South Africa Sharks: Building a Career Protecting Sharks When Fear Shapes the Narrative

1:00:00 On today's episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast, we have Low Clossons from South Africa here to talk about her career in not only with sharks, but in marine science. We talk about pipe fish. We talk about an endemic seahorse in South Africa. We talk about just living in South Africa. Dave recounts a lot of stories from South Africa. It is so much fun and I can't wait to bring this to you. So let's start the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. I'm your co-host Andrew Lewin here with my co-host Dr. David Ebert. David, we went back a little in time and recounted a little bit of your experience in South Africa, in South Africa, while talking about Low's experience in South Africa.

1:00:49 A lot of fun. What do you want people to get out of this interview? I think just a little bit of a tour guide of South Africa, just some of the real beautiful places there. I talked about the garden route and Nisna and stuff, all beautiful places. And of course, whatever we do is have someone on from South Africa. For me, it's a kind of chance to go down memory lane and get a little nostalgic. I had such a wonderful time and wonderful experience in South Africa as a young person there. And thankfully, we talked about some stuff we're not going to include in this podcast today. That will leave off for now.

1:01:30 But no, it's wonderful. I mean, I just I always talk very highly of South Africa. I love I just love the country's beautiful place. And I just the people are wonderful. And I've just had some really good friends. Low's a person I've gotten to know be friends with in the last couple of years. And we talk about how, you know, she was really working on everything but sharks and rays. And we got connected through a mutual friend, Jonathan Giddens, who was on the podcast. Yeah. Last year in August, I think she was. And I just talked about how we network and the marine community small. And one thing led to another. And now Lowe's kind of diving into the shark world, which is kind of cool to see. So I love that. Yeah, I love that. I think that's awesome.

1:02:11 It's going to be, you know, I think it's always fun for me to learn about sort of the geography of South Africa when we have people from that country on. But also just, you know, when we hear about South Africa, especially on this, on this podcast, we talk a lot about sharks. But in this episode, we really got to focus in on the diversity of animals that are there, but also the discovery that needs to be made. One interesting thing is a lot of times we have people on from like South America or from like the Southeast Pacific, you get a lot of people like who haven't done research because funding hasn't focused on their countries in a lot of places. And now they're just discovering so many new things with like manor rays and these little sharks and all this kind of stuff. You've worked there as well.

1:02:51 And you have so many collaborators around that are able to do this. But even in South Africa, a country that you would think would have dedicated resources to marine science just based on like the shark science that they do, still discovering a lot of things that are happening. We talked about the discovery of a species of seahorse in this episode. And that ends up being like they didn't know that it was there. And so I think it was really cool to talk to Lo about this because she was really kind of finding her way within marine science and being like where do I belong based on sort of like networking and availability of stuff and like, oh, this interests me as an explorer. And that's really where we dive into is like her science career so far as an explorer and where that's going to take her in the future.

1:03:35 So I can't wait for people to listen to this interview. So they let's get into the interview with Lo Claussens. Enjoy everybody and we'll talk to you after. Halo, welcome to the Beyond Jaws podcast. Are you ready to talk about all things marine biology and of course sharks? I am. Thank you for having me. Well, welcome to another episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast where we have an awesome guest to kick off our new year. We have the fabulous Dr. Lo Claussens from South Africa. And you know me, if we have somebody from South Africa, you know, it's gonna be an awesome show today. So Lo started her journey studying South Africa's endangered and endemic Nysna seahorse for her PhD. She after completing her PhD, she continued to research and conservation work in the Nysna estuary, which is in the south coast of South Africa, continue to work in and worked as the director for the Nysna basin project.

1:04:25 Her work during the critically endangered pipefish led to the species being downlisted to endangered in 2025. She's been a National Geographic explorer since 2019 due to her work on the pipefish. Also during this time, she discovered the first pygmy seahorse from Africa. I won't try to pronounce the name. It's Hippocants or something or other as well as a new pygmy pipefish. I won't try to pronounce that one either because I don't understand it. It's so easy. I know. I'll let you do that in just a moment. For this work, she was named a finalist for the Future Nature Award in 2020. In 2021, Lo moved to Palau to lead the development research of conservation of Palau's National Marine Sanctuary, which he took her first open and deep ocean diving experiences. During her time in Palau, she developed locally led offshore research focused on local capacity development and guidance of onshore of offshore research in small island developing states.

1:05:14 It was during this time she saw the light and started to gravitate to sharks when she recorded the Pacific sleeper shark for the first time in Palau waters, thus extending its known range at the time. And we extended it beyond that actually. So and thanks to our mutual friend, Jonathan Goodens, Giddens, who was on the podcast last August, she connected Lo and I, which resulted in a publication documenting this range extension. Now here's where Lo's story really gets good. In 2023, Lo moved to Timor Leste taking up a postdoctoral fellowship with WorldFish to study the unknown ecosystems and the remote South Island and South Coast. During this time, she started seeing very shark and ray species being landed. And this resulted in a collaboration with me and Adriana Pestana, who was also on the podcast last March, documenting the shark and ray fawn of Timor Leste.

1:06:01 In fact, one of the cool discoveries we've already made was done through a live video of the painted swell shark, which led to another publication with Jonathan Lo and I. Lo will be featured in an upcoming episode of the Save our Seas Foundation supported documentary series, Searching for Lost Sharks, Extinct or Live. We'll have an update for you on that later. Lo's experiences have made her a cheerleader for the underdogs and those that are too often forgotten, like seagrasses, muck and weird critters to remote coastal communities. She's a member of both the IUCN Species Survival Commission, Seahorse, Pipefish and Sea Gragons. I'll have to find out what those are and the IUCN SSC species monitoring specialist group. Lo has published 40 papers, including two with me, and she has one book to her credit.

1:06:43 She's received numerous grants and awards. She's a frequent presenter at conferences, a public speaker and featured in various media platforms. And today she claims she's been on the Beyond Jaws podcast. And with that, Lo, welcome to the pinnacle. We can start it. It looks like and one more thing. Lord, look, Lo did her PhD at Rhodes University, which is my alma mater. I did my PhD. So there you go. It's the road connection. Old road alumni, alumni stick together, right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So so well, so I'm gonna ask you the question we ask everybody. So how did you first get interested in marine science? Yeah, so this is a long story, but I'm good.

1:07:25 We have time. We got lots of time. Okay. So as you said, I'm from South Africa, but I was born in the middle of South Africa in a little mining town, which is very depressing. Objectively. So I grew up there born and bred. The ocean was very far removed from my life, but I was privileged enough to go on summer holidays along the South coast. South Africa, which is the garden route and you know, people that have been there know it's magical. So and from when I was three months old privileged enough to go to the ocean. So the ocean was always there, but it was just not in my everyday life.

1:08:09 So after school where I was pretty average to be fair, right? I went on a gap year to Scotland and I came back and my parents are like, okay, you're going to study. We don't care what you study, but you're going to study. So I enrolled to study journalism at the University of Pretoria, which is also very far removed from any ocean. Right. So as you can imagine, I was not having a good time. I also quite suffered from depression and social anxiety during that time while still, but during that time. And then I dropped out middle of the year and I was a lost cause, I think, plus my within your first year.

1:08:53 Yeah, within my first year of journalism, I was like, yeah, no, it's not working. I am leaving now. And then it was a bit of a bit of a period of I don't know what's happening, you know, with my life. I know I like the ocean. I know like animals. I know like all these things and then by happenstance, we went to the University of South Africa, UNISA, which is the distance learning university. Right. So you're never on campus. You sit in your house and you study. And I went there and this friendly lady is like, okay, you can do zoology, environmental science. You can do a BA or a BSC. Right. So BSC is where you have all your sciencey bits in it. And the BA is just a little bit of the softer kind of social side of it.

