Dive beneath the surface with us as we bring to light the enchanting and perilous world of sharks, alongside the indomitable shark conservationist Dr. Rima Jabado. She's not just making waves; she's here to guide us through the blue abyss, unraveling myths and broadcasting a clarion call for the protection of these majestic creatures. Our conversation navigates from the spine-tingling theme of "JAWS" to the stark realities threatening shark populations, striking a balance between jest and the sobering urgency for marine conservation.
Throughout the episode, we traverse the diverse tapestry of marine life, spotlighting not only the apex predators of the sea but also the lesser-known species that are equally crucial to the oceanic ecosystem. Rima shares her journey from childhood wonder to conservation crusader, shedding light on the remarkable projects aimed at safeguarding our finned friends. We navigate the complexities of marine protected areas, the nuances of shark behavior, and the global challenges that loom large over the survival of these enigmatic species. In the midst of it all, we conjure the peculiar allure of the ocean's more obscure residents, from the curious goblin shark to the vibrant freshwater stingrays.
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Rima mentions the Elasmo Project, a non-profit initiative she founded in 2010 to encourage work in data-poor areas focused on investigating shark and ray fisheries and trade. She also recently launched the Important Shark and Ray Areas project to map critical habitats for these species around the world and support area-based management. Additionally, Rima is Deputy Chair of the IUCN SSC and the Chair of the Shark Specialist Group.
Dive beneath the surface with us as we bring to light the enchanting and perilous world of sharks, alongside the indomitable shark conservationist Dr. Rima Jabado. She's not just making waves; she's here to guide us through the blue abyss, unraveling myths and broadcasting a clarion call for the protection of these majestic creatures. Our conversation navigates from the spine-tingling theme of "JAWS" to the stark realities threatening shark populations, striking a balance between jest and the sobering urgency for marine conservation.
Throughout the episode, we traverse the diverse tapestry of marine life, spotlighting not only the apex predators of the sea but also the lesser-known species that are equally crucial to the oceanic ecosystem. Rima shares her journey from childhood wonder to conservation crusader, shedding light on the remarkable projects aimed at safeguarding our finned friends. We navigate the complexities of marine protected areas, the nuances of shark behavior, and the global challenges that loom large over the survival of these enigmatic species. In the midst of it all, we conjure the peculiar allure of the ocean's more obscure residents, from the curious goblin shark to the vibrant freshwater stingrays.
---
Rima mentions the Elasmo Project, a non-profit initiative she founded in 2010 to encourage work in data-poor areas focused on investigating shark and ray fisheries and trade. She also recently launched the Important Shark and Ray Areas project to map critical habitats for these species around the world and support area-based management. Additionally, Rima is Deputy Chair of the IUCN SSC and the Chair of the Shark Specialist Group.
I don't know, I can't sing, but the movie Jaws made a lot of people afraid to go into the water. But perhaps the scariest thing in the ocean is the rapid decline in shark populations. We're joined by Rima Jabado, who leads the Elasmo Project and chairs the Shark Specialist Group within the IUCN Species Survival Commission. I'm Monni Böhm.
Justin Birkhoff:And I'm Justin Birkhoff. Welcome to the Protect Species podcast, where we celebrate biodiversity and converse with conservationists. Monni, thank you for that wonderful introduction. You sound like a musical instrument. I sound like a shark. You sound like a shark. Do sharks make noises?
Dr. Monni Böhm:I don't know, but if they did this is what it would sound like theme song and it was.
Justin Birkhoff:Yeah, it was just bad, just bad hey, that's fine.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Nobody can.
Justin Birkhoff:Nobody can claim that we kind of I don't know, violated any copyright violation wasn't close enough to be like no, no, not worth it precisely.
Justin Birkhoff:I think we're safe we could go the whole vanilla ice route and you could, like hum it out. Did you see that when he got busted? Oh so good. It's a wonderful clip, if those of you who are not familiar with it worth a youtube. When he got sued by the rolling stones for the introduction and he hums by the rolling stones for the introduction and he hums out the two different tones and they're basically the same, it's wonderful do they just go like no case closed, because there's clearly no resemblance well for you.
Justin Birkhoff:No, there wouldn't be any resemblance at all, was it for for him?
Dr. Monni Böhm:no, it was he I really need to google that. I'm not.
Justin Birkhoff:I'm not you're old enough to know this.
Dr. Monni Böhm:You really are, yeah but am I cool enough to know?
Justin Birkhoff:this.
Dr. Monni Böhm:That's a big question, different question entirely, and I think I've just outed myself as not being cool enough to know this, her little shark I was gonna say speaking about cool, yeah, captain cool over there captain cool over there and her shark army um, I mean literally sharks that don't even look like sharks.
Justin Birkhoff:And there was a shark that had legs four legs very confusing that is very confusing, um and somewhat, you know an odd place somewhat upsetting because now they can be on land if they have legs, we we're not safe anymore. This is a weird evolutionary question. Maybe we should ask Kelly, our producer, what her thoughts are on the evolutionary process of lobe finned fish into sharks with legs or just generally.
