[Shannon] - Well, thank you everyone for joining us today
for our webinar,
"Shipwreck Ecosystems, Ecology and Conservation."
I'm Shannon Ricles, the Education and Outreach Coordinator
for Monitor National Marine Sanctuary
and Mallows Bay - Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary,
and I'm going to be your host today.
-: And I'm Mark Losavio, the Media and Outreach Coordinator
for Monitor and Mallows Bay - Potomac River
National Marine Sanctuary.
-: Sorry, Mark.
(Shannon laughing)
I did your picture, and it went too fast.
And this webinar is brought to you
by NOAA's Monitor National Marine Sanctuary
in collaboration with the North Carolina Office
of State Archeology.
-: Partnering since 1975,
NOAA and the state of North Carolina
work to research, honor, and protect
the hallmarks of North Carolina's underwater
cultural heritage, shipwrecks.
These shipwrecks hold the information
about the ever-changing technologies
and cultural and physical landscapes.
They serve as a uniquely accessible underwater museum
and a memorial to generations of mariners who lived, died,
worked, and fought off our shores.
This is just one of the many webinars we'll be hosting
in the coming year for the Submerged NC Webinar Series,
in collaboration with the North Carolina Office
of State Archeology.
-: Now, Monitor is just one of 15 national marine sanctuaries
and two marine national monuments
in the National Marine Sanctuary System,
and this system encompasses more than 620,000 square miles
of marine and Great Lakes waters
from Washington State to the Florida Keys
and from Lake Huron to American Samoa.
Now during the presentation,
all attendees will be in "listen only" mode.
You are welcome to type questions for your presenters
into the question box at the bottom of the control panel
on the right hand side of your screen.
And this is the same area that you can let us know
about any technical issues you might be having
and we can help you with.
We'll be monitoring the boxes and the questions
and hopefully we will respond to you just as soon as we can.
We are recording this session and we will share
the recording with registered participants
via the webinar archive page and a URL for this webpage
will be provided at the end of the presentation.
-: So without further ado, we'd love to welcome Cady Breslin
with the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island.
Cady, feel free to take it away.
-: Awesome, thank you so much, Mark and Shannon.
-: Yep, let me share the screen with you.
-: All righty.
Shannon: All right, there you go.
-: All right.
Oh.
I am...
The webinar screen will not go away.
There we go.
All right, thank you guys for bearing with that.
My name is Cady and we are here to talk about
the Shipwreck Ecosystems.
We're gonna look into a little bit about their ecology
and the conservation of those really specialized ecosystems.
A little bit about me.
I am a white female of average size in her early 30s
with brown hair and I'm wearing a blue top.
I have a background in biology and environmental education.
I'm a marine educator here at
the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island,
but I also am lucky enough to participate
as one of our staff divers
and I'm training to be a scientific diver
so that I can participate more fully
in the conservation efforts
that I'm gonna share with you today that our partners
and we are doing here, collaboratively, on site.
I live in the Outer Nanks with my partner Kyle
and our two dogs, Scout and Remi,
you can see in the photo there.
And I love to hike, read, bowl,
and I'm way, way too competitive at game night.
An overview of the talk itself.
So we are gonna dive into the North Carolina ecosystem
right off of our coast.
So as you travel from the beach off coast, there,
what's going on out in the ocean off of the Outer Banks.
And then we'll look at the shipwrecks
that also are out there in the ocean.
Why do those shipwrecks happen
and what are the impacts of those shipwrecks over time?
And then, over time, what we see on those ecosystems
of those wrecks. And do a couple species highlights
of special species of interest on those ecosystems,
as well as the conservation efforts that we,
here at the aquarium, and our partners are working on
for those species, and the actions that we take,
as well as actions that you might be able to take
no matter where you're from.
The ecology off of the North Carolina coast,
the environment, it's pretty sparse in a lot of areas.
So it's almost comparable to a desert.
It's open ocean, it's very barren
and there are very few solid substrate areas
off of the Outer Banks.
We don't see a lot of hard, rocky outcroppings
or a lot of the basic structural framework
for many ecosystems.
So that means we have a lot of shifting sand.
That's happening both naturally with wave action
as well as anthropogenically,
so humans are causing shifting sand as well.
In the photo, this is a photo taken off of Ocracoke,
which is an island in the Outer Banks,
and we could see these deep channels in the sand
that are actually dug consistently so that our ferries
can travel back and forth from different land masses
off of our coast, so we are digging those ferries,
excuse me, digging those channels,
the waves are pushing the sand back into different places
and we have to continuously do that.
But it's also happening naturally out off of our coast.
Which is part of the reason we tend to see
so many shipwrecks off of our coast.
We have those storms, so we have both hurricane season
here every year and we also have Nor'Easters,
which are gonna be those storms that
are moving around that sand,
that are dangerous in themselves with the wave action.
And then when we have those shifting sands,
if you don't have a lot of experience navigating
those waters that are changing the depth
so much with that moving sand,
if you don't have special really,
really sophisticated equipment,
you might not be able to navigate those sands,
and even if you do, sometimes it's still a detriment
to folks trying to navigate those areas
and those will end up with ships
running a ground and sinking.
Other things that we've seen a lot of shipwrecks occur from
are battles and wars.
There's been action off of the Outer Banks coast
in the Civil War and both World War I and World War II.
We also have seen action from pirates
and some human behaviors,
so folks who are intentionally sinking ships,
like we have seen action, even from Blackbeard,
was somewhat active off of the Outer Banks.
And we also have some lore in our area where folks
would take horses and put lanterns around their neck.