1:09:35 Right. And just by I don't know why I went to BSC route. And then I went home and I studied for three years. And then I moved back to the middle of South Africa for some reason, right? So away from the ocean, which is a rookie mistake. I went to the mine doing random things. I moved on to my honors and my dad always said, you know, there's no money in marine biology.

1:10:17 And he's not wrong. He's not wrong. No, not wrong. You know, and he's from an engineering background. So then I went freshwater. I did my honors and freshwater ecosystem health. I did my Masters in freshwater ecosystem health at the University of Johannesburg. But it was that Masters degree that changed everything. The Masters degree was made out of modules. And one of the modules took me down for a coastal module down to Neisner on the south coast. And we were in the estuary there. We met this old professor, Professor Brian Allenson, also from Rhodes. He was 90 something, right?

1:10:58 So he was old and he met us. He took us our group out on the estuary. It was raining. It was cold. It was miserable. But I had the time of my life. It was amazing and nice and it's beautiful. It's got these beautiful heads with the ocean coming in. It's beautiful. And we saw the little seahorse in an aquarium there and Professor Allenson was talking about how he would want to do some research in it. And I was like, oh, interesting, interesting old man. And I said to him, if you ever get money, you let me know, right? But the course came to an end.

1:11:39 We went home and I think the key thing is that I sent a follow-up email and I said, hey man, do you have some money? And then it all came together. We got some money from local residents. Neisner is known for very rich people who had too much money. And then I got some funding because again, I wasn't a scholarship kid, right? My marks were never good enough for scholarship. A lot of us can relate to that. So we got money from the community. I moved down to Neisner.

1:12:19 I enrolled in Rhodes University. Prof Brian Allenson was already retired, but you know, he would see was from there. And then I got a brilliant co-supervisor professor, Allen Hudson, who was still at Rhodes. And everyone did work in Missouri and he was chief director in the early stages of Inside the beach, trying to make sure you have the best begins, right, within Sweeney learning. What were the biggest challenges when you started that that PhD going into the marine park cuz he did like the honors and freshwater.

1:13:06 You had the interest there and you had the basics of science, like doing as like as aology or science degree. knowledge that you had to learn? It's catching up. And I feel like the ocean is just so dynamic and there's just so much diversity in it. And with a PhD, you do a deep dive, right? So I just needed to teach myself so many things. And it's funny you say catch up because I feel like my whole life I'm catching up. I'm running and running and running and running to catch up because I always felt I was a little behind.

1:13:47 I started my PhD quite late. I worked in between, it wasn't a you pitch up and you study, study, study and you've got a PhD. It was always late. So I'm always rushing to catch up. And just working in the ocean, getting a skipper's license, diving. I did my open water like in 2004-ish and I did like a dive a year. But then suddenly in 2014, I got to Neisner. I dusted my little regulator off. And then I got into the history alone and I just kind of gave myself a refresher, which I wouldn't suggest to masses of people because that's how you die.

1:14:28 (laughing) But it worked out. It worked out. And I figured out how to dive again. To be fair, it was like five meters of water. It's fine. You can stand up again. It's cool. Yeah. So just all that. And it was relatively lonely. So as someone with social anxiety that works, but professionally you're isolated also, because you're not at a campus. You don't see your lectures. Prof. Allenson was amazing because he was like old school. So he taught you the value of taking time, taking care when we did water quality analysis, right? And it was still like the old school method.

1:15:11 And he, yeah, I mean, not that I can remember anything now, but like the old school method, you know? How to measure like nitrates and phosphates and things like that and stuff. And he started from scratch. If he pulled out a sensor, he would start describing to you how it works, point by point. So valuable. So it's not, yeah, it's, but, you know, it was slow going a little bit alone, a lot of trying to do it yourself and figuring it out. But yeah, having someone like that teach you these things is amazing. I got to say as a PR plug, that Nysna area in that garden route, if people listen to show, if you ever go to South Africa, take the time to drive from Cape Town up to Port Elizabeth and just take some days.

1:16:01 That's just a beautiful area. I used to drive it all the time. It was just, it was just, it's an amazing area there. And so you actually kind of landed in a really nice area if you had to be. I mean, it could be worse, right? Yeah. I mean, it could be up in Johannesburg for some place. Yeah. Yeah. But it was interesting. And I think, you know, people always say, it doesn't matter where you live, you know, you make the best of it or whatever. But I think, and I think many people in the ocean, you know, sciences and the ocean world can appreciate. Yeah, that might be so, but ocean people require an ocean. Yeah. So, you know, once you're there, then you're like, okay. So I got to ask it as a side question, as an inside question.

1:16:42 Do you ever, do you ever see any of the, the, the infamous Nysna elephants when you were there? No, no, but this is now a side tangent thing. Totally. Because Sandparks is doing research on this, this Nysna elephants, but fun fact, it's not elephants. It's elephant. And they put out, it's just one and a female shame. And they put out action cameras, like cameras to like motion sensor cameras and they captured this one little elephant that was walking around alone, playing with these like, like forestry equipment. And this lady was giving this presentation and it was this at his presentation that I was this lone Nysna elephant walking around.

1:17:29 There used to be, there used to be back in the day when I was there, there used to be three around, at least. And they were, they used to talk about them. They're legendary to supposedly see they're like, they're a local endemic species, a subspecies. Yeah, species, I think is a big word. Like a sub? Yeah. But they're separate. They're separate. Yeah. It's kind of a, yeah. And they live, I mean, it's a totally different environment, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's all photos of many of them walking around, but I think they just get squeezed out, right? Yeah. If you're listening to the episode, go, go, Google up the Nysna elephant. It's kind of an interesting story, but yeah, I didn't know they're down to one. There was like three and it was like a big, it was a big, I never saw them, but it was like a big deal if you, if somebody, if you encountered them down in that area and stuff, but it's kind of a, kind of.

1:18:12 But I wasn't lucky enough. No, especially. Well, it wasn't in the estuary soaps. Yeah. That's their problem. Yeah, that's their problem. So you're working in the estuary down there in Nysna and you're working on the the pipefish, right? No, the seahorse. The seahorse. Okay. The Nysna seahorse. The seahorse. Okay. And actually you can, why don't you give the scientific names of those two species that I couldn't pronounce earlier? Okay.

1:19:03 This one, I'm surprised, Dave, that you weren't able to, I always have trouble once he says, I just kind of tune out. I'm like, I don't know who that is. Like, well, then when this one, he couldn't figure it out. I'm surprised. They got my attention. I wasn't sure. I probably could have got through the hippocampus now, but the other one, the pipe, uh, pipe horse fish. Yeah. That one I probably couldn't have done. I couldn't have done. I probably could have got that one done. And I, so I, I'm not, I'm pretty shameless. And if I mangled the name, I mangled the name. I don't know. Yeah. You got to try it. I got to give it a shot. So, so what, so I got, so I have to ask you, what's the, what's the derivation of the species name for those two? Uh, what the reasoning behind it? Yeah.

1:19:43 Yeah. What, what's, you know, um, so the taxonomist here, so if it's wrong, just blame the taxonomist always. Sure. And he's like the signated taxonomist in the world. Right. Um, so he becomes this gnarly. That was an interesting story because we were people kind of got to know me as the signated person in South Africa. Um, well, anyway. Um, so we went up to Sudwana to try and look for this pipe horse because someone sent me a photo for of this pipe horse. Right. Um, which wasn't that big a deal. Okay. Yeah. There's always this many new species of pipe horses. That's cool. Whatever. And then we got there and a young dive instructor, um, showed us a photo of a tiny, tiny little seahorse that looked very suspiciously like a pygmy.