Dr. Monni Böhm:she should introduce her shark collection.
Justin Birkhoff:She should Just very quickly, kelly. I wonder if they're named Kelly. Do they have names?
Dr. Rima Jabado:She's just shrugging.
Justin Birkhoff:She's ignoring us. She doesn't want to speak she's technically distancing herself from her own shark collection. She claims she doesn't even have a voice for radio, which is weird, because this isn't radio, this is a podcast that's very true.
Dr. Monni Böhm:It's very different, very different?
Justin Birkhoff:yeah, because we download these on our quote-unquote phones, these computer devices that happen to make phone calls we do.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Phones can do more than just phone calls do you remember rotary? Phones are the ones with the with the rotation, hence the name.
Justin Birkhoff:I don't know.
Dr. Monni Böhm:I was living in germany. We didn't call them that, I don't even. We just called the telephone. There you go. That's what I was called at that stage.
Justin Birkhoff:Yeah, guess what there were other options.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Absolutely Again for the younger listeners you might want to. I don't know. Google the history of telephones or something.
Justin Birkhoff:You know, in case you have some free time or insomnia, you know whichever.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Or just a healthy interest.
Justin Birkhoff:Curiosity.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Curiosity. Kill the cat out of here, absolutely. Speaking of which, maybe we should become curious about our guest and move away from the shark army that's surrounding us. Ignore kelly entirely, because she's just not talking to us, and just start talking to our guests I think we should.
Justin Birkhoff:We're going to talk a little bit about sharks today. I feel like that we we established that already some sharks, it would have been right a curveball if we said now we talk about roses, everybody roses, roses cacti, cacti, cacti are fun um succulents.
Justin Birkhoff:You're not helping at all. So we'll talk a little bit about sharks today with Rima uh, about shark conservation. Some of the big threats this is gonna be kind of a reoccurring theme of this, of this entire podcast is what's what is threatening species and what sort of conservation actions are out there, what we're learning and what we're trying to do to help save some of these species. Morning Rima, how are you doing today?
Dr. Rima Jabado:I'm good, thank you. Thanks for having me. Are you awake? Because, I'm not, I'm trying to be. I have coffee in front of me Speaking is a bit of an issue.
Justin Birkhoff:It's better living through chemistry, right, yeah? So, Rima, we really like to start these with kind of a little bit of an explanation of who you are, why you're here, what you're interested in doing, and then we'll go from there.
Dr. Rima Jabado:Why am I in Indianapolis? Yes, because you guys are hosting us here for the last two weeks for these fantastic meetings that have brought together members of the Species Survival Commission, but also the Centers for Species Survival that are across the world. So thanks for having us.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Oh yeah, now we remember we invited them. Remember you invited all of us. I know we brought it on ourselves.
Dr. Rima Jabado:No, it's been great to be here and just talk conservation for the last few weeks.
Dr. Monni Böhm:So you love sharks. Our producer, Kelly, put I don't know a lot of shark paraphernalia on your recording desk here, which is mildly annoying, but sure she also loves sharks. Why do you love sharks, though, Rima? We know Kelly's story, and you know.
Dr. Rima Jabado:Um, cause I think they're amazing, and when we talk about sharks, we're talking about sharks and rays and chimeras, but, uh, all of them, I think, are absolutely fascinating. There are so many species, so over a 1, 200 species around the world, and every single one has something different and special and mysterious, and we haven't even scratched the surface of what we know about them. So I, yeah, I'm fascinated by them and I just want to continue learning. How did that begin, though?
Dr. Monni Böhm:Was it Jaws? It was. Oh excellent, You're living the cliche. I love it.
Dr. Rima Jabado:It is a living cliche and it is a living cliche for so many marine scientists. You'd be surprised that. And seeing the head of a shark at a supermarket, just literally the head sitting on ice interesting and when I was growing up and I was like oh, what is this? And then eventually I realized what they were that was so cool.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Yeah, that's fantastic.
Justin Birkhoff:Yeah, we do like hearing where how people get into this field and where that that spark begins. So from seeing jaws and seeing the shark head where. How did you progress into this field and where that spark begins. So from seeing JAWS and seeing the shark head. How did you progress into this as a career path or an educational path?
Dr. Rima Jabado:Well, for a very long time I thought there was nothing else but JAWS and that weird thing at the fish market. There was no internet when I was growing up and, weirdly enough, I don't think we were ever taught anything about the environmental field at school and it was all about philosophy and history and geography and it was traveling a lot to Canada over the summers and to see family there and just seeing posters of great whites. Actually that even began as that and buying everything I could when I was on holiday over the summer so that I could read about them, and I never thought I would pursue a career in marine sciences or conservation. It was more of a pastime that I loved and, yeah, I was just really interested in them.
Dr. Monni Böhm:When you were a kid, what did you want to be?
