Episode 4: Transcript

Brittany (00:01)

Sharks have always been part of Long Island's waters. Greg Metzger is out there studying them up close. He's a Southampton High School Marine Science teacher and the field coordinator for the South Fork Natural History Museum's Shark Research and Education Program. He's catching, tagging, and releasing white sharks right off our coast and bringing that research straight back into his classroom.

Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Dive Long Island podcast. I'm your host, Brittany McCabe, and with me today is shark expert, Greg Metzger. Greg, thank you for being on the show.

Greg  (00:39)

Yeah, it's great to be here. I appreciate the opportunity.

Brittany (00:42)

So Greg, we're gonna dive into all of your shark research, but before we do that, I would like to have you introduce yourself to the dive community.

Greg  (00:55)

Yeah, so my name's Greg Metzger. I've been on Long Island for quite a few years now. I originally came from Western New York. So if you hear my ⁓ twang a little bit, I guess I still have it. I don't fit in anywhere. That's where my original roots came from. I always wanted to be a marine scientist, even though I grew up in Western New York, where we still have more dairy cows than people that live in the county. I was inspired by Jacques Cousteau, watching him on a black and white TV on Sunday nights to learn about the marine environment.

It was the summer of my 11th grade in high school that I came down to Long Island University's Southampton campus for a marine science summer camp. And that was the first time I ever had a chance to see the ocean or taste it. And so luckily my grades were good enough to get it accepted to LIU Southampton and graduated there for the bachelor's degree in marine science. Knowing that nothing was really known about sharks, but certainly was interested in them.

planning on being a shark person back then. was more my undergraduate work led me to giant bluefin tuna research with a premier researcher in bluefin tunas at the time. They had this cutting edge new technology called a pop-off satellite tag. So, you know, working with giant blue fins and juvenile blue fins for a couple summers, you know, I was pretty much set and ready to go. had funding from the organization.

was able to ⁓ get a, so I was gonna get a PhD, not necessarily to teach, to get a PhD to be researching in that. And the plan was to be a ⁓ bluefin tuna researcher. I missed the minimum GRE score for the program that I was looking to get accepted to. Even though I had funding, had a project, and I had a professor that was gonna take me by just a couple points. I think it was about 10 points or something. need, yeah.

I it was 10 points. So I needed a minimum thousand on the GRE and I got a 990. And I didn't get accepted. And I says, you know, this is stupid. Like if this is what it takes to, you know, like be a PhD and I missed it by 10 points, like this is, I don't necessarily want to play in that game. And when I'm talking to my students, because currently I'm a, I teach marine research and aquaculture and oceanography at Southampton High School.

I tell my students that those are the best 10 points I never earned. Because if I would have earned those 10 points, I probably would have followed through and be studying bluefin tunas. But I wouldn't have met my wife, I wouldn't have my daughter. I would not have a multi-million dollar facility built to my specific design and specs, which is what I've been fortunate to do in my career at Southampton. We have a very sophisticated wet lab there that has really allowed me to have a pretty awesome career.

Having summers off though and keeping in touch with some buddies from from LiU days is where we started to transition into the shark program. Yeah, so that's sort of a quick not so quick Trip from high school to sort of starting the doorsteps of where we are right here with our shark stuff

Brittany (04:09)

You gave us a lot there. Thank you, Greg. I want to go back to the beginning where you mentioned that you were watching Jacques Cousteau. What was it about that TV show that got you hooked to marine science?

Greg  (04:20)

Yeah,

so, you know, coming from Western New York where, like I said, we had more cows than people. I was always outside, though. I was, you we had a pond on our property, so was down. You know, I love to freshwater fish and try to catch snapping turtles. And so I was always drawn to the outside environment. But watching Jacques ⁓ Cousteau, you know, I was like, man, he's got a really good job because, you know, one day he's out, you know, trying to...

swim with dolphins. The next week he was scuba diving with corals. Each week was just a different, completely different aspect of the marine environment. I was like, jeebers, you could do that? This guy's on TV, and he's obviously paying his bills. So was really just that unique experience each week from watching him do his thing that I was like, there's got to be a spot for me in there somewhere.

Brittany (05:14)

the variety that's what really drew you.

Greg  (05:17)

Yeah, was the variety. know, I knew I wanted to be a marine scientist, but I didn't necessarily know what that meant and I didn't know necessarily where I was going to end up. As I started to take classes and interact with the marine science teachers and when I was here in college, I gravitated towards fish. I knew was going to be, fish was going to be my area of interest. I didn't really care much about phycology or mollusks. Sorry guys, but...

It was Dr. Reisman, Dr. Howard Reisman that he was the ichthyologist there and is still here in Southampton and we're fortunate that all these years we've been able to cross paths enough to keep in touch and so it was Dr. Reisman that really, you know, solidified my interest in studying finfish.

Brittany (05:48)

There you go.

That's cool. You mentioned that you were fishing in the pond in your backyard. Yep. Was that something that you did with your family or did you do that alone? ⁓

Greg  (06:16)

⁓

So my dad, my dad worked second shift. So I didn't, you he was sleeping when we were awake and we were sleeping when he was working and he worked kind of far away. So I didn't, I didn't have a, you know, I was close with my dad, but we just didn't have time, you know, and if it was the, if it was on the weekends, there was usually, you know, cutting wood or something, getting ready for it. It was always something. So I would sneak away. It was nice to be able to just walk into the backyard. You know, I didn't have a car in the early days and stuff, but.

We did do some fishing trips and those were really special to be able to do that. But it was pretty much on my own, you know, that and then when I started getting buddies, you know, we would go if our parents dropped us off one way the other. We also had a lot of freshwater creeks that were around for trout and stuff. So we could get our parents to drop us off. Bike riding was too far away. We would need to be, you know, like a triathlon to ride our bikes to the nearest creek because it's pretty it's really, really rural where we're at. So, yeah, so that's that's sort of how.

how it worked, was sort of self-driven.

Brittany (07:19)

So you built that trial and error of figuring out what the fish would bite for and everything all on your own or with your friends. Yeah.

Greg  (07:26)

⁓

Yeah, I mean, you know, was fortunate if I had I did have uncles that were really big into fishing musky fishing and cat fishing and fly fishing. My grandfather was in the fly fishing. so, you know, in talking with them and interacting with them and having opportunities here and there with them, you know, to learn about matching the hatch and what that meant and trying to think like a fish and reading the water in terms of, you know, they're probably going to be, you know,

on the edges of where fast water meets slow water. They wanna be in the slow water, but let the fast water bring them the food. So those same sorts of basic fishing techniques that we kinda use now to try and pick an area that we're gonna go catch sharks started in those early days with the same sorts of things, structure or not structured depending on what species you're after.

So there was a foundation back in those early freshwater days, I think, that definitely trickled over to help just get the ball rolling for us here in our shark world. Our shark research really started at the level that we're at now, trying to catch and tag these baby white sharks to confirm whether the South Shore of Long Island's a nursery for white sharks. And unfortunately, you're not going to get the weekly tackle report on...

what Jimmy used to catch the white sharks last year or last week. Yeah, so there was a lot of trying to figure it out. And when that was the goal was to catch these baby white sharks because they were not a targeted species. It's not like there was hordes of people going out there and you could sort of get a sense of what, you know, listen even to the radio when you, know, tuna fishing, you can listen to the radio and listen to, you know, what color they're using. Are they using Joe shoots? What is it? They spreader bars. what, you know, there was none of that available whatsoever.

to us trying to catch these baby whites. OCEARCH came along, certainly helped us tremendously. That was an organization that still is an organization that goes around the world trying to catch white sharks. when they came and after we caught and tagged that first baby white shark, when they learned about that and came for those two years, that was a tremendous benefit. Because here is somebody that does go and target white sharks. So they know.

where they like, where to go, how they typically, you know, they didn't have a whole lot of experience with the little guys, but they had a wealth of knowledge to pull from, and that really helped to jumpstart a lot of the techniques and tweaks and changes that we do now to try and get a baby white shark on the line.

Brittany (10:00)

⁓ I'm gonna come back and I circle back to your comments about the baby white shark But you dropped a nugget there about this multi-million dollar facility At Southampton High School that you helped to design. Can you tell us a little bit about that process and how you end up getting the

Greg  (10:20)

Yeah,

that was a pretty wild and crazy ride. So when I was hired in 2001, I don't even know if there were any fish tanks with water in them when I was hired there. There was an oceanography class that was taught by one of the, he was my mentor when I was hired there. And he always wanted a

sophisticated wet lab, some sort of a systems built wet lab, but he just didn't have the expertise, you know, to put it together. So when I was hired, he started the forensics program there. He had been teaching oceanography for a long time and was ready to pass the baton and he was excited to create this forensics program. And so I came in to basically a 1960s science classroom with the green panels and the black countertops.

asbestos tiles and you know the desks and stuff and so you know knew that if I needed wanted to teach marine science I needed to put some fish tanks in I needed students to be able to go and collect things for locally and watch them and observe them in captivity so I started putting up some fish tanks and you know we started out with one classroom one section of oceanography so I taught mostly regions biology and one section of oceanography well then

One section turned to two sections, turned to three sections. I was the most requested course in the school for a whole lot of time. So the students were coming, and so I needed to put in more fish tanks so that there were more tanks available for students. If you've got 12 kids in a class, OK, you can get away with a couple fish tanks. But now I had like 60 kids, so we needed to put in more fish tanks so that everybody had an opportunity. And so I would wait for everyone to leave at night. I'm not tenured at this point.

and I would rip out a section of countertop and throw it in the garbage and build, you know, new, put in new, new fish tanks. And so, you know, but nothing in the room was designed for saltwater and nothing was so when we'd forget to turn the hose off on a Friday, we got a frantic phone call from the custodian, you know, the downstairs was all the, the downstairs was flooded. Unfortunately we had,

very neat freaky social studies teacher that was also the union president right underneath us and he came in my multiple occasions to the entire drop ceiling on his desk with water and blown up computers and so But you know the students continued to we've ratted out the the heater that blew up the one day had there was I think there was four inches of water all the way down the upstairs hallway whoops yeah whoopsie ⁓ but you know the students came in in droves and so

The principal at the time came to me and said, hey kid, if you had an opportunity to design your dream classroom, what would it look like? So I said, well, how much money do you have? And what part of the building is the addition going off of? And he says, well, don't worry about the money so much. But he says, it's going to go off your old classroom. So I asked him some questions about whatever else. And so I basically had a sense of how big of a footprint the building was going to be, the addition was going to be. So I literally went down and pasted off. And I put that onto graph paper.