1:20:32 And we were like, yeah, nah, cause pygmies don't live in the Indian ocean or in Africa. Right? So we were like, nah, man. Um, but we looked at it and it was a pygmy. Um, and then later, almost a year later, um, I went to, uh, with Richard Smith who did his PhD on pygmy seahorses and we went to collect, uh, some specimens to see, you know, if we can describe it. Um, and the name comes from that dive instructor. Her second name was Nalu. Yes. Okay. And Nalu, um, her surname. So that's where that come from. I also was like an ode to her for finding. Yeah. That's nice. Um, because that was a big discovery. That was the first pygmy seahorse in the Indian ocean in African continent.

1:21:15 Yeah. Um, you know, that was quite big. And then the pypors, we wanted to give kind of a Zulu name because it's on the East coast of South Africa in Brazil and it kind of, um, refers to like a chief, like a chief kind of person. And the little pipe horse has got a little crown bumpy thingy. Nice. So it looks like a crown. Yeah. Graham will give the scientific terms, but a little bumpy thing. The bumpy thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That thing. Um, so it kind of was apt, I think, to kind of bring that in. Yeah. Well, I think it's interesting because I, I didn't mean to, I didn't want to, I think it's kind of interesting, but for people listening to it, they want to get too off in the weeds. But I think it's fascinating because South Africa, I always talk about the sharks and rays there, but it's just such a, there's, to this day, there's things you can discover like these, these pygmy seahorses, pipefish, new fish.

1:22:05 New fish species. You can, you can still find in there. If you're, if you know what you're looking for, you're looking around for it. And this was all during your PhD, during your PhD. It was, it was kind of mangled in. So I started my PhD 2014 while working for the basin project. So my aim with the basin, Neissner basin project was to take it from a 90 year old professor organization to a community research organization. Right. Yeah. So I finished my PhD 2018 ish. And then I worked as director for the, for the basin project. So we dabbled, we dabbled in many, many things we collaborated with many, many people.

1:22:46 And whenever there was a side gig, because that's one of the things I love in my life as a side gig. I go and do the side gig. Yeah, that is spoken just like a marine scientist. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, there's this project here. Oh, there's this thing. We're like protocolies. If there's something happening, we're like, okay, okay, we're going. So, you know, and people send me photos all the time. And then I'm like, okay, Dave, I think we're similar, because people send you photos a lot. Oh, all the time. Shark photos, date. Sorry. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what happened. People sent me photos and then we made it happen. We went to have a look. So is this like people with, within Neissner, like that we're sending you photos?

1:23:29 No. It's just because it's like just random people. Yeah. And how did they get to know that you were like the, the, the sort of so-called the expert at the time for doing a PhD on these types of seahorses and, and pipefish and so forth. Like, was it just through academics? Like, through the institutions? I mean, I think the academics didn't don't know. Academics don't know about me. They were like, who's this random person? No, no, I think, okay. So people love seahorses because what's not to love for sure. The Neissner seahorse is South Africa's only endemic seahorse. It's endangered for a long time. It was the only endangered seahorse till the stupid Australians came on the, you know, and got their own endangered one, whatever.

1:24:17 It's kind of like, I always follow our lead, you know? Yeah. Yeah. That's maybe a different, different thing. It's a different podcast. Special seahorse. Special seahorse. And we put a lot of effort into promoting that seahorse. There's a couple of like, very popular South African shows. One is 50-50. I don't know. Yep. I don't know if there's South African audiences. Anyway, 50-50 and the other one is called Blanche. Yep. Okay. And we, they came to look at the Neissner seahorse and the work we were doing. Neissner is, it's, I mean, there's a lot of kind of wealthy people living there. Right. Yeah, we, we shared far and wide. So I think people just, just got, got into, yeah. And then what also happens is people reach out to Project Seahorse, which is like the seahorse people. Yeah.

1:25:06 They're Canadian, by the way, too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In the world. And then they kind of link us up also. Yeah. I think that's such an important strategy to, right? To get that out there. You know, like seahorses do well with the public. They become iconic species. You have this endemic species here. You're in an area where there's, you know, the money is, is, is, is there. And so people will, will, you know, they kind of take pride in it, right? It's kind of like, have you ever heard of the organization Rare? Yeah. They do, they, and they do the same thing. They take like one species, usually in an island community or small community and they're like, this is the pride of the community. Let's, let's make this the pride. And then they get everybody, you know, to, to protect it and, and so forth. And it makes it a lot easier.

1:25:53 And so, you know, you can do more funding for research. You find out more about it. You can do more policy work and, and that. So I think that's, that's great that you get that out there. It just goes to show how important, you know, I'm the, I'm the comms guy. So it's important to get the communication out there. I think a game changer really. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's a game changer to make it easy for people to understand. Sometimes scientists can just be so far removed, even when they think they're not far removed. They're far removed. Yeah. Yeah. So I really love the idea of, you know, and we took people out on the, it's just what I really love. So we had little rocky shore outings with like people and then you just showed them animals on the rocky shore, you know, we'd be like this is a sea stock. This is how it eats. This is what it does for, you know, it's daily life. And people don't realize that until you show them stuff. And it's like you're a kid and you're playing on the rocks. Yeah.

1:26:45 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we know it's it's I think that's one. That's one thing a little bit with the social media. I think the in person stuff is even better with people that, and you touch it. It's like, you know, in the science community, like we'll get real excited talking about something amongst ourselves. And we're like, you're really excited. But somebody who doesn't even know anything about it, we're using all this jargon that they don't even understand. You're kind of leaving out the people that you really want to connect with and convey that enthusiasm to, you know. And so it's, it's a, it's a it's a really interesting thing. And I've always liked it, and it's a great time. And so I think a lot of I think it's changing now used to be kind of like people I had growing up when I was a student, they were very much like insular. And so like, and so I think, you know, we kind of started changing, social media changed the whole landscape. But it was starting to come around a little more when you start having these for whatever you want to call like, whether it's Discovery Channel or even National Geographic doing some of these more outreachy things where you can connect and talk with somebody. And then you need to be able to communicate to them in a language that the average person can understand.

1:27:43 language that the average person can understand. Right. You know, because if you're throwing around the, throwing around the scientific name of the seahorse or something, like, well, that's great for you and, Yeah. But who else really is gonna know what you're talking about or why they, why they, the question is like, why should they care about this little seahorse? Yeah. Yeah. I always think I take quite a minute to understand something. So when I explain something, I explain it so I would understand it. Of course. You know? Yeah, that's the important part, right? Make it super clear, yeah. And exciting, you know? Yeah. The ocean is exciting. Yeah. And what I really think is, and Dave, you can probably appreciate this from when you started work, all the ability we have now to show people what lives underwater, like the cameras, the, Oh, yeah.

1:28:26 The video, the footage. Oh, my God. I mean, that wasn't there. Oh, no. Now we can show people, look at this thing. Oh, no. Look at this thing. Yeah. Well, I, I, I, I tell people back in the day when I, Paul Cowley and I would set off to Namibia and it's a true story. We literally all we have is a compass and a map. That's the only navigational thing we had. And that's fun to be fair. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, how many, how many people like say in your, in your age group and younger would know how to use a compass? If they literally just gave them a compass and that's all they had. No GPS, no, no satellite phone, no nothing. And literally, you know, I, I, I laugh. I tell the story now because it's kind of funny, but I tell like Leonard Campagno and a few people there, Tom Hacks, like, we're going to be gone for eight weeks.

