WEBVTT

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<v ->We're pleased to have you joining us today</v>

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for our special presentation on hammerhead sharks.

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We the NOAA office of National Marine Sanctuaries

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like to host this distance learning program

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opportunities for educators and students

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and other interested people

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to learn more about specific topics

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about the science and research that's happening

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in America's Ocean and Great Lakes Treasures.

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Sometimes we're sharing educational materials with you

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or scientific expertise, resources, and training.

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So all of this to support ocean

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and climate literacy with you and your audiences.

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So welcome today.

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I wanted to introduce myself.

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My name is Claire Fackler

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and I'm the National Education Liaison for NOAA's office

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of National Marine Sanctuaries.

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So what are these places that I'm talking about?

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So if you are familiar with the National Park system,

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which I suspect many of you are, then I wanted

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to let you know that the National Marine Sanctuary System

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are basically underwater parks that are managed by NOAA,

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the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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So these are areas of national significance

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and are special for a wide variety of reasons.

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So each of these dots on the map of North America

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that you're looking at,

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represent one of our 16 National Marine Sanctuaries.

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We have two triangles,

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one in the Hawaiian Islands in the Papahanaumokuakea,

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Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, and one in American Samoa.

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That's just another name.

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They're called a Marine National Monument.

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Same idea, underwater park.

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But altogether NOA manages

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about 620,000 square miles of Ocean and Great Lakes

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Treasures that we're protecting now and for the future.

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And there's some yellow boxes on the map.

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It's an exciting time for ocean conservation.

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The Biden administration has an initiative

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called America The Beautiful, which is in alignment

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with a global initiative called 30 by 30.

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And this is protecting 30% of our public lands

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and public waters by the year 2030.

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So those yellow boxes represent proposed

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marine sanctuaries to expand the sanctuary system,

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so more ocean conservation and protection

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of these public waters.

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So, exciting times for us.

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I mentioned that these areas of national significance

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are set aside for a wide variety of reasons.

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In some cases it's due to the unique

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and beautiful biodiversity.

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In other cases,

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it's because of the cultural assets like shipwrecks

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or maritime heritage as seen in this picture.

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But all in all, these marine sanctuaries and monuments

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help provide shelter for threatened and endangered animals,

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like this Hawaiian green sea turtle.

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Congress mandates us to conduct education

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and outreach,

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research,

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and monitoring, all to help protect the resource.

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So those habitats, ecosystems,

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these special places underwater.

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And like a national park, we want all of you to know

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that you can enjoy, and explore, fall in love with,

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recreate in these special ocean places.

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So we want you to get into your sanctuary as

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however you want through paddle boarding.

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You can kayak.

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In some cases, you can fish.

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You can snorkel, scuba dive,

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surf, get on a boat,

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view marine life,

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and you can actually get hopefully inspired

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and want to volunteer some of your time

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to protect these treasures now and for the future.

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So with that, I wanted to introduce you

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to our special guest speaker today.

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We have Dr. Grace Casselberry,

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who got her PhD at University of Massachusetts Amherst

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and is currently doing a postdoc there.

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She is a former Dr. Nancy Foster Scholar.

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She's a current National Geographic Society Explorer

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and ultimately her work is that she's interested

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in the movement, ecology, and migration of shark species.

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So with that, I'm gonna find Grace on my list,

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pass the controls over

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so that she can take over the presentation.

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Thanks for joining us, Grace.

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<v ->I was still muted.</v>

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Thank you so much for having me, Claire.

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And thank you everyone for joining.

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I'm really excited to get to talk to you today

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about my dissertation research that I did at UMass Amherst

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and was funded in part by the Dr. Nancy Foster Scholarship

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through sanctuaries.

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So I wouldn't have been able to do any of this work

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if it weren't for the National Marine Sanctuary System.

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And so today I am gonna be talking to all of you about

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tracking great hammerhead sharks

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in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

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And so to get us started off,

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I wanna introduce us to our cast of characters.

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The first being the great hammerhead shark.

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Great hammerheads are actually the largest

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of the hammerhead shark species.

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A lot of people don't know that

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there are multiple species of hammerheads,

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but great hammerheads are the biggest.

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They live in tropical and subtropical waters

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all around the globe,

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and globally their populations are assessed

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to be critically endangered.

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But the United States is actually a place

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where great hammerhead populations are doing a lot better

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than other places in the world.

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So because of really conscientious conservation measures

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that have been put into place for the last 30 years,

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we're finally starting to see some stabilization

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and recovery of great hammerhead shark

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populations in the US.

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But even though we've been working really hard

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to conserve them, there's still a lot

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that we don't know about great hammerheads.

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So we have really limited ecological data

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when it comes to things like their migratory patterns,

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and within the Florida Keys specifically,

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things like connectivity movements

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between different locations, high use corridors,

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and then also seasonality.

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How long are they in the keys, what habitats do they use?

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Does that change throughout the year?

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So those are all some questions that I was interested

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in answering with this research.

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Another one of our cast of characters here

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is the Atlantic tarpon

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and it'll become a little bit more clear

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about why I'm talking to you about tarpon on the next slide.

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But for those that aren't familiar with tarpon,

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they are an incredibly popular game fish

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that migrate every year to the Florida Keys

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to form these large prespawning aggregations,

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or these big schools where they form inshore

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and then they go offshore to reproduce.

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And so part of what you're seeing in this video here,

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I apologize if it's a little bit jerky,

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is a school of tarpon making its way

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from an inshore area to go farther offshore.

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And tarpon are the focus of a really intense

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recreational fishery, especially when they come

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to the Florida Keys.

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In fact, there's been some research

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that shows that folks targeting tarpon

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and a couple of other inshore flats species generate

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over $400 million a year for the Florida Keys economy.

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So these are really important fish.

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But more and more often we were starting to hear stories

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about people who have hooked a tarpon,

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and are fighting it on the line,

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losing that fish to great hammerhead sharks

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coming up and eating them,

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before they're able to release them.

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And this interaction between a hooked fish

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and a shark is called depredation.

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And that's something we're gonna be talking

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a lot about today.

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So depredation is a form of human wildlife conflict,

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and people don't really think about human wildlife conflict

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in the marine environment very often,

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I feel like before I started working on depredation,

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my thought process of human wildlife conflict

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was things like wolves eating people's livestock out west.

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But human wildlife conflict happens

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in the marine environment as well.

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And depredation, that full or partial removal

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of a hooked fish from fishing gear

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before it's able to be landed,

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isn't something that happens just exclusively with sharks.

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So a lot of other marine predator species

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have been documented to depredate things.

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So things like marine mammals, our seals,

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and our dolphins here on the slide will also do this.

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Sometimes seabirds, and even also sometimes other big fish.

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So things like barracuda or grouper have been known

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to eat hooked fish as well.

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Essentially it's a lot easier for a predator

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to eat a fish that has a hook in its mouth

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and is distracted than it is to catch a free swimming fish.

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So you can't really blame them.

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And even though people are talking a lot more

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about depredation these days, it's not a new phenomenon.

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So there was this really interesting paper

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that came out a few months ago from one of my colleagues,

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Marcus Drymon, that argued that depredation

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is an old conflict with the sea.

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And they actually went back and looked at some popular

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writing from someone who you may have heard of,

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named Ernest Hemingway.

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And they were able to show that this is a problem

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that people were talking about almost a hundred years ago

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when they were trying to land tunas

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in places like the Florida Keys and Bimini.

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And it was really hard to get those fish to the side

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of the boat because sharks would come up and eat them.

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So what we're seeing happening right now

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is shark populations are starting to slowly recover.

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There are more people fishing in The Keys than ever before.

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And so we have this perfect recipe

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for this human wildlife conflict

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between sharks and our recreational fishers.

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Why would depredation be a problem for the tarpon fishery?

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So a little bit more background on tarpon here.

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The tarpon fishery in Florida

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is almost entirely catch and release.

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So those fish that are hooked by anglers are,

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they're not gonna take those fish home to eat them,

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they let them go.

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Anglers fish for tarpon because they're really fun,

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it's kind of a bucket list fish for a lot of people.

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They jump, they do these really big jumps,

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where they come up out of the water

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and they shake their heads around.

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They're really fun to fight.

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It's a thrilling experience.

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And so obviously it's pretty upsetting when your fish

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that you're planning to let go gets eaten by a shark,

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when it otherwise would've gone on to live a happy life.

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For tarpon, it's not great

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because it's an unquantified source of mortality.

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And this is happening a lot

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at these prespawning aggregations,

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which is a place where fish come to form large groups

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before they go off to reproduce.

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So we're potentially losing these fish

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before they're able to reproduce and contribute

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to continuing to grow the population.

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And so if that adds up more and more over time,

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we could to see population declines.

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There's also been a little bit of research that shows

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that depredation can change sharks' natural

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foraging behaviors, as well as research that shows

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that the more often anglers experience depredation,

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the more likely they are to target

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and harvest sharks afterwards.

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So this is an issue that's not great for the anglers,

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not great for the fish that are getting depredated,

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and also not great for the sharks.

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So we wanted to set out to kind of figure out

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how big of a problem this really is in the tarpon fishery.

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And the place where I focused in on in the Florida Keys

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is called Bahia Honda.

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So in the top left hand of your screen

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you'll see a map of the entire Florida Keys,

257
00:12:41.070 --> 00:12:43.500
and there's a little red square there.

258
00:12:43.500 --> 00:12:45.750
That square is Bahia Honda,

259
00:12:45.750 --> 00:12:48.840
and it's kind of at the gateway of the lower Florida Keys.

260
00:12:48.840 --> 00:12:51.750
So if you've ever driven down through The Keys,

261
00:12:51.750 --> 00:12:53.640
Bahia Honda is one of the first Keys

262
00:12:53.640 --> 00:12:56.400
that you get to after you come over the seven mile bridge

263
00:12:56.400 --> 00:12:58.323
if you're headed towards Key West.

264
00:12:59.310 --> 00:13:04.290
And it's a really high, high flow deep channel between Keys.

265
00:13:04.290 --> 00:13:08.040
So moving to the top right hand side of your screen here,

266
00:13:08.040 --> 00:13:11.490
that's an overhead view of Bahia Honda channel

267
00:13:11.490 --> 00:13:14.730
and you can see it's traversed by the US route one bridge

268
00:13:14.730 --> 00:13:16.770
to the north and then the remnants

269
00:13:16.770 --> 00:13:20.100
of the old railroad bridge to the south.

270
00:13:20.100 --> 00:13:23.490
And the way that people fish for tarpon in Bahia Honda

271
00:13:23.490 --> 00:13:25.980
is they will anchor underneath

272
00:13:25.980 --> 00:13:27.480
of that old route one bridge,

273
00:13:27.480 --> 00:13:30.960
and drift their fishing lines with the current.

274
00:13:30.960 --> 00:13:33.960
And then when a fish takes their bait,

275
00:13:33.960 --> 00:13:35.700
they'll pop off of the anchor

276
00:13:35.700 --> 00:13:38.190
and drift with the current to fight their fish.