Dr. Rima Jabado:Everything, everything, but not a shark scientist, but it just didn't seem like it was something that you could be Exactly.
Dr. Rima Jabado:So that didn't happen until later in life, let's say in like my mid twenties, where I was like, okay, well, I want to learn more about this, what do I do? And I decided to go do my master's in Australia at James Cook University, and that's where I really got exposed to so many amazing marine scientists that were working not working on sharks, but on turtles, on corals, on dugongs, and I got really interested in conservation and what that meant and what was you know, wildlife around the world and marine wildlife in particular. And since then I've been hooked. So what is the Elasmo project.
Dr. Rima Jabado:It is a project that I, so Elasmo Banks are Sharks and Rays and it's a project that I started in the UAE so in the United Arab Emirates, when I was working on my PhD, and it was really trying to understand fisheries and trade. And to do that I needed to start by engaging with fishermen, so understanding what they were doing, why they were doing it, what was their motivation, what was their perception. Doing a lot of landing site surveys, so you can do a lot of independent surveys and go out and try and catch sharks and see what you have, but you'll never get the kind of information that you can get from a landing site, so where multiple fishermen kind of information that you can get from a landing site, so where multiple fishermen, thousands of fishermen, sometimes come back at the same time and lay out their catch. And that's when you really understand diversity.
Dr. Rima Jabado:Species collect information on biology and trade. So utilization what is happening with the products that are being brought in? Is it just the meat that's being traded and consumed? Is it the fins and so on? And I quickly realized that there was such basic information that was missing from most developing countries in the world. We didn't even have a checklist of species that was occurring and I started traveling to various countries to try and do similar projects and really just start with working with fishers and all the way to understanding trade utilization and trying to translate it into policy and so many students were also interested in this in West Africa and in Asia to try and understand exactly this what species occur here and what kind of information do we need to inform policy?
Dr. Monni Böhm:And I wonder if most of the students were inspired by Jaws.
Justin Birkhoff:Possibly.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Or Jaws 4. Where are we in the sequence I think there was a 6, no.
Dr. Rima Jabado:Was there a 6? I don't know.
Dr. Monni Böhm:I don't know, I'm not a shark person. I mean I love them. But I clearly have not watched Jaws.
Justin Birkhoff:I mean clearly, it's like there's that like basic lack of understanding of just not knowing what's where is it makes those conservation efforts so much more difficult, right, like you can't protect what you don't know Exactly. And that, I think, ties in really nicely with the important shark and rays area project. So you, that's something recently launched, correct?
Dr. Rima Jabado:That's something we launched about a year ago.
Justin Birkhoff:It's been a rollercoaster year.
Dr. Rima Jabado:It feels recent and very far away at the same time and so far away at the same time. So this was a project that really wanted to go into this one arena. Let's say that we haven't focused on when we're working with shark conservation. We work a lot about on fisheries and fisheries management. We've been increasingly working on trade management, and both are extremely important and are things we need to continue working on.
Dr. Rima Jabado:But we've also have this area, which is marine protected areas and area based management, that we hadn't exposed ourselves to in a way, because we had marine protected areas and area-based management that we hadn't exposed ourselves to in a way, because we had marine protected areas that had been developed, some of them for sharks very few, but most of them just did not consider sharks when they were being developed and did not consider sharks in their management plans.
Dr. Rima Jabado:And what we've been trying to do is go to different regions of the world, bring the experts at that regional level and really identify what are some of the most critical habitats for sharks and rays and by critical I mean areas where they're potentially reproducing, where they're feeding, where they're aggregating, where there's a huge diversity of species and map that and as simple as that, just having an e-atlas online with the best scientific information available, so that when decision makers are trying to decide, what do we do in terms of spatial planning? What do we do in terms of our current marine protected areas? Do we expand them? Is this the right design? We can make sure that they're considering sharks.
Justin Birkhoff:So with kind of the lack of really good understanding about some of them. I grew up in California, on the West Coast. We have a large great white population and we don't know, Justin surfs, where they're pupping, where the maturation process for these juveniles is occurring, and that makes protecting these critical life stages really important. Is that something that we see the world over? Or is that, I mean, I would assume, as much, considering that the great white is probably one of the best known shark species?
Justin Birkhoff:And we still seem to have this complete lack of understanding of their entire life cycle.
Dr. Rima Jabado:And it's the case for most species. There is a huge percentage over 20% of species that we call data deficient. When you use, you know IUCN red list categories and criteria, and it's because we don't know anything about them. Some of them we only know from a few specimens. Some of them, we know that there are current fisheries but no one's done research about them.
Dr. Rima Jabado:And so moving beyond that easy data where you go to a fish market and you collect the basic information where a lot of it we don't know, but to actually know what habitats they utilize and what habitats they utilize regularly and predictably, is even harder. And so what is coming out from this project are the gaps in our knowledge, and actually we hope that the results of this project will be twofold, in the sense that we are able to map the areas that we know now are the most important. But we're also very conscious that there is this gap, and we hope that we can make sure that the next generation of scientists are also focusing on some of these areas that we've identified as gaps. Scientists are also focusing on some of these areas that we've identified as gaps, and so the spatial information is critical if we want to start using spatial management to be able to contribute to conservation.