1:29:11 And if you don't, if you don't hear from us in 10, like no phone call or anything, send somebody to look for us. And that'd be like, yeah, yeah. You know, 10 weeks, 10 weeks is probably not going to end really well for us, but if you just come, but, but that was all, I was all Find our bodies somewhere. Yeah, go find our bodies. What's left of it and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Phone the parents. Yeah. And literally all I do is like, I just look at a map in Namibia and say, well, we'll be somewhere along this 500 kilometer area of the beach. And be like, that'd be it. And we'd, and we'd go. And there's, you know, I mean, I can't imagine people like getting sort of your age group and younger, like not being out of communication with no, no satellite phone, no camera phone, nothing, just literally a compass and a map for, for two months.

1:30:00 I'm not even out of communication. When I go to the bathroom, I got my phone with me all the time. You have to. Something like that. Like it's going anywhere without communication is ridiculous. Now it's crazy. Oh, the sciences are very regulated now, even in South Africa, you know, it's very regulated. What you're allowed to do, what you're not allowed to do. I mean, my whole PhD, my diving was illegal theory. Yeah, because you need a dive supervisor. You need this. You need. Yes. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Here in here, money for that here in Canada, like you can't scuba dive for work. You actually have to have a commercial divers license now. Because insurance won't cover. So like we have like our government, so like environment, Canada and climate change, that department will have its own field unit where they are commercially regulated, like they have their commercial divers and they go out with the poll commercial diving sort of like equipment and stuff like that.

1:30:53 And you're just like, Oh, where I see other people, I'll see them online. Like scuba dive. Like how, how are you allowed to do this? Like what's, what's happening? That's not fair. Wild West. Well, that's when I, when I was coming up in the 80s, I'd say this all the time. Like it was the Wild West because you, even in California, if you thought of something like, well, go try it out. No, there was no restrictions. Like I, if I wanted to go out and catch like, you know, whatever a bunch of sharks or something, big deal, just have a fishing license. That was it in South Africa. It wasn't even that. It was just like, I just roll into some town somewhere and just as they're asking people and whatever sharks we need. We, and I won't get into some stories here because we probably get in trouble now, but this is how we could go off into the, definitely go off into the weeds here, but yeah, just walk away.

1:31:43 But there, but there was a lot of stuff you would do. Like you would just, you could, there was no, I say there's nobody cared. You could literally just go do what you want. I think in some ways it was a lot better to do. It was like a little better because you could do stuff. It wasn't like you had to like, just to do anything. You had to get some permit. You could just, you could do some stuff. I think it's, if anything has gotten too far the other way now, we're. It's a smidge too regulated and the problem I, I mean, safety. Yeah, I get it. Of course. Yeah. Safe safety. Yeah. That bugs me a little bit as it removes the ability of people that is maybe not a big organization that doesn't have a million dollars to do this work. It kind of removes them of doing this work.

1:32:24 Because if I had to go legit, say with the diving during my PhD, I, we, there was no money. I mean, I did a commercial diving course and a scientific diving course. Yes. But I didn't have money to pay a dive supervisor to look at. You'd almost have it out of a team of divers to go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You know, that's what I think what it does is, is it takes away the, I guess the freeness of exploration. Yes. Right. We're at, which I think it defines, you know, yeah, which defines a lot of both of your careers. I feel like, you know, in a way like Dave, obviously you're an explorer. You, you like to discover things. You get into, you know, quote unquote, some trouble and then come out of it. And then, but, but you do it for the exploration part of it too.

1:33:07 And, and, and low, it looks like like this, that seems to be the theme so far with your career and correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like, you know, let's explore. Let's see what I can find. Oh, there's something else over here. Like you're with a small, you're working with a small organization and a nice place. And then all of a sudden you're getting a lot of attention because you're finding these cool things, you know, and it's just by, just by discovery. And then by going over to, you know, like a, a dive operation and be like, Hey, we found this potentially this really tiny seahorse. Oh, there's a pygmy seahorse. Now we've discovered that there's pygmy seahorses in, in the area. Were you always like that even as a, as a kid, like was the exploration, is that the part of science that, that drives you to really fall in love with science and the work that you do is, is like, I know it's that's for Dave too, but is that what does it for you is to like the, the opportunity for discovery or the fact that you're trying to do something, but you're out in, in the bush, out in the water, like going out and doing stuff.

1:34:10 Is that what makes it for you? I think so. I think so. And you know, as a kid, yeah, you know, I, I love looking at tiny things. I love seeing things that, you know, people might miss or whatever. Um, you know, and spending time, time with it. And I think marine science is such a cool gig to do that. Yeah. Oh yeah. I'm for sure. Because it's so broad and then you're walking like, say in a conference and you meet an amphipod guy and you're like, amphipods are the best shit ever. Have you seen these things and you're like, I guess. And you just, I just love people that love their things so much. Yeah. Dave, I mean, you are that for sharks and rays, right?

1:34:53 Yeah. Oh yeah. And so you can have heated battles in there, like heated debates and discussion in there. Yeah. Oh yeah. And I just love the love and the passion. And for me, I mean, I love significance, but I just love the ocean. Yeah. So I do get side enough. I don't have a good side gig going. I have my day job. Yeah, cool. Yeah. Of course. Do my day job, but I love a side gig and I love a side gig that doesn't need a lot of money that works with people on the ground and that does cool stuff. That's this podcast. That's what I love. That's how this podcast. That's what I love. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love it because I think you don't need, you don't need all the money. You don't need all the things. If you can build a nice network. I mean, look at Dave and I, we, it was an email correspondence.

1:35:36 Yeah. And that's also the value because then when you find the people that are really into their thing or their field, they want to share, they want to help. They want to reply to emails. I mean, you get a whole bunch of people that are just shit and don't want to play, but they're like, okay, you, you do you, man. Yeah. I will play with these people. You have that choice. Yeah, exactly. No, I mean, I mean, I mean the way you and I connected was just like through Jonathan was just random. Yeah. It's like, yeah, it's just, I've had those things happen. You know, I've had a longer career now than you, you, you at this point, but I've had those are just amazing because I've had some, I've met some of the best people like connecting with you and then that that's what led to, to going to, to Timor Lesty and, um, uh, if you're affected, just we'll share the story quickly.

1:36:21 I don't know if everybody knows the story, but you were in Palau and I knew Jonathan, I've actually, Jonathan, I have never actually been in the same room physically together, but we've had this correspondence for many years. You're like buds. You're like, we're like drinking buds. It's like, probably, I think we've published like five or yeah, literally like we've published like five or six papers together from like, um, from all over the world, like the Galapagos, Palau, Timor, Lesty, and it's just like, but we built this relationship like through, through, through, through email. And that's the nice thing with, with internet now. And then when, when you went to Palau and you thought you had this, um, uh, Pacific sleeper shark, that just got, was like, Oh, that's really kind of cool.

1:37:05 And, and then fast forward. And then you went about a year, you sent me some pictures that when you were in Timor Lesty, I didn't even know you're in Timor Lesty at the time. And, uh, I moved around very quickly. Yeah. I was kind of like, Oh, what are you doing? I thought you were on a holiday or something. And then you're like, Oh no, I work here now. And then that led to me modified my, my, I was planning to go to Indonesia's already. And suddenly I added Timor Lesty into the group. And that was one of the best things I, I did. Very quickly, actually. Yeah. And that was also a side gig that I kind of wangled into my day job, um, to make it happen.

1:37:46 You know, I'm sure it could have happened outside of it, but it was just easier to be like, I mean, I was guarding, I was, I was already going to Northern to Darwin, Australia. And I was going to go from there to like, to like Bali and then suddenly you and I connected like literally within like a couple of weeks. It's like, okay, I'm coming to Timor Lesty with the team. And, um, that's phenomenal is a phenomenal. Yeah, that that's when you came back from that trip, you were like Timor Lesty is a gold mine of species and things like that. You know, you were, you were like a kid in a candy store. Oh man. Oh yeah. I got it. You know, I still gotta go here. Oh, oh yeah. No, it was great.