277
00:13:38.190 --> 00:13:41.310
And sometimes while they're doing that,

278
00:13:41.310 --> 00:13:43.530
you'll see a shark like this great hammerhead

279
00:13:43.530 --> 00:13:46.920
in the bottom corner pop up and eat that tarpon.

280
00:13:46.920 --> 00:13:48.870
So what I wanted to know was how often

281
00:13:48.870 --> 00:13:50.343
that was really happening.

282
00:13:52.080 --> 00:13:54.330
So to understand depredation in Bahia Honda,

283
00:13:54.330 --> 00:13:58.470
we have kind of two factors at play here.

284
00:13:58.470 --> 00:14:01.077
We have a natural predator prey dynamic between

285
00:14:01.077 --> 00:14:04.170
the tarpon and the hammerheads that's been going on

286
00:14:04.170 --> 00:14:07.200
for hundreds, if not thousands of years,

287
00:14:07.200 --> 00:14:09.390
way before people were ever in the picture.

288
00:14:09.390 --> 00:14:12.150
But then when we add fishing into that equation,

289
00:14:12.150 --> 00:14:15.330
that's how we get the human wildlife conflict.

290
00:14:15.330 --> 00:14:17.400
And so I used two different approaches to kind

291
00:14:17.400 --> 00:14:20.580
of get at the dynamics of this situation.

292
00:14:20.580 --> 00:14:23.580
The first was quantifying how often

293
00:14:23.580 --> 00:14:25.500
that depredation is happening.

294
00:14:25.500 --> 00:14:27.690
And I did that using a visual survey

295
00:14:27.690 --> 00:14:29.670
and I kept track of a bunch of different factors

296
00:14:29.670 --> 00:14:32.100
that could potentially be influencing depredation

297
00:14:32.100 --> 00:14:35.580
that I'll get into in more detail in a few minutes.

298
00:14:35.580 --> 00:14:38.640
And then we have kind of a space use question happening here

299
00:14:38.640 --> 00:14:43.380
where you can't have depredation if there isn't an overlap

300
00:14:43.380 --> 00:14:47.760
between the predator and the prey in space and time.

301
00:14:47.760 --> 00:14:51.750
So I used some tracking technology to better understand

302
00:14:51.750 --> 00:14:55.800
drivers of shark presence within Bahia Honda,

303
00:14:55.800 --> 00:14:58.653
as well as changes in movement throughout the year.

304
00:15:01.200 --> 00:15:05.280
So this is how I quantified depredation in Bahia Honda.

305
00:15:05.280 --> 00:15:07.530
A lot of people when they think about science,

306
00:15:07.530 --> 00:15:11.010
they think of really fancy expensive equipment.

307
00:15:11.010 --> 00:15:13.920
Sometimes you can do science with a lawn chair

308
00:15:13.920 --> 00:15:16.980
and a folding umbrella attachment, a clipboard,

309
00:15:16.980 --> 00:15:19.110
and some binoculars, and a camera.

310
00:15:19.110 --> 00:15:21.540
So I conducted a visual survey

311
00:15:21.540 --> 00:15:25.620
where I sat on the lookout point at that old route one

312
00:15:25.620 --> 00:15:27.720
bridge in Bahia Honda State park,

313
00:15:27.720 --> 00:15:29.970
or at the old railroad bridge, sorry.

314
00:15:29.970 --> 00:15:32.250
And I watched the fishing happening

315
00:15:32.250 --> 00:15:34.350
underneath of that US route one bridge,

316
00:15:34.350 --> 00:15:38.280
and I kept track of how many boats were in the area,

317
00:15:38.280 --> 00:15:39.780
what the current was doing,

318
00:15:39.780 --> 00:15:41.820
was it an incoming or an outgoing current,

319
00:15:41.820 --> 00:15:44.103
was it an incoming or outgoing tide?

320
00:15:45.450 --> 00:15:46.950
How many fish were getting hooked?

321
00:15:46.950 --> 00:15:48.900
And when a fish did get hooked,

322
00:15:48.900 --> 00:15:51.270
I would time how long the fight was,

323
00:15:51.270 --> 00:15:53.370
and keep track of how many times it jumped,

324
00:15:53.370 --> 00:15:55.590
different things like that to better understand

325
00:15:55.590 --> 00:15:59.100
what biological and also behavioral factors

326
00:15:59.100 --> 00:16:01.593
might be influencing this depredation.

327
00:16:03.060 --> 00:16:06.810
But I did also get to use some fancy expensive equipment.

328
00:16:06.810 --> 00:16:11.100
So I was tracking both the hammerheads and the tarpon

329
00:16:11.100 --> 00:16:13.920
with some electronic tagging technology

330
00:16:13.920 --> 00:16:16.170
called acoustic telemetry.

331
00:16:16.170 --> 00:16:17.910
The way acoustic telemetry works

332
00:16:17.910 --> 00:16:21.630
is it's a coupling of tags and receivers,

333
00:16:21.630 --> 00:16:24.330
and it actually uses sound to tell you

334
00:16:24.330 --> 00:16:26.430
where those tags are in the water.

335
00:16:26.430 --> 00:16:29.340
So you can see a picture of one of those tags in my hand

336
00:16:29.340 --> 00:16:31.140
on the left hand side.

337
00:16:31.140 --> 00:16:34.770
And then our acoustic receivers are what you're seeing

338
00:16:34.770 --> 00:16:37.950
on the right hand side sitting on the bow of our boat.

339
00:16:37.950 --> 00:16:41.010
And what we do is we go out and we anchor those receivers

340
00:16:41.010 --> 00:16:44.490
down on the ocean floor and they're our ears in the water,

341
00:16:44.490 --> 00:16:46.470
they're just constantly listening.

342
00:16:46.470 --> 00:16:49.230
And when we put one of those tags on a fish,

343
00:16:49.230 --> 00:16:53.970
if the fish swims within listening range of that receiver,

344
00:16:53.970 --> 00:16:56.070
there'll be a little ping that goes out

345
00:16:56.070 --> 00:17:00.090
and it will register what shark that is

346
00:17:00.090 --> 00:17:02.730
that's swimming by our receivers.

347
00:17:02.730 --> 00:17:05.820
And so this is just a little visual demonstration of that.

348
00:17:05.820 --> 00:17:08.310
I've got my nurse shark buddy here showing us

349
00:17:08.310 --> 00:17:10.170
how acoustic telemetry works.

350
00:17:10.170 --> 00:17:13.170
So it's got the tag inside of it,

351
00:17:13.170 --> 00:17:16.050
sends out that little ping out into the water,

352
00:17:16.050 --> 00:17:17.400
and the receiver will hear it.

353
00:17:17.400 --> 00:17:21.030
And if it moves from one receiver to the next to the next,

354
00:17:21.030 --> 00:17:23.460
I can connect the dots and see the path that

355
00:17:23.460 --> 00:17:25.983
that fish is taking through our receivers.

356
00:17:29.280 --> 00:17:32.520
So the next step of that after you have your receivers

357
00:17:32.520 --> 00:17:34.860
is you have to put tags on your fish.

358
00:17:34.860 --> 00:17:36.390
And so I got to do some really fun

359
00:17:36.390 --> 00:17:38.430
shark fishing for this project.

360
00:17:38.430 --> 00:17:42.090
We fished for the great hammerheads in Bahia Honda.

361
00:17:42.090 --> 00:17:44.130
We tagged 18 of them.

362
00:17:44.130 --> 00:17:46.800
And the first step once you get the shark to the side

363
00:17:46.800 --> 00:17:50.040
of the boat is we would put a rope around the base

364
00:17:50.040 --> 00:17:53.580
of its really charismatic, characteristic hammerhead,

365
00:17:53.580 --> 00:17:56.400
and then a rope around its tail to help restrain it.

366
00:17:56.400 --> 00:17:59.310
That keeps us safe and it also keeps the shark safe,

367
00:17:59.310 --> 00:18:01.110
because as you can see they like to wiggle

368
00:18:01.110 --> 00:18:04.290
around a lot when they're up by the side of the boat.

369
00:18:04.290 --> 00:18:06.030
Once we have that shark secure,

370
00:18:06.030 --> 00:18:07.890
we start doing our tagging process,

371
00:18:07.890 --> 00:18:12.180
which happens all around the dorsal fin of the hammerhead.

372
00:18:12.180 --> 00:18:15.270
And you'll see some pictures of me putting tags

373
00:18:15.270 --> 00:18:17.730
on the dorsal fin of the shark.

374
00:18:17.730 --> 00:18:19.860
I just wanna point out that sharks

375
00:18:19.860 --> 00:18:22.920
do not have nerve endings in their fins.

376
00:18:22.920 --> 00:18:24.870
They're made entirely of cartilage

377
00:18:24.870 --> 00:18:26.520
and so they can't feel this.

378
00:18:26.520 --> 00:18:29.610
It's like even less than what it feels like

379
00:18:29.610 --> 00:18:31.143
to get your ears pierced.

380
00:18:32.310 --> 00:18:33.540
And so at the end of the day

381
00:18:33.540 --> 00:18:35.850
we have a shark that looks like this.

382
00:18:35.850 --> 00:18:37.770
So at the base of the dorsal fin,

383
00:18:37.770 --> 00:18:39.960
that's our acoustic tag there, that's the tag

384
00:18:39.960 --> 00:18:42.690
that sends a little ping out into the water.

385
00:18:42.690 --> 00:18:45.420
Another thing that I was interested in was

386
00:18:45.420 --> 00:18:48.720
if this was a small number of hammerheads

387
00:18:48.720 --> 00:18:51.510
that were coming to Bahia Honda and eating tarpon.

388
00:18:51.510 --> 00:18:53.670
So the same sharks kind of over and over again

389
00:18:53.670 --> 00:18:55.860
had figured out a way to get an easy meal

390
00:18:55.860 --> 00:18:57.900
or if it was a large number of hammerheads.

391
00:18:57.900 --> 00:18:59.550
So I gave these sharks each

392
00:18:59.550 --> 00:19:03.360
a unique combination of color coded tags.

393
00:19:03.360 --> 00:19:06.120
And then while I was watching the fishing as well

394
00:19:06.120 --> 00:19:09.690
as the fishing guides that were actively out there

395
00:19:09.690 --> 00:19:12.390
fishing for tarpon, I was in communication with them.

396
00:19:12.390 --> 00:19:15.030
And so we were keeping track of sort of which hammerheads

397
00:19:15.030 --> 00:19:18.240
were coming and eating tarpon during the time

398
00:19:18.240 --> 00:19:20.163
that I was doing that visual survey.

399
00:19:22.860 --> 00:19:26.220
This is a map of what our acoustic receiver array

400
00:19:26.220 --> 00:19:28.110
looked like within Bahia Honda.

401
00:19:28.110 --> 00:19:33.110
So, you can see I've got four rows of four receivers

402
00:19:33.150 --> 00:19:36.510
that covered the entire stretch of the channel.

403
00:19:36.510 --> 00:19:41.280
And then for reference on the sort of south,

404
00:19:41.280 --> 00:19:43.260
the bottom right hand side here,

405
00:19:43.260 --> 00:19:45.000
I'm not sure if you can see my cursor or not,

406
00:19:45.000 --> 00:19:46.380
but that's where I was sitting

407
00:19:46.380 --> 00:19:49.353
when I was watching the tarpon fishing.

