Evelina, she fished every day she could, sometimes twice a day, you would always catch her fishing, and my dad is the same way, so we would go out, we'd go fishing on the pier. A lot of those piers that we used to fish on, they have been destroyed in a couple of hurricanes and rebuilt a couple of times now.

And a lot of them are privatized. So it's a very different world than it was even whenever I was growing up. But we used to just spend all day fishing, have a cooler of some drinks and some snacks, and just sit out there and catch fish, especially when the spot we're running, we're real big on spot.

So when the spot run by, which they make this migration past Myrtle Beach and you can catch and like, when they're biting, like you're pulling them out of the water left and right. So we would have a lot of fun fishing there on the pier and going back and my grandma or my aunts would clean the fish and we'd have a fish fry and everyone in my family, and honestly, the neighborhood would be down there. (LAUGHS) We'd all be eating together. And so that's what I grew up doing and having this really deep connection to the ocean in terms of, this is where my food and my sustenance comes from. And I think that a lot of people don't have that connection of like where their food comes from.

So I'm very fortunate to have that connection.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: Jasmin, if you don't mind, I'd actually like to hear more from you about your family's history in Myrtle Beach. Because, you write quite movingly about, it seems almost like the story of your family's history there very much mirrors the story of Black Americans through the last century.

For example, you say your grandmother, Evelina, like her house used to have this incredible view of the ocean, but it lost that view at a certain point in time.

GRAHAM: Yeah, Myrtle Beach, like a lot of the South, a lot of the Black community, was heavily impacted by slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, all of those sorts of things.

Both of my parents went to segregated schools for at least part of their schooling. So not that long ago and I talk about it in my book, I effectively went to a segregated school, just not segregated by law. And so this is something that was really important to me to share, not only because it's my family history and where I come from and the giants whose shoulders I'm standing on, but also because I think it's important for us to acknowledge and recognize the way that history has unfolded. And how that has created a lot of these barriers and issues that I talk about in the book, related to science, but not only just science, but everything in general, and society.

And so my family has been in Myrtle Beach for as far back as we can remember, and the land that they occupied, it used to not be desirable. It wasn't good farmland, and that's why they were allowed to live there. And so then you had this shift where people started thinking, Oh, actually, beaches are cool and places that we want to be.

And then we have this Black community here that we've pushed here, because we didn't want them anywhere else. But now we want the land that they're sitting on. And we're going to find ways to try to get that. And so that's the sort of story that I outline in the book. Where they ... used to be able to see the ocean from her front yard.

And now there's like a Sheraton, several hotels blocking the view, because everything built up around them. If you go to Myrtle Beach, the neighborhood that my family lives in, it's surrounded by tourism. And these giant hotels and condos and all of these things that are effectively cutting off their access from the ocean.

I mentioned that the piers that I used to go to are now privatized. You have to pay for them, to get on there and fish. And so it's created this barrier within the community of, how do we access these resources that are so important to us, and to our survival as a community, when all of these forces are putting up these literal fences and doors to stop us from getting it.

CHAKRABARTI: You actually, you opened my eyes to certain things about the visceral history there, right? Because you write how in 1960, August 30th, because the beaches weren't integrated for a long time, a group of civil rights activists actually organized a wade in at Myrtle Beach State Park, which just imagining, that's quite moving and powerful.

Now, even though the ocean and the beaches were right there for your family for a long time, what year was the first year any member of your family was actually allowed by law to go to the beaches that were right next to where they lived?

GRAHAM: So I was talking to my aunts about this, and my aunt Rose, she remembers it being when she was a senior in high school so that was in the '60s at some point.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. And specifically in the book, you say '66 or '67.

GRAHAM: '66 or '67. Yeah. Which wasn't that long ago. I think sometimes we think about this being history long ago. These are people that are alive to tell these stories. It wasn't that long ago. And so it was recent. And for a long time, it was, hey, you have to go to Atlantic Beach, you got to go to North Myrtle Beach, you can't go to the water here.