1:38:26 You know, if you haven't heard the podcast episode, check it out. Yeah. But we'll, but the, but I want to go back and go die, do some diving there next time. And I want to go, I got, I've never seen a seahorse in the wild. That's one of the things I definitely like to see sometimes. See, thank you. Carefully. You don't see a croc in the wild. Yeah. I still want to run this rocket. That was because those are the stories that concerned me. I was like, you could, what now? Like how many are there? Yeah. Everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Too many. I know. I, I told the story of that. But by, yeah, but, you know, I've been in Africa, you know, Nile crocodiles, you know, you know, they're there been to other places where they had like Australia's are, but man, and Timor, lesti, that was like a new level of crocodiles for me.

1:39:11 It was just like everywhere. It was just like, don't step off the road. You know, don't go here. You know, I, I, I remember the one day we talked about this when Denise was on the show last year about, she was asking, I think it was, I can't remember his junior. She said, is it okay to go take a picture over there? Some like pretty little lagoon. I thought she said, he said, yes. And so she starts walking over there and he starts throwing it. Oh, there's like a crocodile there. It took some guy last week. He's like, oh, dear God. Like, great. Oh, I need to do this. Not ideal. Loses a camera woman the first week in the trip. Great. That's perfect. Oh, no, no, I don't want to do that. There's other people that we can lose. Not not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. We got plenty of people from World's Fish.

1:39:53 You can lose one of them. Take them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just so people understand, because we'll be, we're going to be doing, we're going to be doing an episode later this year on, on team or less. And we'll have low come back on to, to talk, get more in depth in the team or less the stuff. But this was a place that's completely unexplored for sharks and rays. And so now we have a drawn up a stone on the ground.

1:40:36 Now he's doing her PhD and we, and this was a side thing we sort of worked out with low is that we now we, she's doing Adrian is doing this as part of her thesis chapter now on team or less tea, which is great for her. Because we have a grad student doing all the work now we can just enjoy it. Yeah. And it's awesome. I think because I think, and correct me if I'm wrong Dave, she wouldn't have gone to team or was not in her plans. No, no, no, no. So it's awesome how it comes together because someone needs to pay attention to this. And what's right better than Adrian, Adrian for that. Oh yeah. Yeah. Adrian are doing a PhD on it. Right. Well, I knew I, well, I've known Adrian for a while and she'd done, I've been in the field with her and we've done some, some her and I actually had worked together and I knew she was in Darwin and I thought like, Oh, this is just perfect.

1:41:21 And so I talked to her advisor, Pete kind, I said, Hey, do you mind if I take your grad students with me to Timor Lesty and might work something out? And he's like, sure. So it's literally it's like, so it worked in, it's going to be, this is going to be a, I think just beautiful chapter for her old thesis and it's, it's a, it's a completely unexplored area. I mean, it's like, yeah. And I'm sure there's people listening to this thing. They go, where's Timor Lesty now? Yeah. Yeah. Go look at a map. But do you see it used to be, I know if I tell people East Timor, they know, they know that, but Timor Lesty, the name change. I needed to go. Yeah, definitely. We definitely had a Google on it when we discussed it before the podcast. Right. I was like, I need to find out more about this place.

1:42:02 But it was a country though, you know, if you're a diver and if you're a macro diver, 100% of places. Yeah. It's amazing. And it's it's it was, yeah, it was not easy to get around to places, but it was just, it was, it was a, it was a phenomenal one. Definitely one of the highlight trips of my career to go in someplace completely off the grid. Didn't know anything about show it up there. But people were friendly, just getting amazing. The Timo are amazing. Yeah. The driving is true. So we were driving from one place to another and our driver, Sam, we were like, Hey, Sam, how long would it be? And he's like, no, two hours, man, two hours. And then five, six hours later, we were still driving. And we were like, wait a minute.

1:42:44 I'm not sure. Sam, I have to post on social media, some of the, some of the, some of the roads there, because there are places that Sam there would be driving just the middle of nowhere. And Sam, I know, like, oh, I need to go right here. I'm going to turn left here. There's no signs. And we're just sitting in the car, like, okay, well, I never would have never in a million years would have figured out how to get around there. But the benefits of having a driver who lives there is, oh, yeah. Well, she's well, great driver. Some of those drivers are, yeah. Well, he takes you from A to B alive. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, when he stopped, he stopped, yeah, the car to sort of quote, use the restroom. He's like, don't get off the road because the Crocs will probably take you out there.

1:43:27 And, um, but yeah, no, it was, yeah, it was as well as if you ever go there and you want to go exploring T more or less the higher, we'll talk to somebody and hire a good driver because you will not, because there's no signs out there. You're just driving along and you'll just turn one way or another and you just assume the driver's going to get you there eventually. And yeah, like you said, it's like, it tell you, maybe it's two hours as well. It's more like five or six hours to get there. And that's torture, you know, because you and your haters like, I'm going to get ready for two hour drive. Yeah. And then like, big, like if it's two and then maybe you go three, that's not bad. But to go like, like triple the, you're like, okay, this is crazy. Yeah.

1:44:07 And you, and you, the funny thing is we would stop in these towns and I, I'm sure they had names for them. We just stopped in the town. Like, okay, it's time to eat and just like order up whatever, on the menu. And I still remember like we had ordered like chicken scene to be a staple there. I can remember like we're all, we're all there looking at the, at the quote chicken bones and we're all looking at each other, like six biologists were like, what part of the chickens is this? I have no, and it was just like, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna call it. Yeah, we're gonna ask. Yeah. Well, I was a newbie at the time. I know. I know. Lo's just like, it's chicken Dave. It's just called chicken. Just in your head. It's chicken.

1:44:49 Chicken. Yeah. Yeah. Don't ask. Never, never mind. There's lots of cats and there's rats the size of cats around, but they could actually have been a dog. Maybe also. Yeah. Regardless, chicken. It was protein. It was all good. Yeah. It was chicken. We had chicken and rice. It was great. We're, we loved it. It was awesome. Chicken right in my head is chicken and rice, chicken. Yes. But I think what's interesting is, um, having a country like this and then doing research in it. So it's difficult, right? Yeah. Oh yeah. It's difficult. Oh yeah. And it's difficult to get it in and our situation and what we had just had the opportunity of, I was a person that was in that knew other people that wanted to in and connected them with people that live there. Yeah. And that's how you get to do stuff.

1:45:32 Right. And I think, you know, it's like I talk about a lot of these things, like we're finding a lot of, we're finding a lot of, we're gonna have some really cool stuff coming up later on with the sharks and rays we're finding there. But it's like, it's like I always say, like, if it was easy, everybody would do it. And the fact that people haven't gone there to do it, it's not, and you know, they're low, you live there. It's like, it's not an easy place to work and stuff. And you just, but you just get, you know, you just get in there and you just do the best you can and, and stuff. And as I say, if you've got to have a bit of an explorer sort of attitude to go and do that stuff, because it's not, I say, you know, you think you're got a two hour ride, just like a five or six hour ride. Yeah. It's not a, it's all dirt roads.

1:46:14 It's, and I use the word road kind of loosely because it's, there are some of the places. It could be a path. Yeah. It could be a path. There could be something, whatever, you know, it's just kind of a thing. And the other thing I just wanted to mention too, like the people that were so nice. And if, if you look up the history of there, it's just, they, they, they went through just like a brutal civil war for almost 30 years with Indonesia. And you just, and you just, and yet you just think like, God, well, these are like the nicest people I've ever met. Like who'd want to, who'd want to have a war with these guys are just really friendly. And, and just like, we just, and it was just amazing. Just some amazing contact there. I just really liked it. Like I said, I definitely hope to get back there someday and do some, but we're going to go, we're going to do some diving. Lowe's going to show me seahorses there somehow. So all the tiny things, all the tiny things, all the invertebrates. Yeah. What? Well, speaking of which I saw you, you, you did a book with Terry Gosselin. Yeah. But marginally I provided some photos. Okay. So no, Georgina Jones was the, was the writer and creator of all. Okay.