408
00:19:51.540 --> 00:19:53.100
And then before I wrap things up today,

409
00:19:53.100 --> 00:19:54.570
I am also gonna talk to you a little bit

410
00:19:54.570 --> 00:19:55.950
about broad scale movements.

411
00:19:55.950 --> 00:19:58.470
So we didn't just have acoustic receivers

412
00:19:58.470 --> 00:20:01.530
in Bahia Honda channel, we also maintained

413
00:20:01.530 --> 00:20:04.590
over a hundred receivers spread from Key Largo

414
00:20:04.590 --> 00:20:06.570
all the way to the Marquesas.

415
00:20:06.570 --> 00:20:08.490
And there are lots of other researchers

416
00:20:08.490 --> 00:20:11.910
that use acoustic telemetry and many of us are part

417
00:20:11.910 --> 00:20:16.200
of various data sharing networks so that we can share

418
00:20:16.200 --> 00:20:19.140
other people's tagged fish with each other.

419
00:20:19.140 --> 00:20:22.320
And so that allowed me to actually track great hammerheads

420
00:20:22.320 --> 00:20:25.440
throughout all of coastal Florida essentially.

421
00:20:25.440 --> 00:20:26.370
So we're gonna talk about

422
00:20:26.370 --> 00:20:28.593
some broad scale migrations as well.

423
00:20:30.840 --> 00:20:32.460
Moving into some of the results

424
00:20:32.460 --> 00:20:35.370
of what I found with all of this work.

425
00:20:35.370 --> 00:20:37.140
So I sat on that bridge

426
00:20:37.140 --> 00:20:40.380
and watched tarpon fishing for 211 hours,

427
00:20:40.380 --> 00:20:43.560
which is a very long amount of time.

428
00:20:43.560 --> 00:20:46.650
And I saw almost 400 tarpon get hooked.

429
00:20:46.650 --> 00:20:49.350
Of those 104 fish were landed,

430
00:20:49.350 --> 00:20:53.760
I saw 25 depredations and four post-release mortalities

431
00:20:53.760 --> 00:20:55.530
that happened at the surface.

432
00:20:55.530 --> 00:20:57.870
So a post-release mortality

433
00:20:57.870 --> 00:21:00.330
is a little bit self-explanatory,

434
00:21:00.330 --> 00:21:04.170
but it basically is if a shark eats the fish

435
00:21:04.170 --> 00:21:08.340
after it's let go and those can also happen at depth.

436
00:21:08.340 --> 00:21:10.740
So certainly probably more of them happened

437
00:21:10.740 --> 00:21:12.990
than just the four that I saw.

438
00:21:12.990 --> 00:21:15.450
But I saw four that happened at the surface.

439
00:21:15.450 --> 00:21:18.210
On average it took just over 12 minutes for someone

440
00:21:18.210 --> 00:21:21.540
to land a tarpon and then release it,

441
00:21:21.540 --> 00:21:23.070
but only nine and a half minutes

442
00:21:23.070 --> 00:21:25.110
for that depredation to happen.

443
00:21:25.110 --> 00:21:28.950
So these depredations are happening pretty quickly

444
00:21:28.950 --> 00:21:33.540
and when you exclude, so backing up a minute.

445
00:21:33.540 --> 00:21:37.470
Something that's tough about fishing in Bahia Honda

446
00:21:37.470 --> 00:21:40.560
is that you have to deal with all of those bridge pilings.

447
00:21:40.560 --> 00:21:44.130
You can actually see them pretty well in this picture here.

448
00:21:44.130 --> 00:21:46.140
So when someone hooks a fish,

449
00:21:46.140 --> 00:21:48.360
they actually have to fight that fish out

450
00:21:48.360 --> 00:21:49.860
from within the bridge pilings,

451
00:21:49.860 --> 00:21:51.630
and that makes it really easy

452
00:21:51.630 --> 00:21:53.640
for the fishing line to break

453
00:21:53.640 --> 00:21:57.810
if a fish goes and wraps around the piling.

454
00:21:57.810 --> 00:21:59.820
Tarpon also have really hard mouths,

455
00:21:59.820 --> 00:22:01.890
and they spit the hook really easily.

456
00:22:01.890 --> 00:22:04.140
So a lot of people lose fish in the first,

457
00:22:04.140 --> 00:22:06.150
like, minute or so of the fight.

458
00:22:06.150 --> 00:22:10.920
So when we exclude those really quick fish that get lost,

459
00:22:10.920 --> 00:22:15.920
ultimately we saw a 15% mortality rate for tarpon

460
00:22:15.990 --> 00:22:18.723
that were fought for a substantial amount of time.

461
00:22:21.060 --> 00:22:24.480
Now I'm trying to keep lots of graphs to a minimum

462
00:22:24.480 --> 00:22:27.330
for you here, but I'll walk you through this.

463
00:22:27.330 --> 00:22:29.970
What I was looking at was trying to understand

464
00:22:29.970 --> 00:22:33.973
what factors significantly influenced whether or not

465
00:22:33.973 --> 00:22:37.590
a tarpon getting fought in Bahia Honda would survive.

466
00:22:37.590 --> 00:22:42.120
And so we have survival probability here on our Y axis,

467
00:22:42.120 --> 00:22:44.190
or the vertical axis,

468
00:22:44.190 --> 00:22:47.580
ranging from one which means a hundred percent survival,

469
00:22:47.580 --> 00:22:50.220
to zero, all the fish die.

470
00:22:50.220 --> 00:22:53.130
And then what we have on our horizontal axis

471
00:22:53.130 --> 00:22:55.500
is our fight times.

472
00:22:55.500 --> 00:22:57.690
And what we found was that there was actually

473
00:22:57.690 --> 00:23:01.200
a significant difference between survival probability

474
00:23:01.200 --> 00:23:04.110
based on what direction the current was going.

475
00:23:04.110 --> 00:23:05.880
So if it was incoming current,

476
00:23:05.880 --> 00:23:09.210
that current's flowing north into the channel,

477
00:23:09.210 --> 00:23:11.460
the fish were actually significantly more likely

478
00:23:11.460 --> 00:23:14.100
to survive than on an outgoing current.

479
00:23:14.100 --> 00:23:16.770
And that's, the outgoing is in the red here.

480
00:23:16.770 --> 00:23:20.430
And you can also see as you follow those curves over time,

481
00:23:20.430 --> 00:23:23.670
that our survival probability goes down incrementally

482
00:23:23.670 --> 00:23:26.100
the longer those fish are fought.

483
00:23:26.100 --> 00:23:29.310
So ultimately we need to be getting fish to the side

484
00:23:29.310 --> 00:23:33.210
of the boat faster to prevent these depredations

485
00:23:33.210 --> 00:23:35.520
and that dashed line that you see in the middle,

486
00:23:35.520 --> 00:23:36.690
that's our 12 minutes,

487
00:23:36.690 --> 00:23:39.183
our average fight time for these fish.

488
00:23:41.430 --> 00:23:44.433
Taking a step into our acoustic telemetry,

489
00:23:45.330 --> 00:23:49.230
what I have here are a graph of the detections

490
00:23:49.230 --> 00:23:52.680
or when we heard from all of our tagged hammerheads

491
00:23:52.680 --> 00:23:55.320
and our tagged tarpon over time.

492
00:23:55.320 --> 00:24:00.320
So our tarpon dots are in black, our hammerheads are in red.

493
00:24:01.440 --> 00:24:04.320
Each kind of row that you see going across

494
00:24:04.320 --> 00:24:06.420
is an individual fish.

495
00:24:06.420 --> 00:24:09.390
And then this is across the entire time of the study.

496
00:24:09.390 --> 00:24:14.160
So the two and change years that I was tracking these fish.

497
00:24:14.160 --> 00:24:16.320
And what I really wanna highlight here is you can kind

498
00:24:16.320 --> 00:24:19.950
of see these three really strong pulses

499
00:24:19.950 --> 00:24:21.900
when there are a lot of fish in the area,

500
00:24:21.900 --> 00:24:25.830
and those correspond to the springtime

501
00:24:25.830 --> 00:24:28.320
that prespawning aggregation time when the tarpon

502
00:24:28.320 --> 00:24:31.950
have all migrated to The Keys to get ready to reproduce.

503
00:24:31.950 --> 00:24:33.990
So we're seeing more tarpon in the area,

504
00:24:33.990 --> 00:24:35.490
which is what we would expect,

505
00:24:35.490 --> 00:24:38.310
but also at the same time a lot more hammerheads

506
00:24:38.310 --> 00:24:40.770
in the area every time sort of March,

507
00:24:40.770 --> 00:24:42.780
April time period rolls around,

508
00:24:42.780 --> 00:24:45.363
through kind of the end of May, beginning of June.

509
00:24:49.140 --> 00:24:51.720
I can then take those acoustic detections

510
00:24:51.720 --> 00:24:56.720
and look at how that translates to space use.

511
00:24:56.820 --> 00:25:00.060
So here we've got our bird's eye view of Bahia Honda.

512
00:25:00.060 --> 00:25:04.170
Again, those black points surrounded by white

513
00:25:04.170 --> 00:25:07.650
are the locations where I had all of my acoustic receivers.

514
00:25:07.650 --> 00:25:08.910
And what I'm showing you here

515
00:25:08.910 --> 00:25:11.940
is core use areas for the fish.

516
00:25:11.940 --> 00:25:15.150
The yellow core use area is tarpon,

517
00:25:15.150 --> 00:25:17.850
and the red is the hammerheads.

518
00:25:17.850 --> 00:25:20.700
And core use area is really just

519
00:25:20.700 --> 00:25:23.970
where those fish are spending the most of their time

520
00:25:23.970 --> 00:25:25.860
when they're within the listening range

521
00:25:25.860 --> 00:25:27.780
of my acoustic receivers.

522
00:25:27.780 --> 00:25:32.250
And so these are two representative months of the year.

523
00:25:32.250 --> 00:25:34.680
April would be one of our spawning months.

524
00:25:34.680 --> 00:25:37.320
And you can see there's a ton of overlap there

525
00:25:37.320 --> 00:25:39.780
between where the hammerheads are,

526
00:25:39.780 --> 00:25:42.000
and where the tarpon are in space,

527
00:25:42.000 --> 00:25:44.970
whereas November not quite as much overlap.

528
00:25:44.970 --> 00:25:48.240
So we're seeing these hammerheads kind of shifting

529
00:25:48.240 --> 00:25:50.430
where they like to be in the channel

530
00:25:50.430 --> 00:25:52.473
based on where those tarpon are.

531
00:25:54.210 --> 00:25:58.350
And because that visual survey showed me

532
00:25:58.350 --> 00:26:02.040
that current direction was really important for depredation,

533
00:26:02.040 --> 00:26:04.830
I wanted to understand if that translated

534
00:26:04.830 --> 00:26:07.680
to a change in space use.

535
00:26:07.680 --> 00:26:09.330
And it turns out it does.