And so they went to the Black owned beach, and that's super far away from them, especially when you don't have a car. And so we have an ocean right here that we could literally walk to, that we can't go to because of the color of our skin. And that's something that I think it was important to bring up in the book, because we talk about access.

We talk about getting people into science, especially in marine science. But that when you have that restriction from not being able to even access public pools, the ocean, being able to swim, all of those things have an impact on how people feel comfortable with the ocean and comfortable enough to go and decide, I'm going to go study it.

There's these historical things that are barriers that we have to think about before we even get to all of these other sorts of academic financial barriers that exist now.

CHAKRABARTI: Your personal, your professional and personal life is so intimately tied to the oceans now, but you write that even though you were growing up in a post segregation era, technically, did you find comfort at the beaches as a young girl?

GRAHAM: So because of the historic segregation, my family didn't really go to the beach. We went to the piers, not the beaches.

CHAKRABARTI: I wanted to make that distinction, right? Because for people who don't know the area, me included, it's like when you think of piers, you think that they're just naturally on the beach, but these are different locations you're talking about.

GRAHAM: Yeah. And so the piers are, when I was fishing as a kid, a lot of the people on the piers look like me and we were all fishing, and we were over here. And then there was like the big fancy hotels and beaches where people that don't look like us go and it was a distinction.

Even though we were allowed to go, it still wasn't a place that I think my family was comfortable being in or used to being in. And so that sort of generational trauma, for lack of a better word, gets passed down where you're denied a place for long enough, that if you've evolved your culture to not go there, for it not to be a place that you associate with peace or vacation or enjoyment, you associate it with stress.

And so I think that my family just generally, we just didn't go to the beach, we were on the piers. That's where we felt like we were welcome, and we found our peace.

CHAKRABARTI: And importantly, as you said earlier, you weren't sport fishing, right? This was fishing for sustenance. That's a really different relationship to what the water can provide.

GRAHAM: Yeah, for sure. The majority of what my family eats is seafood that we got from the ocean. And so I have that really direct relationship with food. And it's something that I've taken into adulthood, that I find it really important for me, especially as someone that works in conservation, that I know and understand where my food comes from, because the sort of commercialization of food has caused a lot of issues with climate change and social justice and all sorts of things.

And so I am fortunate enough that I do know how to fish. I do know how to hunt and I can get my own food. And know that I'm doing it sustainably and not have to trust other corporations to be doing it sustainably. So it's something that's really deeply rooted inside me and something that I wanted to bring out in this book. Because I think oftentimes fishermen are put in tension with conservation in people's minds.

Like they think that, Oh, the fishermen are the problem, but it's not that fishermen are the problem. My family also needs there to be healthy fish populations, because we won't eat. So it's also really important to us, conservation and this idea of take what you need and make sure everyone has enough.

But no one's taking too much, is the basics of sustainable fishing. And that's something that was built into us, because you want to make sure that your children and your children's children are able to eat, as well.

CHAKRABARTI: It seems like it's the same thing as with hunting. Hunters are conservationists, right?

Because like a healthy wilderness is required for there to be animals that hunters legally take. And for a long time, actually, there have been some really powerful collaborations between traditional conservationist groups and hunters. I think, I feel like it's exactly the same for fishermen, but the complication with the oceans is that there's a lot of corporate fishing out there, right? Like massive ships that are just strip mining the oceans. Those aren't the small-scale fishermen we're talking about, but I think the major damage being done to all of these marine species that you know and love so well, it's coming from this massive global demand for marine based proteins.

GRAHAM: Yeah, for sure. And my family and all the fishermen that I talked to as part of this project that I'm doing with my dad, all say the same thing. It's hey, these big ships are out here taking our fish and we don't actually get that fish, because it's all getting taken by all these other big corporations, and so we can't feed our families and they're out here making millions of dollars, and we're just trying to eat and we're the one suffering.

