Scientists Thought Sawfish Were Gone… They Were Wrong

1:00:00 Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. I'm your co-host, Andrew Lewin, with my co-host, Dr. David Ebert. Dave, you ready to talk about some sawfish? I have to tell you, I do. This is really, is truly a bonus episode we're doing today with Rachel. Because as we kind of alluded to in the last time when she's on a few weeks ago is that we did, we had her on to talk about tiger sharks and kind of after we finished there, she brought up about, happened to casually mention the sawfish project she had going on, which has not really received any attention yet. And we thought, wow, okay, Rach, we'll have you back on and we'll do another episode with you to talk about this unbelievable story. And it really is if you follow sawfish conservation or you're into just follow shark conservation in general, you'll find this an incredible story of how they discovered this whole area that was unknown previously, sawfish.

1:00:51 And so, yeah, so it was, I guess, we got people like Rachel, we just need to have on more frequently, I guess, because we just agreed. We didn't even know about this and found it out. So as I said, it's really a truly a bonus episode. And I really hope people enjoy it because this was a pretty exciting episode, I think. Well, it was fun. And we'll talk about it after when we published the interview, when you guys listened to the interview, but it's one of those words. It, you know, there's some benefits to, like social consequences, you know, in certain geographies around the world. So environmental benefits, you know, the places where we least exist or least change are usually where the environment's the best.

1:01:32 And we usually have these kind of interesting discoveries. But it just goes to show, you know, Mar Alliance is working out there with people who grew up there for over generations and generations and generations across Central America and parts of the Caribbean. And it's such an important aspect to build those community relationships and to work with communities to discover, you know, a nursery haven for sawtooth and for sawtooth sharks. I think it's just, it's great. So we're gonna, we're gonna talk about that. So let's, how about we start the interview with Rachel Graham talking about the sawtooth sharks. Sawfish. Saw, ah, let's do that. Okay. Let's do that again. So here's the interview with Rachel Graham talking about this new discovery.

1:02:16 Enjoy, and we'll talk to you after. Hey, Rachel, welcome back again to the Beyond Jaws podcast. Are you ready to talk about sawfish today? I am so ready, Andrew. So ready. All right. All right. I love it. I love it. Welcome back, everybody. Guess who we have on today again? We have Dr. Rachel Graham, who, when we, she came on originally to talk about tiger sharks here recently. And at the end of the episode, she talked about start talking about this amazing discovery she has with sawfish. And Andrew and I thought, well, we have to have her back on to talk about sawfish. You can't let that one go to waste. So Rachel, welcome back to the show again. Glad to have you back.

1:02:57 Thank you so much for, yeah, thank you for having me back. And so quickly after the tiger sharks, but it's like boom, boom, boom. We're getting all these incredible discoveries and globally, globally relevant discoveries. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. So yeah, we, well, like I said, it was four years from the last time you're on. You've been on here twice now. It's great. We'll have to start having a regular segment with you about sharks in the middle of America's. So I'll just turn it over to you. Why don't you tell us all about the sawfish research down in Central America? Absolutely. So I think one of the, I think the reasons why you were excited to have this episode is that here we are in 2026.

1:03:43 And we know that the distribution of large tooth sawfish, pristice pristice, has shrunk incredibly throughout the world. You have some lifeboat populations left in, for example, Northern Australia, Papua New Guinea, Western Indian Ocean, a couple of places, potentially Brazil, definitely in Brazil, potentially Colombian Ecuador, etc. We've had a couple of captures over in Costa Rica and in Central America, but they're far and few between. And here we have after several years of working with this, and I say here, I'm speaking from Panama, after several years of having conducted surveys with fishers, our Mar-a-Lines team, originally led 10 years ago by Megan Cheves, and then working with several local partners from communities have actually discovered what seems to be the largest nursery ground for large tooth sawfish so far in the Americas.

1:04:56 So we know that if sawfish are existing in other parts of the Americas, I'm sure there are other nursery grounds. But there is no getting around the fact that we have managed to get incredible capture rates, especially last year. And we are moving towards behavioral change with the communities we're working with, the fishers we are working with, behavioral change, policy change, working with the fisheries department, Ministry for Environment in Panama, and so many other actors, so that we can not only try to ensure or safeguard the persistence of the sawfish in this nursery site, but of course, if it's an issue of the research, we must have some adult sawfish somewhere. So expand that work to the rest of Panama and the region and really try to restore this population, which is so incredibly depleted primarily from extensive gill net shrimping and other net related fisheries.