1:47:21 To be fair, all the other co-authors were just people that gave photos. So we shouldn't actually be there. Well, it's still, it's still a book. So, well, you know, well, you know, I don't know if you know, but you know, Terry used, Terry worked at the South African museum back in the day. I think, I think I knew that. In the early eighties, he left, he left and went to the California Academy of Sciences just before I, I arrived in South Africa. Like he left like an 80, 40, he left in 80, 45 and I arrived in like 86 and years later I got to know cause I go, I'm, I'm just South of San Francisco. So I go up and I got to know him here in San Francisco, you know, real nice guy. But yeah, he, he spent a couple of two or three years, I think in, in South Africa and wrote a book on the, a very close connection here. Oh yeah. And newly Brancis like every second one is a new one. So yeah, there's so many to discover, right? Cut out for him.

1:48:15 Yeah. Every second one is new. So much so that people are just like specie one specie two specie three. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. He's, he's still, he still goes back every now and then because he has good friends in Cape Town. Um, and then actually some of his people, him and his wife were friends with her or became good friends of mine when I lived there at the museum there. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I have some, I have some, yeah. We have some really, turned out we had really good mutual friends, but it was only after I'd left South Africa. I got to know him at in San Francisco. Um, awesome though. Anyway, small little, the science circles are small. Doesn't matter what you're studying. True. It's all yeah, small, prestigious world. But I, I know people listening got off a little tangent there, but I think, but the point is you meet a lot of people in this field that you wouldn't, you wouldn't know that they have, they have this travel in these different circles. And like I said, it's a small world in a lot of ways, you know, so, but I think that played a big role in how I do my work also, because I've been, I work, I've worked on many, many different things, right? Um, and most of that is because I met someone or someone wanted to do something where I was based or whatever. And then, you know, I dabble in, in what they maybe do or whatever.

1:49:22 Um, you know, and that's how you build your network and you learn. So it's always been a steep learning curve because there's always new things happening and new fields. And now you got into the shark world now, which is awesome in my perspective. I feel like that's a slippery slope. Yeah, it could be, but yeah, one day you wake up and it's just like sharks everywhere. Yeah. Suddenly start, you start thinking about that. Doing, doing that, doing that solo dive in, in, in night off. Niza doesn't look so quite as like, Hmm, I wonder what that could have, a lot of things could have gone really wrong here. Right. I didn't even think about sharks. Barely, barely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so now you got kind of got shocked by the way, when you were in working at Niza, you ever seen a shark? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Yeah. But the worst was when I was doing my surveys for seahorses. Every now and I get, I got shocked to shut out of me by these electric race? The electric race.

1:50:22 Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. And I didn't think they could do that. But they can. Oh yeah. You discovered it the hard way. Yeah. You found it. But also such a rook. Under, you shouldn't have been on it. Yeah. And uh, you know, uh, but it's graphically missing in the Make up. You know, let's let's go look into Niza's Welocking transcend and see if that's what you needed right. You, uh, is important. So such a rookie, like not only once, like a few times. Yeah. You know? They wasn't like, oh, I should just stay away from them. Yeah. No, no. Once you can accept. But they're sneaky. Once you can accept, but you know, a third or fourth time, it's like, that's kind of on you. That's my fault. Yeah, but they're sneaky, Dave. They're sneaky because they lie and they kind of cover themselves and they're in the seagrass and you don't see them. Yeah, that's true. And that's how I look for seahorses. And then it's like, oh, okay. Yeah, okay, okay. You're forgiven of that. Well, you know that, well, you know, I think I worked on blue stingrays for his master's thesis and we used to go dive.

1:51:04 Oh, not. Yeah, it was his master's thesis with blue stingrays. And so we used to dive along the coast there in areas where we knew the stingrays would aggregate, just snorkeling. And you can see, this is getting back in the eighties. You can see where they all, they sit in the bottom. And with a lot of times if they're feeding, they'll put their spine up. Yeah, yeah. As a protective measure. Have you seen that? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, it's sad. Sadly, like whatever it was, you know, 15 years later when Steve Irwin was gotten paled by a thing. I knew exactly like, yeah, I used to watch those things. That would happen. I knew exactly what happened. Cause you could see swimming along if you don't see those rays in the thing.

1:51:45 And they just like, that spine goes up, man. You can be in a lot of trouble if it hit you in the wrong spot and stuff. But yeah. Now also we should mention that Steve Irwin was like holding the stingray, you know, facing the stinger. He wasn't like just swimming and it got stuck. No, yeah, yeah, right. Handling. That's not ideal. So they know. No, no, no, no, no. But in very Steve Irwin fashion, he was holding it. Right. Yeah. He right. He was trying to show. Yeah. Yeah. Right. He was actually I'm talking, but you could be swimming along, not looking for rays at all and like swim over one. You could get not realize it. Yeah. Cause these blue stingrays and there's and they're not the only one. They'll come in shallow like that. But the fascinating shallow and aggregate like like a carpet of them.

1:52:30 Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And the cool thing about that that we always talk I talk about is like that's something you just observe, like you see that the just sort of laying out there and stuff, but it's an interesting observation that I don't think people really had ever commented on before until Paul's thesis that these things actually when they're feeding because they're busy, they put their spine up because well, things like bull sharks will like to eat them. And there's a few other sharks that like to eat those things. Seven gill sharks. And that's why if you ever have you ever have a chance to dissect a bull shark, look around the jaws, you'll find like just dozens and dozens of stingray spines in the mouth of a bull shark. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. And same with same with the hammerhead sharks, too. They love to eat stingrays. Yeah. You see them hunting stingrays all the time in the shallows, right?

1:53:12 Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So now so now you're back in South Africa. You've you've left Timor. What's yeah. What's what's next for low? I don't know. So my team or chapter kind of ended, but I'm still going to continue working in Timor. We're working looking at the ecosystem on the south coast. So we're doing some beta remote underwater video so you can get an idea of the ecosystem function, what's happening. And then we're connecting that with the communities that live there to understand their resource use and how that can change into the future. So the bigger picture is to help communities to kind of adapt.

1:53:52 But in that is really a first look because you're looking for almost like if whatever reference is, this is your reference data. This is this is what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So poor. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll continue to dabble with that. But remotely, I'll go for field trips and so on. And then otherwise, I'm looking around. Yeah. Looking around for my next full time gig and side gigs, multiple side gigs. Well, what's it like? What is the is it is the question for you? Like I always ask, you know, a lot of a lot of scientists that we have on, like, what's the question that drives you? You know, is it the exploration? Is it that initial, like just describing a species or describing, you know, an ecosystem like an east east Timor where you're just you're not or Timor last day where you just don't know what's there or what the trends are?

1:54:43 Is that is that what drives you? Is these new habitats and getting new information or is there some other question that you really want to know and you really want to sort of indulge in and dive into? It's weird. Well, it's interesting that you ask that because I've been thinking that myself, because I feel like my career has kind of happened haphazardly. Like, right, you know, there came opportunities. I'm like, I can do that. Why not? Yeah. How difficult can it be? Very difficult. It turned out very different. Everything's very difficult. And so but now I studied large scale marine protected areas, right? So it's offshore, deep sea offshore in Timor, it's coastal, shallow. And both of these scenarios were a first look.