Dr. Monni Böhm:So we had the California surfer question. Now we're going to the German question, which relates to admin and I'm allowed to make this joke, being German, so that's OK. So, in addition to chairing the shark specialist group, you've got another important job within the Species Survival Commission of the IUCN. Right, you're the deputy chair of the SSC. What does that mean? Does that mean admin? No, thank God.
Dr. Rima Jabado:I do enough. Admin. I do enough admin. It's really a supporting role for Jon Paul Rodriguez, for the office chair and for the SSC. So we have a huge group. I mentioned this the other day. It's a beast. There's almost 200 specialist groups, task forces, some of the most prominent scientists in the world that are engaged in this network and that are contributing to conservation, and so it's really about making sure that we can all work together to try and make sure that we have the right tools available and that we can facilitate their support. They're all volunteers, and so that's the driving force of the SSC. It's all of this volunteer network of phenomenal people that are working on conservation in marine, aquatic, let's say environments and terrestrial environments.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Cool, Awesome. That sounds like a really big role, in addition to all this shark stuff that you already do. It's like I feel in conservation we sometimes have the tendency to overload ourselves.
Justin Birkhoff:Yes, we often wonder when conservationists make time to sleep.
Dr. Monni Böhm:I mean, I feel this week we didn't. No, no.
Dr. Rima Jabado:Mostly this week Living the dream really. But it's been fun it has been wonderful.
Dr. Monni Böhm:It has been super fun.
Dr. Rima Jabado:You get to engage with some really fantastic people coming together and just realizing that everyone is human. I think that's one of the big things that most people are scared of. When they think of the SSC, when they think a lot of the the chairs of the specialist group, they think, oh, these, well, these are people that are unattainable, these are people that we can't communicate with. But everyone is human and the only reason they're in this position is because of their passion, because they want to make a difference, because they care. And, yeah, we don't get much sleep, but I would much rather not get sleep knowing that I'm making a difference than not get sleep for something else, I guess.
Dr. Monni Böhm:True, but at some point we all need to get sleep, so we can make a difference, you know there has to be some sleep and that's what I'm going to do over the next week.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Anyway, moving on swiftly before I get too distracted week. Anyway, moving on swiftly before I get too distracted. Sharks, of course, as pointed out by our producer Kelly, are a bit of a sexy species. Hence she's got all of that shark paraphernalia laid out here. They do get a lot of attention, probably when it comes to marine conservation at least. There's a lot of sharks, there's movies about them. Jaws Is that the wrong kind of attention? I don't know. But how would you describe sharks and that whole shark family? And what's your favorite shark? What's the weirdest shark? What's the coolest?
Dr. Rima Jabado:shark fact. So I want to step back a little because I don't think sharks get enough attention.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Okay, the wonderful thing is anybody that you ask about. Does your animal species or your plant or fungus species gets enough attention? Everybody would say no.
Dr. Rima Jabado:I would agree with plant and fungi as well. They don't get enough attention. We've struggled for decades to make people care about sharks. It's very different when you have a cute species that you can fundraise for, that you can work on conservation and you can get popular support to try and do conservation Sharks there's been that stigma from Jaws, from many, many movies that have vilified particularly the great white shark, but with that any other shark species.
Dr. Rima Jabado:We've had incidents of human wildlife conflict that have you know where sharks have been at the forefront and that's been a struggle and every time there's any incident there it's all over the media.
Dr. Rima Jabado:It doesn't happen for hippos, it doesn't happen for snakes, for bees, for so many other animals where you have a huge number of deaths every year from that interaction, and so, on top of that, they're commercially important species. So trying to convince someone to lose money so that they can conserve a species is not easy. And this is why I'm saying they don't get enough attention, because we have been screaming out loud for years about the need to protect these species and it's only in the last decade that we're starting to get some species and it's only in the last decade that we're starting to get some attention, and the attention that we've gotten is for 5% of the species. I call them the usual suspects. I'm so happy that we've gotten attention for them, but we have so many unknown species that no one cares about, no one knows about and that also need the attention. So we're losing species at a rate before we even make sure that people know what they are, where they occur, what needs to be done.
Dr. Monni Böhm:So what are some of these unusual suspects?
Dr. Rima Jabado:let's bring them into the spotlight um, my favorite are, uh, what we call the rhino rays. So the guitar fishes, the wedge fishes, um sawfishes are some of them.
Justin Birkhoff:Sawfishes are phenomenal. Sawfishes are phenomenal.
Dr. Rima Jabado:You know, all of them critically endangered and disappeared from more than half of the countries in the world where they used to occur, so they were designed to die in a bad way, to say, because they're you know they have a rostrum, that is, that has teeth on each side, so you can imagine that swimming.