And so I think that's a really important thing to realize that there are different types of fishing and there's fishing that can be done sustainably and there's fishing that's unsustainable. And so we need to cut down on the unsustainable fishing so that our sustainable fisheries can thrive, and that people can eat.

And people have the saying, fish are friends not food, but fish are friends and food.

CHAKRABARTI:

GRAHAM: Yeah. So it's interesting cause they're both wildlife and a commodity and a thing that like provides people with nutrients. So we have to manage it as such.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. I love that you write in the book that your very first fishing rod, which your dad still has, was a little yellow Tweety bird fishing rod.

And the hat that you bought him once for Father's Day, can you describe that for us?

GRAHAM: Yeah, so he actually wore the hat yesterday at my book launch event. It's called, it says on it, it says, "My fish" and it has a little picture of a little tiny fish. And then it says, "My kid's fish" and it has like a much bigger fish.

And I got that hat for him one day, one year for Father's Day, and I just thought it was so funny because I would often catch bigger fish than him.

CHAKRABARTI: (LAUGHS)

GRAHAM: And we would always laugh about it. And that rod, he actually surprised me at my launch event yesterday and brought it out in a case. He built a case for it.

So it now lives in this little shadow box that says Jasmin Graham's first fishing rod. It's very cute.

CHAKRABARTI: Oh my gosh. Dads are the best. Okay. I also wanted to ask you about how you learned about the fish that you and your father were catching when you were young. Because as we mentioned at the top of the show, that South Carolina's low country culture that you write about in the book is really deeply influenced by the Gullah Geechee people.

So what were some of the names of the fish that you were learning as a young girl?

GRAHAM: Yeah, it was really funny, because when I got to my fish biology class, and I was trying to learn the scientific names and match them up to the common names, which common names vary vastly, which is why we use scientific names, so that we can all agree.

This is like the one name that we all agree that this fish is called. Because common names vary so widely, especially regionally. And so like for us, things like striker, are like in my textbook, we're called vermilion snapper. I'm like, Oh, okay. That's the same thing, and even like sometimes shortening things or smushing words together. There's an official common name of a fish being oyster toadfish, and us calling it an oysterfish. And then sometimes there being groups of fish that are, like, similar that we don't distinguish between them, because they taste the same, effectively.

They look the same, they taste the same. That's how we distinguish fish. Whiting. Whiting is actually several different kinds of fish. But we call them all the same thing. And so little things like that, or we'll call a fish something, that name actually means a totally different fish in a different part of the world.

Ribbonfish. We call that Ladyfish in the textbook, but there is a fish that exists that's called a ribbonfish, but it's not the same thing as a ladyfish. So it gets very confusing. When I had to be like, okay, I have to relearn everything. So that was fun going through school.

CHAKRABARTI: I wonder if that, experiences like that, as you've then moved into your professional career as a marine biologist, is that one of the reasons why, it sounds like you feel like this personal affinity with sharks and particularly all the hammerheads that you study and love the most. Because hammerheads are odd looking.

They don't really make sense. You wonder what, why they're there. Did you ever have that feeling as a Black woman in the marine sciences? When you're literally surrounded by basically entirely white colleagues?

GRAHAM: Yeah, I definitely felt like a fish out of water, pun intended.

But yeah, I think that, I mentioned this in the book, that sharks are so [misaligned], like people have these perceptions of who sharks are, and their motivations. And this idea that, oh, sharks are these mindless killing machines and they're something that should be feared. And because they have sharp teeth and all of this, like we don't trust them.

We don't trust sharks and the Jaws effect and the way that we portray shark encounters, negative shark encounters on media and movies and all of these things. It makes people have a fear of them, to the point where some people literally will not get in the ocean, because their fear is so large that they're going to have a negative encounter with a shark.

I see similar things happening, and I mention this in the book, with Black people. And this, the way that we're portrayed in media, and the images that go along with news stories when a Black person is involved. All of those things lead people to be afraid of us, not because of anything we do or because we are by nature, any more aggressive or anything like that, similar to sharks. We're just minding our business, walking down the street, and somebody decides they need to cross to the other side. Because, I don't know, I'm afraid. Everything that I'm getting from the outside, this input, is biasing me to say, I'm afraid of that person.

