Field research is always a
challenge, particularly when you're working with wild animals.
There is a lot that you can't control about fieldwork
But when it all comes together and you're catching the sharks
that you want to be tagging and the fish that you want to be tagging, that's really
where the magic happens.
My name is Grace Castleberry.
I am a Ph.D.
candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
And a NOAA Dr.
Nancy Foster scholar.
The NOAA Dr.
Nancy Foster scholarship is part of the Office of National Marine
Sanctuaries, and it supports graduate students that are doing research
directly connected to research needs in the sanctuary.
For me personally, I would probably not be getting a Ph.D.
degree without this scholarship.
My research is in Florida Keys, National Marine Sanctuary,
where I study interactions between great hammerhead
sharks and Atlantic tarpon, with a particular focus on hammerheads
eating or depredating Atlantic tarpon that have been caught
in the recreational fishery before they've been landed.
What I
want to do is find solutions, understand what different environmental factors
like the direction that the current is flowing in or the time of day.
How does that influence these interactions between sharks and recreational anglers?
And then also testing out some new technologies to be able to understand
if there are some technological solutions that we can use to reduce
how often these interactions are happening
People fish recreationally
for fun, but also for food and that's very important.
But sharks got to eat too, right?
So we want to make sure that we can find a way for both of us
to use the ocean together sustainably.
We fish for the great hammerhead sharks in Bahia Honda
in a bit of a nontraditional way. We actually hand line for them.
Once that shark takes the bait, I can feel the line
just start ripping through my hands.
And then I let that
shark take the 50 yards of rope that I have off
of the back of the boat, and it's attached to a big float.
Once we get it close enough to the boat, we will put a tail rope on its tail.
So basically we reach over and lasso its tail and we tie
that to the boat and then we also do the same thing at the head.
So the whole reason that we're tying the shark to the side of the boat
is because we want to keep the shark safe.
We also want to keep us safe, which also means we don't want it to thrash around.
Once the shark is secured, we start our tagging process.
I'll put the acoustic tag at the base of the dorsal fin.
And then I put the satellite tag a little bit higher
up on that dorsal fin. We will measure the shark, we will determine
if it's male or female, and then we take the hook out,
we untie the ropes and we let her go
and we get to see all the cool data
that she gets to collect for me as she swims throughout the Keys.
I grew up always loving the ocean.
I fished with my grandpa
and my mom on summer vacations and cape Cod, Massachusetts.
But I never really thought that that was a job that I could do
until I was in college at the University of Connecticut.
My hope is that as I finish my Ph.D.
and hopefully one day have my own lab that I can provide
experiences of collaboration between women in shark science
and just continue to foster a sense of inclusion
and provide opportunities for those that may be less represented
or less heard from in marine science, in fisheries
biology, and in particular in shark science.