Dr. Rima Jabado:If there's any fishing net, you get caught in it, and so add to that the fact that fishermen are usually scared of pulling one up, they'll cut the rostrum, the saw, immediately, and so they've died around the world very quickly. But the wedge fishes and the guitar fishes have very large fins and for a very long time, the driver behind catching them and retaining them was the shark fin trade. And they are now. So almost 70% of those species are considered critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable, and we don't talk enough about them and no one knows about them. And I find it very strange because they're not scary, they don't have crazy teeth, they're beautiful. They're so colorful and they're yeah, I think they would be the perfect target of this campaign on marine megafauna, on, like what are beautiful species out there. They need your attention.
Dr. Monni Böhm:So if sawfishes have, saws essentially that rostrum that looks like a saw. Do guitarfishes have saws essentially that rostrum that looks like a saw. Do guitarfishes carry guitars?
Dr. Rima Jabado:They look like a guitar. Apparently Somebody wants that.
Justin Birkhoff:Is that?
Dr. Monni Böhm:somehow the body shape that looks like a guitar for our listeners who might want to imagine what a guitarfish looks like. I mean Google it, but yeah sure.
Dr. Rima Jabado:I guess not. Maybe some species might have a bit of a rounded snout. That could look like a guitar, but most species have a pointed snout. Okay, cool.
Justin Birkhoff:Maybe an electric guitar. Maybe an electric guitar.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Electric guitar. I don't know they come in weird shapes. This podcast is a production of the Global Center for Species Survival at the Indianapolis Zoo. We record all episodes in the Bedel Financial Media Studio, made possible by a generous gift from Eric and Elaine Bedel.
Justin Birkhoff:So you kind of named some of your favorites that are not necessarily in the main public's eye. What is your, your kind of your, your weirdest shark like? If you were to pick one and be like this one is so unique you wouldn't necessarily believe it's a shark have you seen a goblin shark?
Dr. Rima Jabado:I have small. I've seen pictures of a goblin shark um goblin sharks, um torpedo rays are just so weird. Um why?
Dr. Monni Böhm:do these species have like the best names?
Justin Birkhoff:goblin shark right.
Dr. Monni Böhm:It's like oh, this is exciting torpedo awesome um chimeras.
Dr. Rima Jabado:Have you seen what chimeras look?
Dr. Monni Böhm:yeah, I was gonna go and ask you about chimeras, because you mentioned them earlier on. I feel that probably lots of our listeners don't quite know what they look like. Can you describe one? Oh gosh.
Dr. Rima Jabado:They have to Google it. I think they're so weird looking.
Dr. Monni Böhm:I don't even know how to begin to describe it. The description doesn't do it justice.
Dr. Rima Jabado:No, they're just something that you would imagine, which makes sense in very deep water, some of these weird creatures that appear in the dark, but I think they're particularly beautiful. We don't have that many pictures of live ones, because they most most species occur in deeper waters, but I think they're fascinating and they look so strange.
Dr. Monni Böhm:I just I just Googled one. It looks like a deep sea ghost with big fins, so funnily enough we call them ghost sharks.
Justin Birkhoff:Oh well, there you go. This is where all the naming conventions come from.
Dr. Monni Böhm:I see, yeah, it's like you just sit around spitballing. It's like what do you call this one Goblin? What's this one? I don't know. Hammerhead Shout out to.
Justin Birkhoff:Kelly. It's wonderful and exciting and so much of it is like deeply basic, like what's the hole in the back of your head called. It's like it's the Latin term for big hole.
Dr. Monni Böhm:You're is like somebody really reached for that one, so I thought you were actually talking about an actual hole in the head.
Justin Birkhoff:Imagine the hole your spine goes in. It's like this literally means big hole.
Dr. Monni Böhm:You're like oh man, somebody just I was only half listening and I was like what? Justin has a hole in his head didn't realize.
Justin Birkhoff:So, Rima, like most people who study marine science, you're a diver. What's your like? Most poignant fun, or like awe-inspiring memory of diving around sharks?
Dr. Rima Jabado:so many. Anytime we see one, we just get overexcited.
Justin Birkhoff:I've uh so that goes back to the conservationists are people too. We just get excited about things that we love, right?
Dr. Rima Jabado:yes, and and just seeing them alive maybe, maybe as well. I spent so much time exposed to dead animals and, you know, there comes a point where it's overwhelming. It's like, is there anything else left in the water? And so when you do go on a dive and this is not common it's quite rare to find dive sites where you can regularly see shark species, and often it's the same species that you see, Um and so to be able to see them live and just in their element is fantastic. And you know, you have the hammerheads, the scalloped hammerheads that aggregate, you have the reef sharks and so on, and I think they're still fascinating. But the most exciting thing is when you're actually just swimming around and you see this animal that you've never seen, that you never thought was going to see, and it's like, oh my God, I've added the species to my list of live animals and it's so exciting what's your shark species?