1:06:01 How do you think this this particular site kind of remained relatively unintruded upon by fishers and others? So the site that we found is in the Darien in the Darien Gap, which until recently has been heavily featured in the news primarily for that trans Darien Gap migration, people coming into Venezuela, Colombia and more, and then crossing over into Panama in the hopes of moving up Central America and into the United States. Darien Gap is very, very well known for being very remote, being hostile, dangerous, very dangerous. And this is the same area where that persistent population of sawfish remains.

1:07:01 Interesting. Yeah. You know, it seems like it's kind of it's kind of like those areas where you know, you've got the old ordinance or unexplainable. There's an offshore wind, there's an unexploded or unexploded bomb areas offshore. Nobody touches them. Nobody goes there. And then when you kind of do a survey of the fish, you realize the fish are thriving because nobody can't go there. And that's very well situation in the Darien Gap. Well, what the. I say there's a couple of things I couple of examples I can think of as, you know, when they had the issues with the Somali pirates of Somalia, nobody was going in that area there. Nobody was fishing in that area. just rebounded amazingly. And the other one is the the the tenacular butterfly ray, which we were about to declare extinct, turned out that there's a remnant population that is down in the, what's the the Straits of Hormuz? It's the only population left in the war. And Spherophilia, the Straits of Hormuz, on the Iranian side, that's the only population of this butterfly ray left in the world we thought was extinct and then turned up.

1:08:08 We found this pot. So getting to your point here, it sounds like the Darien Gap and and sawfish is there's the same type of thing where nobody goes there because it's highly dangerous. So what Rachel, what makes it so dangerous? I'm curious, I'm not familiar with the region. So not only is it difficult territory, it's mountainous, it's jungle, it's riverine. But there's also a lot of banditry. So a lot of people would get assaulted, actually on the way from Colombia into Panama, and, and worse. So very scary. I've talked to several people who've gone through the Darien Gap and the stories are pretty horrific. So in that backdrop, you know, we were working further south from some of the key transfer or crossover areas. But these areas as well are pretty remote, and in fact, have a lot of police and military checks. So we're constantly having to check our passports and our, our, our ID cards and more they register us. And so we have a, we always have to check in with the authorities when we're working in that area. And this is one of the reasons also why it's such a privilege to be able to work with indigenous fishers in the area, you have two indigenous groups, the Wunan in the Embera. And so we work very closely with them.

1:09:40 And since they're moving up and down the rivers to fish to move their, their agricultural products and more. And as a result, we're not just looking for sawfish. We're also trying to establish baselines for the riverine fisheries, riverine fish, and so much more. And do they, do they get any other freshwater stingrays get up into that area? Are you aware of? I'm sure there must be, but I haven't. And I've asked the fishers to please share with us any unusual species that they don't recognize or more. And we have not had any, any of the freshwater stingrays coming out in any of the surveys that we're doing. And so we're doing quite interesting surveys across multiple river basins.

1:10:29 We are finding other nursery sites, for example, for hammerhead species and even bull sharks. So we're going to be expanding our, yeah, we're going to be expanding our whole project in that entire region to a host of other species. So now with the sawfish, they you've identified this area, are they, are you looking to try to develop some protective areas with the government in that area? So it's interesting because what we found is that if the fishers and so these are some of the data that we've taken up, if the fishers get to the sawfish pretty quickly and they're incentivized to check their nets more, and there is a bonus scheme that we're working with, because these animals are so rare we can afford to work on a bonus scheme.

1:11:17 Then you'll check your nets more frequently and the mortality is much reduced. And in fact, what we're finding now is we're having a over 90% survival rate of the sawfish on the nets. Yes. And it used to be 60. And then with the bonus, then it seems edged up and edged up. And what we're seeing also is that the fishers themselves have said, we would like to see these the species protected, we know how to take them out of nets, etc. We get a bonus for it.

1:11:57 We, you know, we're recognized for what we're doing. And now they're women folk are also part of the project. And they're creating some of this incredible sawfish artisanary, which I'm showing you right now. And this is a very interesting version of the sawfish. But it's taken off, we make really big ones that take sometimes two months to make. And this is on native grasses that are hand dyed with organic dyes and all the rest anyway, all to say that now you know the whole family is getting in on the sawfish, what I'm, I like to call the river guardians.