536
00:26:09.330 --> 00:26:13.290
So these again are our core use areas

537
00:26:13.290 --> 00:26:16.620
for tarpon in yellow, and hammerheads in red just

538
00:26:16.620 --> 00:26:18.390
during the spawning season,

539
00:26:18.390 --> 00:26:21.723
on the incoming current and the outgoing current.

540
00:26:22.830 --> 00:26:27.060
And while there isn't actually a substantial difference

541
00:26:27.060 --> 00:26:30.510
in the amount that those two core use areas overlap

542
00:26:30.510 --> 00:26:33.390
on the different currents, you can see that the space

543
00:26:33.390 --> 00:26:36.360
that the hammerheads are using is way smaller

544
00:26:36.360 --> 00:26:39.390
on the outgoing than on the incoming.

545
00:26:39.390 --> 00:26:41.250
And if any of you here have ever fished

546
00:26:41.250 --> 00:26:44.377
in Bahia Honda before, you might be thinking,

547
00:26:44.377 --> 00:26:47.370
"Wow, that's kind of exactly where everyone

548
00:26:47.370 --> 00:26:50.430
fights their fish on an outgoing current."

549
00:26:50.430 --> 00:26:53.400
And so what we think is happening here is that

550
00:26:53.400 --> 00:26:56.100
the hammerheads are contracting their space use

551
00:26:56.100 --> 00:26:58.950
on the outgoing and that's really facilitating

552
00:26:58.950 --> 00:27:02.610
these quick depredations and helping them find

553
00:27:02.610 --> 00:27:04.440
those hooked fish faster,

554
00:27:04.440 --> 00:27:06.783
and to be able to feed more efficiently.

555
00:27:10.380 --> 00:27:13.380
If we start to zoom out, move away from Bahia Honda,

556
00:27:13.380 --> 00:27:17.370
and look at where our hammerheads are going

557
00:27:17.370 --> 00:27:20.280
all throughout the year and all throughout The Keys,

558
00:27:20.280 --> 00:27:22.650
we see that they're, as we know,

559
00:27:22.650 --> 00:27:25.440
a very highly mobile shark species.

560
00:27:25.440 --> 00:27:29.280
So pretty much anywhere that we had acoustic receivers,

561
00:27:29.280 --> 00:27:31.410
we heard from great hammerheads in The Keys,

562
00:27:31.410 --> 00:27:33.450
which was very exciting.

563
00:27:33.450 --> 00:27:38.400
But I'm gonna get rid of some of our low use areas

564
00:27:39.300 --> 00:27:41.520
just to highlight these high traffic

565
00:27:41.520 --> 00:27:44.040
migratory corridors for these fish.

566
00:27:44.040 --> 00:27:47.190
So as we go from kind of the cooler tone in green,

567
00:27:47.190 --> 00:27:50.340
that's sort of middle of the road movement,

568
00:27:50.340 --> 00:27:54.180
orange and red are even higher movements back and forth.

569
00:27:54.180 --> 00:27:57.810
And we've got Bahia Honda here in the center

570
00:27:57.810 --> 00:28:02.460
as kind of like the middle of the spokes of the wheel here,

571
00:28:02.460 --> 00:28:06.360
with those red high traffic movement areas.

572
00:28:06.360 --> 00:28:09.630
But we see a lot of connectivity from the channels

573
00:28:09.630 --> 00:28:12.780
like Bahia Honda out to the reef tract

574
00:28:12.780 --> 00:28:16.500
where we have some artificial reefs through wrecks

575
00:28:16.500 --> 00:28:18.630
in places like the Vandenberg

576
00:28:18.630 --> 00:28:23.040
and the Adolphus Busch wreck, as well as natural reef areas

577
00:28:23.040 --> 00:28:26.010
like Western Dry Rocks and Eyeglass Bar.

578
00:28:26.010 --> 00:28:28.860
So a lot of high connectivity between Bahia Honda

579
00:28:28.860 --> 00:28:32.253
and the reef tracts, particularly in the lower Florida Keys.

580
00:28:35.910 --> 00:28:39.810
And that's reflected when we think about habitat use.

581
00:28:39.810 --> 00:28:42.390
So we had sharks that stayed

582
00:28:42.390 --> 00:28:44.940
in the Florida Keys all year round.

583
00:28:44.940 --> 00:28:46.320
And what you're looking at here

584
00:28:46.320 --> 00:28:48.810
is essentially a fancy pie chart.

585
00:28:48.810 --> 00:28:49.830
So the same kind of thing

586
00:28:49.830 --> 00:28:52.980
that you learned about in third or fourth grade.

587
00:28:52.980 --> 00:28:57.570
But each slice of our pie is a different habitat

588
00:28:57.570 --> 00:28:59.880
that we were able to monitor these sharks

589
00:28:59.880 --> 00:29:01.380
in the Florida Keys.

590
00:29:01.380 --> 00:29:03.390
And you can see in the spring we start out

591
00:29:03.390 --> 00:29:06.720
with this huge slice of the pie in channels.

592
00:29:06.720 --> 00:29:09.030
Springtime is when the tarpon are here,

593
00:29:09.030 --> 00:29:11.670
they're in the channels because they're looking for tarpon,

594
00:29:11.670 --> 00:29:13.350
that's where the tarpon are.

595
00:29:13.350 --> 00:29:15.690
And then as we move throughout the year,

596
00:29:15.690 --> 00:29:19.650
we start to see more emphasis in that reef tract area,

597
00:29:19.650 --> 00:29:23.100
particularly use of artificial reefs which are in orange.

598
00:29:23.100 --> 00:29:26.433
And then basins are deeper, more open waters.

599
00:29:29.640 --> 00:29:33.030
While some sharks stayed in The Keys all year round.

600
00:29:33.030 --> 00:29:36.780
We also had others that chose to migrate farther north.

601
00:29:36.780 --> 00:29:40.110
So similar to that map that I just showed you of The Keys,

602
00:29:40.110 --> 00:29:43.140
this is connectivity between different places

603
00:29:43.140 --> 00:29:45.180
where there were acoustic receivers,

604
00:29:45.180 --> 00:29:49.950
our cool tones, so our blue, are low traffic areas,

605
00:29:49.950 --> 00:29:54.900
and then our darker warmer tones are high traffic.

606
00:29:54.900 --> 00:29:58.080
So we see unsurprisingly a lot of connection

607
00:29:58.080 --> 00:30:02.010
between the lower Florida Keys and the upper Florida Keys,

608
00:30:02.010 --> 00:30:04.890
but also lots of sharks that moved back and forth

609
00:30:04.890 --> 00:30:08.850
between sort of the greater Tampa Bay area,

610
00:30:08.850 --> 00:30:12.660
some sharks that went as far north as the Florida panhandle.

611
00:30:12.660 --> 00:30:14.850
And then our northernmost point,

612
00:30:14.850 --> 00:30:18.390
which is exciting for all of our sanctuary folks,

613
00:30:18.390 --> 00:30:19.590
you can see on the Atlantic

614
00:30:19.590 --> 00:30:22.230
that's actually Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary,

615
00:30:22.230 --> 00:30:24.840
which was very cool to get to see a hammerhead

616
00:30:24.840 --> 00:30:27.030
go from the keys to Gray's Reef.

617
00:30:27.030 --> 00:30:29.403
And then she came back to The Keys as well.

618
00:30:31.830 --> 00:30:35.670
We also saw some separation

619
00:30:35.670 --> 00:30:39.540
between whether the sharks like to go up the west coast

620
00:30:39.540 --> 00:30:41.970
of Florida or the east coast of Florida.

621
00:30:41.970 --> 00:30:44.010
So our shark in the yellow here,

622
00:30:44.010 --> 00:30:46.590
that's the one that went all the way up to Gray's Reef,

623
00:30:46.590 --> 00:30:50.700
but she really was a Atlantic coast kind of shark.

624
00:30:50.700 --> 00:30:52.950
So she would spend a lot of time in The Keys,

625
00:30:52.950 --> 00:30:55.620
when she migrated away, she consistently,

626
00:30:55.620 --> 00:30:57.810
and we tracked her for over three years,

627
00:30:57.810 --> 00:30:59.550
would go up the Atlantic Coast,

628
00:30:59.550 --> 00:31:02.670
really never venturing into the Gulf of Mexico,

629
00:31:02.670 --> 00:31:05.790
whereas the shark that we have in the pink,

630
00:31:05.790 --> 00:31:08.640
would consistently go into the Gulf.

631
00:31:08.640 --> 00:31:12.600
And I actually have three round trip tracks from her

632
00:31:12.600 --> 00:31:15.870
going from The Keys, up to Charlotte Harbor,

633
00:31:15.870 --> 00:31:18.690
then to Tampa Bay, then to the panhandle,

634
00:31:18.690 --> 00:31:21.600
and then coming all the way back down into The Keys,

635
00:31:21.600 --> 00:31:24.090
which is really cool to get to be able to see

636
00:31:24.090 --> 00:31:27.300
this migration pattern that happened

637
00:31:27.300 --> 00:31:29.460
super consistently over time.

638
00:31:29.460 --> 00:31:32.130
Or she would leave around the same time every year,

639
00:31:32.130 --> 00:31:33.810
start heading north and come back

640
00:31:33.810 --> 00:31:35.523
around the same time every year.

641
00:31:39.210 --> 00:31:42.180
So to start wrapping things up here,

642
00:31:42.180 --> 00:31:45.840
we learned a lot about great hammerheads in Florida

643
00:31:45.840 --> 00:31:49.830
and in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary as well.

644
00:31:49.830 --> 00:31:53.130
So we had really widespread movement for these hammerheads

645
00:31:53.130 --> 00:31:56.100
within The Keys, and we documented

646
00:31:56.100 --> 00:31:58.680
what's called partial migration to northern points.

647
00:31:58.680 --> 00:32:02.910
Now partial migration is just when part of the population

648
00:32:02.910 --> 00:32:05.310
does a migration and the other part doesn't.

649
00:32:05.310 --> 00:32:08.190
So like I said, we had some hammerheads that stayed

650
00:32:08.190 --> 00:32:09.810
in The Keys all year round,

651
00:32:09.810 --> 00:32:11.820
and others that moved north,

652
00:32:11.820 --> 00:32:13.860
and then came back to The Keys in the spring

653
00:32:13.860 --> 00:32:15.363
when those tarpon return.

654
00:32:16.440 --> 00:32:18.330
For those sharks that stayed in The Keys,

655
00:32:18.330 --> 00:32:21.600
there were seasonal shifts in habitat within The Keys,

656
00:32:21.600 --> 00:32:23.670
they moved to some of those deeper waters

657
00:32:23.670 --> 00:32:26.130
like the artificial reef as it got warmer.

658
00:32:26.130 --> 00:32:30.000
And so I suspect that probably some of those inshore waters

659
00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:31.530
were just a little bit too hot

660
00:32:31.530 --> 00:32:33.570
to spend a ton of time in.

661
00:32:33.570 --> 00:32:36.330
And that drove that shift out onto the reef

662
00:32:36.330 --> 00:32:37.560
where they can get into deeper

663
00:32:37.560 --> 00:32:39.333
and a little bit cooler waters.