And I drew up my dream classroom. I had a sense of like three foot for handicapped accessibility and that sort of stuff. I had some sense of ⁓ what the infrastructure had to look like. But I had a vision of what I wanted my students to do and to leave knowing. And it was great to have spackle buckets and two by fours and.

you know, Home Depot shop lights and stolen five gallon water jugs from the guidance office as my old fish tanks, you know, because I learned a lot about set up and design and what I wanted and what worked, what didn't work. And so I was able to incorporate, you know, a lot of that knowledge into the original, you know, drawing. And so I gave the drawing to the principal and I said, here. So several months later,

all these suits show up into my classroom with this giant binder and they slap it down on the table and they're flipping through. And so it says, well here, take a look at these pages. And so it was the first architectural rendition of that piece of graph paper that I had given them. so it was pretty awesome. if you, we blew up, I still have the original drawing, but ⁓ we were able to blow it up.

and it's posted up in the classroom. So if I ever get asked the question, from time to time students will ask, it's pretty close to what the original drawing was that I gave them and what's actually there. So it was really just hard work and putting one foot in front of the other. And I had no visions of grandeur in terms of this giant classroom was going to be built to my specs. was just...

know, hard work and dedication and, you know, doing what's what I felt was right and best to give an education to the students at Southampton. And it just happened to work out that they were putting together this capital improvement bond. So it wasn't they were raising the money for a whole bunch of things, one of which was the wet lab. So we actually don't know how much the wet lab cost to build because it was part of this bigger, you know, bond. But, you know, just spitballing it.

They didn't do it for a hundred bucks. could tell you. know, when, when, um, they were building, you know, putting in the infrastructure and the concrete and steel and stuff, you know, I was of course, you know, watching what was happening. I'm thinking to myself, man, what the heck are they building? I mean, the steel and concrete that's in that, know, but the wet lab is on the second floor. And so I had given them, you know, the size tanks and stuff like that. when projected calculations of weight, and so, you know, engineers like to

over engineer some things, especially if they're putting a feather in their cap, which is what this was. Everybody that worked on this project had done a million schools, a million classrooms, a million gymnasiums, auditoriums, but none of them had ever done a wet lab. And so everybody there wanted this to come out right. And that was just lucky. On multiple occasions, me, the little old teacher, is sitting there with all of the suits.

and all the architects and the engineers and the structural engineers, the contractors, ⁓ electrical engineer, plumbing engineer, and they're just firing questions at me about why do you need this and what about that and how come this is a brr-brr-brr-brr. And I had literally gone through every inch in my head over and over and drawn everything up because I had to figure out everything in order to make it work. And I knew that

The good news was they were all hungry to have this come out right. The bad news was none of them had ever done it before. So I couldn't rely on them to make sure that there was enough power, that the circuits were right, that there was enough space to put things. There was just so much. And I went to every place I could find. I went to the Long Island Aquarium. I went to Cornell Cooperative Extensions. I went to the New York Aquarium.

and would ask, know, what did you do right? What did you do wrong? If you had an opportunity to redesign your wet area, what would you do? What, you know? And so, yeah. So, and I, it was fortunate that, you know, the people in the room recognized that I had a lot of knowledge. And if I didn't know, I was perfectly okay to tell them, but I had people that they could go to. And I was fortunate that, you know, they did go and visit some of the places because they were really had head scratchers like

Like you have an entire panel box of power in this four foot by three foot section. Why do you need like this is more power than takes the run hat and you know so I would explain to them well you know there's all these pumps and heaters and chillers and it's got it and it all has to be here so it looks nice. So that was a wild and crazy ride but you know it was was really a fantastic project. The lab has come out great. We able you know we did make some mistakes but ⁓

we were able to have a renovation and fix those mistakes. And so it's a really special place that the students of Southampton that take advantage of the program were able to utilize.

Brittany (18:52)

It's a spectacular facility. did a great job designing it. Thanks. And your kids are really lucky to be able to learn in there. Just to try and paint the picture for viewers, you walk in. There's a really nice lab station, right, where students can sit there for any kind of lecture. Yeah. And then when you walk beyond that space, there's some huge tanks. Like, what kind of sizes are we talking, Greg? Yeah.

Greg  (19:19)

So the lab is broken like you explained into two parts. So when you first walk in, that's the classroom section. There's three long benches that will house 30 students. And I wanted that space to be as small as possible because I wanted the most footprint for the cool stuff, which is on the other side of the wall. And so we have over 100 fish tanks that range in size from about two gallons to 1,200 gallons. I forget.

We're about a hundred and I think a hundred and fifty or a hundred and sixty different species of living creatures, which includes a whole bunch of phytoplanktons, zooplanktons, copepods, rotifers, brine shrimp. We have mangroves. We've got a couple different species of jellyfish, all kinds of we have sharks, stingrays, clownfish. We have a mimic octopus, which is a really incredible animal to have.

have in our lab, it's pretty rare, you don't see that very often. We have peacock mantis shrimp. It's a huge, corals, a huge variety of all things marine oriented. So we go on a lot of field trips, and so you walk in and you say, wow, this looks like an amazing aquarium. I correct people, not too often usually, but when they call it an aquarium, say, no, this is a classroom.

You know, everything that's there is there for a purpose or a function of some sort of learning. know, whether it's, you know, interactions between organisms, you know, we have cleaner shrimp and more eels that are together. yeah, everything, it's a classroom. And so everything is there purposefully for some learning moment that happens throughout any one of the courses that we teach. It's nice to be on the classroom side and watch a movie or read a story or, you know,

Introduce the activity or with the concept and then you'd get up and you walk on the other side of the wall and okay Let's go look at it in you know in real time and here it is and stuff. So It's really fantastic to be able to have that instant connection Just by getting up and walking across the wall

Brittany (21:34)

And you're not just teaching oceanography anymore, is that correct?

Greg  (21:38)

Right, so I actually, before this year, I hadn't taught oceanography in four or five years because I brought back to Southampton a research program. So we had a research program there that ran for many years. For a whole bunch of reasons, it sort of just fell off. And that sort of bothered me that students didn't have an opportunity to do authentic research. And so I pitched bringing back a research program.

that we were positioned to do very, very well. Not that there was anything wrong with the old research model, it just had some inherent flaws that I felt kind of contributed to it waning. And so if we're going to bring back a research program, let's bring it back really strong so that we can get research back on the lips of students and staff at Southampton High School. And then it can branch off into other aspects. Some of the pushback was, well, we have a lot of students that might not be interested in marine. Why does it have to be marine?

It's like, well, we have a world-class marine facility that's perfectly set up for authentic research. it's to get the ball rolling. At that point, I had already been established in the shark research. So I felt that I was very familiar with how scientific method works and how scientists go about answering unknown questions and stuff like that. So yeah, so that's sort of where the research program

came from and we also have aquaculture. So the wet lab is about, about 60 % of the wet lab is actually there for, to support aquaculture. The aquaculture we do though is typically marine ornamentals. So these are fish and shrimp and corals and things that you would buy at a pet shop to bring home and put in your salt water tank. And the reason for that is,

We cover all of the same techniques for the most part that you need in order to be successful with shellfish. So oysters, clams, scallops, but we, although our space is large, it's not large enough to do shellfish, know, clams, oysters and scallops, it's not big enough. And it's a lot harder to do fin fish because you not only have to raise the phytoplankton that you would need to raise shellfish, but you also have to raise for us, it's three different

zooplankton. So for an aquaculture program, a class, you want to try to provide them every opportunity. And that's why we chose ornamentals, because we can keep them in small tanks. So a clownfish in the wild, most of its life stays in a three-foot area. So if we put them in a three-foot tank, it's not... Because part of a lot of what we talk about too is morals and ethics of keeping animals in captivity. And so we have those real conversations about...

you know, is this fair? Is this ethical? Is it moral? And, you know, so we have those conversations and, you know, it is what it is. Like, it's a part of what we are able to do. So the lab, you know, it has its traditional teaching moments, but there's all these other things that roll into and, you know, not all the students have to agree and we don't always have to agree, but as long as you get them thinking and, know, in some, a lot of respects, it's good.

for discourse that doesn't end in, I'm never talking to you again. And so I think that's something that's sort of lost in today's world, that you're either with me or you're against me and I'm never gonna talk to you again. And that's not how people work. So it's okay for students to push back. It's not okay to keep animals in captivity and this is their reasons why. And it's like, well, we feel that it is and that's why we do. so, yeah, I don't know how we got on that. It's a little off topic, but I think it's an important aspect to.

You know talk about that. You know we have these so anyway, so spinning back to The aquaculture course it's a fully functioning aquaculture facility So we have an algae room that's completely separate from the rest of the facility and that's for security purposes in terms of you contamination and stuff like that we follow and try to stay up on all industry standards in terms of techniques that are used out there and You know we have a variety of animals that

that we have spawning at any given time and then it's up to the students, know, as we work them through each of the units. I basically teach aquaculture in the order that you would need to sort of set up and run an aquaculture facility. So we start by what kind of aquaculture do you want to do? know, recirculating or flow through and, you know, and then we just walk them through, you know, you have to raise phytoplankton and zooplankton, get your mommies and daddies and how you get them to fall in love.

And then, you now that you got the babies, what's involved with keeping the babies, it depends on what, you know, how, what kind of spawners you have and all that sort of stuff. So it's, it's a very intensive course. I'm super proud of that course. The students that pay attention ⁓ are definitely well set up to walk into an aquaculture facility as, you know, we don't have any certifications or anything like that, that, that they get, but they definitely know their way around an aquaculture facility.

wherever they go. And we field test that by taking them to the Conscience Point Shellfish Hatchery or to the Long Island Aquarium and do the behind the scenes tours where they have a lot of aquaculture going on behind the scenes. So I'm very, very proud of all the courses. I'm teaching an oceanography course this year. I'm having a lot of fun with it. My students, I really have a great group of students, so to come back into oceanography with such a great class is a good thing. And so we'll just see what happens next year. All the courses I teach are electives.

So if the students don't sign up for them, then I'm out on the street looking for a job. No, they won't get rid of me. Hopefully not anyways. So yeah, so my schedule is sort of in flux from year to year depending on where students interest in law and popularity and stuff.

Brittany (27:40)

For those that don't know what aquaculture is, how would you define that?

Greg  (27:44)

Yeah, aquaculture is basically farming the water. Most people on Long Island that are familiar with aquaculture probably immediately think, you know, clams and oysters and scallops, which is true. And so this is where, you know, you get adults that are called broodstock and you get a handful of them and you induce them to spawn, which is usually increasing water temperature. But depending on the species, you know, there's other variables that you can get them to. It might be seasonal.

You get them to release their eggs, their sperm and eggs, and then you would collect them and try to raise as many of them as you possibly can to a marketable size. So depending on what your market is, it might be just a few months for some of the species that we raise. It could be a couple of years. And so we've been able to create a nice network of places to offload the stuff that we raise in the lab.