1:12:42 And I would love to see sawfish protected as a species throughout Panama. And that proposal is in front of the Ministry for Environment and also with the Department of Fisheries with support from the fishers who are catching the sawfish. And so, you know, we've also been formally invited to be part of the reconformed National Shark and Ray Committee. And that is, again, where we will be proposing this, this protection. Yeah, absolutely. So the vision, the vision is that we get this national protection.

1:13:24 And so really basically, this yeah, that'll be visual, the vision is the and especially tag. So I'm training a lot of the fishers in how to actually conduct the monitoring and the tagging science as well. What are the chances that the policy can go through for that protection? Do you find like... I think very strong. Yeah, I think you're dealing with them before. I think very strong. I had met with the Minister for Environment during the World Conservation Congress and he was absolutely thrilled by this idea of having them be an iconic species of protection and especially if you have local support for it. I think that's huge. Yeah. And being able to be one of the first countries to show recovery of such a critically threatened or critically endangered species is a massive feather in anybody's cap. Yeah. Do you think the bonus for the incentive for the fishers to get at the sawfish faster, is that a sustainable program for the long term or is that more of a short term?

1:14:45 So it's interesting because the short answer is I think yes. When you consider it's not a huge bonus but at the same time you need to have it be large enough to warrant people wanting to go and check their nets a bit more frequently and to be able to release them. Right now small sawfish, there is still illegal trade for sawfish parts and so we have to combat that as well and we know that people are after the teeth or after the rostra and the teeth are used in chicken fights, cockfighting.

1:15:25 Cockfights, cockfighting. Cockfights, absolutely and we have people who are stalking some of our Facebook posts and all the rest trying to figure out where they can go to the source to get. Wow, really? Roster, yes. When you went into some of the villages there, do you see a lot of roster from generations that they just save there for curios and stuff? So it's interesting. Nobody seems to have any big rostra around, especially in the communities where we're working. So it's very likely that those got sold off. Yeah. And then I was given a small rostra that you see behind.

1:16:09 And even in this one, somebody came in and said, hey, can I take a couple of these teeth? Oh, wow. So the guy wouldn't give him the rostra but he allowed him to chop out some of the teeth. So there's still a desire even with such tiny little teeth. And occasionally you actually even see these for sale on Facebook marketplace along with hawksbill talents that they're using in cock, yes, in cockfighting. And this is just on Facebook marketplace openly visible in Panama. So cockfighting is a pretty prevalent thing in Panama.

1:16:51 Apparently more than I, than you. Yeah, right. Yeah, which is interesting, because it affects ocean animals too, because of the weapons that they use to. Yeah, it is because I mean, okay, selfish are not protected yet. But hawksbills are. And what you're seeing is you're seeing, as I mentioned, a host of different things that are being sold with hawksbill scutes. And unfortunately, people are even highlighting the fact that they're true and genuine. Oh, wow. So they're just out there like saying it, even though they're protected. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, you know, I have many, many pictures. I know all the costs and yeah, I had no idea the hawksbills were also on there. I mean, I just I just learned a few years ago that the sawfish roster were were the teeth were used for the Oh, yes.

1:17:43 Yeah, because I was a kid growing up here, we used to go watch the cock fights on Saturday nights. It was big, you know, the Mexican community here used to love doing their having their cock fights. And these just be up the street from where I live. And I had no idea they that's what they use. I was 12 years old, but it was, of course, yeah. But it was just amazing to think like all these years later, it's like, really, that's what they use them for. And then the hawksbill, that's a new one for me. Now I had no flipping idea. Absolutely. Well, Dave, I'll send you, Dave and Andrew, I'll send you some pictures of the, they call it a stucco with all the little, oh, yeah, little cock fighting. Yeah. Yeah. We have other things. Yes.