664
00:32:40.380 --> 00:32:43.080
And we saw high seasonal use of channels,

665
00:32:43.080 --> 00:32:45.900
which just really highlights the importance

666
00:32:45.900 --> 00:32:49.830
of those tarpons prespawning aggregations,

667
00:32:49.830 --> 00:32:52.413
particularly in places like Bahia Honda channel.

668
00:32:54.930 --> 00:32:57.330
Within Bahia Honda, we were able to show

669
00:32:57.330 --> 00:32:59.970
that the great hammerheads are actually modifying

670
00:32:59.970 --> 00:33:01.980
how they use Bahia Honda

671
00:33:01.980 --> 00:33:05.010
in response to tarpon being there.

672
00:33:05.010 --> 00:33:07.620
So when the tarpon are there in numbers,

673
00:33:07.620 --> 00:33:10.710
those sharks are shifting where they are in the channel

674
00:33:10.710 --> 00:33:11.970
so that they're overlapping

675
00:33:11.970 --> 00:33:14.250
with where the tarpon are more often.

676
00:33:14.250 --> 00:33:15.990
And then on that outgoing current,

677
00:33:15.990 --> 00:33:18.810
they're really contracting where they use space,

678
00:33:18.810 --> 00:33:21.453
which is facilitating these depredation events.

679
00:33:22.440 --> 00:33:26.460
A 15% depredation rate is not great,

680
00:33:26.460 --> 00:33:29.400
but it's also not the worst thing that could happen.

681
00:33:29.400 --> 00:33:32.790
It's certainly better than a 90% depredation rate.

682
00:33:32.790 --> 00:33:35.010
It's tough to really contextualize

683
00:33:35.010 --> 00:33:37.740
what this means for the tarpon population,

684
00:33:37.740 --> 00:33:39.630
because they don't have a stock assessment,

685
00:33:39.630 --> 00:33:42.420
and that means that we don't have a great handle

686
00:33:42.420 --> 00:33:45.930
on how those tarpon populations are changing over time.

687
00:33:45.930 --> 00:33:49.920
But you can imagine that a 15% depredation rate isn't ideal

688
00:33:49.920 --> 00:33:51.870
because similar to shark species,

689
00:33:51.870 --> 00:33:54.150
tarpon also live for decades,

690
00:33:54.150 --> 00:33:56.850
takes them a while to mature,

691
00:33:56.850 --> 00:34:01.290
and we're losing these fish from a spawning aggregation

692
00:34:01.290 --> 00:34:04.320
where they are getting ready to reproduce.

693
00:34:04.320 --> 00:34:08.130
And so you can see that losing reproductive fish 15%,

694
00:34:08.130 --> 00:34:11.103
year after year after year, that's gonna add up over time.

695
00:34:12.180 --> 00:34:16.530
The 15% estimate is also probably an underestimate

696
00:34:16.530 --> 00:34:18.360
in terms of how much shark mortality

697
00:34:18.360 --> 00:34:21.690
is actually happening in the area.

698
00:34:21.690 --> 00:34:24.660
So I'm not Superman, I don't have x-ray vision,

699
00:34:24.660 --> 00:34:26.910
so I wasn't able to see anything

700
00:34:26.910 --> 00:34:29.220
that happens underneath of the surface.

701
00:34:29.220 --> 00:34:31.110
So there are probably depredations

702
00:34:31.110 --> 00:34:32.700
that are happening at depth,

703
00:34:32.700 --> 00:34:36.720
and also post-release mortality is happening at depth

704
00:34:36.720 --> 00:34:40.560
that aren't part of that mortality estimate of 15%.

705
00:34:40.560 --> 00:34:42.840
But overall, what the analysis showed is really

706
00:34:42.840 --> 00:34:45.060
that tarpon need to be leadered faster.

707
00:34:45.060 --> 00:34:47.850
So we need to be getting them to the side of the boat,

708
00:34:47.850 --> 00:34:50.460
quicker because the longer you're fighting your fish,

709
00:34:50.460 --> 00:34:53.400
the more likely you are to lose that fish,

710
00:34:53.400 --> 00:34:55.773
particularly on the outgoing current.

711
00:34:58.830 --> 00:35:01.440
So what do we do with all of this?

712
00:35:01.440 --> 00:35:05.190
Depredation is a really tough problem to tackle,

713
00:35:05.190 --> 00:35:07.830
because we're dealing with a natural interaction

714
00:35:07.830 --> 00:35:09.870
between predators and prey,

715
00:35:09.870 --> 00:35:12.270
and the sharks have to eat,

716
00:35:12.270 --> 00:35:13.740
and you can't really blame them

717
00:35:13.740 --> 00:35:16.350
for trying to take an easy meal.

718
00:35:16.350 --> 00:35:18.690
So the first thing that might come to mind

719
00:35:18.690 --> 00:35:22.620
for a lot of people is a policy or management based solution

720
00:35:22.620 --> 00:35:24.453
like a time area closure.

721
00:35:26.040 --> 00:35:29.790
My personal feeling is that this should be a last resort

722
00:35:29.790 --> 00:35:30.623
in the fishery.

723
00:35:30.623 --> 00:35:33.330
Time area closures are very contentious,

724
00:35:33.330 --> 00:35:35.460
they often are really time consuming.

725
00:35:35.460 --> 00:35:38.610
There are things that we could do to be this quicker,

726
00:35:38.610 --> 00:35:41.070
and a closure is going to really dramatically affect

727
00:35:41.070 --> 00:35:44.040
the livelihoods of a lot of fishing guides

728
00:35:44.040 --> 00:35:47.580
that use this area to take their clients.

729
00:35:47.580 --> 00:35:49.980
And it's a really great place for people

730
00:35:49.980 --> 00:35:52.380
to catch their first tarpon,

731
00:35:52.380 --> 00:35:55.110
and that's what we need is we need people

732
00:35:55.110 --> 00:35:57.780
getting into fishing to be stewards

733
00:35:57.780 --> 00:35:59.670
and advocates for these species.

734
00:35:59.670 --> 00:36:02.640
So it would be a big loss to close Bahia Honda,

735
00:36:02.640 --> 00:36:03.930
but there are some things that we can do

736
00:36:03.930 --> 00:36:07.080
that aren't closing that fishing ground.

737
00:36:07.080 --> 00:36:08.970
We can make some behavior changes.

738
00:36:08.970 --> 00:36:13.320
So making sure that you are fishing with heavy fishing gear.

739
00:36:13.320 --> 00:36:17.010
I saw some people out there fighting tarpon for 45 minutes

740
00:36:17.010 --> 00:36:20.160
to an hour because they were on really light rods.

741
00:36:20.160 --> 00:36:22.950
Those fish didn't fare well either from sharks,

742
00:36:22.950 --> 00:36:25.980
or they're gonna be so tired by the time you let them go

743
00:36:25.980 --> 00:36:28.530
that that's not gonna be a good release for that fish.

744
00:36:28.530 --> 00:36:30.690
So making sure that you're getting tarpon to the boat

745
00:36:30.690 --> 00:36:33.330
as fast as you possibly can.

746
00:36:33.330 --> 00:36:35.340
If there are some fishing guides on this call,

747
00:36:35.340 --> 00:36:37.740
talking to your clients about this being an issue

748
00:36:37.740 --> 00:36:41.310
and advocating for them to fight the fish quickly,

749
00:36:41.310 --> 00:36:42.960
it would be really great.

750
00:36:42.960 --> 00:36:45.600
Also having awareness on the outgoing current.

751
00:36:45.600 --> 00:36:47.190
Sometimes you can see these sharks

752
00:36:47.190 --> 00:36:49.530
coming before they get to the fish

753
00:36:49.530 --> 00:36:53.160
and if that happens you can actually tighten your drag

754
00:36:53.160 --> 00:36:55.260
and try to break the fish off the line.

755
00:36:55.260 --> 00:36:57.900
The video that seems to have stopped playing,

756
00:36:57.900 --> 00:37:00.420
but I think it looped through a couple times for you here,

757
00:37:00.420 --> 00:37:03.120
is actually from a fishing guide in Bahia Honda,

758
00:37:03.120 --> 00:37:05.130
that had broken the tarpon off the line

759
00:37:05.130 --> 00:37:08.100
and it looks like it actually got away.

760
00:37:08.100 --> 00:37:10.470
So this can be an effective method.

761
00:37:10.470 --> 00:37:13.290
There are also some shark deterrent devices out there

762
00:37:13.290 --> 00:37:17.073
that are being marketed specifically to reduce depredation.

763
00:37:17.970 --> 00:37:21.270
I think that these could have some promise

764
00:37:21.270 --> 00:37:24.840
in the tarpon fishery, but they largely haven't been tested

765
00:37:24.840 --> 00:37:28.110
in a recreational fishing setting.

766
00:37:28.110 --> 00:37:31.020
So there's some more work that we need to do

767
00:37:31.020 --> 00:37:32.940
as scientists there to better understand

768
00:37:32.940 --> 00:37:36.123
how effective these kinds of things could be.

769
00:37:37.080 --> 00:37:39.960
And with that, I am in the home stretch.

770
00:37:39.960 --> 00:37:42.960
This project was super collaborative.

771
00:37:42.960 --> 00:37:46.200
So many people from my team at UMass Amherst

772
00:37:46.200 --> 00:37:48.360
came to help me out in the field.

773
00:37:48.360 --> 00:37:52.260
So this is most, but I don't think all of them

774
00:37:52.260 --> 00:37:54.660
on this slide, but I'm very appreciative to everyone

775
00:37:54.660 --> 00:37:57.273
that came down in the field to help me on this work.

776
00:37:58.440 --> 00:38:00.420
And I'd like to thank particularly

777
00:38:00.420 --> 00:38:03.210
the Dr. Nancy Foster Scholarship, which allowed me

778
00:38:03.210 --> 00:38:08.190
to do this research in the first place by funding my PhD.

779
00:38:08.190 --> 00:38:10.950
I worked really closely with Aquarium Encounters

780
00:38:10.950 --> 00:38:12.600
in the Florida Keys.

781
00:38:12.600 --> 00:38:14.550
They were super helpful, especially as we dealt

782
00:38:14.550 --> 00:38:18.063
with some challenges doing field work with COVID,

783
00:38:18.930 --> 00:38:22.020
and all of the fishing guides in Bahia Honda

784
00:38:22.020 --> 00:38:25.920
that talked to me about losing their fish to sharks,

785
00:38:25.920 --> 00:38:28.350
and were supportive of my project.

786
00:38:28.350 --> 00:38:30.780
And with that I'll wrap things up

787
00:38:30.780 --> 00:38:32.403
and I can take any questions.

788
00:38:36.000 --> 00:38:39.210
<v ->Excellent, thank you so much, Grace.</v>

789
00:38:39.210 --> 00:38:42.900
It's really cool to hear that presentation.

790
00:38:42.900 --> 00:38:46.470
So for those of you online,

791
00:38:46.470 --> 00:38:48.150
there's already been lots of great questions

792
00:38:48.150 --> 00:38:50.010
that have come in, but if you have a question

793
00:38:50.010 --> 00:38:52.320
that we can hopefully get to with Grace,

794
00:38:52.320 --> 00:38:57.320
go ahead and enter that into your GoToWebinar control panel

795
00:38:58.290 --> 00:38:59.790
and we'll hopefully get to it.