Dr. Monni Böhm:list like for your dives?
Justin Birkhoff:Is it like a bird list? Are you checking them off?
Dr. Monni Böhm:It's like precisely because a bird, we would probably ask this, so we should probably ask this to everybody else as well.
Dr. Rima Jabado:I should probably start a list then. Yeah, I've probably seen over 400 dead species.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Okay, which is you can have a dead and alive list. I should do that, or alive, I think, my live one would be very small compared to my dead one.
Dr. Rima Jabado:I'm probably.
Justin Birkhoff:I'm thinking about 40 50 species maximum, if I'm not over exaggerating, I mean that's, that's pretty incredible it is, but I make an effort to to find them.
Dr. Rima Jabado:When, when I hear about areas where there is an opportunity to go dive with them it's definitely an area that I will target it becomes a bucket list. It's like oh my god, I guarantee to go see this here, so definitely make an effort to go there. Do you have one? That's?
Dr. Monni Böhm:on the top of your bucket list. If you had to pick one species, that's like you really must.
Justin Birkhoff:Who's your favorite child. Yeah, I know, pick your favorite child, Rima.
Dr. Monni Böhm:I want to see all of them spoken like a true shark mother, and this is why you co-chair the specialist group.
Justin Birkhoff:There you go so, if you, we'll dive a little bit more into the, the conservation yeah, oh, it's good good pun, unintended um about the threats and some of the actions that are being taken, um in a second, but as far as just kind of general biology, what is one thing that you think our listeners should know about sharks? And you can pick a shark or you can do it, as you know, as the breadth of the family, if you'd like.
Dr. Rima Jabado:That they're fish. They're a different kind of fish.
Justin Birkhoff:Okay.
Dr. Rima Jabado:Most fish that we know of usually can reproduce very quickly, have released millions of eggs into the water column, which allows them to be able to reproduce very quickly and replenish populations once populations have been depleted. With sharks it's completely the opposite, and they give live birth. It means that most animals and again this varies a lot if you consider the diversity, so over 1,200 species, but generally speaking, most will not attain maturity until they're, in you know, six, seven, eight, a hundred years old, and so that's a bit of a jump Six, seven, eight, a hundred, you know no BS.
Dr. Rima Jabado:It is a very wide range and it's actually 150 for the.
Justin Birkhoff:Greenland shark For those of us that are counting.
Dr. Rima Jabado:For the Greenland shark, and so you can imagine that they would have an animal, would need to roam the ocean for 150 years before it can actually contribute to that population. And so if you just think of the lifespan of a human and how long 150 years is, and how long 150 years is, it's insane when you think about the amount of threats that are actually overlapping in some of these habitats. So it's literally swimming and trying to stay away from fishing nets and so, again, many different species, but mostly few pups, considering these animals and some females can be pregnant for two, three years and give birth to one pup at a time, and so it's really really difficult to be able to replenish populations or recover populations once there's been a decline.
Justin Birkhoff:It's interesting because we talked to Vivek about elephants and that kind of pregnancy cycles. I mean it's a, I would say, common fact. It's not necessarily a super well-known fact about elephants but, like that, pregnancy length is very similar and we see similar concerns with elephants.
Dr. Rima Jabado:Is that that recovery time is because there's so much time, energy and effort put into every single offspring and it's not something that we think about for sharks because, as you said is as much as they're a different kind of fish, we have this assumption that they breed like most fish do and I think these are the parallels that we often try and do in in in our presentations, when, when we're talking to different audiences is to just make them realize it is a fish, but it's different, and we we try and compare it with some of the more charismatic animals that are conserved or have conservation action within different countries. Whether you know it's working in India and talking to them about the tigers or the elephant, whether it's you know talking about eagles or anything else in other countries, to try and say it's not your usual fish. You really need to consider that it has a completely different life history.
Justin Birkhoff:So that kind of that runs nicely into. You know threats. You know there's a lot of things that we hear about in media about threats to, particularly to marine environments, plastics being a really big one. You mentioned finning was a concern with sharks. Out of all of the threats that sharks are facing today, what is the biggest threat? Fishing?
Dr. Rima Jabado:Anything that's related to fishing, and fishing can come in so many forms. Right, it can be recreational fishing, where you have a rod and line and you're fishing off a pier. It can be what we call small-scale, artisanal fisheries. So these are smaller vessels, you know, 10, 15 meters in length, that go out in the coastal areas, and then you've got these massive industrial vessels and they can use a variety of gear, and I won't go into the detail of the gear because there are so many different types.
Dr. Rima Jabado:But it really doesn't matter what type of gear you're using, what type of fishery it's going to impact sharks and rays. They occur in every single body of water around the world, including rivers in many cases, and so where you're fishing, you're likely impacting these sharks, and we do talk about plastic pollution and it's practically irrelevant for these animals. There are a few species that are filter feeders and so when they are swimming and I'm talking about the whale shark, the basking shark, the manta rays and devil rays that swim with their mouth open trying to, you know, filter the water so that they are able to gather their food, and they have been ingesting plastic, and obviously there are some studies looking a little bit more at what that impact might be, but in the grand scheme of things that's less than 10 species of sharks that are potentially impacted and still to those species the threat of fisheries is so much higher than what might be happening from plastics yeah, I mean that.