1:18:25 The other spots, little weapons. Yeah. Apparently, Peru is another real hotspot for the cock fighting because, because a lot of stuff goes, and I found out from the Peruvian store and Peru. Yeah. When I was there, when I was there two years ago, like their year, yeah, year, two years ago, I, they were, they were talking about the sawfish that had been caught in Ecuador. And they took off the roster because it was like first one that caught like 20 years or something. And it was so valuable for the, for the roster for the cock fighting stuff. And it was, and it got shipped to Ecuador or it was caught in Ecuador, but got shipped to Peru for processing to make, to make the, make those. So Panama is, is one of three countries where we're really checking to see kind of where it's off if selfish are still extent and the two other countries are Belize and Honduras. And so I'd done a lot of surveys years ago, looking at whether people had seen any sawfish recently. So we've got an idea of when the last sawfish was seen in each of these countries. And in Belize, you know, people hadn't seen that there weren't any verifiable records of sawfish in when I did those surveys before 2010, it was around two, it had been 10 years, 15 years or more and large tooth sawfish hadn't been seen in 30 or 40 years. So in Honduras, they had

1:19:55 been seen more recently. In fact, we did a whole survey in the Mosquito all throughout Honduras and in the Pacific. Yeah. And Pacific nothing in the Mosquito. Absolutely. Several people had actually noted sawfish more recently. So then I followed this up with EDNA. So in about 21 was at 2018 or so I did a whole bunch of EDNA work. And sure enough, Darien was very much highlighted as a site with still or 2019, 2018, 2019, with extant sawfish.

1:20:37 And of course, now we have the proof with all the captures and more. Yeah, in Honduras, same thing, lots of positives, again, in La Mosquitia. So we know that the sawfish are there, because their lagoons, more fresh water, very likely are going to be the large-toothed sawfish, because we just had a primer for both sawfish species that you can find in Central America, especially on the Caribbean coast, and then in Belize, this is what blew our socks up, because we have deployed over 80,000 hooks, so many scientific long lines, so many people have used gillnets until about five years ago when we managed to get those banned actually, first big nation to get gillnets banned in their territorial waters.

1:21:24 And we have signals, positive signals that sawfish are still alive in Belize. Somehow, I have no idea how, because we've never seen one, we've never caught one, never on a bruv or anything. But our colleagues who are processing the EDNA samples said, oh yeah, these are definitely positives. And from two ends of the country too, which is very interesting. They're pretty habitats, because they really, mangrove areas are really important for their survival, their life cycle. Yeah, estuarine, mangrove, riverine, large kind of deeper rivers they like, especially if they're large animals. Yeah.

1:22:11 The large ones, are they there year round or do they move around and they go to certain areas? Well, obviously you got the one nursery area. So we don't know here, that's the thing we don't know. And what we're trying to figure out next is the movement patterns for these juveniles. So we're going to be doing, yeah, we're going to be doing some acoustic tagging, a little bit too small for maybe fat tagging. And, you know, there's a lot of fallen branches and everything. And we just don't want them ripping up their fins and stuff. After all, they are critically endangered species. We need to really take care of them very well. And so the whole aspect of handling and care and ethics has been absolutely top number one with fishes.

1:22:55 Now, it seems like the Caribbean side, you're finding some little sort of rays of hope on that side on the Pacific side. It's pretty barren. You're not finding much of anything in terms of selfish, are you? So these are all on the Pacific side. Oh, these are on. Okay. Okay. So the Darien and this whole riverine system is giving into the Pacific. Okay. Some other areas. Yeah, absolutely. So, um, uh, And this is where we need to expand the search for the adults because clearly I've had folks who've shared some sightings of much larger animals. And in fact, 10 years ago, so nine years ago, we did have, um, we didn't have a fisher.

1:23:44 You're going to love this story. I'm in a yellow taxi in Panama City. We get chatting. He's the cousin of a fisherman who lives in blah, blah, blah. We talk about sawfish and all the rest. And he goes, Oh, you know, I think we used to have them in our river. Some time ago, I go, here's my card. Here's our sticker. Here's our sticker. Tell me, you know, get get in touch. If ever there's anything, you know, next thing you know, I'm actually out of the country, but Megan, our national coordinator is like, Rachel, I just got a call from a fisher. They just landed a three meter sawfish in this river system facing the Pacific. I said, drop everything, get on a bus, tell him not to cut everything up, keep stuff for you and all the rest. She got there.

1:24:30 Unfortunately, the guy had thrown away a lot of stuff. Already, but there was still some, there was still some pieces of the fillet pieces of the skin and stuff. And of course, the rostrum, which the guy did not want to give away. And, but it, we were, she got quite a bit of data from it. And that was also how we did a little control test for the people doing the EDNA work, because 2017, I guess, because we did a control test and a bucket of water. And I remember them coming back to me. I remember them coming back to me going, this is a really strong signal. Where was this? You definitely have sawfish here. I didn't want to say, yeah, it's a bucket. It's in the bucket. But it just shows that those larger animals are then it seems moving maybe across multiple estuaries. Yeah.