I don't know why, and I don't have any reason to. And it's the same thing with sharks, of this bias that exists, there are fish, there are predators. They are just like dolphins and orcas and all those sorts of things. They have big teeth as well. But we don't fear dolphins and orcas in the same way, because society doesn't tell us to be afraid of them.

CHAKRABARTI: It's interesting. I love dolphins and orcas, but orcas have this unique distinction of being a species, like humans, that kind of taunts and even plays with their food, which, to shark's credit, they do not, as far as I know. Jasmin, hang on for a second. Much more to talk about in just a second. This is On Point.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: Jasmin, I would love to learn as much as I can from your shark science expertise, and particularly because you specialize in some of the more unique looking sharks, like the hammerheads. Why do hammerheads have the shape of heads that they do?

GRAHAM: Meghna, that's a great question and I wish I had an answer for you.

I've been citing this for years and I still don't know. But that's science. So hammerheads have this head, this extended, what we call cephalofoil, in case you're ever on Jeopardy, it's called a cephalofoil. And there's a lot of theories behind this head, like Oh, it helps them turn better, which is a cool biomechanics thing.

But there are hammerheads with various sizes of heads. So what's up with that? There's also been observations of hammerheads using their heads to pin down stingrays in order to eat them, which is their favorite snack. And then there's also this theory that, Oh, they have their sensory organs spread out further, so they're able to have better senses.

So they have these little pores called ampullae of Lorenzini, and it helps them sense electrical charges. And by having this wide head, they can spread their ampullae of Lorenzini out further and their eyes out further. So they get closer to 360 degree vision and all of these things. And so right now I'm working with the some colleagues to understand the distribution of ampullae of Lorenzini, and if that has any effect.

I've also looked at the genetics, and the morphology or the way that the sharks are shaped, to understand how they're related to each other. Because there's two conflicting hypotheses about how the hammerheads evolved.

And one of those hypotheses actually suggests that the hammerhead head was actually like entirely an accident, and they've actually been evolving it away this whole time. And we've been trying to figure out what it's useful for. And the answer may be nothing. I've been taking a deep dive into understanding the ecology and evolution of hammerheads.

It's a really fun subject, that is still more or less a mystery.

CHAKRABARTI: Can you tell me more about that electromagnetic sense that sharks have? Because I only recently learned about it, and it seemed to me to be one of the coolest adaptations out there in nature. So what is it, and how does it work?

GRAHAM: Yeah, so it's super cool. So they've got an extra sense that we don't have, and it's these little pores, like little holes, just like we have pores on our face, little holes, but they're filled with jelly, which conducts electricity. It's actually open into the environment. It has these canals that go all the way to their brains, where they can actually interpret this information.

And so it can send the electrical charge all the way from the water to their brains, like directly, which is really cool to have like your sensory organs directly connected to the environment. It's pretty wild. But these pores are all over their snout, all over their nose. And what's really cool, you might say, why do you need to sense electrical charges?

Whenever you have muscles, the thing that makes your muscles contract is a weak electrical signal. So that's what makes our hearts beat. That's why whenever your natural pacemaker stops working, which is the thing that sends the signal that tells your heart beat, beat, beat, we have a manufactured pacemaker that gets put in our bodies, that actually sends an artificial, artificially created electrical charge to our heart to tell us to beat.

And so that same signal, the sharks can actually pick up. So even if they can't see the animal, they can feel its heartbeat, which is wild.

CHAKRABARTI: Wow. Oh, how far away can they sense that signal?

GRAHAM: So that's another question that we don't quite know the answer to, but there's a lot of people testing that and it seems like it might vary with species.

And so one of the things that we're looking at is, does how closely together these pores are, how far apart they are affect the distance at which they can actually sense that? And is that maybe a reason why the hammerhead head is a positive adaptation? Because it spreads out the ampullae of Lorenzini, or it gives them the opportunity to have more of them than other sharks.

