How do you save a shark you know nothing about? | Simon Berrow

48,373 views ・ 2012-02-16

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00:15
Basking sharks are awesome creatures.
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They are just magnificent.
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They grow 10 meters long; some say bigger.
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They might weigh up to two tons.
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Some say up to five tons.
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They're the second-largest fish in the world.
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They're also harmless plankton-feeding animals.
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And they are thought to be able to filter a cubic kilometer of water every hour
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and can feed on 30 kilos of zoo plankton a day to survive.
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They're fantastic creatures.
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We're very lucky in Ireland,
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we have plenty of basking sharks and plenty of opportunities to study them.
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They were very important to coastal communities,
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going back hundreds of years,
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especially around the Claddaghduff, Connemara region
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where subsistence farmers used to sail out on their hookers and open boats,
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sometimes way offshore to a place called the Sunfish Bank,
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about 30 miles west of Achill Island,
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to kill the basking sharks.
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This is a woodcut from about the 1800s.
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They were very important, for the oil out of their liver.
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A third of the basking shark's size is their liver,
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and it's full of oil, gallons of oil.
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That oil was used especially for lighting,
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but also for dressing wounds and other things.
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In fact, the streetlights in 1742,
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of Galway, Dublin and Waterford,
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were lit with sunfish oil.
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"Sunfish" is one of the words for basking sharks.
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So they were incredibly important animals.
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They've been around a long time, very important to coastal communities.
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Probably the best-documented basking shark fishery in the world
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is that from Achill Island.
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This is Keem Bay up in Achill Island.
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Sharks used to come into the bay,
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and the fishermen would tie a net off the headland,
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string it out, an old Manila net,
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and as the shark came round, it would hit the net,
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the net would collapse on it.
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It would often drown and suffocate.
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Or at times, they would row out in their small curraghs
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and kill it with a lance through the back of the neck.
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And then they'd tow the sharks back to Purteen Harbour,
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boil them up, use the oil.
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They also used the flesh as well, for fertilizer
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and also would fin the sharks.
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This is probably the biggest threat to sharks worldwide --
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the finning of sharks.
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We're often frightened of sharks, thanks to "Jaws."
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Maybe five or six people get killed by sharks every year.
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There was someone recently, wasn't there? Just a couple weeks ago.
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We kill about 100 million sharks a year.
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So I don't know what the balance is,
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but I think sharks have more right to be fearful of us than we have of them.
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It was a well-documented fishery.
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As you can see here, it peaked in the '50s,
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where they were killing 1,500 sharks a year.
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And it declined very fast -- a classic boom-and-bust fishery,
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which suggests that a stock has been depleted
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or there's low reproductive rates.
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They killed about 12,000 sharks within this period,
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literally just by stringing a Manila rope
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off the tip of Keem Bay up in Achill Island.
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Sharks were still killed up into the mid-80s,
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especially out of places like Dunmore East in County Waterford.
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About two and a half, 3,000 sharks were killed up till '85,
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mainly by Norwegian vessels.
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You can't really see,
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but these are Norwegian basking shark hunting vessels.
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The black line in the crow's nest signifies this is a shark vessel,
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rather than a whaling vessel.
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The importance of basking sharks to the coast communities
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is recognized through the language.
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I don't pretend to [know many Irish words],
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but in Kerry they were often known as "ainmhide Na seolta,"
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"the monster with the sails."
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Another title would be "liop an dá lapa,"
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"the unwieldy beast with two fins."
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"Liabhán mór," suggesting a big animal.
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Or my favorite, "liabhán chor gréine," "the great fish of the sun."
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That's a lovely, evocative name.
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On Tory Island -- a strange place anyway -- they were known as "muldoons."
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(Laughter)
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No one seems to know why.
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Hope there's no one from Tory here. Lovely place.
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But more commonly all around the island, they were known as the sunfish.
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And this represents their habit of basking on the surface
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when the sun is out.
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There's great concern that basking sharks are depleted
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all throughout the world.
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Some say it's not population decline,
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it might be a change in the distribution of plankton.
