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