CHAKRABARTI: Wow. That's the sound of my mind being blown. So cool. Now the title of your book is Sharks Don't Sink. I always thought that they did, because they don't have air bladders. They've got like those very oil heavy livers. Am I wrong?

GRAHAM: So you are correct. So sharks don't have swim bladders.

They have a material, like an oil in their liver called squalene, which helps them be a little bit more buoyant. But they are actually negatively buoyant. So as soon as they stop swimming, they sink. And so the reason why I called this book Sharks Don't Sink is because the only thing that keeps sharks afloat is that they keep moving forward.

And I think that's an important life lesson for us all, that as long as we keep moving forward, we won't sink.

CHAKRABARTI: They should have made Dory a shark in Finding Nemo.

GRAHAM: They should have. Yes.

CHAKRABARTI: That would have been amazing because then the 'just keep swimming' would have made so much more sense. But maybe I'm being too literal as an adult.

Now, the other thing that is quite amazing about sharks. And you do write about this in the book, is that as a family or a genus, they are ancient, right? They're pushing what, 500 million years old.

GRAHAM: Yeah. A lot of people don't realize this, but sharks have been on this planet a long time.

They've survived five mass extinction events. And a mass extinction event is when the majority of life on planet just ceases to exist. And sharks were like, Yeah, we're fine. And they just kept going through five of them.

CHAKRABARTI: (LAUGHS)

GRAHAM: And they've outlived so many things. They're older than dinosaurs.

We think of dinosaurs as being like, Oh, they were so long ago. Dinosaurs are children compared to sharks. Trees, they're older than trees. They've been on this planet longer than trees have. And then what really gets people is my favorite fact, is they are actually older than the rings of Saturn.

CHAKRABARTI: No way.

GRAHAM: Yeah, so sharks were on earth before Saturn had rings.

CHAKRABARTI: Wow. I had no idea. You're connecting this show to my other favorite topic, which is space. This is incredible. And we've had multiple mass extinction events and they've survived all of those.

GRAHAM: Yeah. Yeah. And we're now in what a lot of scientists are calling the sixth mass extinction event, which is largely driven by people and our impacts on the planet.

And this one they're not doing so hot in. And that's a concern. We have over 70% of our shark species that are endangered. So at risk of extinction. There are some species that have lost as much as 90% of their population. And this is just since the industrial revolution.

So not that long ago. We're taking them out at an alarming rate. And that's part of the reason why I want to work so hard to move people from fear to fascination. Because when you're afraid of something, you often don't care whether it lives or dies. But they're really important to our ecosystem.

As predators, they do some really important things. They are keeping the populations of fish under control, keeping the ecosystem in balance. They're also removing the weak, injured, sick fish so that they are less likely to spread disease or poor genetics and things like that, to the rest of the population.

And then they also control the movements of those animals, even just by existing. So if you have like a group of parrotfish and they're all grazing on a reef, if there are no predators, they will just keep grazing in the same spot until they decimate. But if you have predators, that forces them to move around, because they don't want to get eaten.

So instead of overgrazing on just one spot, they're spreading it around. So it's not as detrimental to the habitat. So sharks are really important, and people don't realize it, but they're really doing a service in the ecosystem that we need. And they've been here a long time. So we don't even know what the oceans look like without sharks.

And I personally don't want to find out.

CHAKRABARTI: You actually put it quite delicately in terms of the causes of these precipitous drops in in the population of various shark species. Like you said, some have dropped by 90%. I'd like to actually make it more visceral for folks, right?

Because are we talking about habitat change? Or are we just talking about straight up hunting and fishing of sharks, the mass hunting and fishing?

GRAHAM: Yeah, so the major threats to sharks are overfishing, which is where we take out more sharks than they can replace themselves. So sharks are animals that take a long time to grow to maturity.