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It's been suggested
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that these sharks would make fantastic indicators of climate change,
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as they're basically continuous plankton recorders,
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swimming around with their mouth open.
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They're now listed as vulnerable under the IUCN.
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There's movements in Europe to try and stop catching them.
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There's now a ban on catching and even landing them,
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even landing ones caught accidentally.
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They're not protected in Ireland;
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in fact, they have no legislative status in Ireland whatsoever,
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despite our importance for the species
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and also the historical context within which basking sharks reside.
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We know very little about them.
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And most of what we do know
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is based on their habit of coming to the surface --
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we try and guess what they're doing from their behavior on the surface.
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I only found out last year, at a conference on the Isle of Man,
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just how unusual it is to live somewhere
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where basking sharks regularly, frequently and predictably
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come to the surface to "bask."
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It's a fantastic opportunity for a scientist
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to see and experience basking sharks.
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They are awesome creatures.
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It gives us a fantastic opportunity to study them, to get access to them.
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What we've been doing for a couple years -- last year was a big year --
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is we started tagging sharks,
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so we could try to get some idea of sight fidelity and movement
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and things like that.
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So we concentrated mainly in North Donegal and West Kerry
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as the two areas where I was mainly active.
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And we tagged them very simply, not very high-tech,
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with a big, long pole.
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This is a beachcaster rod with a tag on the end.
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You go up in your boat and tag the shark.
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And we were very effective.
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We tagged 105 sharks last summer.
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We got 50 in three days off Inishowen Peninsula.
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Half the challenge to get access
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is to be in the right place at the right time.
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But it's a very simple, easy technique; I'll show you what it looks like.
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We use a pole camera on the boat to actually film the shark.
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One, it's to try and work out the gender of the shark.
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We also deployed some satellite tags, so we did use high-tech stuff as well.
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These are archival tags.
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What they do is store the data.
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A satellite tag only works when the air is clear of the water
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and can send a signal to the satellite.
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And sharks and fish are underwater most of the time,
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so this tag actually works out the locations of shark,
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depending on the timing and the setting of the sun,
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plus water temperature and depth.
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And you have to kind of reconstruct the path.
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What happens is,
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you set the tag to detach from the shark after a fixed period --
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in this case, eight months --
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and literally to the day, the tag popped off,
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drifted up, said hello to the satellite
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and sent, not all the data, but enough data for us to use.
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This is the only way to really work out their behavior and movements
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when they're underwater.
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And here's a couple of maps that we've done.
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In that one, you can see that we tagged both off Kerry.
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Basically, it spent all its time, the last eight months, in Irish waters.
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On Christmas, it was out on the shelf edge.
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Here's one we haven't ground-truthed yet
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with sea-surface temperature and water depth,
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but again, the second shark spent most of its time
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in and around the Irish Sea.
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Colleagues from the Isle of Man last year actually tagged one shark
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that went from the Isle of Man to Nova Scotia in about 90 days.
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Nine and a half thousand kilometers -- we never thought that happened.
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Another colleague in the States tagged about 20 sharks off Massachusetts.
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His tags didn't really work.
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All he knows is where he tagged them,
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and where they popped off.
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His tags popped off in the Caribbean,
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and even in Brazil.
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We thought basking sharks were temperate animals
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and lived in our latitudes,
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but in actual fact, they're obviously crossing the equator as well.
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So very simple things like that,
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we're trying to learn about basking sharks.
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One thing that I think is a very surprising and strange thing
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is just how low the genetic diversity of sharks is.
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I'm not a geneticist, so I won't pretend to understand the genetics.
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And that's why it's great to have collaboration.
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Whereas I'm a field person,
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I get panic attacks
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if I have to spend too many hours in a lab with a white coat on.
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Take me away.
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So we can work with geneticists who understand that.
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So when they looked at the genetics of basking sharks,
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they found that the diversity was incredibly low.
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If you look at the first line, really,
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you can see that all these different shark species are all quite similar.
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I think this means they're all sharks
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and they've come from a common ancestry.
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But if you look at nucleotide diversity,
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which is more genetics that are passed on through the parents,
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you see that basking sharks, if you look at the first study,
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was order of magnitude less diverse even than other shark species.
