Curious Conversations, a Research Podcast

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Travis

How much do we know about sharks? I think between us having Shark Week and about 15 different versions of Sharknado movies, I was under the assumption that we knew quite a bit about the species.

But then I started reading about the research of Virginia Tech's Francesco Ferretti, and it made me realize that maybe we don't know quite as much as I thought we did about them. This of course made me curious as to what we don't know, why it's important to our overall environment, and what he and some of his colleagues are doing to help us overcome this challenge. And thankfully Francisco was kind enough to join the podcast to answer all these questions and more.

Francesco is an assistant professor in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation. His research focuses on characterizing the history of human impact in the ocean to help us better understand how this has altered marine ecosystems and how we can develop solutions for a sustainable use of marine resources. So Francesco and I talked about what we don't know about sharks and why it's hard to get that information, as well as why it's important for our ecosystems. He also shared some of the work he and his colleagues are doing using crown sourcing social media and even artificial intelligence to help better collect that data. And on top of all of that he was able to confirm that I actually did learn a very valuable lesson from a Captain Planet episode I saw as a kid. So if you are also a child of the 90s, you're want to stick around for that. I'm Travis Williams and this is Virginia Tech's Curious Conversations.

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Travis

I'm fascinated by all your work with sharks and learning more about sharks, but I think I'm most fascinated by the fact that there's things that we just simply don't know about sharks, maybe even a lot of things. So I thought maybe a good place to start this conversation is what's some of the information about sharks that we just simply don't have? Yeah, there's a lot of information we don't know about sharks. And in fact,

Francesco

We know that sharks are in pretty poor conservation status overall around the globe. Many shark populations have been declining because of mainly of the effect of industrial fishing. And one of the biggest, and now they are one of the most endangered threatened group, vertebrate group in the ocean. One of the biggest obstacles to their conservation is understanding their ecology, understanding. So it's basically the data we have to understand precisely their abundance, their distribution. But even for those of which we have abundance and distribution data, we have a pretty severe knowledge gaps in their ecology and their biology that will hamper our management and conservation for developing good strategies and effective strategies for their recovery, for their conservation, and for their management when they are within and they are in commercial fisheries as target or as they catch.

Travis

Well, I want to know a little bit about what the challenges are in getting some of that information, but I guess. Maybe my mind immediately kind of goes to why is it so important for the overall oceans, for the overall world? Why is it so important that sharks are in danger?

Francesco

That's another thing that they're still like, we know that they are very important because they are many, often they are at the top of the trophic chains, at the top of the food webs. And so they are top predators or sometimes mesopredators, but they are very high in the, usually relatively high in the trophic web. And being high in the trophic web means in the trophic web means that they are connected to many components in the, in the ecosystem. So when they decline or where they change the population abundance, there are a rippling effects through the trophic chain and the trophic, and the trophic web. And these rippling effects can also be detrimental for ocean, for ocean services that we, we like, and then we treasure. Even the most direct, it could be the yields of fisheries in, it has been demonstrated that the declines of predators and sharks may make fish population more hysterical, more, they change in abundance more frequently than they are when there is an healthy ecosystem. This is not good for fisheries. In some other occasions, we have seen that the over-exploitation of sharks may have caused and contributed to the shutdown of or the collapse of entire fisheries. And so, they are directly affecting our commercial activities, but they may also affect the overall status and health of the ecosystem that not only generate yields of fisheries or commercial products for us, but also generate all other, another list of ocean services like recreation, spiritual or social wellbeing and going to the beach in a very nice coastal region is an asset for who's enjoying this and for scuba diving, for recreational fishing, for anything you can do engaging with the ocean. And so all these ocean services may be impacted by the over-exploitation of these important products, important ecosystem components.

Travis

So it sounds like everything is connected. Everything is connected.

Francesco

Yeah. Yeah.

Travis

And I think when I was a kid, I watched this episode of a TV show called Captain Planet. And so I want to ask you a question related to Captain Planet. I hope people know what that is, or maybe I'm just dating myself. But in that specific episode, I very clearly remember this in my like eight, nine-year-old brain. Someone had killed off too many sharks, and so the jellyfish population rose and people couldn't go to the beach. And so it sounds like maybe that was a cartoon, but maybe that's actually kind of what may happen. Is that something that could possibly happen?

