← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
A Black Shark Scientist on How to Make Marine Biology More Diverse
00:21:45
Marine biologist and shark specialist Jasmin Graham chronicles her story as a Black woman attempting to follow her dream of studying sharks in her new memoir.
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This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Kusha Navadar in for Alison Stewart. When you think of sharks, you probably think attacks, big mouths full of teeth and the menacing Jaws theme song. But that's not the case for Jasmine Graham. As a shark scientist, Jasmine spends a lot of her time on boats observing sharks, interacting with them, and taking notes about their behavior for research. Just a few short years ago, though, Jasmine was ready to leave the field. After experiencing racism in a predominantly white field for years with no support, she wanted out. But that all changed in 2020. She found herself on Twitter under the hashtag blackinnature and discovered another black woman shark scientist. And then another and another. And after some public interaction, they took their conversation privately. And suddenly, a world that once felt so isolating was a little less lonely. These chance encounters led to a complete pivot in her career. It's at that pivot where we meet her at the beginning of her memoir. It's called Sharks Don't Swim Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist. And it's out now. And joining me is Jasmine Graham. Hi, Jasmine. Welcome to all of it.
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Hi. Thanks for having me.
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Absolutely. Great book. I'm really excited. At some point, we're going to take calls as well, hopefully. But I'd love to talk about your background a little bit because, Jasmine, you're a marine biologist, but more specifically a shark, Shark scientist. How do you describe what you do when someone asks you at a dinner party or you're generally out in the world?
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Well, what I like to tell people is that I get paid to study fish. So I ask questions about what do sharks do, where do they go, and how are humans and the things that we do in our planet and in our oceans impacting shark survival? So that's. That's what I do.
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What might a typical day of research look like for you?
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Well, there's no such thing as a typical day. So some days I'm out on the water on boats and I'm out and I'm doing shark surveys where we're catching fish, we're catching sharks, we are tagging them, taking samples, releasing them. We do a number of things. We track their movements to see where they're spending on a time. We take little samples for genetics to look at how their populations are doing, how they're related to each other. We take blood samples similar to when you go to the doctor and you get tests done. We can do lots of tests with their blood and looking at, are there any pollutants, any signs of stress, those sorts of things. Other days I'm sitting at a computer writing scientific publications, applying for grants, answering emails. The less glamorous side of things. Some days I'm out talking to students or working with early career scientists and advising and mentoring them. So it's a wide variety of things that I do on any given day.
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C
That's wonderful. And on some rare days, we're lucky enough that you're talking to us on radio as well, which is a cool part of your job as well. Now, there's a stat in this book that really struck me. It's towards the beginning, I believe it's. According to a 2013 paper in Marine Policy, on average, 100 million sharks die each year from encounters with humans. Can you tell me why that number is so high?
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Well, it's a lot of reasons. There's overfishing. So overfishing is where we take out more sharks from the population than they can replace themselves and that we take sharks out of the population for a lot of reasons. Shark meat trade, different aspects of sharks that we use in medicines and cosmetics, and especially squalene, which is a substance in their livers. It's used in a lot of cosmetics, lotions, things like that. We also have issues of bycatch, which is where sharks aren't specifically being targeted. So they're not actually fishing for sharks, but they catch sharks accidentally and they die nonetheless. And then we have issues of, of poaching and illegal trade as well. And those things aren't as well documented, which is why that's an estimate of 100 million. So we have some countries that we have reports, but we know that there are other sort of poaching things that happen at the high seas where maybe they're not in any federal waters of any particular nation. And those don't get tracked as well. And so we're, we're really just guessing at the number of sharks that are killed each year. But we know that we are taking sharks out faster than they can replace themselves, which is why we're seeing these huge decreases in shark populations. Some shark populations have decreased as much as 90% since the industrial Revolution. So it's a big problem listeners, if.
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You'Re just Joining us, I'm here with Jasmine Graham, the author of Sharks Don't Sink Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist. The memoir goes through through Jasmine's career as a marine biologist, a shark scientist, and also with her experience in the field of academia and marine biology. And you know, Jasmine, a thing that is really going to stand out to readers in this book is your advocacy for sharks. Do you feel like it's your job to be a voice for them? And how do you wish the perception of sharks would change?
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Definitely feel like it's the responsibility of folks with a platform to use that platform to add, advocate for this group of animals that is so misunderstood and often portrayed very negatively. So I like to say that sharks haven't had the best PR people. You know, orcas, dolphins, sea turtles. We have all sorts of movies about, like, little kids befriending these animals and little happy go lucky stories and Sharks got Jaws and all of these scary thrillers where sharks are, like, hunting people down. And the perception is that there are these mindless killing machines, and a lot of people have a fear of them. And when people fear something, it's really hard for them to see the value in that group of animals, and it's even harder for them to want to protect that group of animals. And so what I try to do with my work is help people move from fear to fascination and understand that sharks are not out to get you. This is sort of the Hollywood stereotype of sharks that has driven a lot of these fears and try to have more positive emotional responses associated with sharks so that people can connect with them in the same way that they connect with dolphins and orcas and sea turtles and all of those other things that people perceive as being cuddly and adorable and all of these other things.