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You can see this work was only done in 2006.
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Before 2006, we had no idea of the genetic variability of basking sharks.
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We had no idea: Did they distinguish into different populations?
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Were there subpopulations?
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And that's very important if you want to know
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what the population size is, and the status of the animals.
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So, Les Noble in Aberdeen kind of found this a bit unbelievable, really.
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So he did another study using microsatellites,
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which is much more expensive, much more time-consuming,
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and to his surprise, came up with almost identical results.
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So it does seem to be that basking sharks, for some reason,
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have incredibly low diversity.
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And it's thought maybe it was a genetic bottleneck,
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thought to have been 12,000 years ago,
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and this has caused a very low diversity.
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And yet, if you look at the whale shark,
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which is the other plankton-eating large shark,
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its diversity is much greater.
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So it doesn't really make sense at all.
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They found that there was no genetic differentiation
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between any of the world's oceans of basking sharks:
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even though they're found throughout the world,
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you couldn't tell the difference, genetically,
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from one from the Pacific, Atlantic, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa.
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They all basically seem the same.
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Which, again, is kind of surprising; you wouldn't expect that.
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I don't understand or pretend to understand this;
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I suspect most geneticists don't either,
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but they produce the numbers.
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So you can actually estimate the population size
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based on the diversity of the genetics.
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And Rus Hoelzel came up with an effective population size:
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8,200 animals.
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That's it -- 8,000 animals in the world.
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You're thinking, "That's ridiculous. No way."
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So Les did a finer study,
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and he found out it came out about 9,000.
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Using different microsatellites gave the different results,
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but the mean of all these studies is about 5,000,
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which I personally don't believe.
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But then, I am a skeptic.
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But even if you toss a few numbers around,
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you're probably talking an effective population of about 20,000 animals.
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Do you remember how many they killed off Achill in the 70s and the 50s?
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So what it tells us, actually,
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is that there's actually a risk of extinction of this species
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because its population is so small.
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In fact, of those 20,000,
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8,000 were thought to be females.
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There's only 8,000 basking shark females in the world?
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I don't know. I don't believe it.
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The problem with this is they were constrained with samples.
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They didn't get enough samples
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to really explore the genetics in enough detail.
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So, where do you get samples from for your genetic analysis?
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Well, one obvious source is dead sharks --
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dead sharks, washed up.
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We might get two or three dead sharks washed up in Ireland a year,
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if we're kind of lucky.
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Another source would be fisheries' bycatch.
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We were getting quite a few caught in surface drift nets.
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That's banned now, and that'll be good news for the sharks.
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And some are caught in nets, in trawls.
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This is a shark that was actually landed in Howth just before Christmas --
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illegally, because you're not allowed to do that under EU law --
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and was actually sold for eight euros a kilo as shark steak.
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They even put a recipe up on the wall,
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until they were told it was illegal.
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They actually did get a fine for that.
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So if you look at all those studies I showed you,
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the total number of samples worldwide
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is 86, at present.
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So it's very important work,
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and they can ask some really good questions,
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and tell us about population size and subpopulations and structure,
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but they're constrained by lack of samples.
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When we were out tagging our sharks --
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this is how we tagged them on the front of a RIB, get in there fast --
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occasionally, the sharks do react.
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On one occasion, when we were up in Malin Head in Donegal,
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the shark smacked the side of the boat with his tail,
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more, I think, in startle to the fact that a boat came near it,
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rather than the tag going in.
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And that was fine. We got wet. No problem.
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And then when myself and Emmett got back to Malin Head, to the pier,
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I noticed some black slime on the front of the boat.
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I used to spend a lot of time on commercial fishing boats,
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and I remember fishermen saying
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they can tell when a basking shark has been caught in a net,
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because it leaves a black slime behind.
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So that must have come from the shark.
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Now, we had an interest in getting tissue samples for genetics
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because we knew they were very valuable.
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We would use conventional methods;
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I have a crossbow -- you see it in my hand there,
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which we use to sample whales and dolphins for genetic studies as well.
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So I tried that, I tried many techniques.