796
00:38:59.790 --> 00:39:02.940
If we don't get to all of the questions today,

797
00:39:02.940 --> 00:39:05.250
I'm going to email them to Grace

798
00:39:05.250 --> 00:39:07.470
to have her respond in written form

799
00:39:07.470 --> 00:39:10.140
and then we'll send it out to all attendees.

800
00:39:10.140 --> 00:39:15.120
So with that, let's go ahead and kick off some questions.

801
00:39:15.120 --> 00:39:18.210
So there was a slide where you had

802
00:39:18.210 --> 00:39:21.360
the shark with the color tags

803
00:39:21.360 --> 00:39:24.633
and the question is, are the tags removed after your study?

804
00:39:25.860 --> 00:39:28.260
<v ->Yeah, that's a great question.</v>

805
00:39:28.260 --> 00:39:33.260
So, they are not physically removed by me,

806
00:39:34.020 --> 00:39:35.970
but I can tell you that they fall off,

807
00:39:35.970 --> 00:39:40.080
because I recaptured three of the sharks

808
00:39:40.080 --> 00:39:41.670
that I tagged in this study,

809
00:39:41.670 --> 00:39:46.230
and they had shed those, they're called cattle tags,

810
00:39:46.230 --> 00:39:47.850
those color coded tags.

811
00:39:47.850 --> 00:39:51.330
So as the fin grows they kind of pop

812
00:39:51.330 --> 00:39:54.660
the casing that holds them on off.

813
00:39:54.660 --> 00:39:58.140
And most of them you couldn't even tell

814
00:39:58.140 --> 00:40:00.480
that that hole had been drilled.

815
00:40:00.480 --> 00:40:03.750
I wouldn't have known that it was a shark that I tagged

816
00:40:03.750 --> 00:40:05.850
if it didn't still have the acoustic tag on it.

817
00:40:05.850 --> 00:40:07.053
So they do fall off.

818
00:40:07.980 --> 00:40:08.813
<v ->Well, that's great.</v>

819
00:40:08.813 --> 00:40:12.450
And so there is a young viewer, age seven,

820
00:40:12.450 --> 00:40:14.400
who is in our Florida Keys

821
00:40:14.400 --> 00:40:16.050
maybe in our eco discovery center.

822
00:40:16.050 --> 00:40:17.220
So she had a similar question

823
00:40:17.220 --> 00:40:18.840
about do the tags eventually fall off?

824
00:40:18.840 --> 00:40:20.460
So, thank you for that question.

825
00:40:20.460 --> 00:40:24.210
Another 7-year-old watching from the Florida Keys

826
00:40:24.210 --> 00:40:26.100
wants to know, can you tell us

827
00:40:26.100 --> 00:40:28.290
about the sizes of these sharks?

828
00:40:28.290 --> 00:40:30.870
Like how big were the biggest sharks?

829
00:40:30.870 --> 00:40:33.120
<v ->Oh yeah, that's a great question.</v>

830
00:40:33.120 --> 00:40:37.050
So all of the sharks that I tagged were mature,

831
00:40:37.050 --> 00:40:39.213
most of them were females,

832
00:40:40.224 --> 00:40:43.470
and they were between 10 to 14 feet long.

833
00:40:43.470 --> 00:40:45.900
So, they're pretty big fish.

834
00:40:45.900 --> 00:40:49.710
It was very exciting to get to be that up close

835
00:40:49.710 --> 00:40:52.203
and personal with big sharks like that.

836
00:40:53.310 --> 00:40:57.000
<v ->Sign me up, that sounds so exhilarating, that's awesome.</v>

837
00:40:57.000 --> 00:40:58.410
Okay, another question coming in.

838
00:40:58.410 --> 00:41:00.870
Are sharks and other marine life affected

839
00:41:00.870 --> 00:41:04.410
by hurricanes path, like the recent Hurricane Helene

840
00:41:04.410 --> 00:41:06.963
that impacted that side of the Florida Coast?

841
00:41:07.890 --> 00:41:10.260
<v ->Yeah, so that's a really great question.</v>

842
00:41:10.260 --> 00:41:13.290
That's something that we are still learning about,

843
00:41:13.290 --> 00:41:15.930
but there was a study that actually used the same kind

844
00:41:15.930 --> 00:41:18.840
of technology that I used for this project.

845
00:41:18.840 --> 00:41:20.610
So acoustic telemetry,

846
00:41:20.610 --> 00:41:24.720
that tracked blacktip sharks in,

847
00:41:24.720 --> 00:41:26.430
I can't remember the exact name of the bay,

848
00:41:26.430 --> 00:41:29.760
but in a bay in Florida near Tampa,

849
00:41:29.760 --> 00:41:32.550
it showed that those baby blacktip sharks

850
00:41:32.550 --> 00:41:36.900
actually moved out of the bay into deeper water

851
00:41:36.900 --> 00:41:39.000
as a tropical storm was approaching.

852
00:41:39.000 --> 00:41:40.440
And they think that that's because

853
00:41:40.440 --> 00:41:42.870
of a drop in the barometric pressure.

854
00:41:42.870 --> 00:41:45.480
And then as the storm moved away,

855
00:41:45.480 --> 00:41:47.910
those sharks came back into the bay.

856
00:41:47.910 --> 00:41:52.830
So they do seem to sense that a big storm is coming,

857
00:41:52.830 --> 00:41:55.230
and if you move into deeper water

858
00:41:55.230 --> 00:41:57.030
that's a little bit calmer, you know,

859
00:41:57.030 --> 00:41:59.310
they can go down deeper beneath the waves.

860
00:41:59.310 --> 00:42:00.990
There's not as much sort of turbulence

861
00:42:00.990 --> 00:42:03.120
and chaos happening in the water.

862
00:42:03.120 --> 00:42:06.573
So we think that that's why they move out into deeper water.

863
00:42:08.070 --> 00:42:10.980
<v ->Great, a question that came in about</v>

864
00:42:10.980 --> 00:42:13.740
how do shark migrations relate to their sex?

865
00:42:13.740 --> 00:42:16.563
Like do females migrate more often?

866
00:42:17.970 --> 00:42:18.870
<v ->That's a good question.</v>

867
00:42:18.870 --> 00:42:23.370
I think the answer probably depends a lot on the species,

868
00:42:23.370 --> 00:42:26.760
and I don't think we really know enough about hammerhead

869
00:42:26.760 --> 00:42:28.440
migrations to be able to say,

870
00:42:28.440 --> 00:42:31.470
or great hammerhead migrations to be able to say

871
00:42:31.470 --> 00:42:34.650
that males do something different than females.

872
00:42:34.650 --> 00:42:37.470
But there are a lot of different shark species

873
00:42:37.470 --> 00:42:42.470
where the males will say, spend time closer to shore

874
00:42:43.380 --> 00:42:46.320
and the females will be farther offshore or vice versa.

875
00:42:46.320 --> 00:42:48.610
They often tend to kind of group up

876
00:42:49.590 --> 00:42:51.630
based on whether they're male or female,

877
00:42:51.630 --> 00:42:53.343
and spend kind of different,

878
00:42:54.750 --> 00:42:56.280
spend time in different places

879
00:42:56.280 --> 00:42:57.830
at different parts of the year.

880
00:43:00.300 --> 00:43:03.870
<v ->Great, okay, gosh, questions are coming in rapidly.</v>

881
00:43:03.870 --> 00:43:05.613
So, let's see.

882
00:43:10.860 --> 00:43:13.470
Okay, this is kind of, you might,

883
00:43:13.470 --> 00:43:15.660
I'm just gonna pull off away from hammerhead sharks

884
00:43:15.660 --> 00:43:17.610
for a minute, but you might have something,

885
00:43:17.610 --> 00:43:20.130
there's a student who's a sophomore

886
00:43:20.130 --> 00:43:21.720
at University of Missouri,

887
00:43:21.720 --> 00:43:24.330
and this person's looking to apply for one

888
00:43:24.330 --> 00:43:28.200
of our NOAA Hollings internship program.

889
00:43:28.200 --> 00:43:30.960
So she wants to know what's the best advice

890
00:43:30.960 --> 00:43:34.293
you have for someone wanting to get into marine biology?

891
00:43:35.130 --> 00:43:38.820
<v ->Oh, I mean it sounds like you're looking</v>

892
00:43:38.820 --> 00:43:42.060
into the Hollings program, which is a great place to start.

893
00:43:42.060 --> 00:43:47.060
I think my piece of advice is to try to get

894
00:43:47.160 --> 00:43:50.250
as much experience as possible

895
00:43:50.250 --> 00:43:52.680
as early as possible.

896
00:43:52.680 --> 00:43:56.580
A mentor of mine once told me that it's just as important

897
00:43:56.580 --> 00:43:58.710
to know what you don't want to do

898
00:43:58.710 --> 00:44:02.070
as it is to know what you do want to do.

899
00:44:02.070 --> 00:44:06.090
And so trying to get a variety of experiences,

900
00:44:06.090 --> 00:44:09.750
whether that's if you live in a place near a local aquarium,

901
00:44:09.750 --> 00:44:12.120
if you can volunteer at your aquarium

902
00:44:12.120 --> 00:44:14.220
just to get your feet wet,

903
00:44:14.220 --> 00:44:17.910
no pun intended with marine science.

904
00:44:17.910 --> 00:44:22.740
And then as you kind of progress looking at internships,

905
00:44:22.740 --> 00:44:26.580
I used to be a contractor at a NOAA fisheries office,

906
00:44:26.580 --> 00:44:28.560
and we had a few Hollings scholars

907
00:44:28.560 --> 00:44:32.100
and those are really great opportunities to take.

908
00:44:32.100 --> 00:44:33.603
So definitely pursue that.

909
00:44:34.440 --> 00:44:35.550
<v ->And just another pitch,</v>

910
00:44:35.550 --> 00:44:38.460
if you're maybe not an undergraduate student

911
00:44:38.460 --> 00:44:40.500
but you're still interested in learning more

912
00:44:40.500 --> 00:44:43.470
about student opportunities with NOAA,

913
00:44:43.470 --> 00:44:46.410
I'll put it in the chat, but NOAA.gov/students,

914
00:44:46.410 --> 00:44:48.150
it's an online searchable database

915
00:44:48.150 --> 00:44:51.060
that will let you know the opportunities available

916
00:44:51.060 --> 00:44:53.460
for you at whatever stage of school

917
00:44:53.460 --> 00:44:55.500
and career you might be at.

918
00:44:55.500 --> 00:44:58.140
So thank you for that little segue, Grace.

919
00:44:58.140 --> 00:45:00.783
Okay, now a fantastic talk.

920
00:45:01.620 --> 00:45:02.640
Couple questions here.

921
00:45:02.640 --> 00:45:05.250
Are there other fish species that are commonly caught

922
00:45:05.250 --> 00:45:08.340
in this specific area in addition to the tarpon

923
00:45:08.340 --> 00:45:12.360
that have also been depredated by sharks?