1:25:22 Well, you know, we know we had, this might be something, you know, we had Diego Cardenosa on last year and he, you know, he talked about lots of areas in Columbia that you can't, you can't go to. And I know Ecuador is the same way and Peru, just because of the drug trade. And you just can't go there. It's just, it's super dangerous to go there. And so do you think these might be sort of these lifeboats for some of these things like the sawfish in these areas? Oh, absolutely. Because if it's not, you know, discarded ordinance and bombs or, you know, dangerous migrate, migrate migration routes, then it's a drug trade. And there are certain areas where I have learned over the course of my 28 years in this sector that you just don't go to.

1:26:03 Or if you go to you need to make the right relationships and let people know that you have absolutely, you have no intention of talking to anybody, etc. And this is what you're going to be doing. And in fact, that has gotten out of us out of trouble in a couple of instances, because when you work locally with fishers locally and others, they will be the ones who say, you know what, maybe tonight, we don't sample over there. And you go, I understand, please know that we will be sampling 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Lights at night, let whoever needs to know. Yeah, no. And it's those kinds of things. And also, and there was an alert at one point, because I had revealed the scale of the shark fishery between Belize and Guatemala.

1:26:56 And there were Guatemalan fishers and Belizean fishers who basically said you cannot travel to Guatemala in the near future. You cannot go to Guatemala, because you have really pissed off some people. So for three to four years, I did not go to Guatemala. But you wouldn't know that and they don't play. They don't know you still live in Guatemala. I know exactly. And I used to live in Honduras. You don't you know, when you when you get that, that's a that's a kind enough heads up. Yeah, don't mess with that. But that is another reason why you work to democratize science, you work locally, because at the end of the day, if it doesn't suit people locally who will be the ones at the front lines determining whether or not they're going to sample over there.

1:27:44 And if you have to steward these species, ensure that laws are upheld or more, then don't bother. Yeah, no, I think it's I think we're learning that across the world now, you know, in conservation, right, where can't just come in parachute in and parachute out with with the data and not share it. And that's what you have to do. And you have to have a communication action done through that you have to you have to work with the local people and make sure they they get by and make sure they're they're part of the project too, right? You talk about it all the time, Rachel, they're all there. A lot of them are part of the project. And so you're looking down and developing the project together. And that's how you find out. That's that's taking it more steps. And it's really and you're finding out what are the needs. So the reason why we started looking at doing a baseline for the fisheries riverine fisheries is because fishers were saying, you know, when you have these conversations, what what are some of your biggest challenges?

1:28:43 Where'd you get your protein form? How do you? How do you? How do you maintain your family, pay your bills and all the rest? That's when a lot of these things are coming out that basically, um, they're reliant on one or two species, that one or two species is becoming scarce or having to shift to other species, but now they're terribly worried. They're seeing shifts because of climate change. I mean, all of this comes out. And then the question is, is would you like to figure out what's happening? And we can do it together? Yep. And that's what we're doing. Yeah, makes sense on both sides too, right? Yeah, yeah, you definitely got it.

1:29:24 Yeah, me. No, otherwise, you cannot work anywhere these places like you're going. If you didn't have that didn't, didn't want to, I wouldn't want to. It's a Yeah, it's it. I definitely wouldn't want to. And it's so much richer and trying to come up with, you know, kind of a cro created solution to what's going on. And to be honest, I mean, I think that's a really good question. Yeah, solution to what's going on. And to be honest, I mean, sometimes they were like, Oh, selfish. Yeah, we get selfish occasionally, etc. And when I put it into perspective, and I've given several presentations and talks in the communities, etc. And, and I said, I want you guys to know how unbelievably special your situation is. I said, I've had the privilege of being able to work in a lot of different countries, I have been looking for selfish for 25 years plus, but I've never looked at it.

1:30:10 But I think if you're having a little less than 20 years plus, and you guys still have them, the majority of the world no longer has these animals. So it really is up to you. And the reason why we want to look into it is because it is a global priority, or we're going to lose an animal that can reach 23 feet in length, we can reach our present, we can lose our present day dragons. Yeah, yeah. I always kind of thought if there was one species I could see going extinct in our lifetime, it'd be the sawfish. They just go down so quickly. But right now, Australia and the US, the only two places where you got a bit of a lifeboat, as you say, for these things left, but everywhere else, they're just getting hammered.