So it's a really cool thing to watch happen. Other things on the east end that are ⁓ aquaculture, there's a growing industry for kelp. So this is big seaweed basically that grows. so there's a growing number of ⁓ farmers that are growing kelp on Long Island. I don't know, guess the fin fish hatcheries would be like trout. So I think that there's a cold spring harbor.

has a fish hatchery where I think they're raising trout. There's been talk of some entrepreneurs looking to raise saltwater fish offshore here, but it hasn't come to fruition as far as I know. So it's basically farming the water. So you're taking something and creating more of that to sell for a price.

Brittany (29:30)

What a great opportunity for your students.

Greg  (29:33)

Yeah, I I still believe that aquaculture is a really viable source of industry and there's a huge need for it. The ocean isn't providing us anymore. I think the numbers have pretty much plateaued like in the 80s as far as like fish and stuff that's harvested from the ocean. And there's a lot more people running around here than there were in the 80s and they want fish. And so where's that gap come from? It comes from aquaculture.

The unfortunate part is aquaculture still is in its infancy. There's a lot of really difficult bottlenecks to overcome to really have it be a viable, sustainable industry that people want to invest in and can invest in for the long term. There's still a lot of risk that it's not going to succeed because it's still in its infancy. But if you can, ⁓ again, one foot in front of the other, grit, determination.

little bit of luck sprinkled in. think aquaculture is a viable industry for students to pursue.

Brittany (30:41)

In addition to everything you've already listed, you also give students the opportunity to partake in the research that you're doing on Sharks as well, too. Like there's some summer programs that students get involved in with you.

Greg  (30:55)

Yeah, so all of my students that I have in the high school have free and open opportunities to come out on the boat with me in the summer. I'd be surprised how few of them actually take advantage of that. But, you know, I basically want to teach the ones that want to learn today. So, you know, I'm not forcing it on anybody, but, you know, there is that opportunity. Outside of that, we have the work that that we do with the South Fork Natural History Museum. They've recently introduced a program to allow

Researchers, we call them researchers. It doesn't have to be students. It could be teachers, adults. It doesn't matter. We offer three-day and five-day expeditions that come out with us. They're limited because our boats are small. Any of my students have an opportunity to come out. And then there is an opportunity through the South Fork Natural History Museum in addition to private charters. So I do have a private charter business that people could

could contact and then we could do individual charter if you're interested in doing the shark stuff that way.

Brittany (32:02)

So let's talk about that. Let's dive into the shark research. You had mentioned that it got started where you were fishing. Started to notice that you weren't going to pursue the bluefin tuna project, right? Right. But how exactly did you end up landing on sharks as the ticket?

Greg  (32:26)

Yeah, so when I came to Long Island as a college student, my passion for fishing followed me. And so I bought surf casting rods and had some mentors here. And I got tired of seeing the fish just outside of my range that I could cast. And so then I got hired at Southampton as a teacher, year one. And I had the most money I ever had in my life. I had no responsibilities and tons of cash. So I said,

I'm going to get those fish. And so I went and bought a small boat, 17 and a half foot center console scout, 50 horsepower engine. And I was a fishing machine. So, you know, as a cautious boater, you know, I started in the bay and it took me a while to get up the nerve to fish the inlet. And then once I kind of conquered the inlet and started working my way up the food chain,

on those really, really, really flat days, was like, I think I could zip out into the ocean. So I'd zip out in the ocean and then come back. And then I was like, all right, maybe there's more of these flat days and I could zip out a little farther. then, know, sharks were always something that, you know, that's the high food chain as far as catching them. And so I bought a shark rod and went out, you know, and started to just dabble close to shore on those really nice days on a 17 and a half foot center console scout. And we started catching sharks. And so

I kept in touch with a handful of people from Southampton, but one of which was Dr. Toby Curtis, who's currently as our lead scientist for our shark work through the South Fork Natural History Museum. so he was the one that, you know, at this point was a shark biologist. He's a real shark scientist. has master's and PhDs with sharks. And so he's the real shark guy. And so he was the one that planted the seed about the South Shore of Long Island being a nursery for great white sharks. And so that was super exciting to

because I had no idea that there were great whites, let alone babies. And he explained that there's only really two confirmed nurseries in the world, and both of them were in the Pacific. There were no confirmed nurseries for white sharks in the entire Atlantic. so that was just super exciting to me to be able to go out, try and catch these little baby white sharks. And if we were able to get any, then

you know, really unlock a vulnerable, precious moment in their lives that nobody really knew about. So I was all over it. And I didn't really care what I was catching as long as it was sharks. we were able to, I upgraded the boat because it was very difficult to get people to go shark fishing on a 17-foot boat. I still get a lot. That's your boat. So I currently have a 21-foot pilot house Parker, a perfect boat for what we...

we do. ⁓ yeah, so then we were permitted. The bluefin tuna biologist that I started out with back in the day, she had two of those satellite pop-off tags that were left that she said I'm not gonna put out on bluefin. They had had some issues with the tags and so it wasn't, it was too expensive for her to put them out with the reliability she had been getting back. So she said they're literally gonna sit on my shelf.

I was already established as a science teacher at Southampton. So she said, do with them what you want. If you deploy them, maybe they'll work. Maybe they won't. If you want to just keep them for educational purposes in your classroom, do whatever you want with them. So that we were armed that first year with our permits to chase baby white sharks, which are prohibited. And that's one pop off satellite tag. And so that was the 54 days of fishing. I'd set the goal at

50 sharks. said, I think based on what we've been catching the last few years, we could probably catch 50 sharks this year. We had, the story is real, it's not made up for TV drama. We had caught 49 sharks. I had 49 data sheets that I had filled out that year. It was the end of August, I was going back to school, and I think two or three days, and we hadn't seen a shark in like three days of fishing. So it's the end of August, it's brutally hot, we're sweating, and somebody says, hey, I think I saw a small fin by the float.

And just as that, whoop, the float goes under. We had a shark on. It comes up, the first time I saw it, came up ⁓ belly side up and it was a mako. You know, it like a three foot, four foot mako, which are very common that time of the year. White belly, pointed nose, the whole shebang. All right, we got a small mako on. That's cool, at least it broke the thing. It comes up the second time and it came up dorsal side. So its back came up. Well, makos are bright blue and this one was dirt brown.

So in my brain, like everything is wrong. What my eyes are telling my brain, what my brain's, nothing's working on it. Then it just overwhelmed me. said, we have a baby white shark. And so like that was really, I got goosebumps, sorry. ⁓ And so we were able to get it tail roped and we had caught, you know, and we were able to put that pop off satellite tag on a young of the year white shark and let it go. And so the tag popped way early.

But it stayed on long enough that we had the first movements ever of a young of the year white shark, which was we tagged it on Long Island and it popped, think, however many days or weeks later was off of Jersey. So we knew that, you know, we so we had to start location, a pop off location. We didn't get any of the data in between or anything like that. But proof of concept was there, you know. And so then OCEARCH came the next two years and that really jump started the white shark stuff. So that's how that's sort of how it started was just.

you know, with my interest in fishing and then with Dr. Curtis, you know, sort of really planting the seed about the baby white shark, then that's what really jump started our research. Because in trying to catch and tag baby white sharks, we started to catch all these other species of sharks. And then we started to catch them in big numbers and we started to catch them consistently year after year. So this was very attractive to other shark scientists because that's the hard part is getting consistent

reliable access to the animals. And we showed year after year that we were able to do that. So because of that success, then we were able to secure some funding from other organizations to contract us to basically catch and tag sharks. And what's been nice is those other organizations and people were friends of ours. So yes, as long as we did their work, they were okay with us also doing our work that we had started at the museum, which is

basically putting the satellite pop-off tags, which is the workhorse for the data for the South Fork Natural History Museum shark program. And they didn't care about, you know, the crew that came out. We have, on any given day, a very eclectic crew that's out there. might be, you know, lot of the times it's people that have never experienced anything, sharks, boats, shark research, handling sharks. And so I guess that's where the gift of teaching comes in from.

⁓ me you know just be able to take this very eclectic mix of people that never really seen each other don't anything i've asked them to do and you know able to do high-power chart science at you know industry standard levels

Brittany (39:48)

What a great impression for them.

Greg  (39:50)

Yeah, mean, you know, some of them have come back again. So I guess that's always a good indicator that they trusted the first time around and come back again. yeah, we've had tremendous support and it's been a great, it's been a really great thing.

Brittany (40:05)

You threw out a couple of terms that I don't know that some people are familiar with. So I'm going to go back to, you said that white sharks are prohibited species. What does that mean, Greg?

Greg  (40:18)

Most of the time sharks that are deemed prohibited are because of low populations. so prohibited means that you're not allowed to target them. And then you're certainly, if you, you know, I mean, if you're shark fishing or you're engaging in fishing, you don't have any necessary control over what jumps on the line. But if you do get, have a prohibited species that you catch, you have to immediately let it go. You can't do any unnecessary harm. So you have to, you know, immediately

release it, cut the line. You you're certainly not allowed to, you know, tail rope it and secure it and draw blood and muscle biopsies and fin clips and put tags in them and suture them and all that sort of stuff. So you know, we're able to do that because we've asked permission from New York State if we're fishing in state waters and from the federal government if we're fishing in federal waters. You know, we've have actually just filling out the forms now for this coming season.

You know, basically ask permission and this is who we are and this is why we're doing it and this is what we're able to do to be able to then target prohibited species like sand tiger sharks, sand bar sharks, the baby white sharks. So a prohibited species is just one that you're not able to target. So like what that means is if, say you, I'm assuming you don't have a... I not. the fishes permit. So if you were out and you saw, you know, a sand tiger swimming, you know, on the shore, you know, at the surface, you wouldn't actively be able to...

try and catch that shark because it's prohibited. Their populations are low, so it's just a way, method, a management method to protect them.

Brittany (41:53)

Protect them.

Okay. Now you had brought up that a young white shark looks a lot like a Mako for a novice shark fisherman. You mentioned the color. Are there any other distinguishing features between those two sharks to help them know?

Greg  (42:11)

So white sharks teeth are very, different than mako shark teeth. So mako sharks have long, very thin, know, they're sort of fat at the base and get very thin quickly and they sort of stick out all over the place where baby white sharks have that iconic triangle shape with the very wide gaps in between each of their teeth. that's certainly something that stands out. White sharks are also ⁓ quite a bit

beefier, even at that same size. So if you took a three foot Mako shark and you compared it to a three foot white shark, the white shark's physical body is bigger, round, more girthy. And then right before their tail, Mako sharks and white sharks have a keel. So it's basically like a flattened ridge that sticks out ⁓ laterally left and right, right in front of where their actual tail is.

And on even just a small white shark, it's so wide, you're not able to, you can't put your finger and thumb around the base of it. They have this very wide keel where Mako sharks, their keel's a lot smaller. It's there, visually it looks the same, but the white shark has a really wide one. I mean, the biggest thing is the brown color versus the, and then certainly their teeth are very different.