924
00:45:12.360 --> 00:45:14.760
<v ->Ooh, that is a good question.</v>

925
00:45:14.760 --> 00:45:16.830
Most of the people that are fishing there

926
00:45:16.830 --> 00:45:18.960
are fishing for tarpon.

927
00:45:18.960 --> 00:45:21.780
Occasionally people will catch permit there,

928
00:45:21.780 --> 00:45:26.520
which are kind of more commonly caught out on the reef

929
00:45:26.520 --> 00:45:28.050
or in the flats areas,

930
00:45:28.050 --> 00:45:30.510
but there are permit that will come in and out of there,

931
00:45:30.510 --> 00:45:34.980
and they're another really popular sport fish in Florida.

932
00:45:34.980 --> 00:45:36.750
I've also been told that there are snook

933
00:45:36.750 --> 00:45:37.890
underneath of that bridge.

934
00:45:37.890 --> 00:45:40.157
I've never caught a snook underneath of that bridge.

935
00:45:40.157 --> 00:45:43.020
I have not heard about depredation issues

936
00:45:43.020 --> 00:45:46.050
with those species, though.

937
00:45:46.050 --> 00:45:51.050
I think that this is a place where the hammerheads know

938
00:45:51.930 --> 00:45:53.670
that there are tarpon to eat,

939
00:45:53.670 --> 00:45:57.210
and they are kind of going there

940
00:45:57.210 --> 00:45:59.130
sort of with that fish in mind,

941
00:45:59.130 --> 00:46:04.130
as much as a shark can have a meal in mind. (laughs)

942
00:46:04.140 --> 00:46:05.520
<v ->Kind of a follow up to that question,</v>

943
00:46:05.520 --> 00:46:09.750
are there other shark species that are present

944
00:46:09.750 --> 00:46:13.293
that might be depredating but you're not as aware of?

945
00:46:14.130 --> 00:46:15.930
<v ->Yeah, that's a great question.</v>

946
00:46:15.930 --> 00:46:18.750
So there are definitely bull sharks in Bahia Honda

947
00:46:18.750 --> 00:46:21.363
that do also depredate.

948
00:46:22.230 --> 00:46:24.420
So when I was doing the visual survey,

949
00:46:24.420 --> 00:46:27.870
I only ever saw hammerheads and it's really easy to know

950
00:46:27.870 --> 00:46:30.720
that you're looking at a hammerhead

951
00:46:30.720 --> 00:46:32.130
for the shape of their head,

952
00:46:32.130 --> 00:46:34.620
and also because they have their dorsal fin,

953
00:46:34.620 --> 00:46:36.540
which you maybe have noticed in some of the pictures

954
00:46:36.540 --> 00:46:41.010
is really tall and triangular and distinctive.

955
00:46:41.010 --> 00:46:42.660
So I could tell for sure

956
00:46:42.660 --> 00:46:44.550
that I was looking at hammerheads there,

957
00:46:44.550 --> 00:46:47.460
but I have caught bull sharks in that area

958
00:46:47.460 --> 00:46:49.830
and I know from the fishing guides that I work with

959
00:46:49.830 --> 00:46:52.050
that bull sharks do also eat tarpon there.

960
00:46:52.050 --> 00:46:55.650
So when I talked a little bit about how this 15%

961
00:46:55.650 --> 00:46:59.850
is kind of a starting number for how often

962
00:46:59.850 --> 00:47:02.940
depredation is happening, we know that bull sharks are there

963
00:47:02.940 --> 00:47:04.680
and they're probably the ones

964
00:47:04.680 --> 00:47:06.990
that are eating tarpon at depth,

965
00:47:06.990 --> 00:47:09.390
and there just wasn't a good way for me

966
00:47:09.390 --> 00:47:11.673
to quantify that in this study.

967
00:47:12.510 --> 00:47:13.413
<v ->Okay, great.</v>

968
00:47:14.760 --> 00:47:15.840
Going back to the basics,

969
00:47:15.840 --> 00:47:17.850
how many hammerhead species are there

970
00:47:17.850 --> 00:47:21.063
and do all of them live in the Florida Keys area?

971
00:47:22.140 --> 00:47:23.370
<v ->That's a great question,</v>

972
00:47:23.370 --> 00:47:25.590
and the answer has actually changed

973
00:47:25.590 --> 00:47:29.610
in the last like week, I think?

974
00:47:29.610 --> 00:47:34.470
So there were was just a new species of hammerhead shark

975
00:47:34.470 --> 00:47:37.710
described by some biologists at I believe

976
00:47:37.710 --> 00:47:40.590
Florida International University.

977
00:47:40.590 --> 00:47:42.450
It's a new species of bonnethead shark,

978
00:47:42.450 --> 00:47:45.480
which is one of our smaller hammerhead species.

979
00:47:45.480 --> 00:47:49.563
So I think the number is now 10 and used to be nine.

980
00:47:50.940 --> 00:47:53.370
But they do not all just live in Florida.

981
00:47:53.370 --> 00:47:55.830
So we have hammerhead sharks

982
00:47:55.830 --> 00:47:58.860
that live really all around the world.

983
00:47:58.860 --> 00:48:01.830
There are scalloped hammerhead sharks

984
00:48:01.830 --> 00:48:04.020
that live on both the east

985
00:48:04.020 --> 00:48:06.300
and west coast of the United States.

986
00:48:06.300 --> 00:48:07.950
There are smooth hammerhead sharks.

987
00:48:07.950 --> 00:48:11.040
There's a species of shark called the Carolina hammerhead

988
00:48:11.040 --> 00:48:12.873
that's also found in the Atlantic.

989
00:48:13.710 --> 00:48:16.980
So yeah, there are hammerhead sharks all over the place.

990
00:48:16.980 --> 00:48:19.920
It's a very cool, weird little adaptation

991
00:48:19.920 --> 00:48:22.220
that they have with their hammer shaped heads.

992
00:48:24.930 --> 00:48:26.223
<v ->Thank you for that.</v>

993
00:48:28.200 --> 00:48:30.090
Have you noticed any migration changes

994
00:48:30.090 --> 00:48:34.053
due to a warming, due to warming ocean temperatures?

995
00:48:35.220 --> 00:48:36.960
<v ->That is a good question.</v>

996
00:48:36.960 --> 00:48:41.960
So the dataset that I have is not over a long enough

997
00:48:42.780 --> 00:48:45.240
timescale to really be able to say that.

998
00:48:45.240 --> 00:48:49.440
So you need data that covers like a decade or more

999
00:48:49.440 --> 00:48:52.350
to really be confident in something

1000
00:48:52.350 --> 00:48:55.500
like gradually warming temperatures

1001
00:48:55.500 --> 00:48:57.750
over time changing movements.

1002
00:48:57.750 --> 00:49:00.630
But we are starting to see that with other species

1003
00:49:00.630 --> 00:49:02.550
where we have more data.

1004
00:49:02.550 --> 00:49:06.660
So there has been a study published about bull sharks

1005
00:49:06.660 --> 00:49:10.230
that are actually expanding their nursery areas.

1006
00:49:10.230 --> 00:49:14.220
So the places where they will pup or have babies

1007
00:49:14.220 --> 00:49:16.770
are starting to move farther north

1008
00:49:16.770 --> 00:49:19.950
up into the Carolinas where previously I believe

1009
00:49:19.950 --> 00:49:23.040
it was that they were not pupping north of Georgia.

1010
00:49:23.040 --> 00:49:26.730
So we are seeing a change in that over time

1011
00:49:26.730 --> 00:49:28.590
and that's been connected to warming

1012
00:49:28.590 --> 00:49:31.833
water temperatures in coastal areas.

1013
00:49:33.180 --> 00:49:36.090
<v ->All right, well we also have another school group</v>

1014
00:49:36.090 --> 00:49:40.770
participating from Pa'auilo Elementary and I'm excited

1015
00:49:40.770 --> 00:49:42.840
because I'm an island girl

1016
00:49:42.840 --> 00:49:44.910
and the school's on Hawaii island,

1017
00:49:44.910 --> 00:49:47.850
and I went there from kindergarten through third grade.

1018
00:49:47.850 --> 00:49:51.930
So welcome to our participants from Pa'auilo Elementary.

1019
00:49:51.930 --> 00:49:53.820
Lots of questions coming in.

1020
00:49:53.820 --> 00:49:56.940
The one I'll ask is have you had a chance

1021
00:49:56.940 --> 00:50:01.020
to study other sharks besides the great hammerheads?

1022
00:50:01.020 --> 00:50:02.070
<v ->I have, yeah.</v>

1023
00:50:02.070 --> 00:50:04.740
So I've been very lucky to get to work

1024
00:50:04.740 --> 00:50:07.680
on a number of different shark species.

1025
00:50:07.680 --> 00:50:09.420
The shark species I'm working on now

1026
00:50:09.420 --> 00:50:12.690
is actually one that you have out in Hawaii.

1027
00:50:12.690 --> 00:50:15.420
So I work on tiger sharks as well.

1028
00:50:15.420 --> 00:50:17.790
I'm doing a project right now in St. Croix,

1029
00:50:17.790 --> 00:50:20.160
in the US Virgin Islands that looks

1030
00:50:20.160 --> 00:50:22.200
at how tiger sharks interact

1031
00:50:22.200 --> 00:50:25.350
with four different sea turtle species there.

1032
00:50:25.350 --> 00:50:28.320
And I'm using the same kind of electronic tracking

1033
00:50:28.320 --> 00:50:30.900
technology to look at how the tiger sharks move,

1034
00:50:30.900 --> 00:50:33.210
and how the sea turtles move.

1035
00:50:33.210 --> 00:50:35.430
But I've worked on a number of different

1036
00:50:35.430 --> 00:50:38.310
shark species throughout the years,

1037
00:50:38.310 --> 00:50:41.280
but tigers and the hammerheads are probably two

1038
00:50:41.280 --> 00:50:43.410
of my favorites that I've worked with.

1039
00:50:43.410 --> 00:50:45.810
<v ->That's awesome, thank you.</v>

1040
00:50:45.810 --> 00:50:47.460
Okay, back to your research.

1041
00:50:47.460 --> 00:50:50.280
Do you note any post-release mortality

1042
00:50:50.280 --> 00:50:52.170
of the great hammerheads?

1043
00:50:52.170 --> 00:50:55.080
This person says there's pretty well documented evidence

1044
00:50:55.080 --> 00:50:59.400
that hammerheads have a high post-release mortality rate

1045
00:50:59.400 --> 00:51:04.170
so how is this experimental design decided upon?

1046
00:51:04.170 --> 00:51:05.220
<v ->Absolutely, yeah.</v>

1047
00:51:05.220 --> 00:51:09.153
So that was something that we were super conscious about.

1048
00:51:10.050 --> 00:51:13.380
So what we did when we were fishing

1049
00:51:13.380 --> 00:51:17.220
was we made sure that we got that hammerhead

1050
00:51:17.220 --> 00:51:20.130
to the side of the boat in 10 minutes or less,

1051
00:51:20.130 --> 00:51:22.050
which is a really hard thing to do

1052
00:51:22.050 --> 00:51:23.700
because they are very big sharks

1053
00:51:23.700 --> 00:51:25.890
and they were not tired

1054
00:51:25.890 --> 00:51:28.020
by the time they got to the side of the boat,

1055
00:51:28.020 --> 00:51:29.130
in 10 minutes or less.