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Was that a shift that happened in your own life as well, where you had a perception of sharks that changed over time?
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I would say that my perception of sharks was very neutral. So I grew up in a fishing family, and so we relied on the ocean for food. So my connection with the ocean was. Was very much a. This is a place that we rely on for our family's survival. And I had a lot of respect for the ocean and everything that lived in the ocean. But because we don't eat sharks, sharks were kind of not super relevant to us. We would sometimes have people on the piers that we fished on catch sharks. And it was kind of more of a nuisance thing of like, oh, somebody's got a shark. Everybody reel in really fast. Because whenever somebody had A shark. The shark would always run and tangle up everybody's fishing lines and it was always a big, huge mess. But it wasn't that we had a fear of sharks or a hatred towards sharks. It was more like, well, this is a little annoying. Okay, we're going to release this shark and move on to get the fish that we actually want so that we can eat them. And then I learned that sharks actually have really important impacts in the marine environment. And I started to think, wow, I wish I would have been paying more attention to these sharks as I was interacting with them because they're actually really cool and like super dope animals.
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What was the first thing that you learned about sharks that you thought was super dope?
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How old they are? So I, I started working in a evolution, a genetics lab where we were trying to track the evolution of sharks through time as part of the Tree of Life project. And it was just incredible to me that this group of animals had been on this planet over 400 million years. Some estimates as much as 450 million years. And that just was like mind boggling to me. And the fact that a shark today more or less looks like a shark looked back then and it's very different than say like dinosaurs. Dinosaurs came and they left and the closest living relative now is like a chicken. It's a very different, very different looking animal. But like sharks, sharks now and prehistoric sharks are very similar. And yet sharks were here before dinosaurs. They were here before tre trees, they were here before Saturn got its rings. And that's just mind blowing to me.
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Absolutely. Listeners, if you're a scientist that can relate to some of Jasmine's experience or maybe you're dying to ask a question about sharks, you can talk to us, you can call us. We're here. Give us a call, send us a text. We're at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. We're here with shark scientist Jasmine Graham. Also just wrote a book, a memoir. It's Sharks Don't Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist. I realize I mispronounced the title of the book at the beginning of the segment, so I'm sorry about that. Jasmine. It's Sharks Don't Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist. Give us a call if you have a question. 212-433-9692. And I want to dive into the memoir part of this book a little bit. Jasmine, when we first meet you in the book, you tell the reader that you're about to leave the field, actually. Can you say a little bit about what brought you to that point?
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So the field of science is. It's a really interesting structure because it's very hierarchical in nature. So there's a lot of potential for power imbalances. There's a lot of potential for a few people not in good faith to really control the narrative and control who gets heard and who gets seen. And that was something that I found very difficult as someone coming from a background that was very different from my colleagues. So being in a very homogenous, mostly white, male dominated space and trying to make my way as a black woman in science was really challenging. And there was a lot of toxicity that I found not only in the competitive nature of the way science is being carried out with this sort of publish or perish mentality, but also with the way that I was interacted with at conferences and, and the way that I would try to tell people, hey, this is something I'm experiencing, and have people sort of, you know, gaslight me and say, oh, no, I don't think the person meant it that way, or I think you're overreacting and all those sorts of things is very frustrating. And also to have. Yeah, go ahead.
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No, no, please keep going. I didn't mean to interrupt you.
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And also to have experiences where I felt like I wasn't being protected, where I was being taken advantage of, or that people were trying to use their power to sort of bully me felt very unfair. And so I was kind of like, you know, I don't need this. This doesn't feel like a great environment. And I wanted to get out of there. And so that's sort of where the book starts off, is stepping off this path of sort of the traditional way of science and doing science in a different way.
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And what was it like for you? You talk about finding other folks through the hashtag blackinnature on Twitter. And we're talking about, during that time, the COVID the height of Black Lives Matter protests. You find other black shark scientists online for the first time. What was that feeling like?
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It was like finding a unicorn. Because I had, I had gone through years of being the only person. I mean, we actually did a study on the American Elasmo Rank Society, which is one of the largest societies for people who study sharks and rays. And in 2019, there was one black member of the American Alasbranc Society and it was me. So, like literally the only person. And to have discovered, hey, not only is there another person like you in this field, but there are, there's more than one was pretty wild because I had been feeling so isolated up until that point. And it's sort of like when you're in a desert and you don't know how thirsty you are until you have that first sip of water. And being able to be in community with them and talk to them and be like, hey, this is what's happening with me and this is how I'm feeling. And them say, yeah, me too. And your feelings are valid and you're not imagining it and you're not making it up and you're not overreacting. I didn't realize how much I needed to hear that because people hadn't told me that people hadn't told me, your feelings are valid, you're not overreacting enough. As I was going through this. And so this was at a moment where I had wanted to leave science entirely. And so then from meeting them, I said, hey, if there's other people feeling this way, then we should just try to do this differently. This isn't just a me problem. This is a problem with science as a whole. And maybe there's a different way to do science. And so that's why we founded Minorities in Shark Sciences together and struck out to try to find a new way to do science through this nonprofit.