1:55:26 Right. But what I find interesting, the more I do, what I do is I like to go to a place I want to insert myself into that place, understand it and then understand how it works on a local scale. Because I think in the sciences, well, in my my frame of reference, we're going bigger, bigger, global, global, global. Yes. And we're missing the local. Yes. Yes. Coming so generic. Absolutely. Yeah, you can understand the area generically. But of course, is it right? So I like to spend time. So in Timor, I was privileged enough to live there for like two years and a full year on the south coast in a little village.

1:56:13 And the things you observe, I mean, Dave, we drove around where people were catching fish and we saw no sharks or rays, right? Yep. But that's just timing. I think what really interests me is to is to go on on the super local level. I always think I like to do kind of pilot studies that you can then scale to areas and whatever. But understanding coastal ecosystems, the functioning and what I really want to dabble in more, which I want to teach myself is more thinking about how it will change into the future. So while I was in Timor, I started working marginally with ecosystem modeling.

1:56:53 And I would love to expand that more and go to like deep diving into into it. And if my brain can comprehend things like that. So I'm unsure. Yeah, I love it. And then our final question that we ask everybody is, you know, you've been in this career for a little bit now. You've accomplished quite a bit already for people who are just starting out their careers that are listening to this podcast. They want to go into shark science or marine science in general. What advice would you give them so that they can help them on their that might help on the journey that would like if you're looking back, would it help you or that continues to help you in the future? I think some things that really helped me is firstly, take a beat, take time and think about your science.

1:57:41 Think about what you want to do. Think about your question. Brother Alanson always said to me, you know, what you need to go do now is go sit in your little hut alone and go and think. So do that. Yeah. And then reach out, build your network. I have sent a million cold emails to a million different people. And it doesn't pan out always, but it pans out many, many times. And then you build your network. And what I find useful is any job I then do and I need advice from somebody that knows more. I can reach out and be like, hey, man, or I can do nice projects with people across the world. And then the last thing I always tell myself is you don't need loads of money or big toys, you know, or magic big organizations to do things.

1:58:25 You can go out and do science and do research and do it, do cool stuff on bare minimum. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. So especially countries like South Africa, I mean, Iran just doesn't do well, right? People don't get big funding, but you can still do cool stuff. Yeah. You don't need to wait for that. A lot of it's networking too when you when you agree networking. Hugely so. I mean, the pick me seahorse, the pick me pipe horse to work with you. Many of that thing we had no funding, no funding. Yeah, we paid our own way. Yeah. Yeah. So just do that, man. Yeah. Do the fun things. Well, yeah. Yeah. Well, look, low. This has been awesome.

1:59:06 Awesome. I knew you'd be a great guest and we're going to be having we're going to be having a one of one of the upcoming Searching for Lost Sharks episodes going to be on Timor Lesty. And it's going to be coming up here in 2026. And we'll have you back on to talk about the episode when it comes out. And then we'll get really dive. Dive. Deep about Timor. Yeah, we'll get we'll do a real deep dive. We didn't get real into it here, but we'll do a deep dive in the team or less. The a fascinating country I had. I have to say, thanks to you. I had such I just one of the one of the highlights of my my career. It was doing that. That's awesome. Because I know you've been everywhere. Yeah, no, it was that was that was that was a real it was it was so unexpected. And you just made the trip so wonderful.

1:59:47 And now all the ancillary projects coming from it. So yeah, be great. So anyway, so anyway, thank you very much. So we'll be in touch with you guys. And thank you for the yeah for having me on. This is so much fun. Yeah, yeah, you bet. We loved it. I can't wait to have you back on again. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, love, for joining us on today's episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. What an episode. We got into a lot of things. We got sidetracked a lot, which was a lot of fun. You know, we're having like just a great conversation when we're we get sidetracked and talk about little, you know, just little things, how things have changed and just sort of like how things have, you know, how things came to be, which I think is kind of fun, like going through that history, which you don't know about all the time until you talk to people.

2:00:31 This is why I think podcasting and speaking and networking is so important, because you start to hear those stories of little things that happen. I don't think we recorded, but we talked a lot after about how, you know, white sharks were protected back in the day and, you know, and how all that kind of got together, which we'll probably do an entire episode just on that, because it's such a crazy story. But it's just kind of cool to go and recount some of these things and go back in time to look at how things are done here and how the perspectives have changed in a span of a few decades, which I think is really cool. Dave, like, what did you get out of this interview other than going down memory lane? I think the thing with Loa is that she just has a broad interest, which I think is really, it's really important. A lot of people, like, you know, we've had, we've talked to people, I do and you do and stuff, whether on the podcast or just in person.

2:01:22 And especially a lot of young people think like, Oh, if I want to do sharks, I need to be doing sharks, like from day one, blah, blah, blah, blah. And certainly some of us, I mean, I was kind of always into the shark thing early on. But, you know, someone like Loa took her kind of a circuitous route to get there. I mean, she grew up, we've had other guests on there. She grew up inland, basically in a mining town in the middle of South Africa. And, you know, kind of she slowly came around to getting into marine science, did her PhD working on in an estuary environment. And then through different networking, basically, she ended up working on sharks and her and I have done a couple papers now. Now we have this project going on in Timor Leste with Adriana Pestana. And it's just a real, it's just one of those. It's I think it's a great story. It's kind of showed you how things can come along. And even if you maybe didn't start off doing sharks, you can kind of find your way there eventually.

2:02:16 And even if you're someone who wanted to do sharks early, you have sometimes take a different path to get there. And so I think Loa's story is a great one. She just really had a passion for the marine environment. She really enjoys working in the communities and while he's developing countries and certainly having been for her being in Palau and Timor Leste, those are certain areas to be in. And it's an adventure too. She's definitely got that explorer gene to go to look around. I mean, she just really thrives on it. And I can tell you from being in having gone there and explored Timor Leste with her, that's an adventure. That's for sure. But it was just really wonderful. I knew she was kind of getting to know her. I knew she'd be somebody to be really good. She's just kind of getting into the shark world. So like, stay tuned. We'll see what big things she has coming up in the future. And if you're out there looking for a really good teammate and stuff, you're an employer, she's looking around for some other job opportunities now, which I think is good.

2:03:16 It really, you definitely build up more of a portfolio moving around a little bit to different job opportunities and stuff. You learn more, you get with her, she has more of a global perspective. And we talked, as you know, we talked both on air and off air about just when you're working a lot of these countries like Timor Leste or Palau or or Madagascar stuff, you know, you really get in, you know, especially you and I, you come from Canada, I mean, from the US, you get home, man, from one of these trips. I know I do and Moda is a whole new perspective. It's like, what are our problems here? Christ, you don't have any problems. Yeah, when you think about comparative what people what people go through or have gone through and getting over that trauma of wars and civil wars and, you know, droughts and, you know, everything, right? There's there's a lot of stuff that's going on today, where you just, you just don't don't realize it. When you come home, you're like, oh, okay, cool.

2:04:09 Like, the stuff that we're talking about is stuff still needs to be talked about. But when you look at the world perspective, you're like, no, actually, you might, you know, doing pretty okay over here. So, oh, yeah, definitely privileged. And that you and I, you know, living in the countries that we do. And it's kind of nice in that way. Very appreciated. Hopefully, it doesn't flip another way, you know, in time. But, you know, what's what's what I found interesting about this interview was the fact that like, no matter what era you grow up in, networking is still the number one thing. Yes, look at a career, right? Like, I remember, you know, talking to people, the name is Kisharina, but talking to people that we've talked to on this podcast before, where, you know, when, you know, when, you know, back in the 80s, 90s, they were writing letters to different professors. And so, and that's how they were communicating.