Francesco

No, yes, exactly. These are the kind of rippling effects that can happen over the Tropic Cascades as we call it in technical jargon, you over-exploit top predators, the prey of these predators are increasing and then the prey of these mesobredators are declining precipitously. And so they may affect overall, you may have a link between a shark and within jellyfish. And in many, many ocean regions, in some ocean region, it has been linked, it has been demonstrated that the...ecosystem impact and the impact of fisheries on predators and sharks may increase the abundance of these low-level invertebrates like jellyfish or even octopuses or other.

Travis

Well, what are some of the challenges to getting this data? What are the challenges to learning more about sharks?

Francesco

There are two main reasons why we are in this status of data deficiency or lack of information about...One is that sharks are now the whales of the 80s. They are now a conservation priorities. They are now important for management and conservation, but they were not in this condition even just at the turn of the millennium. Just in the early 2000s, like numerous high-level profile records, reports started to document and demonstrate the strong effect of fishing on many shark population. And so over time, we have been accumulating evidence of their poor conservation status. so management and conservation started paying attention and also scientific research also started to focus more on this information. These also affected their role among the public. Like right now, I can see kids playing with shark figurines or toys or reading books about sharks. I'm going to my...elementary school where my kids are staying and I see kids coming to me and say, Hey, this shark guy. And then they're coming with their, they're coming with their books and they're showing me their favorite species. This was not the case when I was a kid. When I was a kid, there were dinosaurs, there were whales, they were, now I'm seeing that the sharks are substituting or complementing these charismatic, uh, these charismatic megafauna. Hopefully they are not going to be following the same fate of the dinosaurs. And that's what we were working on on this issue. It sounds like maybe we're just a little bit late to digging into trying to get some of this data. That's what I wanted to say. I wanted to say that these factors contributed to us having a long leg in the amount of information that we have for addressing efficiently the conservation problems and management problems that there are revolving around sharks.

Travis

Well, I love that you're known as the shark guy at the local elementary school. That's pretty, that's pretty great title to have.

Well, I know one of the shark populations that you specifically have been looking at are these great white sharks in the Mediterranean sea. And so I'd love to know a little bit more that, but I guess right off the get go, is there a difference between a great white shark in the Mediterranean and just other great white sharks? Is that like a different breed of sharks or is it just location?

Francesco

Yeah, there are around the world, there are six, seven population, this genetically distinct population of white sharks. have, we know a lot about the California population or this. Northeast Pacific population, the Northwest Atlantic population, the one that roams along our East coast, South Africa and Australia, New Zealand. We know very little about that. And there is another genetically distinct population in the Mediterranean Sea. This population has included among the biggest in white shark individual ever recorded, like white sharks almost of seven meters. These population of white sharks has been historically depleted because of fishing, again, coastal fishing initially and industrial fisheries later on. And now they are at a very low level of abundance that makes them very difficult to study. And so to answer your question, yes, there are white sharks, there have been white sharks in the Mediterranean Sea for, in recent...history and for as long as other population has been inhabiting other parts of the world ocean. And at the moment, however, we are losing this population and we are missing the chance to study them to promote and to develop efficient conservation strategies to avoid that they are going completely extinct. And we are losing this genetic pool from this important region.

Travis

Are there any specific challenges that that particular short faces that maybe other sharks don't that we know of?

Francesco

Yes. The Mediterranean Sea is one of the most exploited ocean region in the planet. So there is a lot of fishing, there is intense fishing, and there is a lot of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. Although the situation has improved over time and especially in the northern part of the Mediterranean Sea with the European Commission coordinating the management of many European nations, still in the southern, Southern Mediterranean, North Africa and the Eastern part of the Mediterranean, there is a lot of irregularly and undetected fishing. And there is intense fishing that still can currently impacting white sharks and other large predatory sharks in the Mediterranean Sea. And unfortunately, these depleted populations have their strongholds in this part of the Mediterranean Sea that is very overlapping with their sources of threat.

Travis

When you talk about fishing, Are we talking about people fishing for the sharks? Are we talking about the fishing for other things and that impacting the sharks or maybe a little bit of both?