So they called them nags,
they would put a lantern around their head,
we've got the town Nags Head,
and they would took those horses up into the dunes
and the horses would kind of look like lighthouses,
or beacons, for those ships
and they would accidentally run a ground.
Is one of the lores around here on why we might have
so many shipwrecks.
And I want you to notice the images on the screen
of two shipwrecks.
I know that they're really hard to see,
and that was intentional because we also,
with those shifting sands,
the visibility around here is not always super great
because there's so much turbidity moving that sand around.
Sometimes these ecosystems aren't super clear,
which is important to remember when we look
at these conservation efforts.
Because we have so many shipwrecks off of our coast,
we get the nickname the "Graveyard of the Atlantic."
The map that you're seeing is called
the "Ghost Fleet of the Outer Banks"
that was created by "National Geographic,"
and every little dot along the Outer Banks,
there is a shipwreck.
And you'll notice that even in the sounds,
so I'm here in Manteo, which is on Roanoke Island,
that little land mass in between the landside North Carolina
and the sandbar that is the Outer Banks,
that's where I'm situated at the aquarium here.
We're seeing shipwrecks in our sounds and our rivers
as well as off of our coast.
Which leads me to ask you in a poll,
how many recorded shipwrecks do you think there are known
in the Outer Banks off of our coast?
So how many shipwrecks...
do you think we know about off of our coast?
Go ahead and answer in the poll.
Take a guess if you don't know.
Mark: All right, we already have
50% of respondents voting. -: Awesome.
Mark: This is good, keep going.
Give us your best guess.
Zero to 100, 101 to 500,
501 to a thousand,
or a thousand plus.
That last one is supposed to say "a thousand plus,"
which is a lot, but it could be right.
I don't know.
-: Wow, lots of contributing factors.
Mark: All right, I'll leave the poll open
for 10 more seconds, get those last votes in.
All right, just a few more seconds for this poll.
All right.
-: Awesome, what have we got, Mark?
Mark: So poll results,
we have 51%...
say between 501 and 1000,
and 29% say between 101 and 500,
and 17% say 1000 plus and 3% say between zero and 100.
-: Ah, you with the 17%, you are correct.
Are we back on the slides there Mark?
-: Yes, they're back to you. -: Awesome.
-: So as we're watching this fly over of the Triangle Wreck,
they're over 2,000 known shipwrecks
off of the coast of the Outer Banks, why we get that name.
This is the Triangle Wreck, which are two separate wrecks.
One is the...
Kyzikes American tanker, which sank in 1927
and one sank in 1929.
That's called the Carl Gerhard.
It was a Swedish freighter that actually ran
into the first wreck and smashed in two.
This is a popular wreck site that folks
will dive right off of the beach there.
So, so many wrecks off of our coast
and they have a big impact.
Let's talk about their cultural impact first.
So one historic wreck that you might have heard
Shannon talking about in the introduction
is the USS Monitor.
And this is an important battleship from the Civil War era
because it was the first Union ironclad battleship.
If you're looking at the photo, most of the red part
that you see on the top of that ship there
would be under the water.
So the red part would sit under the water's surface
and that black line at the top and the turret
would usually be what was above the water's surface.
The turret was really the only way in and out of the ship.
And these are the 62 gentlemen who manned that ship
during the Civil War.
It was really important not only because
it was the first ironclad battleship,
it was part of the first iron versus iron battle.
So think to yourself, what were ships made of before iron?
If you said wood, you are correct.
So wood ships would take a lot of damage
from those cannons and guns off of the other ships.
And what they had seen during the iron versus iron battle
is that they weren't taking as much damage,
but since there wasn't a lot of experience,
there was some confusion during that Battle of Hampton Roads
where they thought maybe they had won or taken more damage,
given more damage than they...
thought they had to the other ship.
There were some confusion and those ships
ended up parting ways in basically a draw,
That happened on March 9th, 1862.
And that was the USS Monitor versus the CSS Virginia,
also known as the Merrimack.
So that was a really important battle
as the first iron versus iron ship battle in the Civil War.
Kind of spurred our modern day Navy,
where we're seeing most ships are not made of wood today.
Once Norfolk was captured by the union,
the USS Monitor was actually called south.
So it was being towed south to serve different orders
and it was caught in a storm on December 31st, 1862.
So that surprise storm actually overtook that ship.
And what you're seeing is a painting
of the USS Monitor sinking and it's tug ship
that was bringing it south is actually there.
You can see the ship in the background
as well as the lifesaving rowboat.
So of the 62 gentlemen, 16 of those crew members
actually perished along with the USS Monitor
on New Year's Eve 1862.
Because that turret was the only exit.
And the Monitor was lost for a little over a hundred years.
When it was found by researchers at Duke University in 1973,
those teams located the Monitor and they had to make sure,
is this the Monitor?
So they mapped it out,
it was about 16 miles off of the coast of Cape Hatteras,
in the Outer Banks, and about 230 feet deep.
So the depth there is going to be a limiting factor
on what you can and can't do
as far as monitoring that shipwreck.
So what they did, they were able to map
that shipwreck with sonar.
That's what you're seeing in the top left there.
They also did some excavations and recovered some pieces
and some artifacts.
We have some here at the aquarium,
on loan from The Mariners' Museum,
and they also brought up the turret from the shipwreck
that is kind of like restored,
or put into a place where it can be preserved
and shown in that museum.
They were also able to honor the gentleman
that went down with the ship.
Over time, the remains of two of the gentlemen
were still intact and were able to be laid to rest
in a military funeral.
So we were able to take that cultural history
and kind of solidify it with that shipwreck.