1056
00:51:29.130 --> 00:51:33.090
But we wanted to keep that fight time as short as possible.

1057
00:51:33.090 --> 00:51:37.560
And then we had the benefit of working in that channel

1058
00:51:37.560 --> 00:51:40.230
that has really high current flow,

1059
00:51:40.230 --> 00:51:43.740
and we would just let our boat drift with the current,

1060
00:51:43.740 --> 00:51:46.740
making sure that the hammerheads head was pointed

1061
00:51:46.740 --> 00:51:48.570
into the current so that the water

1062
00:51:48.570 --> 00:51:50.910
was always flowing over their gills.

1063
00:51:50.910 --> 00:51:54.870
So they were getting really good fresh water oxygenation.

1064
00:51:54.870 --> 00:51:58.410
And then we kept all of our working with that shark

1065
00:51:58.410 --> 00:52:01.920
at the side of the boat to five minutes or less.

1066
00:52:01.920 --> 00:52:04.400
So we attached those acoustic tags

1067
00:52:04.400 --> 00:52:06.390
to the outside of the shark.

1068
00:52:06.390 --> 00:52:08.940
Oftentimes people will do a little surgery

1069
00:52:08.940 --> 00:52:11.610
and implant it internally,

1070
00:52:11.610 --> 00:52:14.940
which ensures that those tags can't fall off,

1071
00:52:14.940 --> 00:52:19.140
but takes more time than just attaching it externally.

1072
00:52:19.140 --> 00:52:22.080
So we made a lot of really conscious decisions to make sure

1073
00:52:22.080 --> 00:52:24.030
that we were working with that animal

1074
00:52:24.030 --> 00:52:27.540
as quickly and as little as possible

1075
00:52:27.540 --> 00:52:29.670
and I'm really excited to be able to share that

1076
00:52:29.670 --> 00:52:33.540
I know from the movement data that all of them survived.

1077
00:52:33.540 --> 00:52:35.670
So that was really great,

1078
00:52:35.670 --> 00:52:40.263
means that that we were being careful and and it paid off.

1079
00:52:42.060 --> 00:52:44.553
<v ->Okay, that's good, thank you for sharing that.</v>

1080
00:52:45.810 --> 00:52:47.250
One of our last questions here,

1081
00:52:47.250 --> 00:52:50.160
why did you choose to study depredation?

1082
00:52:50.160 --> 00:52:52.320
Like did you want to do this,

1083
00:52:52.320 --> 00:52:55.770
or was it through a discussion with your main advisor?

1084
00:52:55.770 --> 00:52:59.640
Like whose idea was this, how'd you get there?

1085
00:52:59.640 --> 00:53:03.510
<v ->Yeah, so I always knew that I was interested</v>

1086
00:53:03.510 --> 00:53:06.990
in kind of predator prey interaction questions,

1087
00:53:06.990 --> 00:53:10.110
and how that can influence space use.

1088
00:53:10.110 --> 00:53:13.560
This particular project sort of grew out

1089
00:53:13.560 --> 00:53:16.740
of an existing project that was happening in our lab.

1090
00:53:16.740 --> 00:53:21.270
So my colleague and friend, Dr. Luke Griffin,

1091
00:53:21.270 --> 00:53:26.190
was leading a project looking at tarpon migration patterns

1092
00:53:26.190 --> 00:53:27.510
in the Florida Keys.

1093
00:53:27.510 --> 00:53:32.100
And through doing all of the tagging of the tarpon,

1094
00:53:32.100 --> 00:53:34.140
he was hearing a lot from the fishing guides

1095
00:53:34.140 --> 00:53:37.230
that he was working with about this shark problem

1096
00:53:37.230 --> 00:53:38.850
that they were worried about.

1097
00:53:38.850 --> 00:53:42.150
And so I was getting my master's

1098
00:53:42.150 --> 00:53:45.210
in the Danylchuk lab at UMass at the time.

1099
00:53:45.210 --> 00:53:47.430
I knew I wanted to stay for my PhD

1100
00:53:47.430 --> 00:53:50.610
and kind of all of those things combined together

1101
00:53:50.610 --> 00:53:53.550
to be a perfect project opportunity for me.

1102
00:53:53.550 --> 00:53:56.880
And that's how I got into depredation.

1103
00:53:56.880 --> 00:54:00.990
<v ->Okay, the last question I'll ask is,</v>

1104
00:54:00.990 --> 00:54:03.300
someone's noting that it seems to them

1105
00:54:03.300 --> 00:54:05.190
that these two populations,

1106
00:54:05.190 --> 00:54:09.300
the great hammerhead and the tarpon are intricately related

1107
00:54:09.300 --> 00:54:10.710
and always have been.

1108
00:54:10.710 --> 00:54:13.260
So how do you explain that to fishers

1109
00:54:13.260 --> 00:54:16.263
who are upset at the hammerhead shark recovery?

1110
00:54:18.120 --> 00:54:21.360
<v ->That's a good question, that's a tough question.</v>

1111
00:54:21.360 --> 00:54:23.130
<v ->Sorry to put you on the spot.</v>

1112
00:54:23.130 --> 00:54:26.610
<v ->No, no, no, I mean, it's an important question, right?</v>

1113
00:54:26.610 --> 00:54:28.860
So you're absolutely right.

1114
00:54:28.860 --> 00:54:31.320
They are intricately related

1115
00:54:31.320 --> 00:54:33.300
and it goes back years and years.

1116
00:54:33.300 --> 00:54:38.300
I think that the fishermen

1117
00:54:38.730 --> 00:54:42.540
and the fishing guides are really justifiably upset, right?

1118
00:54:42.540 --> 00:54:44.340
So they're going out to target these fish

1119
00:54:44.340 --> 00:54:45.480
that they plan to release.

1120
00:54:45.480 --> 00:54:49.110
They don't have an intention of them dying

1121
00:54:49.110 --> 00:54:54.110
and so that it's understandably upsetting when they do.

1122
00:54:54.240 --> 00:54:56.740
So we need to think about how

1123
00:54:58.200 --> 00:55:01.770
sharks are really important part of our ecosystem.

1124
00:55:01.770 --> 00:55:04.170
They're top predators, they're important

1125
00:55:04.170 --> 00:55:08.520
for balancing out the lower food webs,

1126
00:55:08.520 --> 00:55:13.020
and they're in some ways learning that this is a way

1127
00:55:13.020 --> 00:55:15.660
that they can get the food that they need to be able

1128
00:55:15.660 --> 00:55:19.230
to survive without spending as much energy,

1129
00:55:19.230 --> 00:55:23.490
as they would have to to run down a free swimming fish.

1130
00:55:23.490 --> 00:55:28.490
And so really it's more about how can we as anglers

1131
00:55:29.070 --> 00:55:32.310
be creative and change our behaviors

1132
00:55:32.310 --> 00:55:34.650
to make this happen less often?

1133
00:55:34.650 --> 00:55:37.170
Because the behavior of the shark

1134
00:55:37.170 --> 00:55:39.600
and the fish is paired together,

1135
00:55:39.600 --> 00:55:42.600
and has been for hundreds of thousands of years,

1136
00:55:42.600 --> 00:55:44.040
and that's not gonna change.

1137
00:55:44.040 --> 00:55:46.470
So how can we change what we're doing

1138
00:55:46.470 --> 00:55:48.390
to make sure this happens less often?

1139
00:55:48.390 --> 00:55:49.980
Because we don't want it to be happening.

1140
00:55:49.980 --> 00:55:53.160
We want those fish to go on and swim and reproduce

1141
00:55:53.160 --> 00:55:55.410
and have a long happy life.

1142
00:55:55.410 --> 00:55:58.260
So it's thinking about how we can kind of change the way

1143
00:55:58.260 --> 00:56:00.903
we insert ourselves into the ecosystem.

1144
00:56:04.230 --> 00:56:06.000
<v ->That is fantastic.</v>

1145
00:56:06.000 --> 00:56:07.710
Thank you so much Grace,

1146
00:56:07.710 --> 00:56:10.650
for answering lots of great questions.

1147
00:56:10.650 --> 00:56:14.343
I'm typing in a quick URL here that I mentioned I would.

1148
00:56:15.240 --> 00:56:18.720
With that, we're gonna go ahead and wrap up.

1149
00:56:18.720 --> 00:56:22.440
There might be a few questions that come out over email.

1150
00:56:22.440 --> 00:56:26.700
In the meantime, I wanted to let you know that an archive

1151
00:56:26.700 --> 00:56:28.860
or a recording of today's presentation

1152
00:56:28.860 --> 00:56:32.850
will be available on our website, long URL.

1153
00:56:32.850 --> 00:56:34.920
Don't worry about it, you're here.

1154
00:56:34.920 --> 00:56:37.310
You'll get an email with a direct link to that.

1155
00:56:37.310 --> 00:56:40.320
If you have any follow-up questions for Grace,

1156
00:56:40.320 --> 00:56:42.570
or about the webinar series,

1157
00:56:42.570 --> 00:56:47.570
SanctuaryEducation@noaa.gov is where you go.

1158
00:56:47.940 --> 00:56:51.480
I wanted to let you all know that today you'll be receiving

1159
00:56:51.480 --> 00:56:54.480
one hour of professional development

1160
00:56:54.480 --> 00:56:57.900
for your participation in today's presentation.

1161
00:56:57.900 --> 00:57:00.060
If you happen to be watching the recording

1162
00:57:00.060 --> 00:57:01.590
and you get to this point,

1163
00:57:01.590 --> 00:57:06.030
you can email Sanctuary.Education@noaa.gov,

1164
00:57:06.030 --> 00:57:07.980
and I will send you a certificate

1165
00:57:07.980 --> 00:57:09.330
for watching the recording.

1166
00:57:11.160 --> 00:57:16.080
And with that, we've been doing these webinars since 2016,

1167
00:57:16.080 --> 00:57:18.990
and we have a very short evaluation.

1168
00:57:18.990 --> 00:57:21.540
It takes about a minute to complete.

1169
00:57:21.540 --> 00:57:24.240
So when you close out of GoToWebinar, it will pop up.

1170
00:57:24.240 --> 00:57:26.010
If you wouldn't mind taking that minute

1171
00:57:26.010 --> 00:57:29.280
to answer a few questions, we take all of your feedback

1172
00:57:29.280 --> 00:57:34.140
in mind as we continue to enhance and improve

1173
00:57:34.140 --> 00:57:38.460
our National Marine Sanctuaries webinar series.

1174
00:57:38.460 --> 00:57:41.430
So thank you everyone for your time today.

1175
00:57:41.430 --> 00:57:43.800
We hope you enjoyed the presentation.

1176
00:57:43.800 --> 00:57:48.270
Special thanks to Dr. Grace Casselberry, for joining us,

1177
00:57:48.270 --> 00:57:49.860
and we look forward to seeing you

1178
00:57:49.860 --> 00:57:53.280
on one of our future webinar presentations.

1179
00:57:53.280 --> 00:57:57.033
So this concludes today's presentation, thank you.