They don't have a ton of young, and they grow really slowly. And so that makes them really prone to overfishing, because if they don't have that many young, and they don't have that many times to give birth or hatch eggs in their lifetime, then we're taking them out pretty fast, and they can't keep up.

And then another issue is bycatch. So where people aren't actually trying to catch fish, that's not their target, but the sharks are getting in their nets or getting on their lines, and they die anyways. And that is a really big problem because those sharks oftentimes aren't even getting used.

So they're dying and then also not providing any sustenance or materials.

CHAKRABARTI: They're just getting thrown back in, right?

GRAHAM: Yeah. And so that's a big thing, in addition to the habitat loss and climate change and all of those other things. But overfishing and bycatches is a big problem for sharks.

CHAKRABARTI: That gets me to one of the other, I think, major goals of minorities in shark sciences or myths, the oceans are literally our planet, right? They cover 70% of planet Earth. And so any truly effective conservation effort has to involve people everywhere, of all colors, all shapes, all sizes, all cultures, all backgrounds.

And that must apply to shark conservation, as well. So are you able to work with people internationally? Or actually, let me put a finer point on it. People who may not walk the halls of an academic institution, but who have profound and intimate knowledge of the waters where they live.

GRAHAM: Oh, yes, absolutely. So that's a huge part of what we do at MISS, is trying to support communities and stakeholders that don't normally get a voice. And so one of our big programs is Iconic Oceans, which stands for Integrated, Coordinated, Open, Networked, and Inclusive Conservation. And we work with MISS members all over the world.

So we have a MISS member who's actually named Meghna, too, in India.

CHAKRABARTI: (LAUGHS) She must be really good at her job.

GRAHAM: Yes. And she's working with MISS with fishermen in India, we have folks in Nigeria, Brazil, Sri Lanka and they're all working with fishing communities and coastal communities there that haven't had a voice, especially in the global South.

There's often not a lot consideration, given to fishermen or to the coastal communities, and there's a lot of what it's sometimes called parachute science or parachute conservation, where folks from the global North come in and they decide that they know what's best because of some elitism that they have.

And so we're really trying to counteract that by engaging local scientists, local communities to be the main voice leading these conservation efforts, to make sure that they're actually sustainable. And by sustainable, I mean for the planet and people, because if people can't continue to live and survive, that's not a sustainable solution.

So that's what we do.

CHAKRABARTI: True conservation takes the recognition and respect of that kind of local knowledge, but it also takes the rest of us, right? Because you had mentioned earlier that it's really hard to rally people to help save a species when so many folks are inherently afraid of them.

Yeah. And it just occurred to me yesterday when we were talking about how to prepare for this conversation with you, that this year is the 50th anniversary of Peter Benchley's novel, Jaws. Of course, the movie came out the year later, so next year would be the 50th anniversary of the movie.

But Peter Benchley, interestingly, years later, really, he was quite public in his regret for the role that the novel played in making people afraid of sharks. Can you just quickly give me a reason or two why folks should not be afraid of them?

GRAHAM: Yeah. A lot of times people think, Oh, shark attacks are really common.

They're actually not very common, especially given how many people swim in the ocean every year in the world, a lot of people in the ocean, a lot of people, a lot of sharks. And the fact that we have as few encounters as we do, that goes to tell you that they're not really interested in us.

Secondly, I like to remind people that we really are the threat here, not the sharks. And on average, 10 people a year are killed globally by sharks. In comparison, people kill 100 million sharks a year. So like, big difference there. So way more likely that the shark is going to end up dead in an encounter with a person, than the person.

And then I also just, I think one of the best ways to counteract the fear of sharks is to just let people experience them. And whether that be in aquariums, or through books and movies that have more positive counter, it's something that, for a lot of people, facts and figures aren't going to change their fear, because it's irrational.

So it's like how you have to connect with them emotionally. And I think the way to do that is to show them sharks in a different light than they've seen. And so that's why I like doing these things like Sharks Unknown and the National Geographic Shark Fest shows that I do, to show people a different perception, a different outlook on sharks and counteract that messaging that they're getting other places.