But something else was noticed
when they were observing the Monitor.
They noticed there was a lot of life growing
on the Monitor.
So it was not only culturally important,
but it became ecologically important.
It became basically an oasis in that desert,
so that open, barren, open ocean
that didn't have a lot there because that sand
was always moving and wasn't a good structure,
we now have structure.
And that structure is now bursting with life
after that a hundred years and it becomes basically a reef.
We see a lot of biodiversity as that wreck has transitioned
into a reef over time as colonial organisms come in
to populate and then they are going to bring in
the smaller animals, so you've got your anemones,
your corals, your sponges and algae, invertebrates.
Those animals are your colonial organisms.
They come in and they start building.
And once they build,
they attract in those smaller animals on the food chain,
plants, depending on what kind of nutrients are available.
And those smaller organisms are gonna bring in
your medium organisms all the way up to your apex predators.
So we end up with an entire ecosystem on these shipwrecks.
And sometimes we'll even find some folks
who weren't exactly invited to the ecosystem.
We'll get into that as well.
But how are scientists going to take this discovery
of this really important cultural and ecological
shipwreck site and ecosystem?
How do we protect that so that over time it's not degraded
or have habitat discretion, destruction?
Excuse me.
You might have noticed that map
that Shannon showed at the beginning.
We have our National Marine Sanctuaries.
This is what has protected the Monitor all this time.
So those sanctuaries, like she said,
there are 15 sanctuaries, several monuments,
and they're protecting over 620,000 square miles
of Marine and Great Lake water.
So really awesome organization doing great work
to protect our resources.
And that was part of the 1972 National Marine Sanctuary Act,
which was within the Marine Protection Research
and Sanctuary's Act.
So it's like a national forest.
It preserves the biodiversity by saying,
"We can visit but we can't take anything away
"and we can't bring and leave anything
"or destroy that habitat."
The Monitor is really important
because it is the very first National Marine Sanctuary.
So it's the first one to be protected under this act.
And the yellow is what they are proposing
as new sanctuaries.
Those yellow squares are where we might have more lands
that are protected in the future.
At the aquarium, we partner with NOAA
and with lots of other partners to work on exhibits
and programs that are going to help raise awareness
for these acts, for this important work
that's being done by our partners so that people
in the public, or folks just like you,
know what's going on and know how they can contribute.
At the aquarium, we have two habitats
that are specifically focused around the USS Monitor.
First, we have our Ironclad Sanctuary.
This is an exhibit dedicated to...
the Monitor,
its battles,
as well as what's happened to it after it sank
and that it became a reef.
There's even a really cool kiosk where you can
interactively look at National Marine Sanctuaries
on that NOAA kiosk there.
And because our mission is to as inspire appreciation
and conservation of our aquatic environments,
and our theme itself is the waterways of North Carolina,
our next exhibit, our largest exhibit in the entire facility
is the "Graveyard of the Atlantic."
And that's the photo on your right.
That is a one-fourth scale model of the USS Monitor.
It's sitting just like the Monitor is sitting
off the coast of Cape Hatteras.
And so it's upside down.
We are looking at the propeller side of the ship
from this angle.
And the other important thing about that habitat
is that folks are seeing all native animals.
There are typically 15 to 25 species, or so, in there.
And right now every single animal is native to our coast.
So it gives a snapshot,
what do these marine sanctuaries look like?
What do these wreck reefs look like over time?
This is what you might see if you went diving
off of our coast.
And so that gives folks a really good understanding
of what the actual North Carolina ecosystems
that they are interacting with are comprised of
and how we are protecting them and how they can help.
So those efforts that we are doing,
we can get into a little bit, we are working in the field,
we're working in the lab and the office
and we're also trying to raise that awareness.
This is a video from one of the partner organizations
that we're working with.
So this is a video off of the Monitor.
So go ahead and count how many individual species you see
while we're watching this video.
In May of 2022, the Global Foundation for Education Project
used an ROV, which is a Remotely Operated Vehicle,
that they called Yogi, to explore around the USS Monitor.
So that's the wreckage you're seeing.
This is the wreck ecosystem reef that has been created
over a hundred years on the Monitor.
So NOAA and the North Carolina Office of State Archeology
worked with CMAST and North Carolina Aquariums
to actually broadcast these streams
and hold curated chats that we participated in
through the aquarium.
So as they were actively monitoring the shipwreck,
we had it live streamed here at the aquarium so folks
could hear the conversation the researchers were having,
they could look at the animals and the plants
and the different species on the wrecks
and really get a firsthand view of what these ecosystems are
and understand why they're so important off of our coast
and what we are doing to help them out.
It's got a little bit more time.
If you're counting a lot of species,
pop into the chat how many located.
We've got a couple special species
we're gonna be talking about here in just a second.
But even at 230 feet deep,
we're seeing so much life off of the Monitor wreck,
which is pretty amazing.
And so these, again, are the gentlemen who crewed,
were the crew on the Monitor, just honoring them as well.
So what the team did then was take stills
of this entire video, hours and hours of video, take stills,
and you might have counted several different species
and that's what they're doing.
They are taking these stills and they are looking at them
and counting how many species they can find,
what area on or around the wreck they are utilizing.
And students in Dr. Carol Price's lab,
Haley and Aaliyah, have actually supplied us
with some of this content because they're analyzing
these species for presence and abundance
and mapping out those ROV studies using those screenshots.
And that helps us understand the ecosystem,
what the species interactions might be going on
and what is going on in these habitats so we can map out
and understand, and the more we understand,
the more we can help.
Did you notice there were two sharks in this ROV photo?
So we see two sharks up on the right hand corner.