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All it was doing was breaking my arrows,
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because the shark's skin is just so strong.
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There was no way we were going to get a sample from that.
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That wasn't going to work.
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So when I saw the black slime on the bow of the boat,
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I thought, "If you take what you're given in this world ..."
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So I scraped it off.
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I had a little tube with alcohol in it to send to the geneticists.
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So I scraped the slime off and sent it to Aberdeen,
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and said, "You might try that."
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And they sat on it for months.
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It was only because we had a conference on the Isle of Man.
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But I kept emailing Les, saying,
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"Have you had a chance to look at my slime?"
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And he was like, "Yeah, yeah. Later."
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He thought he'd better do it because I never met him before;
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he might lose face if he hadn't done the thing I sent him.
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And he was amazed that they actually got DNA from the slime.
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They amplified it and they tested it,
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and they found, yes, this was actually basking shark DNA,
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which was got from the slime.
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So he was very excited.
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It became known as "Simon's shark slime."
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And I thought, "Hey, you know, I can build on this."
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So we thought, OK, we're going to try to get out and get some slime.
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So having spent three-and-a-half thousand on satellite tags ...
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I then thought I'd invest 7.95 -- the price is still on it --
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in my local hardware store in Kilrush
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for a mop handle,
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and even less money on some oven cleaners.
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And I wrapped the oven cleaner around the edge of the mop handle
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and ...
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(Laughter)
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I was desperate to have an opportunity to get some sharks.
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And this was into August now, and normally sharks peak in June, July,
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and you rarely see them, or rarely can be in the right place
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to find sharks into August.
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We were desperate, so we rushed out to the Blaskets
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as soon as we heard there were sharks there,
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and managed to find some sharks.
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So by just rubbing the mop handle down the shark
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as it swam under the boat --
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you see a shark running under the boat here --
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we managed to collect slime.
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And here it is.
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Look at that lovely black shark slime.
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And in about half an hour, we got five samples.
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Five individual sharks were sampled
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using Simon's Shark Slime Sampling System.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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14:41
I've been working on whales and dolphins in Ireland for 20 years now,
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14:44
and they're a bit more dramatic.
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You probably saw the humpback whale footage
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we got a month or two ago off County Wexford.
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14:50
And you always think you might have some legacy
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you can leave the world behind,
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and I was thinking of humpback whales breaching and dolphins.
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14:57
But hey -- sometimes these things are sent to you
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14:59
and you just have to take them when they come.
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So this is possibly going to be my legacy --
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Simon's Shark Slime.
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We got more money this year
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15:07
to carry on collecting more and more samples.
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15:09
One thing that is very useful is that we use a pole camera --
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this is my colleague, Joanne, with a pole camera --
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15:15
where you can look underneath the shark.
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15:17
What you're trying to look at is, the males have claspers,
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15:20
which kind of dangle out behind the back of the shark.
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15:22
So you can quite easily tell the gender of the shark.
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If we can tell the gender of the shark before we sample it,
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we can tell the geneticist this was taken from a male or a female.
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Because in the moment, they have no way, genetically,
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15:34
of telling the difference between a male and a female,
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which I find staggering,
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15:38
because they don't know what primers to look for.
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15:41
Being able to tell the gender of a shark
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is very important for things like policing the trade
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in basking shark and other species through the sightings,
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15:52
because it is illegal to trade in these sharks.
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And they are caught and are on the market.
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15:56
So as a field biologist,
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you just want to get encounters with these animals,
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and learn as much as you can.
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They're often quite brief, they're often very seasonally constrained.
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You just want to learn as much as you can as soon as you can.
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But isn't it fantastic
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that you can then offer these samples and opportunities
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to other disciplines, such as the geneticists,
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who can gain so much more from that.
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So as I said, these things are sent to you in strange ways.
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Grab them while you can.
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I'll take that as my scientific legacy.
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16:25
Hopefully, I might get something a bit more dramatic and romantic
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before I die.
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But for the time being, thank you for that.
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And keep an eye out for sharks.
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If you're more interested, we have a basking shark website now set up.
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So thank you and thank you for listening.
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16:39
(Applause)
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