Francesco

Most of the time it's people fishing commercially for everything, for other species. They can go fishing for tuna, they can go fishing for hake, they can go fishing for many, many other target species with different fishing gears. But they occasionally and accidentally, they can catch large or small wild sharks. And in some occasion, they can even target or they even want to catch these large individuals because especially in these low income countries with the important socioeconomic problems, thinking back 500, 600 kilos of meat, it's amount of salary, it's amount of revenue that...they will not have accomplished with their regular target species.

Travis

Well, I know one of the things that you've been doing, not just in the Mediterranean, but in some broader spaces too, is using the role, using citizen scientists to help collect some of this data. And I find this so interesting. So maybe kind of to get folks started that might not be familiar with that term, what is a citizen scientist and how are you tapping into those?

Francesco

A citizen scientist is a person that delegates his or her time to helping scientists accomplishing their or reaching their objectives. We are in the age of, in the digital communication revolution. We are all connected at the moment. And so there is a lot of opportunity for engaging people in any corner of the, of the planet to help us with our research question. And so over time in the last decades, there has been an increase in this, in the participation of regular people into aspects of science, data collection, sharing information, sharing observations while they were enjoying nature in terrestrial and in ocean ecosystems. And so we are also in our research projects, we also wanted to leverage these aspects, but we generated and we are now working in a project we call Shark Pulse. And Shark Pulse in my vision is going to just bring citizen science, science to the next level, at least for sharks, but it can be replicated in other, for other species. And so we are understanding the opportunities of the big data available, digital communication and the AI revolution. are trying to convert all images and videos and any media about sharks into ecologically relevant observation data. So into shark sightings that we know that we can use to understand the distribution, their abundance and many other aspects of their biology. And so in this we have been working on creating a cyber infrastructure. So an infrastructure of a server's databases and other data and data science workflow to use whatever we can find and mine in social media and in the internet and transform this information into structured data that we can use and analyze.

The citizen scientists or people can contribute to this in multiple ways. The easiest way would be sharing their information in their social media or sharing their observation when they're going scuba diving, when they are going sailing or boating and of any shark that they see, they can share it on their social media. This will allow us to mine this information. So people can share their information, share their pictures, but they can also help us to validate these images because we are sourcing hundreds of thousands, millions of information, but it is not humanly possible to validate all this information manually. So we are developing AI approaches and also complementing these AI approaches with the help of the public to validate and to cross validate all this information that we are sourcing from, from these sources. sounds amazing. is that something that's up and running now or something you're working on getting up and It is up and running. So it is up and running. We are still in a germinal phase of the cyber infrastructure that we want to develop. For this, we are looking, we are working hard to try and define development funds for ensuring the long-term persistence of these cyber infrastructure, but it is already working. It is already working in a way that we want to enhance and we want to consolidate and make more robust and make more efficient. And people can already go to sharkpaws.org and then they can look at our apps that we have in the portal. Apps that will allow them to explore shark sightings and catches around the world for their favorite species, for any species. There will be also apps that will allow them to work with us and to help us in validating information that we are sourcing from Flickr or from Instagram and so on.

Travis

Well, that sounds like a really great way for somebody that just likes to be out around the ocean and take photos to really contribute to a cool project. sounds like a win-win.

Francesco

Yeah, exactly. I mean, it is mind-blowing estimates about digital images that are around now in the planet. Every year, almost about two trillion digital images are shared and taken from smartphones. so the potential is enormous. And now the biggest challenges is being able to ingest and digest this information and structure this information in formats that are useful for analysis.

Travis

Wow. That's like a whole different challenge from the challenge we started with, which was we don't really have the data. Like now we may be to get some of it, but we're getting so much of it. We got to figure out how to put it together in a way that makes sense. in that sense

Francesco

That's what I'm saying. Like we are trying, we are hoping to transition the citizen, a citizen science project in something a step ahead so that we are not only involving people to be citizen scientists, but we want to also to involve scientists to be good citizens so that they can collaborate with their skills and with their capability. We are involving here in our campus at Virginia DEC, we are involving students from the computer science department students from other classes, ichthyology, fisheries management, principal conservation, or students coming from the communication departments or communication programs for developing their communication material and media material. So there are multiple aspects that can be used and multiple profiles that can be used for the common goal of increasing the information and the knowledge about sharks and then using this knowledge to produce tangible conservation and management applications.