And I wanna talk about sharks for a little bit
because sharks are what we call the "stewards of our reefs."
Sharks are what we call a keystone species,
which means that they define an entire ecosystem.
Without sharks, the ecosystems they live in
would be drastically altered or even cease to exist.
And they're over 400 species of sharks
known in the world today.
And they are in various ecosystems,
they're all different sizes and they impact
pretty much the entire ocean as we know it.
They are what we call our cleanup crew.
So they're scavengers, they're going to clean up anything
that's dead and lying around.
They're also gonna go after the sick and injured animals,
which is going to keep disease from spreading.
Just like I could pass along germs
that might end up giving you a cold, fish can do the same.
So keeping those germs from spreading,
because sharks will target those sick individuals,
is going to decrease the spread of disease.
It's also easier for a shark to catch a sick
or injured individual because they're vulnerable.
So they are adapted, they have special things
on their bodies to help them find those individuals
and then consume them, as opposed to the healthy fish.
They're also gonna help manage populations.
So sharks are kind of the keepers of a lot of other species.
Imagine,
there are hundreds of us on this call, right?
Imagine that we have to share one medium pizza.
That's not gonna be enough.
Or imagine that if the 150 or so of us on this call
all met in person in one building that had one bathroom.
That is not going to work.
So there are limiting factors in our habitats,
which might be the food, it might be the space,
it's gonna be lots of different things.
And if there's not enough to go around,
it's not just a few of us that suffer,
it's all of us that will suffer, eventually,
and then our ecosystems are out of balance if we don't have
those limiting factors kind of partitioned out.
So sharks are gonna manage those populations
by making sure that they're not getting out of whack.
That's also gonna keep the strong genetics
flowing through our ecosystems so that whoever's reproducing
is the most physically fit to be reproducing.
The problem here, though, is that sharks
are kind of a target for a lot of
impacts that are happening to our ocean.
We are finding that a lot of sharks
are critically endangered,
endangered, vulnerable, or near threatened.
And one of the biggest problems that we are also having
is that we are data deficient in many of these species.
So over 400 species of sharks, the majority of them,
were data deficient to understand
how their population is doing.
It's really, really hard to study animals
that live in the ocean.
We don't have the sophisticated equipment necessarily
or the funds to use that equipment to find those animals,
track those animals
and understand what's going on in our ocean.
So not knowing what's going on means that
we don't have great understanding
of how the population's doing and how that's going to impact
the rest of our ecosystems, right?
We know the role that they play,
but it's really hard to know how that's being impacted
without knowing are they reproducing fast enough
to keep up with fishing or what have you.
So a reef without sharks, this is, this is a thing,
it's out of balance.
So we have, the blue is the coral reef with the shark,
there's a lot of biodiversity,
a lot of different animals, it's in balance.
However, on the right, we've got a degraded reef
because if those sharks are out of the equation,
we start seeing some over consumption.
So maybe the animals that the sharks would have eaten
are eating too much of another species,
or we can start seeing some other species
that are populating too much.
We're seeing a species that is growing exponentially
instead of being kept in balance.
Something we probably all can relate to are prairies,
or meadows, pollinator gardens.
So if you have just all grass, you have a monoculture.
If you have lots of different species, higher biodiversity,
consider which of these habitat types is going to be
able to support more types of animals, more plants,
which one is gonna have the higher biodiversity
and therefore which one has the better ecological...
impact, right?
Which one is going to have more beneficial outcomes
on the ecology of the area,
or even, a lot of times, even financially?
Something that's producing a higher biodiversity
is going to be more financially important.
Just like if we have fish in balance,
we have more fish to put into our seafood market.
So...
a lot of the times we see that they are sand tiger sharks.
Sand tiger sharks are seen a lot in
the Graveyard of the Atlantic, specifically,
but they are medium-sized sharks that are typically
about six to 10 feet in length
and usually about a hundred to 400 pounds
depending on how old they are.
And they're living worldwide
in subtropical and temperate waters.
They're kind of known for that double dorsal fin,
you can see there on the sand tiger
that we have in our habitat,
and they are also called the "Ragged Tooth Shark."
So they have a big toothy grin and those teeth
look a lot like fish hooks,
which is because that's what they eat, fish.
They eat medium-size fish and they don't tend
to close their mouth a whole lot because, one,
this type of shark has to swim to breathe.
So having their mouth open is going to allow
more water over their gills,
which is going to allow that oxygen to get onto their gills,
and some of the areas of their teeth, they're so pointy
and wear their positioned, they might poke themselves
if they close their mouth all the way.
So they leave their mouths open a lot of the time.
But they're very, they're considered docile,
folks dive with them all the time, and they eat fish.
So they'll hang around those wrecks,
and that's beneficial to them because there's
the proper kind of space for this animal.
They have cover if they need it,
there's great food availability
and a balanced reef ecosystem,
and it's gonna set their pups up for success.
But we're still seeing impacts to those sanctuaries
that are impacting those sharks.
So one thing is going to be over harvesting,
if we're taking too many of them
out of that situation, right?
Just like if we have too many individuals,
not having enough is going to be an issue.
Bycatch.
So bycatch is when you are fishing
and whatever you're fishing for, say lobster or tuna,
what have you, whatever you catch that's not that item
that you went for is called bycatch.
If I go out and I'm looking for a bunch of tuna
but I catch some sharks too, that is bycatch,
and a lot of different types of bycatch are out there.
So it could be directly with a line and hook
and it could also be a net that is just situated out there.
If a shark gets caught in it, like I mentioned,
sand tiger sharks have to swim to breathe,
if a sand tiger shark gets caught in that net,
it will drown.