Brittany (43:26)

The blue.

Okay. And then you use the term young of the year. What is that?

Greg  (43:35)

So for the most part almost all the white sharks that we've caught with our team here are what we refer to as young of the year. So they're less than a year old. So the white sharks that we primarily catch and tag might even be only a few weeks old, certainly not more than a few months old. So young of the year refers to sharks and that's not a unique term to ⁓ white sharks. It's any shark that is less than a year old. And you could typically tell

that a shark's less than a year old because if you flip them onto their back and you look at their belly in between their pectoral fins, which is basically would be our arms, that's where their belly button is. So when I talk about shark belly buttons, I touch the middle of my chest and people get a frown because that's not where our belly button is, but it's where the belly button is on a shark. so, yeah, so typically a shark less than a year old will still have an umbilical scar is what it's.

Brittany (44:29)

interesting how do you how do you determine that Long Island is a nursery I know you have a lot of data young of the year sharks what what gave us that classification

Greg  (44:41)

Yeah, so there's three criteria that need to be met in order to deem an area a nursery for sharks. One is that there's a higher concentration of them in that area than there is in anywhere else. The second is that they spend time in that area. It's not just that you caught one on one day and it left, you know, like that you have to show residency that they've spent time.

in that area. And the third is that it's repeatable. It's not just an anomaly one particular year. There happened to be a whole bunch of them and they all swam around. It has to be repeatable year after year after year. And so through the pop-off satellite tagging, spot through the taggings that we did on those early white sharks those first three years, we were able to show those three things, which then we were able to deem.

at the New York Bight. So I say the South Shore of Long Island, but it's technically the New York Bight, which is the South Shore of Long It's a triangle. If you were to draw a line from Manhattan to Montauk, that's the South Shore of Long Island. And then from Montauk straight to Cape May, New Jersey, you would form basically a triangle that's known as the New York Bight. the technical nursery area is the New York Bight.

Brittany (46:02)

⁓ Yeah, plan words. That is very cool. We can actually say that we have resident white sharks here.

Greg  (46:04)

G H T

So based on our tagging studies, the baby white sharks show up typically mid-May and are here through the middle of October. So they take about a month to swim from Long Island to their overwintering, which is down in the Carolinas. And so then they'll be down in the Carolinas till...

April-ish and then they start their migration north. It takes them about a month to swim from Long Island to the Carolinas and then from the Carolinas back to Long Island. What's interesting though is some of those first sharks we tagged with acoustic tags internally. So this is basically kind of looks like a cigar. We make a small incision through their body wall and it gets ⁓ put inside their body cavity and sewn up and the tag emits a unique vibration.

that can be detected for up to 10 years. So the battery life on those tags is 10 years. So we're actually still hearing from those original baby white sharks that were tagged in concert with OCEARCH still this year. So we still are getting 10 year tags. from that, they quickly expand to basically the entire ⁓ East Coast. So we have within three or four years, we had sharks that were in Nova Scotia and swimming down to the Gulf of Mexico. So it's pretty...

Pretty amazing how fast these little white sharks start to expand their habitat use.

Brittany (47:44)

Now when they return for that second year, are they considered a juvenile at that point?

Greg  (47:48)

There's different arguments in terms of how you grade out, you know, year classes and sizes and stuff. There's different terms, know. Young of the year, that's an easy one. And adult, that's an easy one. And then it's all the ones that are in between that, you know, there's different scientists use different terms to represent, you know, different group age classes.

Brittany (48:08)

different.

Okay. What makes, like, what do you think makes Long Island so perfect for a nursery?

Greg  (48:20)

Yeah, so, you know, what do you want for your babies, right? You want lots of food, you want a little stress, want no predators. And so that's basically what Long Island waters provide for not only baby white sharks, there are other sharks that are using Long Island waters as their nurseries. Sand tiger is pretty much...

accepted as Long Island's nursery for sand tiger sharks. Stay tuned, but ⁓ it's looking pretty promising also for dusky sharks. That's what Long Island has. It has the right water temperatures that this young stage likes, tons of food in terms of the Manhattan and bottom fish, the squid, all that sort of stuff. Really, the only

natural predator to a shark is a bigger shark. And so for the baby white sharks, they're basically the big, you know, they're born at three, four feet long, you know, with full set of cutlery and attitude to, to match. you know, there aren't too many sharks that are able that there's bigger sharks physically here on Long Island, but there aren't too many that are going to be able to take on, you know, a young of the year white shark. So, so it's, it's, it's just a really good place for a lot of.

baby shark species. Most of the sharks that I've caught, it's hundreds at this point, were immature. They haven't been, they're not sexually mature yet. It may not be a nursery so much so, like in that first year, but certainly a lot of young sharks come to Long Island. Our work is just in the summertime.

Brittany (50:08)

When you say near shore, how close are you fishing for them?

Greg  (50:13)

anywhere from right outside the white water to about five miles. and typically we're under five, under two miles. So, you know, the sharks that we target are very close.

Brittany (50:30)

to beach. When you do catch a, well actually, before we go into once you catch one, what is the process of trying to catch a white shark?

Greg  (50:40)

Yeah, White Shark specifically, really have found water temperature seems to be a really good thing. if you can find the right water temperature, that's one big plus. Plus water clarity. We found that they seem to tend to like clear water than murkier water.

So that, mean, that's, that's pretty much what, what we target is clear water at the right temperature. And it doesn't really seem to matter where that is. You know, in, in the early years, we were literally outside the white water anchored up and we caught boatloads of baby white sharks. went back. ⁓ so, you know, we went there like two years in a row and, know, we were like mowing them down, relatively speaking, ⁓ multiple, when I say mowing them down, multiple attempts in a day, you know, is,

So we were like, right, we got it figured out. We come here, this is the time of year, boop, boop, boop. And then we went back two more years and we never even got a bite. Never saw one zero nothing. And we were like, what happened? Yeah. And so then it's just sort of retooling, going back, looking at, all right, what was the same? What's changed? What's different? And then looking at the temperature data from the tags. And so we've had a lot of great advice.

Brittany (51:45)

What happened?

Greg  (52:00)

⁓ One piece of advice though came from Dr. Harley Newton when we first started and she said the hardest thing is going to be to tag the first one. Once you tag the first one, it'll tell you where the other ones are. And she was basically referring to, you know, the temperature and depth and that sort of thing. you know, because they do have these temperatures and depths or temperatures certainly that they like. yeah. So if you could start to weed out water, if you can eliminate water, and that helps to increase the chances you're going to...

find them. With that said, you know, we're chasing a couple hundred individuals a year by, you know, spitball estimates. So it's not like we're out trying to, you find seagulls where there's tens of thousands of them and, you know, the chances are pretty good. I mean, we're chasing a couple hundred in the New York Bight, which is that giant triangle that, you know, I described. So even if you have everything working for you, if they're just physically not one there, you're not going to get one.

Brittany (52:56)

not gonna get.

Greg  (52:58)

And then you have the one that comes up and swims around the boat 25 times and giving you the stink eye and ⁓ nibbling the bait that you use and swims off and that's it. That's the first and last one you've seen in two weeks of killing yourself out there. But it's a challenge. So I'm looking forward this year to getting back on the Baby White Shark adventures because some of the other projects that we've been working on just

didn't allow us to target the white sharks. And so the other shark species that we were going after, the chances of getting that water that we look for for the white sharks was...

Brittany (53:35)

Challenging You had mentioned in your initial story about the first baby white that The baby white pulled on the buoy or was near the buoy How how exactly do you get them on the line? How do you get them near the boat? Yeah?

Greg  (53:52)

Yeah,

so we attract them using chum, which is basically ground up frozen Manhattan. So we have access to lots and lots of Manhattan. So grind them up and freeze them. And then we put that in the water. And as it defrosts, there's a slow sort of scent trail that drifts off from the boat. most of the time, depends on what species we're after, but most of the time we're just

free drifting, wherever the tide and wind blows us, that's where we go. Sometimes we are anchored in one spot, and so the tide will be taking the scent across wherever it is that we're fishing. We use circle hooks, and we'll try to match the hatch. So I have a livewell on board that will go and try to find a bunker school and snag bunker to use live bunker. But squid, if we can get it. And then we'll place, I only fish two lines for sharks.

because I definitely don't want more than one shark on the line. So usually I have one deeper, farther back from the boat in the chum slick and then one literally right at my feet. It's almost like top water fishing for sharks. ⁓ I like to see them come in and grab the bait right at the surface. It's more of an entertainment thing for me. Yeah, and so then whatever line the shark takes, I only have to get one fishing line out of the water because sharks bite fast, they swim fast, they're

very strong. So if you had three or four lines out, it's very difficult, especially as I mentioned earlier, most of my crew is extremely inexperienced. So if they can just get one in and out of the way, that's a great thing. And I don't know that having more lines out than the two would increase or do anything for us anyway. yeah. And then it's just a waiting game. So when the chum is in and then the baits are set, it's a lot of

hurry up and wait for something to happen. Shark fishing, you can go from a bad day to a good day really, really fast. It doesn't take much of a line peeling off or a fin to cut the water to really get people excited about what's going on.

Brittany (56:05)

So when they bite, you're reeling them in. How long does that take usually, Greg?

Greg  (56:09)

Yeah, because the sharks that we target are mostly juvenile, not more than really three to five minutes. You know, we don't want to, we have to find the fine balance between wearing the shark out enough that it's less dangerous for us to secure it when it gets to the boat, but not exhausted so much that it could expire from the fight. And so I think we do a really

pretty good job of that. Our tagging data for the most part indicates we have almost no mortality, which is great. So I'm happy with our technique. ⁓ One shark that does give us a real run for our money is the common thresher shark. So that's the shark, that's the one that has the very, long upper part to its tail. Their tails will be as long as their bodies and they use that tail to smack and stun and kill small prey items like...

squid or the menhaden or sand eels or whatever it is that they're eating. They are tremendously powerful fast sharks that just don't seem to give up as easy as I wish they would. And then, you know, once you get them near the boat, you know, they have that very long tail that they're very good at using. So it's not just a random whip that the tail is at. You know, they're actively looking and striking at what's causing them problems. So

You know, have this very long six, seven, eight foot tail that's coming at you at rapid speed and you're trying to get a tail rope around it and not get people hurt. So Thresher sharks are one that I love them and I hate them. You know, like they're very difficult to bring in. And those might be, you know, 15 to 45 minutes before we can get those hired into the boat.

Brittany (57:56)

It's hard work. What kind of data are you collecting once you do get them?