Justin Birkhoff:That makes sense. That is so, it's it. So is there you mentioned you know fisheries and you know these places where you're finding all these catches coming in at the same time. So there's targeted shark fisheries and then there's also the bycatch side of it. Do you think one is more impactful than the other, or is it kind of a Venn diagram where there's a nice big overlap between those two?
Dr. Rima Jabado:I think bycatch is so the accidental catch of sharks and rays and chimeras and other types of fisheries. And just to clarify, if a vessel is going out to catch tuna, that's their target species. They put a net in the water and instead of catching 100% tuna, they're catching 5% tuna, 95% shark. But there is a value in retaining those sharks. There is one the issue that most sharks are going to come on board dead already. So do we throw them back in the water or do we retain them? There's there's a value in retaining them for the various products that you can actually process. Um, and so that's the that's probably right now.
Dr. Rima Jabado:The biggest concern is is the fact that there are so many products that can be used from these animals and fins are huge, obviously so some of the most lucrative food products around Southeast Asia.
Dr. Rima Jabado:There is the meat that is growing exponentially. There is a huge decline in teleos fish that we would consume usually, huge decline in teleos fish that we would consume usually, and there's been in many countries a shift from eating regular fish to sharks because it's the cheaper source of protein. And then there are other products that people use. They use the jaws of sharks for souvenirs. They use the skin of rays for very expensive leather products. There is the cartilage that's used in different medicinal ways. The liver of sharks is processed and that's processed into oil or vitamin A, and even during COVID they were testing a lot of vaccines with squalene, which is the oil that you extract from from the liver of the sharks. So there there can potentially be full utilization and in a way it's it's a positive thing that they're able to utilize a whole animal rather than removing the fins and throwing it back into the water. But the concern is that with increasing utilization it means that there's always a reason to retain them.
Dr. Monni Böhm:And I would assume bycatch in itself also is obviously much more difficult to regulate. I mean you can regulate a fishery and go like well, that's the rule, stick with it. But it can't really count for anything else that turns up in your net, and what do you do with it then?
Dr. Rima Jabado:And that's a struggle because what works for some species doesn't work for other species. So there are always going to be trade-offs and there are difficulties because, like I said earlier, it is a commercial burden to try and mitigate bycatch, to reduce it, and so this is why we really wanted to bring in the important shark and ray areas, for example, because then you try and provide that information. Where is there an area that's particularly important for species that could be set aside as a protected area? Is there enough information to be able to say that there are three, four months of the year that an area is being used as a reproductive area where fishing can be limited in that particular area? Yeah, creating seasonality to it where fishing?
Justin Birkhoff:can be limited in that particular area. Yeah, creating seasonality to it, exactly.
Dr. Rima Jabado:Or gear selectivity as well, where you say, okay, well, if you change the size of your net, you're going to be allowing your juveniles to escape, and that's okay, because we need those juveniles to be able to support the population recovery.
Dr. Monni Böhm:So it's all about finding ways to get them to well reproduce, again being fished out before they can do that Reproduce and replenish?
Dr. Rima Jabado:Yeah, because we need them to make it to adulthood.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Yeah, you obviously had more coffee than I. You come up with a better word this morning. That's really good. I know this is like a big question, but if you had to tell the world out there what you think the future holds for sharks and rays, what would you say?
Justin Birkhoff:It's big uh, feel free to be optimistic, I'm always optimistic.
Dr. Rima Jabado:You've been an optimistic person since we met. So um, I think there are so many opportunities to do so many things. Uh, they've survived so far yeah if we do the right thing now, we can make sure they continue surviving so and they're obviously an- ancient lineage of fish right they're an ancient lineage of fish.
Dr. Rima Jabado:They're fascinating. Learn more about them, like do you talk about them to your colleagues, your friends, don't be afraid, go discover them. Support conservation actions, um, be part of it. I think, uh, one of the biggest threat to conservation not to just sharks and rays is that we don't have enough people in this field and, and I think we, we need the, the, the new generation, to recognize that it is a job potential. Like I said, I didn't know that when I was growing up, and I think it's so important that people know that it is possible to have a job. You don't need to be a doctor, you can be a shark doctor, you can be. You know, you can be yourself as a shark doctor.
Justin Birkhoff:Oh, you should.
Dr. Rima Jabado:It's a dangerous thing to do I had someone that listed me as Dr Rima on a flight one day and as soon as I got on the flight they were like oh, doctor, you can help someone if we have an emergency. I'm like no, no no, I'm not that kind of doctor. I'm not that kind of doctor.