So sometimes bycatch is not necessarily even
when you bring it out of the water, it can be before that.
We also see water pollution in both chemical fashion,
fertilizers, our suntan lotions are gonna impact our reefs
as well as trash pollution.
All of these things are impacting those environments
and are causing changes to populations of animals
like our sand tiger sharks.
Sand tiger sharks are one of the animals
that we do have data enough to say
that they are critically endangered
and their population is decreasing.
So they are what we call ovoviviparous.
That means that they breed,
they have an egg inside the mother
that will hatch inside the mother but have live birth.
It's also called non-placental live bearers.
These sharks are pregnant for about nine to 12 months
and they have something that's a really cool adaptation
called intrauterine cannibalism,
where the first egg that hatches, the first pup,
is going to eat all the other eggs and pups,
which is going to allow it to grow inside the mother
so that when it's born it's very strong
and it has a better chance of living.
However, when the mother's only having one to two pups
and they are pregnant for nine to 12 months,
they are being removed from our ocean
faster than they can replenish their population.
And so that is what's leading to this declining
population size,
which is a huge problem because that's going to impact
our marine ecosystems.
So what are we doing for these sand tiger sharks
at these reef areas?
We have lots of partners like OCEARCH.
OCEARCH tags and monitor sharks.
So they will catch the sharks, go out on a vessel,
catch the shark, they'll process it, put a tag,
just like a pet tag you give your cat or dog,
into that shark so that it can be tracked and it can be,
if they catch it again,
you can have individuals and scan them.
And then they're also collecting data
on how big is the animal, where was it located,
male or female, what have you.
Because the more we know, the better we can do
with that information on helping these animals.
At depth, we also can dive and take photos of sharks,
like our sand tigers.
Sand tigers have a pattern, they have spots on their side,
just like you and I have a fingerprint,
or zebras have an individual stripe pattern,
those animals can be individually identified by their spots.
So we take really good photos of them when we're diving
and we can submit them to researchers.
So we can test that equipment here in house.
That's our habitat, Graveyard of the Atlantic.
And then the researchers are going to spend hours
checking out these patterns and seeing,
is this individual the same?
Which helps us look at movement, presence, abundance,
pupping, seasonality, because sometimes these animals are
going to hang out only by themselves
and sometimes they'll hang out in groups,
especially when they're mating.
So, that is kind of what it looks like for spot-a-shark.
where they are matching those patterns
with that computer program.
And I wanna see how well you all can do with this.
So we've got a mystery shark, A.
Check out her spot pattern.
Look at those groupings,
see if anything looks like a strong identifier.
And then here are four sand tiger shark photos.
One of these is the same as mystery shark A,
it's just a different photo of her.
Can you find her?
Which one is shark A?
All right, and I'm gonna pass the poll to Mark
and you're gonna give us your best guest.
Which shark one, two, three or four, was mystery shark A?
Mark: All right, give us your best guess,
who was mystery shark A?
Shark number one, shark number two,
shark number three or shark number four?
I'll only keep this poll open for about 10 more seconds.
All right, last chance, get your final votes in there.
One, two, three or four, who is our mystery shark?
All right.
So it looks like 75% voted for shark number three.
-: Ooh.
Awesome.
Mark: There, now you have back control.
-: Back on here, all right.
If you voted for shark number three, you were correct.
All right, you guys did really well on that.
Let's give it another go and see if it was just luck.
This is mystery shark B, check her out.
Look for any identifiable marks.
What do you see that's gonna let us know
which shark is shark B?
All right, here are your options.
One, two, three and four.
Give you a few seconds.
Who is shark B?
All right, Mark, which shark is our mystery shark?
Mark: All right, who is she?
I'm gonna be honest, I actually struggled with this one.
She's shark number one, shark number two,
shark number three, or shark number four?
I'll give it 10 more seconds.
All right, get those final votes in and I will close it.
It looks like we have 52% said shark number four.
21% said shark number two. -: Ooh.
This one was a little harder, huh?
Mark: You have the screen.
-: Awesome.
All right, if you said shark number four, you were correct.
You might have used this little three in a row line,
spots to help identify her.
So it can be very hard to identify these sharks,
so there's countless hours spent on identifying these sharks
so that we really understand
what our populations look like off of our wrecks.
And that's what our researchers are doing
in their labs after they get this data.
Another way we collect data,
even when we're not diving or doing those remote vehicles,
is acoustic receivers.
I mentioned we get tags into the sharks that we catch.
Well, those tags, if they come close enough
to these receivers that you can see there,
will give us a little ping.
These receivers we dive down and put on piers
as well as on wrecks,
and we have to change them out as they die.
And on the right are the receivers
that we actually have positioned here
off of the Outer Banks.
So when those animals swim by, give us a little ping,
it gives us a good understanding
of what's going on with them.
So this is Crystal, a tiger shark who was giving us
little pings all over the place
and we are checking her out based on those tags.
We can see where she's spending time,
we can see when she's moving, where she's moving,
we even see her go out to the open ocean there,
which can give us a lot of information on correlations.
We can look at patterns and try to see
what we think is happening and why.
And that can give us a lead onto
where our efforts are going,
so give us a place to focus in case
we are looking at fish movement.
Is she following a specific kind of fish
or is she looking for mating?
It gives us better understanding of the behavior
of these animals and then understanding how we can help them
based on what they're doing.
Now we're trying to help the sharks,
but there's another species that we also manage
that might be doing a little too well,
and that is our lionfish.
We mentioned that we had some folks on our shipwrecks
that maybe weren't invited to the ecosystem,
but they showed up anyway.