Greg  (58:00)

So

once we get the shark secured, ⁓ so we keep its head secure with the hook in the line and then we try to get a rope around its tail so that the shark is secure. then once that'll sort of, the sharks kind of chill out once we get them tail roped. We take basic body measurements, various lengths, girth, we sex the shark, ID the shark, and then we'll take, depending on, well, we'll take blood. So we're literally taking blood, it's like.

you get it giving blood at the hospital. We just take it from the base of their tail. We'll take a small muscle biopsy. So it basically looks like an ice cream scoop, but it's tiny. It's only like the size of your pinky. And we'll scoop out a muscle biopsy. We'll take a small piece of fin clips. We'll take a pair of scissors and just cut a small piece of the end of their fin off the pelvic fin. And then depending on what size and species the shark is, then we might put

an acoustic tag inside of it with surgery or we'll fix the pop-off satellite tag or a non-electronic tag. We have a non-electronic tag which is kind of like a band that you might put on a bird. if any of your listeners are familiar with banding ducks or geese, same sort of idea. And then we have a very sophisticated camera tag. So it's called a CATS cam. It has a high definition camera that we put on the

on the dorsal fin of the shark and you're literally riding the back of the shark as it's swimming around. We're collecting all of its body movements and acceleration and as well as temperature and depth of the water. So it's, we have a lot of data to, yeah, that a single deployment of the CATS-CAM results in millions and millions of data points because it's collecting all of this data at 20 times a second and it'll stay on for about 24 hours. So it's

huge data sets. The pop-off satellite tags we have recording the temperature and depth that the shark is at every 10 seconds for 28 days. So these results in really, really big data sets that give us super high resolution information about what these sharks are doing when they're in Long Island waters.

Brittany (1:00:14)

mentioned that you're studying multiple different species. Have you noticed a change in the types of species that you've been studying in the last 10 years?

Greg  (1:00:22)

⁓ I mean the ones so we've seen new ones come in so I caught for you know about Six or seven years ago. There was talk of all these you know black tips sharks that were being caught by fishermen and surf casters and stuff So I called Toby and I was like, how what's a black tip? Like how am gonna know what it looks like? He's yeah, you know, you'll know what it looks like looks very different from blue sharks and mako sharks They've got they've got like a very traditional shark. Look pointy nose sleek sides, you

He says, there's also, and they got black tips. says, but there are also these sharks called spinner sharks. And he said, my vibe is they're probably catching more spinner sharks than they are black tips. I was like, well, how am I gonna know the difference? He says, well, it's pretty easy. says, you know, the spinner sharks have all black tips and they jump and they spin and they swim in schools close to the shore.

I said, all right, well, what about the black tips? He says, yeah, they jump and spin also. They have black tips, swim in schools, and are close to the shore. I was like, OK, so how do I tell the difference? He says, well, he says, when you catch one, you get it secured, flip it over, and he says, look at its anal fin. If it's white, that's the black tip. If it has a black tip, that's the spinner shark. I was like, you scientists are, you have things wrong with you. So he's just laughing. And so that, in all honesty, is.

the best way, I since we've caught a bunch of, and it did end up working out that from our data, Toby was right, we've caught way more spinner sharks than we have black tips. So that is the easiest way. So if you see a shark jump and spin, it's not necessarily a spinner shark because black tips will jump and spin. I've got pretty good eyes, but I can't see the anal fin of a spinning shark to tell whether it was black tipped or white. So really the only way you're going to be able to tell is if

you know you see it swim over you if you're diving and you can get a really good look or we have it secured along the boat to get a look at.

Brittany (1:02:27)

So you've seen more spinner sharks?

Greg  (1:02:29)

More spinner sharks and black tips have come in over the last few years. The first 12 years of me shark fishing, I never saw them at all. And so another new species is a sharpnose shark, so I caught it. I was like, it's got white spots on it, but it's summertime. This isn't a spiny dogfish. Nothing was right about it. And it had real teeth, where dogfish sort of have plate-like teeth.

So I took a whole bunch of pictures and sent it to Toby and he sent it around and it came back as a sharpnose shark. So that was just a couple of years ago. So here's a brand new shark that, you they're small, but it was still cool to catch something I had never seen before. You know, and now what's number one on my list for this coming field season is I want a bull shark. So there's been multiple confirmed drone images of bull sharks here on Long Island, you know, right in the area that we've been fishing. And I actually saw the dorsal fin of

of a bull shark this year. But I had a film crew on board and they were interested in filming, not catching, so I had to relinquish my desire to catch and tag a bull shark. So it'd be pretty cool. that's, you know, I'm hoping to have the opportunity, you know, this summer to, if there are bull sharks confirmed in our area, you know, with the drone pilots and stuff and the network we've been able to put together that, you know, we can start to get.

sort of patterned on a bull shark or two and I can get out there and try to catch and tag a bull shark on Long Island, which would be, as far as we know, the farthest northern tagged bull shark. So that'd be cool. I'd love to get all of our gizmos and gadgets on a bull shark, you know, including the cat's cam. It'd be pretty wild to ride the back of a bull shark in Long Island waters. So none of the shark species that I've mentioned are new to Long Island. They're historically here, have been here.

It's just we're seeing increases in numbers of them, you know, in terms of the work that I've been doing. You there might be listeners that are like, I've been catching them things forever for 20 years. You know, I'm just so when I'm speaking, it's just from my 20 years on the water here, you know, targeting sharks.

Brittany (1:04:37)

So Greg, that would be monumental if you tag the first bull shark since you also tagged the first white shark.

Greg  (1:04:45)

Yeah, yeah, it's just a personal goal. You know, I think I like these wild and crazy adventures, you know, and ⁓ I don't need to catch another dusky shark. I've got my fill of dusky sharks. But I've not got my fill of sand tigers and certainly the baby whites. know, they're still, it's fun to fish for them. And, you know, I just like it. I could do without another blue shark or mako shark, you know.

Brittany (1:04:57)

You

Greg  (1:05:14)

Thresher sharks, like I said, I love them and I hate them. That's one that we're low on in terms of our data. It would be great if we could catch and tag more thresher sharks, because we don't have as much data on thresher sharks. But bull shark, that's a new one. I've never seen a bull shark, and that to me is like an iconic badass shark. So if the first bull shark that I actually saw was one that we caught,

was able to tag and stuff. It's just a personal goal of mine. It has nothing really to do with anything other than that. It'd just be neat to do it.

Brittany (1:05:51)

Yeah. Yeah. I get it. I love bull sharks. talk about girthy. You know, they're very stocky shark and they leave an impression. Yeah.

Greg  (1:06:05)

Yeah, I don't need like a 700 pounder to be my first thing. It'd be great if it was like, you know 150 Okay, I don't want the big guys. I don't want the big guys

Brittany (1:06:17)

Greg, I want to talk to you about the most recent paper that you guys published. For those that don't know, it's called Scratching the Surface, Swimming Depths of Multiple Shark Species in New York, Coastal Waters and Implications for Aerial Monitoring. What was the goal of that paper?

Greg  (1:06:37)

So the goal of this paper was to take a look at our depth data from sharks in Long Island waters along the shoreline and look at the effectiveness of drones and surveillance from beaches and boats and helicopters that New York State had put a lot of effort into in terms of trying to keep beach goers safe. And so we were

positioned with the data set that we had to really get a good sense of how effective would this visual observation be. And so that's what that paper was about.

Brittany (1:07:18)

What did you end up finding?

Greg  (1:07:19)

that visually it's pretty hard to see sharks in Long Island waters. Most of the shark work is done all by seeing the shark, right? So you're flying helicopters, you're flying drones, you have increased lifeguards looking, you have increased boat patrols looking, everything is all visual in terms of determining whether there sharks there or not. And so...

from our data, we showed that most of the sharks, most of the time, are going to be below where they're visually able to be seen. So you could have lots and lots of sharks on a beach and never see them, even if you had all of those methods being employed at the same time, you wouldn't be able to see the sharks. And even if you do see sharks, there's a very, very good chance that there are a whole bunch of other sharks there that you're not seeing as well. So even if, there's only one and it's, you know,

whatever, thousand yards off the beach. There's, chances are there's a lot more in that area. So we just feel that, you know, there's more effective tools out there that could try to, that should be implemented. We're not saying that drones should be thrown in the garbage. We are saying that it's a tool, not necessarily the tool. And from time and time throughout the world where there've been naughty sharks and

people that have to deal with it, that they've found other more effective tools for keeping people safe at the beach.

Brittany (1:08:56)

Would you say that it might be possible for drones to monitor schools of fish like Manhattan or bird activity instead of necessarily just patrolling a coastline in order to beach goers?

Greg  (1:09:11)

Yeah,

I mean, think that that that's getting at sort of what what I'm I guess part of what I'm alluding to, you know, is that there's more than just seeing the sharks. So, you know, we have great cats cam footage from the back of sand tiger sharks that we tagged last year that are swimming literally under the bunker schools and you wouldn't be able to see them. And some of the sand tiger footage shows three or four sand tigers all swimming right on the bottom, right underneath the bunker school. And you would never be able to see those sharks from

from the air. certainly increasing, know, sharks are chewing on bunker. And so if you could, you know, and that's part of what my messaging is for, you know, education and how do people, because I get asked a lot, like how is it safe to swim and that, you know, what do do to help protect yourself? And so, you know, stay away from bunker schools, stay away from bunker schools. So certainly using drones to see the increased activity. If there's a lot of dolphins in a particular area, you know, dolphins are

feeding on sharks, it's I think a little bit of a misconception that if dolphins are around, you're safe from sharks. You know, I've seen plenty of sharks and dolphins swimming together on the same, you know, bunker school, you know, is if there's a bunker school with lots of seagulls on it, chances are that bunker school is going to have sharks on it, you know, because the sharks are coming in, they're pushing the bunker to the surface a lot of times. And so it's easy for the seagull to pick it off or maybe, you know, the shark swipes at a bunker and doesn't quite get it. So now the bunkers

injured and so it's an easier meal for seagulls so I'm specifically looking for bunker schools that have seagulls on them to help increase the chances that there's going to be sharks that I can catch and tag on that bunkers. You know the shark problem for New York is new to New York but it's not a new problem to the world. There have been other places in the world that have been dealing with this situation for decades and so what do they do? know what has been effective and there have been studies that have looked at what is the secession

of dealing with naughty sharks. And it's pretty remarkable how this paper basically goes through the succession. Like throw money at the shiny object first. And then guess what? That doesn't work. So then throw money at the next thing. And that doesn't work. And then it's like, well, all right. They get boxed into it go, what else can we do? Well, let's educate. Yeah, but that's not enough money. But it works. And so that's single-handedly what

keeps coming back as the cheapest, most effective tool at getting at beach safety is educate the public. Don't swim in bunker schools. Don't swim at dusk and dawn. Looking at water temperatures as more more data is becoming available. Times of year, sticking in groups. Don't swim near structures. So there's a lot, just educating that.