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Tell us more about that nonprofit and tell us more about that new way of doing science.
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So Minorities in Shark Sciences, or Ms. As we call it, is dedicated to broadening participation in marine science, particularly the study of sharks and rays. And we do that in a number of ways. First, exposing kids who traditionally haven't had access to hands on science or access to the ocean to learn about science and the ocean and sharks in a very hands on and engaging way. We also support early career scientists through paid experiences, which in marine science is unfortunately a rarity. There's a big expectation traditionally that you work for free or you even pay people for the quote unquote privilege to work with them and gain experience, which creates huge financial barriers for people who don't have a safety net that can't just work for free. They got to figure out how to eat and how to pay rent. And so we provide experiences and training for people that's also flexible and understanding that people have lives and they have responsibilities, whether it be caregiving, whether it be jobs. And not everyone has the ability to just drop off the face of the earth for several months at a time to get these experiences. And so we're all about flexibility and Accessibility and making sure that everyone, no matter who they are, their background, their financial situation, their status as a caregiver, is able to access these resources. And we also encourage mentorship and collaboration so that we can all lift as we climb and leverage each other's expertise and sort of counteract this competitive nature of science where we should all be on the same team and we should all be working together.
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That idea of lift as you climb I think is important. It makes me think of the title, actually. Sharks Don't Sink. Tell me about the title, why you connected with it.
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Yeah, so. So an interesting fact about sharks is, unlike bony fish, they don't have swim bladders, which are these little pockets of air that help fish float. And so that's why whenever fish die, they float belly up. Sharks don't have that. So sharks, their buoyancy is largely tied to the little oil in their livers that helps them be a little bit more buoyant. But largely their swimming is what keeps them in the water column. And so once they stop swimming, they sink. And so that's why you don't see sharks just like sitting still. They're always moving because they have to keep moving or they'll sink. So I, in this transition, that was something that was really important to me as a lesson to learn from sharks, is you will not sink if you keep moving. It doesn't matter what direction you go in, just keep moving, don't stop, don't give up. And so that's sort of where the title came from, is like a shark, I just have to keep moving. And sure, I'm stepping off the path, but I'm still moving in a direction. And that's what kept me from sinking in that really low point in my life, you know.
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I want to get a chance for you to read an excerpt from the book. We've got about two minutes left in the segment, hoping we can get through the whole thing. If you could just from page 16, starting with so I don't going until the top of 17, the end of the paragraph. If you could share that, because I think it's a great tie up of all the things you've been talking about.
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Sure. So I don't just love sharks. I feel for them. I admire their persistence, their resilience, their ability to survive, to keep moving forward. But I'm also laser focused on their vulnerabilities, their need for our protection. I see myself and my people and sharks, all too often black people are perceived and treated much like sharks, feared, misunderstood and brutalized. Often without recourse, assumed to be threatening, when so often we're the ones under threat, portrayed unfairly in the media so that others are predisposed to have a negative interaction with us. It's very hard to imagine a white person being shot at point blank range after being pulled over by a cop for a simple traffic stop or being throttled to death for selling cigarettes on a street corner. If it did happen, there would be a national outcry and rules would be put in place to make sure it never happened again. But not for black people. And in the same way, try to imagine folks going around dragging dolphins behind boats or beating turtles to death. You can't. People would be up in arms if that happened. Campaigns to save the dolphins and turtles would be everywhere. But not for sharks.
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Jasmine, you know, we've got about 30 seconds left. What's one more lesson that you've taken from sharks that you approach with your own, work with your own life?
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I think one of the biggest lessons from sharks and just nature in general is that diversity is what helps us survive. If you have a wide diversity of a group of animals, you're much more likely to be able to adapt to change and to have some sort of resource in order to survive any sort of situation or incident. And I think that's the biggest lesson that we can learn as human beings.
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We'll have to pause it there. It's one of the lessons you can learn from human beings. Sharks don't sink. Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist is available now. I've been speaking with author Jasmine Graham. Thanks so much for hanging out with us today. Really appreciate it.
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I'm gonna put you on, nephew.
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All right, unc. Welcome to McDonald's. Can I take your order, miss?
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I've been hitting up McDonald's for years. Now. It's back. We need snack wraps. What's a snack wrap? It's the return of something great. Snack wrap is back.
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This is Ira Flato, host of Science Friday. For over 30 years, the science Friday team has been reporting high quality science and technology news, making science fun for curious people by covering everything from the outer reaches of space to the rapidly changing world of AI to the tiniest microbes in our bodies. Audiences trust our show because they know we're driven by a mission to inform and serve listeners first and foremost with important news they won't get anywhere else. And our sponsors benefit from that halo effect. For more information on becoming a sponsor, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.