Justin Birkhoff:So I made sure they don't do that for obvious reasons it they don't do that ever.
Dr. Monni Böhm:For obvious reasons it's like I will be no help. I'll be crying in the corner.
Justin Birkhoff:That's what's going to happen. I will make this worse.
Dr. Monni Böhm:I'm sure of it. They're already in distress. They don't need to see my face right now.
Dr. Rima Jabado:So, yes, always be cautious of how you use that. Okay, that's fair.
Dr. Monni Böhm:I had another question. Oh, there was one thing and we should have talked about this earlier on, when we were talking about how cool sharks are and the cool and the weird ones. Let's talk freshwater, because you very briefly mentioned it, but let's just, I feel like this is, this is me, it's in your wheelhouse. It's in my wheelhouse. Are there sharks in freshwater? Yes, tell me more about them.
Dr. Rima Jabado:Okay, so very cool group of species are the freshwater stingrays that occur only in South America, okay, and most people will have seen them in aquaria, and most people will have seen them in aquaria.
Dr. Rima Jabado:There are these amazingly beautiful round little rays, very colorful.
Dr. Rima Jabado:That again are only found in the Amazon and the different waterways there, and so we still have very little information from many of them, even though they're very popular in the aquarium trade.
Dr. Rima Jabado:But we know that there is obviously the development of many of these areas the damming of the rivers, that pollution and so on that are having an impact on them and then in other parts of the world, the only two areas that we know that may have populations of, let's say, freshwater animals are in Western Africa, where there are again another three or four species of rays that regularly occur up the rivers and literally up the basins of the Congo and Cameroon and Nigeria. We don't know enough about them, but from what we know they sound like they've disappeared in most of the areas, again because of damming, but also because there were a lot of interactions with the, with the communities there, with with the stingers, and so it was easier for them to kill the animals to protect themselves when they're waiting in the waters. And then the other area of the world where we have some freshwater animals, and this is sharks and rays, so the river sharks we call them, and a few other huge ray species are in Asia, so in Malaysia and Borneo and indonesia and so on.
Justin Birkhoff:Cool freshwater sharks everybody yeah not very much known about them, but very, very cool sounds like we talked about earlier is the next generation of sharks, scientists is like that. That feels like an avenue to open up really quite wide. Is you know? There's, as you mentioned, there's these data deficient species, and the more we know, the better we can do, and that sounds like a good, good place for somebody to to make make a make a career for themselves you love sharks, you love fresh water.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Apply to Rima.
Dr. Rima Jabado:Apply to money, Work with money All that. There are so many opportunities and, like I said, over 1,200 species, most of them we know nothing about and we need to be able to learn more about them, and to do that, we just need more people working on them, and I've always said this like it feels sometimes that conservation is competitive and it shouldn't be, because there's space for everyone and there is space at every level. Whether you're looking at biology, whether you're looking at communication that anything that you're working on there's just so much to do and so much more will get done if you collaborate.
Justin Birkhoff:And I think that last point is that there's so many things to do is that you don't have to be the hard scientist. You don't have to be a biologist or a taxonomist. That you know. We mentioned Kelly a couple of times this episode. You know her specialist communications. She plays an important role in what we do here at the global center and it's communications and annoying us with sharks yes, annoying us with sharks, but it is.
Justin Birkhoff:You know, there is a piece of conservation for every skill set, for every educational background that you can play a role you know doing. Accounting is not something a lot of scientists are really good at, but we need accountants right, absolutely.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Everything you can think of Fundraisers, oh fundraisers, schmoozers, fundraisers, oh, fundraisers.
Dr. Rima Jabado:Schmoozers, and I think the two of you are really best placed to also think about what are some of the skills that are needed. You've been working a lot with specialist groups and helping them and providing that support network and, like you said, they need help with communications, they need help with R, with mapping. With so many different tools that are now available and it's so important, it's impossible for someone to have all these skills. And it's so important to have that, though, reflected within the field of conservation.
Dr. Monni Böhm:And I think for too long have people just assumed that just because you're passionate will give you all of the skills sheerly like, just run by passion? I don't know. I always felt that was an overwhelming feeling, that just because you're a scientist and you've got a little bit of passion for conservation, you suddenly assume that you can do everything, which is bizarre Because, again going back to that topic that we talked about at the start we all need to sleep.
Dr. Rima Jabado:You just sound tired Monni. I am, Rima.
Justin Birkhoff:It's been a great, great couple weeks, but it's it's been physically exhausting.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Yes, we leave tomorrow and I kind of miss you already.
Justin Birkhoff:But at the same time also the other thing I miss is my bed. Yes, um, but I think that kind of brings us to the end of time, end of our time.
Dr. Monni Böhm:To the end of time. What, oh my God, that's taken a dark turn Is there, I don't even. We're clearly all over time.
Justin Birkhoff:Thank you so much for your time. This was wonderful we had a great time, some laughter and talked about some serious subjects as well.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Thank you very much, thank you both.