A lot of the sharks on Long Island are interested in eating fish. They're not interested in attacking things as big as they are, which is, you know, most of the sharks that I interact with are five, six feet long, about 200 pounds, you know, so the average person is on or around five or six feet long, around 200 pounds. So for these sharks, you know, bumping into something that big, nipping something that big, that's part of their norm. I see it every day as these sharks are swimming in...

around with each other trying to vie to get that food. And so a lot of the bites could be just that. Just get out of my way. A lot of the people that were bit, from my understanding, were literally in or very near the edge of bunker schools. Well, this is where the sharks are going to be. education. I mean, I've never told this story to anyone that they're like, oh, that's ridiculous. I can't believe that. They're like, oh, all right, that makes sense. So stay away from bunker schools. Yeah.

that you just reduced your chances of a negative interaction tremendously. And I can't tell you how many people I see sitting on their boogie boards, sitting on their surfboard, literally in a bunker school or right on the edge, know, two, three feet away from the edge of a bunker school. That's where I throw my baits to try and catch the sharks. And there's your feet there. There's, you you're there. So I would much rather see time, effort and energy being put into education. And

research. So we've got a bunch of sharks tagged, but there's a whole bunch of sharks that haven't been tagged. And so if we could start to just amass a bigger data set, we could refine what are the temperatures that these different species of sharks prefer. What times of year are they in particular areas? Start to make these better connections between water clarity and likelihood of being there. So weather reports are projections based on data.

So maybe with enough data we could have shark projection reports that A, there's an increased chance because of X, Y, and Z that there might be sharks between East Hampton and Shinnecock because of whatever. It's there, we just don't know it yet. So I would like to see some funding diverted away from drones and into education and research.

Brittany (1:14:28)

As a beachgoer, if they're sitting on the beach, they're tanning and they're ready to hop in the water to cool off. What would you recommend them to scan for in the water to stay away from?

Greg  (1:14:41)

So certainly would be to look for bunker schools and they're very easy to see they're these giant dark patches if the water's know calmer you'll hear almost hear them they flick their tails there's these tons of these little and that's their tails flicking the surface of the water so you can hear them you can see them you know and if you see bunker schools that you know that are fairly close

you know, don't get in the water, watch and see what happens. Maybe a whale's gonna jump out of the middle of it with its mouth open. Maybe you'll have dolphins coming through. Like it's a really awesome experience to see. We literally have National Geographic's playing out on our beaches almost every day in the summertime on these bunker schools. You know, certainly if you do see whales feeding in an area or dolphins or, you like I was saying, the seagulls, you know, concentrated in a small area, the little turns, not so much the little small turns.

They are going to be going after smaller fish that typically our sharks aren't going to be interested in. So you don't have to worry about the turns. But if you see this activity, just stay out of the water and wait for it to clear. If you do want to swim in groups, sharks are always weighing risk versus reward. Like, it worth it for me to take time, effort, and energy and potentially get hurt to go in and check out this potential food source? And so if you're in a big group,

four, five people, six people versus one shark, the shark's gonna be like, nah, it's not worth it. Typically, unfortunately we can't ask the shark, hey, why did you bite this person? What was it about that? But just thinking logically and watching these sharks interact with each other, and what's been shown throughout history, throughout areas where naughty sharks have shown up. So that would be the two big things.

Also, limit your time in the water. You have to have a shark and a person in the water at the same time. So if you're in the water for five minutes, you've had five minutes of a chance of being explored by a shark. If you're in the water a half hour, well now you're in the water, you've had a half hour to be explored by a shark. just be, if you're really concerned about negative interactions with sharks, limit the amount of time that you're in the water.

So these are some very basic things that you could do super easily to reduce your almost zero chance anyways. mean, the worst year that New York had, I think we had 13 negative interactions, and that was 13 individuals out of billions of opportunities. So think about the number of people that were hitting, not just the number of people, but the number of times those people. So you might go, I hate the beach. The only thing that brings me to the beach are

Brittany (1:17:23)

at the beginning.

Greg  (1:17:31)

Dead sharks and shark tags. I am not a beach goer, but you know, lots of people are so, but so you go to the beach, you got all your stuff with you. How many times do you get in the water and get out of the water and over the course of so every time you got in the water, that was an opportunity that could have gone bad. So not only is there millions of individuals, each of those individuals are in and out of the water. So I say it's billions of opportunities that a shark could have had a negative interaction with a person and 12 went bad.

or went bad. know, this past season, I don't know that we had any, were there any last season? The season before that, I think there was maybe two. So, I mean, it's infinitesimally small chance that you're gonna have a negative interaction with a shark.

Brittany (1:18:20)

One thing I want to point out, you're actively seeking sharks, you're trapping the water for them, trying to fish for them. And like last summer, how many sharks did you actually end up getting in the season?

Greg  (1:18:31)

Yeah, so last summer was actually a bad, was a tough season for us. You know, typically I fill out between 60 and 70 data sheets a season. So for the whole season, last year, I think I had 25 and it wasn't for lack of trying for whatever reason, you know, we just couldn't seem to connect with where the sharks are or where they were last season. So definitely noticed the downturn in the number of bunker schools that were around. So, you know, sharks follow the bunker schools. So if there's

Brittany (1:18:40)

whole season.

Greg  (1:19:01)

You know, just anecdotally being out on the water visually, you know, I mean, we spent a lot of time trying to find bunker schools to use for bait and to, you know, attract, you know, hopefully try and catch sharks. And it was really hard for us last year. So, you know, that could have trimmed down on the number of sharks that we had access to just because they were feeding somewhere else. They weren't concentrated in and around all these bunker schools up and down the South Shore.

Brittany (1:19:30)

Those numbers alone should give beachgoers and swimmers a little moment to sigh that, you know, there really aren't that many in with how big our waters are, right? How vast it is. There aren't that many sharks out there. We're not talking about numbers of thousands of sharks necessarily. We're talking maybe a couple hundred.

Greg  (1:19:53)

you know, people aren't swimming more than a couple hundred yards off the beach. Very rarely are you gonna find people swimming a half a mile or a mile out into the ocean. ⁓ That's very small. So, you know, the chances of a shark being, you know, very, very close to the beach, they're there. I I was fishing for them last year, you know, literally right there, but it's a very narrow strip. There's a lot of other water that sharks can be in. I mean, even in...

20 feet of water, gotta swim pretty far offshore to get 20 feet of water along the south shore of Long Island. you there are lots of sharks. I've seen some drone footage that's been shared with me that, I mean, there's in the fall, you we have the fall run, which a lot of fishermen and people are familiar with, which is, you know, the migration of striped bass and bluefish and, you know, tunas and stuff. the fall run happens with the sharks as well. You know, there's a large, I mean, it's...

was pretty awesome to be out there and be literally, as far as you could see, sharks around you. But it's not every day, it's not every beach.

They're here, most of the sharks that are in our waters don't have the capacity or the desire to go after things that are this big for food. Their teeth are long and thin. They're designed to grab a hold of and sink into fish. They're not designed to grab and cut off pieces of flesh. So a shark could nip us, which is basically what most of the negative interactions from

you know, the pictures and stuff that I saw were they were simply sharks nipping people. There was no way that that was that was the shark was intending on attacking to eat the person. mean, I don't know. There was some pretty gruesome footage from last summer where a dolphin was was being attacked by I think three or four sharks. And I think it was I think it was off.

Gilgote Beach or somewhere around there, Fire Island, I want to say, possibly. So there was a dolphin that obviously was injured or something sick, and there were a few sharks that found it. And it was really gruesome to watch. These sharks were attacking that dolphin. They were coming in at high rates of speed. They were biting it and that sort of stuff. an attack is different than a

Brittany (1:22:22)

An interaction.

Greg  (1:22:24)

The other thing to point out, we talk about all these young sharks, these juvenile sharks. Some of the bites could have been from shark that has, you're the first human that that shark has ever seen. We have lots of young of the year, the dusky sharks. Some of the dusky sharks that we caught, I watched them, they're chewing at everything. They're like a little puppy. They're biting the seaweed that's floating. You flip a watermelon rind in the water and they're coming to bite on that.

They're biting water bottles. They're biting the back of the boat. They're just biting everything that they come in contact with. They don't have fingers and thumbs to kind of feel what's going on. They have their mouths. And so they're exploring their environment and learning about it by biting things. But I can tell you, a two-foot dusky shark comes up and decides to take a little nip. You're going to the hospital to get some stitches. mean, they're very powerful jaws. They have super sharp teeth. But there's no way that that shark was

planning on attacking and eating you, was just learning like, what is this thing? So again, potentially, I can't speak shark. I can't ask a baby dusky shark, like, why are you going around biting everything? But there is some just common sort of observations that you can infer, I think, with some sort of certainty that they're exploring their environment.

Brittany (1:23:46)

Just like I think of a young German shepherd, right? They kind of are land sharks within their first year of life. Yeah, mean, look at anything.

Greg  (1:23:56)

Any baby is that you watch National Geographic's TV anything they're always putting things in their mouth like that's how That's how they learn so

Brittany (1:24:05)

Sharks are going to be the same way.

Greg  (1:24:07)

I can't say that for certain, it would make a lot of sense. I have to be careful as I choose my words because haters hate. I don't want to give haters more opportunities to hate. If it looks like a duck, it quacks like a duck. In my world, it's probably a duck.

Brittany (1:24:11)

make sense.

He

Yeah. From a diver's perspective, there are some people that avoid diving for fear of sharks. Based on what you saw in the data, would you and what you've seen on the water, would you say that?

It's reasonable for somebody to avoid scuba diving for the chance of an interaction with a shark.

Greg  (1:24:57)

So none of the negative interactions that have happened were scuba divers that I know of. None of them.

Brittany (1:25:04)

All swimmers.

Greg  (1:25:06)

at the beach. I also have very, very, very good information of spear fishermen in Merich's Inlet and some other inlets that they're not supposed to be in, that they see sand tiger sharks and they see sand bar sharks. And these are people that know what sharks look like. They certainly know that it's a shark and not an alligator or you know.

Anaconda or striped bass, you like they can tell that it's a shark, you know, and You know, they're they're spear fishing quite a bit. They're down there They've as far they've never shared any stories of depredation, know of a shark coming and swiping something off their speared stick You know, they've never had, know, the sharks are either just sitting there or you know, they move out of the way so there's lots of opportunities for negative interactions with people submerged underwater and

As far as I know, none of the negative interactions that have happened have been with in those situations.

Brittany (1:26:09)

So people should definitely not avoid this sport due to shark.

Greg  (1:26:14)

You know, and just with talking with you, I mean, how many sharks have you seen on wrecks on Long Island? And I think you're out there quite a bit. Yeah.

Brittany (1:26:18)

None.

Do?

Then thousands of dives and unfortunately I haven't seen one.