Travis

That sounds awesome. Well, I'm curious since you are the shark guy, what is maybe something that is a common misconception about sharks?

Francesco

The common misconception is that sharks are man-eaters. is still fear. Things are changing, but there is still fear on sharks. What we need to work on is changing this perspective. And this is being successful with the communication that lots of researchers and people working on shark conservation are doing changing this perception from fear to respect. And so we need to understand that when we are engaging in ocean activities, we need to pay attention to all the possible risks that we are taking. It is very rare that sharks are engaging with bites or with even deadly interactions with humans, but they do occur. And they are very low. The probability of these events is very low. have even studied and quantified this probability, which is lower than you win in the lottery. Yet when you are engaging in the ocean, you need to use your common sense and you need to use, your common sense has to be helped by the knowledge about the sharks, where they occur, when they engage in foraging or in other activities and understanding more about the sharks can help us to take more informed decision on where and when to go engaging with the

Travis

Yeah. So it sounds like it's not all Jaws out there.

Francesco

It's not all Jaws. If you compare actually to me, working with sharks has also changed my perspective on the perceived risk of working with or engaging in ocean activities. If you imagine, can you imagine yourself dressing like a gazelle or a zebra and going running or playing soccer in the savanna, dressing like seals and we are playing in their territory? Yet, I would have expected more accidents than what we are seeing at the moment because in some situations the rest of the ecosystem can be pretty unforgiving. It is very interesting to see how..And also when approaching these large animal, even white sharks, before coming here, I was in California and engaging with my lab in a shark tag in California. Seeing these animals, like five meters animal going around your boat, I was surprised by the sense of calm and the sense of peace that, and also not excitement, but how that I had like in looking and seeing these beautiful animal, they were not aggressive at all. In fact, it was pretty hard to attract them toward the boat. So seeing them as killing machines, like in the movie Jaws, it's pretty funny because they are not at all in that way.

Travis

Given how much, like you mentioned, given how much we actually invade their space, maybe they're a little bit more tolerant than we're giving them credit for.

Francesco

Yeah, exactly. Or they are not interested at all in us. then many times when accidents occur, it's because they also make a mistake or have an accident. Or they are probing the opportunity to have a prey. And when they're probing, unfortunately, they are big animals. then so they can be quite devastating in some ways.

Travis

Well, I've got to ask you as we wind this down, what is your favorite shark?

Francesco

That's a difficult question.

Travis

I have many sharks that I may not be listening, so don't feel like you're going to hurt any of their feelings.

Francesco

So I really like and I'm really fascinated. I'm fascinated by many species of sharks, but I'm very much fascinated by a cousin of a shark, is the sawfish. The sawfish is technically a ray. It's a shark-like ray with a long, long blade. And it's a very peculiar animal. It's a very cool animal. can reach like sizes also almost seven meters with the three meters of blade. Those are big monsters that once occurred much more abundantly in the ocean. Now they are kind of, they are like the pandas of the ocean because they are very vulnerable to many, many threats from fishing, coastal development, and they are critically endangered all over in the planet, all of their species. But in some cases, they are also showing recovery, like the population of small-toothed soft-fish in Florida. And also, is a good viable population as well in Australia for large-toothed soft-fish. But in the Mediterranean Sea, have instead demonstrated with looking at historical data that the two soft-fish present in the Mediterranean Sea were basically gone in the 60s or in the 70s.

And it's pretty difficult to understand and to reconstruct these baselines just because we have missed the opportunity of understanding or collecting their data when they were abundant.

Travis

maybe, maybe that's a future project and maybe that's a future podcast and just on all saw fishes.

Francesco

The saw fish, can talk, I can talk hours about the saw fish and the stories about this project, which is pretty cool because it goes back in history. There is history, there's mythology and so yeah, that's another. I will hold you to that.

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Travis

And thanks to Francesco for helping us better understand sharks. If you or someone you know would make for a great Curious Conversation, email me at traviskw@vt.edu. I’m Travis Williams and this has been Virginia Tech’s Curious Conversations.

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