And these animals are also being managed by our partners,
and the aquarium's helping out with those.
Did you spot in the ROV photo, there was a lionfish?
He's right there.
So this is a carnivorous fish
that is actually native to the Indo-Pacific,
but they're now out-competing many species
on our shipwreck reefs and other environments
around the Atlantic,
and it is likely due to the pet trade.
So there is a lot of thought that these animals
were part of some aquariums
and that folks actually released them
and then they're just doing too well around here.
So they are a good kind of symbol
for please do your research if you're going to get a pet,
understand what they need and where they don't belong.
Because we are now seeing a very huge impact
from these lionfish, because they reproduce exponentially
and they have no natural predators here.
They also have these venomous spines on their back,
which means that even our sharks really don't
want to eat these fish.
So they are over consuming, like we talked about,
smaller animals on the wrecks
and they are also impacting that ecosystem
and throwing it out of balance,
which can, again, lead to that monoculture.
And what we do here at the aquarium
is we do mitigation and data collection.
So we'll actually go out on these wrecks,
and this is part of what I was saying,
that scientific diver training that I'm doing
is to go do these dives and do lionfish spearing
to take them off of our wrecks.
Our divers will spear the fish
and then put it in these tubes
that's gonna keep them safe from those spines.
And then after their dive, they'll bring it back
and we're going to process those animals.
And what we do is we look at the size, the length,
the sex of the animal, is it carrying eggs if it's female,
and it's stomach contents, to again understand the behavior
and what's going on with these fish
so that we can take that information
and we can manage this population better.
The other thing we're doing with part of that
is trying to create more of awareness as a seafood option.
So conserving our ecosystems by consuming the lionfish.
If there is more of a demand for the lionfish
in the seafood market, we will then catch more of them.
And if we catch more of them,
that decreases the burden of seafood consumption
on other fish being taken from the population
and it's gonna help remove those invasives.
This is our seafood series that we've done here
at the North Carolina Aquarium,
where professional chefs from the area come in
and prepare different meals with the lionfish.
And I wanna know, would you folks eat lionfish?
Would you give it a try?
We've got a poll for you, yes or no?
And once the venom in the spine,
so once those are totally removed,
it is completely safe to eat.
So if that's what you were thinking about,
it is safe prepared.
Mark: Would you try lionfish, yes or no?
I'll be honest, those pictures made it look pretty good, so.
-: Yeah, I'm here for that salsa.
Mark: All right, I'll keep the pole open
for about 10 more seconds.
All right, last few votes and there we go.
It looks like around 80% of us said, "yes," we'd try it.
-: Awesome.
Yes, go out and try lionfish, let's do it.
-: Back to you. -: Thank you, Mark.
Awesome.
So here at the North Carolina Aquariums,
we've given you a survey of what we are doing
out in the field or with our partners
or trying to support our partners in our research,
in the conservation projects that are going on,
as well as trying to spread the word.
So we do exhibits here, like we talked about,
and programs like this,
or we have educational programs on the floor
that we're doing.
We also have the animals in our care
who are part of these projects.
We have some lionfish here, in-house,
that are part of awareness to show people the lionfish.
They're one of the only non-native species
in our entire facility.
And they're here so that people know what lionfish are
and know why, know they're not a bad animal,
they are just in the wrong place
and this is what we can do about it.
The sand tiger shark in our care
is also part of several studies.
So we have done a study called Seazarc,
where we looked at her habitat usage, her behaviors,
and we were looking at informing reproductive studies.
Like I mentioned, they're not reproducing fast enough
in the wild to maintain their population numbers.
So if we can supplement that in professional care,
we can potentially introduce new pups to the wild
and then increase their population.
And it's been really hard.
We don't have enough information to detail
how these animals reproduce
to be doing that successfully just yet.
As far as I know, the only successful birth
of a sand tiger shark in the United States
happened last year.
One pup and it was from artificial insemination
and it was at Ripley's.
So it's been very, very hard,
but the scientists and researchers and the folks,
like here at the aquarium, are trying
and they're still putting a lot of effort
into these programs.
We are also, our sand tiger shark is part of the aquarium,
excuse me, Association of Zoos and Aquariums.
We have a Species Survival Plan as well as
the Saving Animals from Extinction Plan.
So she also submits our data,
what's going on with her, how's she's using the habitat,
what's she eating, whatnot, to those programs with the AZA.
So those are different ways that we, here,
are participating in those projects from the aquarium.
So what can you do?
There are a lot of efforts being made
to protect our historical shipwrecks
and the ecosystems they've become,
but we still need more help.
So one of the big things you can do is sustainable seafood.
Check is it local?
Is it in season?
Where was it caught and how was it caught?
If your server can answer that,
it's gonna give you a lot more information.
If they can't, that might tell you a lot too.
Another really great resource is "SeafoodWatch.org"
that'll tell you what's in season where you are
and tell you what's maybe a good choice
based on where you are and and the seasonality of that.
So making more informed choices about our seafood
that we order or we buy is gonna have a huge impact
and keep us from making an unintentional negative impact.
Sharing your time or even monetarily contributing
to the organizations that are doing the work,
so whatever cause you're passionate about,
sharing that time or the those funds
is going to help those organizations out.
I know here at the aquarium,
we are so supported by our volunteers
and we can do so much more because of them, or with them,
for our environment, that it is just, it's,
there's no dollar amount that could be put to it.
Green cleaners.
So even, no matter where you are,
what you got going on, what your situation is,
you can probably trade out those expensive harsh chemicals,
like bleach and ammonia,
for things like lemon, baking soda, or vinegar,
which are gonna be safe for you,
safe for your family and your pets.
