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

lastly sharks are awesome creatures they

are just magnificent

they grow 10 meters long some say bigger

they might weigh up to two tons some say

up to five tonnes but the second largest

fish in the world

they’re also harmless plankton feeding

animals and they are thought to be able

to filter a cubic kilometer of water

every hour and can feed on 30 kilos of

zooplankton a day to survive

they’re fantastic creatures and we’re

very lucky in Ireland that we have

plenty of basking sharks and plenty of

opportunities to see them they were also

very important to coastal communities

going back hundreds of years especially

the rounded-off connemara region where

subsistence farmers used to sail out on

their hookers and from boats sometimes

way off shore sometimes for a place

called a sunfish bank which is about 30

miles west of Akal Island to kill the

basking sharks is now would cut from

about the 17 1800 s it’s know very

important and they are important for the

oil out of their liver a third of the

size of a ski shock is the liver and

it’s full of oil get gallons oil from

the liver and that oil was used

specially for lighting but also for

dressing wounds and other things in fact

the street lights in 1742 of Galway

Dublin and Waterford were late with son

Fisher than Sun Fisher’s one of the

words for basking sharks so they’re

incredibly important animals they’ve

been around a long time you’re very

important it to Coast communities

probably the best documented basking

shark fishery in the world is that from

a coal island

this is Keene Bay up in Akal Island and

sharks used to come into the bay and the

fishermen would tie a net off the

headland string it out an all manila net

and as a shark came round they would hit

the net the net would collapse on it it

often drown and suffocate or at times

they would row out in their small kirk’s

and kill it with a lance through the

back of the neck and then they towed the

tow the Sharks back to 13 Harbor boil

them up use the oil they also use the

use the flesh as well for fertilizer and

also wood thinly fin the Sharks this is

probably the biggest threat to sharks

worldwide it is the finning of sharks

we’re often off Ryan - sharks thank -

jaws maybe five or six people get killed

by sharks every year there was a some

one reason there wasn’t there just a

couple

to go we kill about 100 million sharks a

year so you know and all the balances

but I think sharks have got more right

to be fearful than us and we have of

then it was well documented fishery and

you can see here

it peaked in the fifties where they were

killing 1,500 sharks a year and in

decline very fast a classic boom-bust

fishery which suggests that it’s a stock

has been depleted or there’s low

reproductive rates and they killed about

12,000 sharks in this period literally

just by stringing a manila rope off the

tip of Keene Bay of the Netherland

sharks were still killed up into the

mid-80s

especially after places like Don

Morrison County Waterford and about two

and a half three thousand sharks were

killed up to 85 made by Norwegian

vessels the black you can’t see this but

he’s in Norwegian basking shark hunting

vessels and the black line and the

crow’s nest signifies this is a shark

vessel rather than a whaling vessel the

importance of basking sharks to to the

coastal communities is recognized

through the language and I don’t pretend

to have any Irish but there’s a in Kerry

they were often owners and the Mede and

the shelter of the monster with the

sails and another title would be lapa

and our lappa the unwieldy beasts with

two fins leave leave on more suggesting

a big animal

but my favorite leave on core grania the

great fish of the surfing that’s a

lovely evocative name I’m Tory Island

which is a strange place anyway they

were known as Muldoon’s and no one no

one seems to know why there’s no one

from Tory here lovely place but more

commonly all around the island they were

known as the sunfish and this represents

their habit of basking on the surface

when the Sun is out there’s great

concern that basking sharks are depleted

all throughout throughout the world some

people say it’s not a population decline

it might be change in the distribution

of plankton and it’s been suggested the

basking sharks would make fantastic

indicators of climate change because

they’re basically continuous plankton

recorders swimming around with the mouth

opens they’re now listed as vulnerable

under the IUCN there’s all sorts of

moves in Europe to try and stop catching

them there’s now a ban on catching them

and even landing them and

landing ones at the court accidentally

they’re not protected in Ireland in fact

they have no elective status in Ireland

whatsoever despite our importance for

the species and also the historical

context with which basking sharks reside

we know very little about them and most

of what we do know is based on their

habit of coming to the surface and we

try and guess what they’re doing from

the behavior on the surface I only found

that we last year at a conference in the

Isle of Man

just how unusual it is to live somewhere

where baski shots regularly frequently

and predictably come to the surface -

bass and it’s a fantastic opportunity

for a scientist see them an experienced

basking sharks I have they are awesome

creatures but it gives us a fantastic

opportunity to actually study them to

get access to them so what we’ve been

doing a couple years but last year was a

big year is we started tagging sharks so

we could try and get some idea of site

fidelity and movements and things like

that so we concentrated mainly in north

Donegal and West carriers the two areas

where where I was mainly active and we

tagged them very simply not very

high-tech with a big long pole this is a

beach tester rod for the tag on the end

go up in your boat and tag the shark and

we were very effective we tagged 105

sharks last summer we got 50 in three

days of inertia and peninsula half the

challenge is to get axis is to be in the

right place at the right time but it’s a

very simple and easy technique I’ll show