2:04:55 Yeah, you were doing it too. And that's how they were communicating. And in this one, Lowe's like, yeah, I just, I just, I spam an email people, I just send email to people, like, not spam email, as in, like, give them spam, but also connect with them to talk to them. The ones that reply end up developing really great professional relationships with them. I mean, that's how you got to know her, like, through email, not instead of her kind of contacting you, but like, you guys contacting each other through email, and just being like, Hey, like, let's, let's work together and you have two papers together. I think networking is still the thing that no matter what, what technology is around, it's still the biggest thing. When we look at how people are moving forward and how people are trying to, you know, create opportunities, and knowing people and being available, like sometimes just sitting in the same room as something, you know, as like when people are talking about a project, they need something.

2:05:49 And, you know, low was on a field trip. And he's like, Oh, yeah, if I like, it'd be really cool to and her professor was like, it'd be really cool to know more about the seahorse. And it was like, well, if you ever ever have money, I'll, I'll do that work. And all of a sudden, like, you know, a couple of weeks later, a couple months later, she gets a she gets an email or she she responds to him or checks in with them follows up and says, Hey, by the way, I was serious about that. Just a follow up, just a quick email saying, Hey, by the way, still interested in that and then it develops into a whole new thing. You can't like this is I tell people all the time, I tell my daughter as well, it's when you get into university, when you get to that level, your professors, I know they're as intimidating as they can be when you first start. The biggest thing is getting to know them, you know, not as not just as a student to teacher kind of thing, but also as like colleagues, you know, get to know the research that they're doing, get to know the work that they're doing, but get to know them.

2:06:48 And then you never know what's going to happen. I'm not saying it's guaranteed that opportunities come, but when an opportunity arrives and you're in the right place at the right time, talking to the right person, you just might be there just by just by happenstance. I, I, you know, I haven't told the story on air. It's a little longer story. I'll tell sometime. I tell it when I give public talks, but when I was an undergraduate at Humboldt State, just finishing up my last getting ready to start my last semester, I literally had a cup of coffee with a professor. There and that cup of coffee led me to grad school and eventually led me to South Africa. Yeah, I was just a couple crazy, right? And so like, yeah, I mean, I never would have the whole my entire trajectory in life changed over a cup of coffee.

2:07:35 Yeah, and it was just like, and I was like, whatever, 21 years old at the time, I just, yeah, and it was just a, and literally, I was just a guy, a professor. I had a class with, I knew him. He just asked what I was doing when I finished up. And I told him what I was interested in. He said, well, let's go have a cup of coffee. And we did. And my whole my entire trajectory and that and so like, and those kind of the same thing, her old trajectory changed because certain things that have happened. And so you just never know what, what point in life some some cup of coffee or some could take could change your whole life. Mine was mine was based off an email. I remember my last my last year, my last semester of my undergrad, I did a presentation when I did the presentation, one of the critiques that the what my my to be advisor was saying, who was my teacher at the time, saying that we don't know enough about physical oceanography. A lot of people when he said I was up, you know, presenting this is like the the remarks afterwards. A lot of people in the class thought he was insulting me that I didn't know much, you know, and at some point, you're like, oh, well, that was kind of harsh. But after that, a year after that, maybe a year and a half after that, I'm out at sea in the Gulf of Mexico doing work. And I'm doing all this stuff. I'm learning about physical oceanography and all this kind of stuff and learning through like real world kind of experience. And I remember when I got back to land after one trip, I emailed him like, hey, I'm not sure if you remember this, but you did a great job. And I was like, hey, I'm going to do a lot of stuff. And I was like, hey, I'm going to do a lot of stuff. And I was like, hey, I'm going to do a lot of stuff. And I was like, hey, I told the whole scenario. Like at first I took it as an insult. And then I'm out here in the middle of Gulf of Mexico. And I realized you were right. And I'm like, I didn't know enough about physical

2:09:06 not because like, I didn't want to know it's just I or it just wasn't taught in our program. Right? He responds, Hey, thanks for letting me know I'm right. Do you want to do a master's with me? Just from email, you know, and maybe I like coaxed him a little bit. But I know, I didn't I didn't ask for a master's. I didn't I just said, Hey, you know what, I want to acknowledge that you were right. And and I felt bad at the time. But now I feel better about myself that I'm learning this and thing. And maybe if I look back, I would do a little bit more real world stuff when I was an undergrad. And then all of a sudden, I'm doing a master's out at Acadia with him in within the year, you know, crazy thing. And you weren't even planning to do a master's, right? I was planning to do a master's at some point, but I didn't know what and I didn't know when I didn't know who so I was still working at that point. I mean, I was I was enjoying myself.

2:09:52 You're having a good time. Both. So I'm having a great time just out of university and stuff. Right. Yeah. But yeah, like, but it was just, you know, and I didn't, I didn't necessarily have the marks to get into a school to do a makeup semester. And, you know, but yeah, but the fact that I had the technician, like the technician experience, yeah, really made it valuable to him because I worked for him as a technician in the summers. And so even before my graduate work, I was wandering around Nova Scotia in a little boat with a with a with an undergrad. And we were, you know, doing water quality stuff in estuaries. It was fun. It was so I had such a great time doing it. Plus, I got to see what Nova Scotia was like, I'd never been down to East. And so it was a lot of fun to do that. But again, it comes down to just like messaging something after you hearing even if it's a critique, you know, even if it was something like, I don't know if he meant he was like, he was kind of harsh, he was like old school kind of that way.

2:10:44 But it was after a critique. And I said, Hey, you know what, I should acknowledge that you were right at that point, you know, I never realized it until now, but you were right. And next thing you know, you know, hey, why don't you come let's discuss the masters, you know, and we did a masters together. So the networking is probably the most important part. You know, if you can go to conferences, go to conferences, if you can, you know, if you're in university, go talk to your professors, they do not want to hurt you, they do not want to harm you, you know, they don't want to make you feel bad, you know, you'll get some that are great, some that are awful in every everybody else in the middle. But but that's the networking is the biggest thing. Well, the nice thing of going to conferences to network is that everybody's usually there that you want to talk to, or most of them, let's say, true, and you can all the other things you can talk to other students who are in the program and find out what's the story on that professor. Absolutely. And that may or may not change. It may may may make you want to go work with that professor more. It might make you like, maybe that's not going to be a good fit for me.

2:11:40 But that's, that's, that's, that's a big thing is that you can also talk to the students and get a feel for like what their experience is in that person's lab. Yeah, absolutely. So and again, and and Lou is like the perfect example of this, right? Is it's the networking and being able to get consulting gigs from it and, you know, subside projects in it because she knows people. And we've seen we've shown the evidence just in this in this interview. So thank you, Lou, for doing that. We really appreciate you coming up. We'll love to have you back on talk more team more less tea when we went at that that episode for the lost shark. I think they're live. And of course, David, people want to get a hold of you. How would they do so?

2:12:21 Instagram is probably most active in Instagram. And I'm also on Facebook, X and LinkedIn. But probably Instagram is the best way to hit me up. And just David lost shark guy. And also check out if you haven't checked out my YouTube channel, a lost shark guy in this series, searching for lost sharks, extinct or alive. We got episode fives coming up soon. And please check them out. And if you like it, please hit subscribe for both the lost shark guy and and for our beyond jaws YouTube channel. We appreciate it. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, always fun. Yeah, beyond jaws looking at our Instagram YouTube channel, subscribe and do all that wonderful stuff. I will connect to you with with low and her her social media links as well. And we want to thank you guys so much for joining us. Thank Lou, of course. And thank you guys for joining us on this episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. I hope you had a great time.

2:13:11 Thank you so much. Have a great day and have a conservation.