Greg  (1:26:29)

You know, it's not that they're not there. You know, they are always weighing risk versus reward like I was talking about. you know, they're there, they're probably just outside of your field of view, you know, and that's kind of by design. Like they're like, hey, what is this thing? Like, this, okay, it's, know. And again, most of the shark species that we have on Long Island are not interested in or have the capacity to eat something as big as a human, you know, and then...

I mean, you don't even get them to come buzz you with your GoPros. I I always said that if GoPros weren't so expensive, I would use GoPros as bait rather than squid or bunker because you put a GoPro in front of a shark on a stick next to a live swimming bunker to try to get the interaction. The shark will go after the GoPro every time, but I'm spending $900 a day for GoPros. So, you know, divers have a lot of

shark attractant, batteries and lights and metal and all that sort of stuff and

Brittany (1:27:33)

Yeah.

Greg  (1:27:33)

I think it's, yeah, that your chances are very, very, very, very small. Don't go diving in a bunker school. I wouldn't recommend creating that niche market. That might increase your chances of a negative interaction. If you're literally scuba diving under a bunker school or in and around a bunker school, that would certainly increase your chances of a negative interaction. doing the diving that I understand, spearfishing, diving, I mean,

I know lots of people that spend tremendous amounts of time at the Ponquogue Bridge, you know, and I haven't heard really too many of them talking about, you know, the sharks that they saw. And it's not because sharks aren't there. mean, there's been basking sharks in the back western part of Shinnecock Bay. There's, know, thresher sharks that have been seen swimming through the canal. There's sand tiger sharks that are caught every year in pound traps in Shinnecock Bay. There's angel sharks that have been caught in Shinnecock Bay. There's ⁓ hammerhead sharks. I mean, there's

It's not that the sharks aren't in the bay. Thresher sharks were caught in crab traps. So there's plenty of sharks in Shinnecock Bay. And there's tons and tons of people that swim at the Ponquogue Bridge, which should theoretically be a really good sharky spot. There's lots of food there. They can handle the current. I don't know of anybody that's ever seen a shark at Shinnecock diving there.

Brittany (1:28:55)

Right. Yeah, mostly just dogfish.

Greg  (1:28:59)

But which I don't count as real sharks. ⁓ Are you shark enthusiasts out there? They are real shark. ⁓

Brittany (1:29:01)

Yeah, I know. It definitely would not be.

enough for Greg. Not for me. No, definitely not. That's fair. Yes, that's a great point because there are so many people that, you know, saw your favorite movie. It left a lasting impression on them and especially the generation that saw it in theaters. You know, some people say they didn't go to the beach for years after that movie is released. trying to...

Greg  (1:29:28)

Yeah.

like really yeah crazy stuff but you know it happened it is cool I don't have you ever seen draws in the theater ⁓ yeah it's pretty cool

Brittany (1:29:42)

And it looks real. Yeah.

i have nothing to do

Greg  (1:29:55)

Good wherever you see it. Wherever you see draws.

Brittany (1:29:58)

But it's tough when you talk to people and they're immediately avoiding either swimming the beach or scuba diving just because of sharks, especially when you know that they're probably driving to work every day and they're missing out on so much opportunity.

Greg  (1:30:18)

Yeah, I mean you're much bigger risk of, you know, a negative interaction with a human than you are with a shark. I mean if people had the same reaction, which is in a lot of ways more appropriate to humans as they did with sharks, and just think about that, every time you saw a human you were running and screaming for your life. But the chances of that human that you're interacting with causing you harm is much higher than going to the beach and swimming and being...

having a negative interaction with a shark.

Brittany (1:30:49)

From that paper, did you guys see a difference in the different species that you were studying for where they spent time in the water?

Greg  (1:31:00)

Yeah, so I think that paper looked at 10 different species of sharks. And out of the 10 species, there were three that were actually ever sort of detectable, which for the paper we called detectable in the top, one to three meters. So that would be three to nine feet from the surface. So seven of the 10 were never in the top.

that top layer of water, the top 10 feet of water based on our studies. So something like a sand tiger shark is pretty much only bottom oriented. I think it was only up near the surface, a fraction of a percentage of the time of the data that we had. Whereas something like the smooth hammerhead, I believe, was the best. And that was like 20%, I think, of the time that we had data for was in that top 10 feet of water.

So very, very different swimming patterns and depths and stuff. Something like the white shark was a little bit more sort of mixed, spent some time at the surface, middle and bottom, but we definitely see, and that's part of the bigger question that we have is how are all these species of sharks, ⁓ some of which I catch literally in the same spot, because I'm anchored, how are they partitioning this water, this habitat, right? So no two organisms are supposed to occupy the same space.

And so, you know, how are these, how are the sharks here on Long Island getting around that? You know, is it so productive that it doesn't matter and they have all the food they could ever eat? Or are they, are there, you know, ways that they're partitioning it out? And, you know, from what we're starting to see, certainly temperature and depth is looking like it's playing a role, that there's certain temperatures and certain depths that different species of sharks utilize, either at different times or, you know, different scenarios.

Brittany (1:32:54)

Could that be based on some species are known to go to such great depths, the temperature has to be dramatically colder. Do you think that they would be using the time that they're spending closer to the surface for thermoregulation as opposed to maybe hunting? Yeah.

Greg  (1:33:12)

I think all of that's all wrapped up into it. We see if you watch, if you look at some of our tracks of the Baby White Sharks, you'll see them going along and then they hit a real warm pocket of water and they'll go down to depth to either avoid that pocket of water or maybe the thermal regulate. We don't necessarily know for sure ourselves, but like the hammerheads that we see, sometimes we'll see them at the surface and they're tipped.

and they have their dorsal fin out of the water and they're sort of tipped on their side and it's like they're sleeping, you know, they're just swimming at the same direction, the same speed. You can drive almost right up to them and you you have to get really, really close before they'll, you know, sort of like wake up and veer off. We've had them where, you know, they're swimming and they're swimming. I know they swim absolutely perpendicular to our jump slicks. So they swam right through it and made no course.

deter detour anything at all. it's like, know, is that, you know, hammerheads do feed on the bottom. Their bottom can be bottom oriented feeders looking for stingrays and stuff like that. So maybe, you know, they're they cool off and they come up to the surface to warm up and digest. Yeah. You know, again, we can't ask them, but maybe we'll slap by one of our cats cams on a on a hammerhead and watch them swim around, see what's happening. You know, white sharks, thresher sharks.

And ⁓ Mako sharks, these sharks are able to keep some of that internal body temperature. So they're able to fight sort of that cold. They're not exactly the same temperature as the water, like as some of the other species of sharks, like spinner sharks or hammerheads. So a white shark, because it maintains some of its body heat, could stay in colder water for longer. It's an adaptation for them so that they can stay in cooler waters with less competition for food and stuff like that. So they may not need to.

you know, sort of swim right at that surface water, temp, warm, surface water temperature to warm, warm up, they can kind of do it more at depth. you know, lots of cool questions and just, you know, as in science, one answer sort of leads to a lot more questions. So it's pretty wild how, you know, we only really collect two pieces of information, temp, the temperature and depth, but it can try to answer so many questions and

You know, it really gets you thinking. For me, I'm not the one necessarily thinking up these questions. That's where Dr. Curtis and the grad students and stuff like that come up with these questions. But it's cool to be sitting at the table and hear them chewing on what it might mean and how that might work and what more do we need to be able to answer that question. So it's cool for me to kind of be a fly on the wall as they're talking and then.

Brittany (1:36:00)

It's exciting. I'm looking forward to seeing the information that you guys start to collect more and more.

Greg  (1:36:07)

Yeah,

so you know one thing that that's been tough for us, we've done a really good job of collecting data, but just the way that our rollout has been and just you know the cards that we've been dealt for our research is it's been harder to publish the data, right? It's a lot of work to go through this and so we're really fortunate that we've got some some great partners and some opportunities that have presented itself where we have

pockets of our data that are now being analyzed and looked at and being, you know, hopefully, you know, with the goal of getting it written up. So stay tuned. We've been sitting on a lot of data for a lot of years and we finally now, I feel like, are starting to put that last piece of the puzzle together where there's a continuous pipeline. So the new data is coming in and there's a mechanism for it to be sort of analyzed and written up and then gotten out. And we can keep that going on a little bit better, you know, rate that we have.

Brittany (1:37:06)

Excellent. For those that don't have a boat, but they want to interact with sharks more, can they fish off the shore?

Greg  (1:37:17)

So great question. This is something that people think they can do and it is tremendously popular. You know, do any sort of Google searching or social media searching. The unfortunate part is that it's a ⁓ really, really bad practice. And fortunately, as it started to gain traction here in New York State, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation actively started to try and work on

rule changes to mitigate the amount of shore-based shark fishing that can happen in Long Island waters and New York waters. And so took several years with a lot of input from a lot of different people and organizations and really happy with what the changes in the rules have been because they didn't want to restrict legitimate striped bass, bluefish, surf casting fisheries, but they did want to restrict

the increase in shore bait shark fishing that was going on and they've done a nice job of that. So some of the rule changes, only way you can propel bait or lures is with the fishing pole. So what was happening with these shore bait shark fishermen is they would attach a giant tuna head or chunk of bait that you would never be able to cast to a drone. And they would have the drone fly it.

you know, a couple hundred yards offshore and drop the bait, or they would swim it out in their mouths, or they would kayak it out in their kayaks. And so by only being able to propel your lure or your bait, that greatly reduces the size of bait that you could put out there, which reduces the chances that you're going to interact with a shark. You're not allowed to chum from the beach unless it's clams or shellfish. There's a restriction in hook size.

⁓ As part of your equipment on the beach, you have to have a pair of bolt cutters You're not allowed to remove the shark from the water anymore So gone are the days of grabbing it by its tail and dragging it up on the beach and sitting on its back and lifting its head for and taking your selfie pictures for your Instagram posts with your flexing bulging miceps and tattoos so yeah, so you can't take the you cannot remove the shark from the water and and so

You know, these are all very concrete, obvious rules that are easy to enforce, which was part of the problem, you know, is enforcement. It was, you know, wishy-washy. The rules, the way that the laws were written was kind of wishy-washy. So it's pretty easy now to know, hey, I just saw you drone that piece of, and it doesn't matter what it is. You're not allowed to use a drone. You can only propel. You know, you just drag that shark up out of the water and are sitting on its back.

as per your Instagram post yesterday, you know, that to enforce these rules. And so why were they put in place? Why is shore based shark fishing so bad in my opinion? Because from our work, and again, this is just me being out on the water, almost 100 % of the sharks that you're going to catch shore based shark fishing are prohibited. And so we had the whole conversation about what prohibited shark species are and why they're prohibited, right? Their populations are low. They're slow to rebound.