you what they look like we use a pole

camera on the boat to actually film

shark one is to try and work out a

gender of the shark we also deployed a

couple of satellite tags so we did use

high-tech stuff as well

these are archival tags so what they do

is they store the data a satellite tag

only works when the area is clear of the

water and can send a signal to the

satellite of course sharks fish are

under water most of times this tag

actually works out the location of the

shark depending on the the time in the

setting the Sun plus water temperature

and depth and you have to kind of

reconstruct the path what happens is

that you set the tag to detach from the

shark after a fixed period in this case

was eight months and mid shoot of the

day the tag popped off drifted up set

allows the satellite and scent not all

the data but enough date for us to use

and this is the only way of really

working out

behavior in the movements when they’re

underwater and he’s a couple of maps

that we’ve done that one you can see

that we taken both off Kerry and

basically it spent all its time the last

eight months in Irish waters Christmas

Day was out on the Shelf edge and here’s

one that we haven’t ground truth that

yet with Caesar the temperature and

water depth but again the second shot

kind of spent most of its time in around

the Irish Sea colleagues in the Isle of

Man last year actually tagged one shot

went in the island man all the way out

to Nova Scotia in about 90 days us nine

half thousand kilometers we never

thought that happened another colleague

in the States tagged her about 20 shots

off Massachusetts and his tag didn’t

really work all you know is he knows

where he tagged them he knows where they

popped off and his tags popped off in

the Caribbean and even in Brazil and we

thought the basket shots with temperate

animals and he lived in sort of our

latitudes for natural fat they’re

obviously crossing the equator as well

so very simple thing like that we stood

up trying to learn on basking sharks one

thing that I think are very surprising

and a strange thing is just how low the

genetic diversity of sharks are now I’m

a geneticist so I’m not going to pretend

to understand the genetics and that’s

why it’s great to have collaboration

whereas I’m a field person I get

patterns it’s a panic attacks if I have

to spend too many hours in a lab with a

white coat on take me away and so we can

work with geneticists who understand

that so when they look at the genetics

of Basilan sharks they found that the

diversity was incredibly low if you look

at the first line really you can see

that all these different shark species

are all quite similar I think this means

basically they’re all sharks that come

from a common ancestry but if you look

at nucleotide diversity which is more

genetic sort of passed on through the

parents you can see that basking sharks

and look at the first study was ordre

magnitude less diversity than another

shark species and you can see this were

presented in 2006 before 2006 we had no

idea of the genetic variability of

basking sharks we had no idea did they

distinguish in two different populations

were the subpopulations and of course

that’s very important if you want to

know what the population size is and the

status of the animals so there’s Nobel

in Aberdeen kind of found this a bit

unbelievable really so he he he did

another study using

microsatellites which is much more

expensive much more time-consuming and

to his surprise came up with almost

identical results so it does seem to be

that basket sharks for some reason have

incredibly low diversity and it’s

thought maybe there was a bottleneck the

genetic bottleneck thought to be twelve

thousand years ago and this is cause a

very low diversity and yet if you look

at whale shark which is the other

plankton eating larger shark its

diversity is much greater so it doesn’t

really make sense at all they found that

there was no genetic differentiation

between any of the world’s oceans of

basking sharks so even though basking

sharks are found throughout the world

you couldn’t tell the difference netic

Allah from one from the Pacific from the

Atlantic from New Zealand or from Island

South Africa they all basically seen the

same which again he’s kind of surprising

you will really expect that I don’t

understand this I don’t pretend to

understand this and I suspect most

janessa don’t understand it either but

they produce the numbers so you can

actually estimate the population size

based on the diversity of the genetics

and Ross also came up with a popular

effective population size eight thousand

two hundred animals that’s it

eight thousand animals in the world

you’re thinking that’s just ridiculous

no way so LEDs did a finer study and he

found out it came out about nine

thousand and using different micro

satellites gave you different results

but the average of all these studies

came out the mean is about five thousand

which you know I personally don’t

believe but then I am a skeptic but even

if you kind of toss a few numbers around

you’re probably talking an effective

population about twenty thousand animals

remember how many they killed a faculty

in the seventies and the 50s so what it

tells us actually is that there’s

actually a risk of extinction of this

species because his population is so

small and in fact of those twenty

thousand eight thousand were thought to

be females so then the eight thousand

basking shark and females in the world I

don’t know I don’t believe it

the problem with this is they were

constrained with samples they didn’t get

enough samples to really explore the

genetics in in in enough detail so where

do you get samples from for your genetic

analysis well one obvious source is dead

sharks - sharks washed up we might get

two or three dead sharks washed up in

Island a year if

kind of lucky another source would be

fisheries bycatch we were getting quite

a few caught in in surface drift nets

that’s now banned now and that’ll be

good good news for sharks and someone

caught a net in in trolls this is a shot

was actually landed in hose just before

Christmas illegally because you’re not