Probably better on your wallet.
And then some other things you can do is check for
shark products, or other products you don't want
in the things you are purchasing.
So things like Chondroitin and Squalene
are often shark products.
We find them in our cosmetics,
we find them in our supplements.
So check for those ingredients
and the bottle's not going to say, "I came from a shark."
So you might have to do a little research,
you might have to call the company,
you might have to get online,
which I know can be time consuming and it can be tedious.
However, that's gonna keep you from unknowingly
contributing to the negative impacts on our ocean.
So I've got one last poll here, Mark,
on what are you already doing?
Are you already doing any of these things we mentioned?
Mark: Right, so "Which of the following conservation
"and stewardship actions do you already take
"in your day-to-day life?"
A, "Contribute time or donations to organizations
"like the National Marine Sanctuaries or the Aquarium."
B, "Make sure the seafood you order or buy
"as sustainably sourced as possible."
Seasonality, where is a caught, how it's caught.
C, "Checking for items to purchase
"that do not contain products of sharks
"like Chondroitin or Squalene."
Or D, "Using natural cleaners like vinegar, lemon,
"baking soda to protect our waters."
-: And even if you're doing those things,
other things you can do is share what you know
or what you learn.
You are the voice for these ecosystems and these species.
So letting other folks know keeps them aware.
Just by being here shows you care,
and we don't need just a few of us
doing conservation perfectly,
we need all of us doing it our best imperfectly,
which matters because it creates a huge impact
even if you can't directly see it.
Do we have some answers, Mark?
Mark: Yes, I will leave the poll open
for about 10 more seconds.
And I'll be honest, I didn't realize to check for squalene,
so I'm gonna start doing that starting today.
-: Yes, I didn't either.
When I first learned about it, I thought, "Oh my gosh."
So I went through my cabinet
and had to pull some things out.
It was the same with microbeads.
So the more you know the better you can do.
Mark: All right, I will close the poll
in about three, two and one.
So, here's what we have here.
We have about 40% is eating seafood sustainably.
I love to see that number. -: Awesome.
Mark: About 30% say use natural household cleaners,
which is good. -: Awesome.
Mark: 26% contributing to organizations
like sanctuaries or aquariums,
and five percent checking for chondroitin and squalene.
That's impressive.
Good job, you guys. -: Awesome.
-: Keep it up.
Mark: All right, back to you.
-: Awesome.
So hopefully what we've come to acknowledge
is that shipwrecks, when they originally happened,
obviously are very tragic for the folks
that are lost with the wrecks, as well as anything
that's negatively put into our environment.
But over time they can increase biodiversity,
especially off of the Atlantic Coast,
here in the Outer Banks.
And that as stewards of our environment,
that no matter where we live,
even if you're smack dab in the middle of Wyoming,
you can be marine conservationists and stewards
through your actions.
And I really wanna thank my partners and supporters
that have contributed their photos, details,
the work that they've done for this presentation
and the amazing things they're doing out there
to support our marine ecosystems
and keep these projects going and keep these habitats
and the species within them preserved,
as well as our cultural history,
because it's really important for us to understand
where we've been throughout time.
And I'm really glad to be the messenger,
but without the work of these folks
we wouldn't even be able to have these conversations.
And I thank you guys all for listening and tuning in
and I want to let you know that, feel free to reach out,
I'd love to hear from you.
And other than that,
I'll turn it over to Shannon and Mark for questions.
Thanks, guys.
Shannon: Absolutely, thank you.
That was awesome, Cady. -: Yeah.
Thank you. -: So now is the time
to write in your questions if you haven't done so.
Also, if you haven't downloaded Cady's bio in the chat box,
you might want to do so now.
In that bio you're gonna find more information about Cady
and some links that might be of interest to you.
So Cady, I'm gonna start out with one of the questions
that we received.
It says...
Hold on, I had it and then we got a bunch more.
So, just a second.
-: No problem.
Shannon: How does the taste and texture of lionfish
compare to other cooked fish?
-: My understanding, ironically, I'm allergic to seafood,
but what I've heard when I've helped process the lionfish
is that they're very palatable.
They're kind of a bland fish,
so it's really easy to season them
to whatever you want them to be in,
and it's more like a white, very mild white fish.
Shannon: Okay, Mark.
Mark: All right, we actually have
a couple questions about lionfish, but before we do that,
can I ask Shannon to give the presentation back to Cady
and if we could go back to your slide
about the shark tracking,
specifically the one about Crystal the tiger shark.
-: You wanna see Crystal, yeah. -: We have a couple questions
in the chat about that.
-: Okay.
Let's find Crystal.
Yeah, it's pretty amazing
what some of this technology can do.
I passed her, didn't I?
Now, I did not do this research
but I will do my best to answer your question.
Mark: So I'll just give them both to you now.
But the questions are-- -: Okay.
Mark: How do you know that Crystal is a sub-adult
and why do you think she was headed out
into the ocean open ocean like that?
I can see that there's a track where she just
fires all the way out into the Atlantic Ocean
and heads right back.
-: Yeah, so if you look at the little kind of age thing
that you're seeing there for "Young of Year,
"Juvenile, Sub-Adult, Adult,"
sometimes this is our best guess.
If we have an animal that's been tagged
and we know that it is like of the year or juvenile,
that might give us some more information.
But the biggest thing we're gonna look at is their size.
So if we have a good understanding on how long
or how much weight an animal should have,
that's gonna give us a good estimation
of where they are in their life cycle.