And so we don't want to increase the number of fishing interactions with hooks and lines and stuff like that, because you're increasing the chances that these animals could be fought to exhaustion, could be foul hooked, and have some sort of injuries to their gills or hooked in their stomachs or something like that. Sharks have cartilage. They don't have bones for their... And they haven't had their skeletal system, hasn't had to support the weight of their bodies in, I don't know, a couple hundred million years.

So when you grab the shark by its tail and drag it backwards up onto the beach, the full weight of the shark is now pressing down on internal organs. Or if it's a female that's gravid, you know, the pups that are in there. So mom's weight could literally crush the pups that are inside that you so desperately need to be successfully born so that we can start to rebuild the population. So, you know, dragging a shark backwards, you're filling its gills full of sand. Not exactly a great

you know, thing for the gills. You're dragging the shark backwards by its tail. So you might be breaking its backs, know, hyper extending its back. You literally could be paralyzing that shark if you broke its back, you know, by popping the vertebrae, which are cartilage, not bone. So it's just really, really bad on all sorts of levels. anybody that really cares about sharks, has an interest in shark conservation, the last thing they should be doing is targeting sharks.

anywhere, you know, so, oh, I can go to South Carolina. It's still legal. Yeah, but the sharks that you're catching in South Carolina are almost all prohibited and they're going to be swimming to New York in the summertime or are passing through from New York down to Florida. So, yeah, so I am really happy that the Department of Environmental Conservation passed the rules that will really make it more difficult for shore-based shark fishermen to happen in New York waters and just encourage anybody that

cares about sharks to not practice shore-based shark fishing.

Brittany (1:42:38)

Playing devil's advocate, if somebody caught a shark and saw it witness it swim away, they could say to you, well, he swam away. Greg, what's the big deal? What are the chances that that shark actually survives?

Greg  (1:42:56)

Yeah,

so there's been, you know, scientists that have looked at that post-release mortality of shore-based shark fisheries. And, you know, I think the number for sand tigers was like eight or nine percent, I believe is the number, was about eight or nine for survival rates. So if you caught a hundred sharks, a hundred sand tigers, and you let them all go, nine of them would die. And you say, well, you know, all right, ninety, you know, one of them survived. What's the problem?

Brittany (1:43:12)

Rivalry.

Greg  (1:43:26)

Sand tigers are a prohibited species, right? It takes, I don't know, over almost a dozen years for them to become sexually mature. They only have two pups at most because of their reproductive cycle, and they only have those two pups every three years because they're gravid for almost two years. They take a year off. So those nine sharks that you just removed could be a significant, and that's just...

But think about the numbers of the thousands that are being caught up and down the South, all over the place. So just because it swims away doesn't mean that it survived. And even though the number might seem relatively low, you're talking about everyone matters. The other thing is, ⁓ I also have worked with the Department of Environmental Conservation to work on salvaging sharks that wash up dead on the beach.

A lot of the work that we do is reliant on them being fat dumb and happy. So we're not killing the sharks. So how are you supposed to know what the internal organs are of sharks? What, you know, what structures are, what, you know, what's going on unless you're able to, you know, have ones that wash up dead on the beach? Well, you know, some towns are very quick to get rid of the fact that they have sharks in their waters. And so as soon as the shark washes up, they immediately bury it. And so this is data.

valuable data that's being buried in the beach. And so I was working to try and create a network and to utilize Intel and help funnel those sharks that we're able to catch to the DEC so that there can be proper necropsy done. The samples can be shipped all over the country to support various research that's being done. And so the hot spots for sharks that wash up are a Long Fire Island shoreline.

Well, where's the biggest shore bay shark fishery? Along that same stretch, you know? So if you pull up the heat maps of where most of the dead sharks wash up, it's right down the beach from where most of the shore bay shark fishing happens. So, you know, again, like is it, you know, some of them it's very obvious there's the hook hanging out of their mouth and that sort of stuff, you know, like the haters can hate. But again, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck,

it's probably a duck. So there's some evidence that you could use that shows they're not all swimming away.

Brittany (1:45:55)

Now you did the necropsy on the shark that washed up in quag with your students,

Greg  (1:46:02)

We've done a few, yeah, we've done a few.

Brittany (1:46:04)

necropsies. So not only can they interact with sharks on your boat, see them alive, and then actually understand, you know, what's causing their death. Do you think that increasing the interactions that your students are having with sharks in different ways would help them to be more proactive and want to see sharks continue to

Greg  (1:46:32)

Yeah,

I mean it all it boils back down to that that education component that we were talking about right So if you educate the public in any way that you can, know, I'm fortunate that I have multiple avenues You know this being one of them Hopefully people listen to this and you know, they if they are one of these skeptics of sharks that they're like, wow Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, know and and start to like sort of lose that, you know just visceral inherent fear of Sharks and start to interact in ways that they may not you know

My students, I would like to say, take opportunities to come out, they look at sharks differently. They see them as animals that are having a hard time surviving and doing their thing, just like any other animal that's out there. They're not this mindless eating machine as they watch a shark swim around and swim around and swim around and bump the bunker and bump the bunker and swim away or swim straight through the chum slick without any movement or change in behavior.

Yes, my students will be the ones that are holding these government positions where they're making informed or trying to make informed decisions about beach safety or are the next mayor or the biologist at the DEC or lawmaker at Congress at whatever level. So I'm hopeful that the ripple effect of the interactions that I'm able to provide with these students will play out where they'll be more.

resources put into education from Parks Department and from the EC and from you know local municipalities, rather than dumping hundreds of thousands and they're up to millions now for just New York, you know with the drone stuff so take some of that and divert it to research and so so I'm hopeful that there's the ripple effect will be there and and there'll be better decisions made or just know to ask

And that's one of the big things too that we, know, in our program, you know, is just ask, like who are you consulting with to get these ideas and to do these things? does, you know, the number of shark researchers are really small and none of them that we've talked to have been contacted by various municipalities that are making decisions. It's like, so where are you getting your decision? Who's making these decisions? Where's the idea even coming from? You know, did you bounce it off a shark scientist?

And for a lot of these, the answers they couldn't have because if they did, they probably would have made different decisions. Or if they did ask, why didn't you listen? Why did you do the exact opposite of what would have been recommended? So I think that's also a very powerful tool that could come from students that have an opportunity to interact with any shark scientist is.

knowing what your limitations are and just that there's a resource out there to ask.

Brittany (1:49:29)

Thank you, Greg. So I'm to go through some rapid fire questions. ⁓ Favorite shark?

Greg  (1:49:38)

Favorite shark is probably still the baby white shark.

Brittany (1:49:42)

biggest shark you've caught.

Greg  (1:49:44)

The biggest shark that we caught would have been probably a 12, 13 foot, 400 pound sand tiger shark.

Brittany (1:49:52)

the most surprising data you've collected.

Greg  (1:49:55)

that the South Shore of Long Island is the third confirmed nursery in the world for baby white sharks.

Brittany (1:50:01)

And did you have a day that left a great impression, like a deeper impression than other days when you were collecting data?

That one doesn't have to be rapid fire, that's last one.

Greg  (1:50:18)

We've had a couple of world firsts as far as we know. ⁓ I mean, still number one probably is putting that first satellite pop off tag on a young of the year white shark. I that is just such like in terms of just shark stuff. I mean, it's a white shark, which to me is the most iconic animal on the planet. It's probably the most recognized, you know, and for us to have such a significant contribution to the white shark.

I think that's still for me is just incredible, like as far as we know, world first. And then we, as far as we know, we're the first to put our CATS cams, so the camera tag on a common thresher shark. So I think that, you know, if they're not world first, there haven't been a whole lot of people that have done it. And so to be a part of that very small group to have contributed, which I think are pretty cool, significant scientific.

Contributions to Shark World is pretty cool.

Brittany (1:51:20)

And then eventually tagging the first bull shark and... Yeah.

Greg  (1:51:24)

And when I come back, if I get asked back, I'll talk about my Bullshark experience. There's been tons of Bullsharks tagged. just, as far as we know, haven't been necessarily once tagged this far north with the types of tags that we have to put out.

Brittany (1:51:40)

Some closing questions we talked about jaws and it's your favorite movie Do you remember when you first saw it?

Greg  (1:51:49)

Ooh, first time I saw Jaws. Ooh. I do not remember the first time I saw Jaws. I have literally probably watched that movie a hundred times. ⁓ I say that because I show Jaws every year to my students. And so I have, you know, four different groups of students pretty much every year for the last 20 some years. So right there is almost a hundred. And then

I'm flipping through the stations and it comes on I just cannot not watch it again so there's been lots of Saturdays and Sundays and Tuesday nights where my wife comes in she's like you have to be kidding me you're watching this movie again.

Brittany (1:52:30)

Again, favorite quote from Jaws?

Greg  (1:52:36)

I probably say, you all know me, you know how I earn a living. That's probably the saying that I do the most out all the Jaws movies. Quint is definitely my favorite character. So he has just so many Quintisms. I'll stick with that one.

Brittany (1:52:57)

Okay, that was going be my next question, favorite character.

Greg  (1:53:00)

Yeah, favorite character by far is Quint. He's, you know, he supposedly was modeled after Frank Mundus and Frank Mundus is definitely somebody that I wish I had an opportunity to interact with. My thought is if I'm understand the timeline, there would have been an opportunity to go out on his boat when I first came to Long Island. I think he was still here. But, you unfortunately,

It'll only be a memory. Maybe AI can bring me bring me back to Frank Mundus be out on his boat with VR glasses one day or something. But yeah, so.

Brittany (1:53:39)

That'd be neat. Well, Greg, thank you so much for being on the show and talking sharks with us. If people wanted to find out more or see the data that you guys have collected and where the sharks are traveling, where should they go for that?

Greg  (1:53:54)

Yeah, so SOFO.org, SOFO.org. So super simple website. That's the South Fork Natural History Museum's website. Along the top row, there's a whole bunch of drop down tabs and one of them is the shark research and education tab. So if you hover over that, you know, there'll be all sorts of things that come up interviews we've done in the past, papers we've written, just mission statements, pictures. So, you know, we're in we're updating.

You know, there's a lot that's been coming in these days, so it's not quite as updated as, you know, it's not like up to 2026, but, you know, it's worth going back and checking out, you know, periodically over time.

Brittany (1:54:34)

Great, thank you so much. And we'll stay tuned for how your season goes this year. Wish you guys good luck. And then we'll have to talk to you again for season two of Dive Long Island.

Greg  (1:54:47)

Yeah, it'd be great to be back. Thank you for the opportunity. Thanks, And congratulations.

Brittany (1:54:51)

Thank you.

Thank you for listening to the Dive Long Island podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to follow and subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. For sponsorship opportunities, guest ideas, or to connect, you can reach me at infodivelongisland@gmail.com and follow along on social media  @divelongisland. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you between dives.