allowed to do that under EU law and was

actually sold for eight euros a kilo as

the Sharks they even put a recipe up on

the wall until they were told this was

illegal and they actually did get a fine

for that so if you look at all those

studies I showed you the total number of

samples worldwide worldwide is 86 at

present so it’s very important work and

they can ask them really good questions

and they can talk to us about population

size and sub sub populations and

structure but they bet they’re

constrained by lack of samples now when

we were out tagging our sharks is how we

tagged them on on the front of a rib get

in there fast occasionally the shark do

react and I one occasion when were up in

Mallen head open Tony Gore the shark

smack the side of the boat with his tail

more and I think in start of the fact

that a boat came near it rather than the

tank going in and that was fine we got

wet no no problem

and then when myself and Emma got back

to to malin head to the pier I noticed

some black slime on the front of the

boat and I remembered we spent a lot of

time out on commercial fishing boats

emember fishing telling me they can

always tell when a basking sharks been

calling the net because he leaves this

black slime behind so I was thinking

well that that must have come from from

the shark now we had an interest in in

getting tissue samples for genetics cuz

we knew they were very valuable and we

would use conventional methods I have a

crossbow to see across with in my hand

there which we used to sample whales and

dolphins for genetic studies as well so

I tried that I tried many techniques all

in all he was doing was breaking my

arrows because the shark’s skin is just

so strong there was no way we’re gonna

get a sample from that so that wasn’t

gonna work so when I saw the black slime

on the on the bow of the boats I thought

well you know if you take what you’re

given in this of this world

so I scraped it off and had a little

tube with the alcohol in to send the

geneticist so I scraped the slime off

and I sent it off to Aberdeen and I said

you might try that and they sat in it

for months action he was only cause

we’re at a conference in the Isle of Man

but I kept emailing les saying you had a

chance to look at mass Lyme yet you know

he’s like yeah yeah yeah yeah later

later later

anyway they thought well they better do

it because I’ve met him before I mean

you know you might lose face if he

hadn’t done the thing I sent him and he

was amazed that they actually got DNA

from the slime and they amplified it and

they tested and they found yes this was

actually a basking shark DNA was taken

was got from the slime so he was all

very excited he became known as a Simon

shark slime and I thought hey you know I

can I can I can build on this so we

thought well ok we’re gonna try and get

out get some slime

so having spent three and a half

thousand on satellite tags I then

thought I’d invest 795 the pricey salon

it my local hardware store in purush for

a mop handle and even less money on some

oven cleaners and I wrapped the oven

clean around the end of the mop handle

and it was desperate desperate to have

an opportunity to get some sharks now

this was into August now and there’s not

very sharks usually kind of peek in a

June July and you rarely see them you

know you really can be in the right

place to find sharks into August and so

we were desperate so we rushed out the

blast case as soon as we heard there

were sharks there and managed to find

some sharks so by just rubbing the mop

handle down the shark as its swam under

the boat you see here as a shark was

running on the boat here we managed to

collect slime and here is look at that

lovely black shark slime and in about

half an hour we got five samples five

individual sharks with sample using

Simon’s shark slime sampling system

I think working at whales and dolphins

in Ireland for 20 years now and you know

and they’re kind of bit more a bit more

dramatic you probably saw the humpback

whale footage that we got there a month

or two ago of County Wexford and you

know you always think you might have

some legacy you can leave the world

behind a lot of sleep enough

how about whales breaching and dolphins

but hey you know sometimes these things

are sent to you and you just have to

take when they come so this is possibly

gonna be my legacy

Simon shark slime so we’ve we’ve got

more money actually this year to carry

on collecting more and more samples and

one thing that is kind of very useful is

we use the poll cameras in college

around with a poll camera where you can

actually look underneath the shark and

what you’re trying to look at is the

male’s of claspers which kind of dangle

out behind the back of the shark so you

can quite easily tell the gender of the

shark so if we can tell the gender of

the shark before we sample it weak

intelligent ethicists this were taking

it from a male or a female because at

the moment they actually have no way

genetically obtained a difference in a

male and a female which I find

absolutely staggering because they don’t

know what primers to look for and being

able to tell the gender of shark it’s

got very important for things like

policing the trade-in in shark basking

shark and other species through the site

ease because it is illegal to trade in

these sharks and they are caught and

they are in the market so as a field

biologist you just want to get

encounters with these animals you want

to learn as much as you can they’re

often quite brief they’re often vary

seasonally constrained and you just want

to learn as much as you can as soon as

you can

but isn’t it fantastic that you can then

offer these samples and opportunities to

other disciplines such as geneticists

who can gain so much more from that so

as I said these things essentially in

strange ways grab them while you can you

know I’ll take that as my scientific

legacy hopefully I might get something a

bit more dramatic and romantic before I

die but for the time being thank you for

that and keep an eye out for sharks if

you’re more interesting we have a

basking shark web site now just set up

so thank you and thank you for listening

you