So if Crystal is maybe not,
I don't know how big tiger sharks get,
but because she's 608 pounds
and she's being called a sub-adult,
I'm gonna assume they probably get much heavier,
like 900 to a thousand pounds or so.
That's a an estimate.
So because she is smaller,
that would be the best guess of sub-adult.
They can also look at body condition, right?
Do they look like they've been part of,
you know, they have a lot of scarring or whatnot,
things like that.
So looking at the condition of that animal and the size
can give us a really good guess of how old they are
unless we know because we have tagged that animal
a long time ago.
Great question.
We have to do that with our sea turtles here too.
And why do I think she's going out into the open ocean?
That is a great question,
and it'll depend on the species of shark.
We might know, we might not know.
So some sharks are gonna go out into the open ocean
because they are migrating.
Some sharks are gonna migrate based on the weather
or to follow food availability.
So here, in the Outer Banks, we technically have a winter,
but being from the North, I wouldn't call it quite winter
like we have up there,
but when the water temperature changes,
that might change food availability or it might change
the shark's ability to tolerate that water situation.
It could also be for mating.
So if that animal is solitary,
usually unless they need to mate,
it might need to travel to find a male to then reproduce.
So I'm not positive for a tiger shark
what would be their incentive or their motive to go,
but those would be my best two guesses.
Shannon: Okay, so another one,
I'm gonna take the screen back from you.
-: Okay. -: But another question
that we have is,
what preys on lionfish in their native environment?
-: That is a great question and, you know, I am not sure
but I will try to find out.
Mark or Shannon, do you know?
Shannon: I do not know.
-: I'm gonna have to look that one up.
What preys on lionfish?
And I'd say probably there is also
better preying on their eggs, potentially.
I'd say that's the best time to get at a lionfish.
But, yeah, I'll have to look into that one.
Shannon: Okay.
Mark: I have kind of a follow up question.
-: Yeah.
Mark: But are we seeing any species around here
that have started to work on that,
that have started to fill that niche on preying on lionfish,
or at least on the juvenile lionfish?
Is that something we're starting to see here?
-: Not to my knowledge.
Besides the humans going in and mitigating those adults,
the eggs can obviously be consumed
because they are not gonna have those venomous spines.
But most animals that I know of around here,
even the sharks, don't want anything to do with them
because of those venomous spines.
And they're nocturnal hunters, primarily,
so a lot of the time during the day
they might be blending in and camouflaging
with that reef ecosystem,
and they can kind of just sit there and hover.
They don't have to swim to breathe.
So if they're well concealed,
and then they have that really protective spine,
they just don't have a lot coming after them
here in our ecosystems.
Shannon: Okay, and I think the last question
we have time for,
and there's a lot of really great questions in here,
but I think we have more time for one more.
-: Okay. -: It says,
what role do you see learning being used in,
machine learning, being used in shark photo identification?
So is there computer programs
that might be able to help with that?
-: Yeah, so for Spot-a-shark, they will use algorithms
to help understand and identify those spot patterns.
So it's not just the researchers
who are looking at those spot patterns,
but also the computers helping do the work
by trying to match the different spot patterns.
But we need that human as well,
because sometimes we'll see,
like that little three line that I pointed out,
sometimes you'll have an animal that has that
and another individual has it,
but the rest of the pattern doesn't match.
So, I think as we have more sophisticated machines
and technology, it could be improved to do it itself,
but it is definitely being used as well right now.
-: Okay, thank you. -: And the really cool thing,
sorry, Shannon,
is how they take the photos
and also how we are kind of looking at
the size of the animal.
If you saw that photo
in the Graveyard of the Atlantic habitat,
what we do is we take the camera,
and attach to the camera are like two lasers
and then the lasers are at a set distance from one another
and then those lasers are then projected on the animal,
and based on, we know how far apart they are here,
looking at how far apart they are on the animal,
we can then calculate how long that animal is.
So that's another cool piece of technology
that's helping us get more intricate data.
Shannon: Very good.
-: Yeah. -: All right.
Shannon: Okay, Mark?
Mark: All right, so if we did not get to your question,
and there are a lot that we didn't get to,
and these are all really great questions,
you are free to send them to Cady at this email address,
listed here on this slide.
And you can also learn more about
the North Carolina Aquarium System on Roanoke Island
at the URL listed here at the bottom of the slide.
Shannon: Video recording of this presentation
will be available on the Sanctuaries' Webinar Archives page
found at the URL that's listed here at the top.
It's a long one, don't worry about it.
We're gonna send it to you.
In addition, the webinar will be archived
on the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary's website.
You're just gonna click on the "Multimedia Section"
in the toolbar to access the webinar box.
It usually takes us about a week to 10 days
to get the video posted because we also have it captioned.
You will also be able to find all future webinars
in that same section.
And, don't worry, as I said,
we're gonna send all of this to you in an email
once the recording is ready for you to view.
Mark: And, of course, we invite you
to follow us on social media.
You can tag us in your favorite lionfish recipes,
or follow us on Facebook and Twitter
to stay in touch with what's happening next
in our National Marine Sanctuary System
and what our next emergency webinar will be.
Shannon: And, lastly, as you exit the webinar,
there is a short survey for formal and informal educators.
If you are an educator,
NOAA would really appreciate it if you would
just take a minute or two to complete the survey.
Your answers will help us develop
future webinars to meet your needs
and your participation is always voluntary
and your answers will be completely anonymous.
Once again, we want to thank you, Cady,
for a fabulous presentation
and thank everyone out there for taking the time
to join us today.
Have a wonderful day and this concludes the presentation.
Bye, everyone.
-: Thanks, guys.