1:30:57 So this brings me full circle to one of the questions that Andrew had, which is the policies. So one of the things that we've seen is if we're going to try and restore populations of fish of marine megafauna, one of the things that we have to do is we have to reduce fishing effort. We have to make it more equitable. Making it equitable is, well, if you're using a hook and line versus a net that has a hundred times the effort, you know, that's where you need to look in terms of making things more equitable. So there have to be some hard choices also. And we've all we're already seeing this will probably be this. I'm very excited. This will probably be yet another episode with you guys, because we need these stories of hope to know that some of these policies are actually working.

1:31:46 Are these working? Are these policies working? The gill net ban and believes is it actually working? We are actually getting signals. So we're trying to quantify those signals of restoration of some of the populations because of the gill net ban. And what does that do? That then inspires others to think, well, if they can do it, we can do it. Maybe not everywhere all at once. Right. But parts in areas like we know that this sawfish aggregate in this particular area, could we maybe just not set at this time of the year in this place knowing that or. And then see how it goes.

1:32:27 Yeah. See how it goes. Yeah. You hit on a great point about you got to show some positive results. Absolutely. As I call them happy stories, but something. So people see that there's okay. If we do this, take these steps, it can work rather than just always a constant doom and glow. Absolutely. Yeah. Anyway, well, Rachel has been another awesome show with you here. We're definitely look like you'll be back again for saying some more. You might get the point. I have to make you like a co-host here. I think so. I think so. And just to get on here, but thank you so much for coming on and sharing your sawfish story and we'll definitely want to follow up more as this progresses to see how it's going and what happens with that with the whole with the whole story there.

1:33:11 So thank you very much. Thank you so much, Rachel. We appreciate it. Thank you, Dave. Thank you, Andrew. It's such a pleasure to be able to be on this podcast with you. And again, so many questions to answer. It's exciting. You know, curiosity, discovery. Love it. Well, it seems like it's been said drive us and it seems like Mar a lines is doing quite a lot of work like all over the Central America. And I think in the Americas. It's awesome. So I like to say I speak for myself, but I think probably Mar Alliance in general, we're a little bit like Greg Norman. Do you remember Greg Norman, the golfer? Yeah, yeah. Attage was he's called the shark, right? Yeah, his favorite adage was I bite off more than I can chew and I chew like hell.

1:33:52 I'd say that that should be on my tombstone. Well, you're doing great work. We do. We do appreciate it. We appreciate you coming on the podcast to share it with us all the time. So we thank you, Andrew. Thanks, Dave. It's a pleasure. Thank you, Rachel, for joining us on today's episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. It was great to have you back on and to talk about these wonderful studies that you've been a part of and that Mar Alliance has been a part of Dave. What were your thoughts overall on the interview? Like I mean to be in such a dangerous area to having such a beautiful discovery. What's your take on that stuff? You've had experiences with traveling in certain places and being in areas where probably maybe you shouldn't have been or you get caught up as someone who doesn't know the area or you're working with people in the area to say, hey, don't go in that area because it could be dangerous.

1:34:43 But then you get these benefits, these environmental benefits when you have this. Like what are your thoughts on this? Well, yeah, you know, people have heard me talk about this and some of the recent projects I've been on. You need to work with and I was to say you have to work with local people there. You have to local researchers, conservationists, scientists. You know, you just cannot go into a lot of these areas on your own because it won't end well for you. And this is area she was talking about is a particularly dangerous area. And, you know, she really basically got to have your contacts and they're going there and gather up the information and stuff. Right. If you go in there, it probably won't end well for you, you know, unless, you know, so and you've got to so that's a really important thing to recognize.

1:35:27 But she has a good relationships with the people there, which is ultimate bottom line. You have to have a good relationships with the people there who are able to go in there and gather a lot of information, get a lot of the data there. And it's a fascinating. It's fascinating discovery. It's almost it turns out you have an action, an unintended marine protected area because nobody else is going to go in there to like try to get the sawfish. Right. Because it's too dangerous for them. And so you so in other words, it's like, yeah, you could put in some policies to kind of protect the area. But in a way, it's already pretty heavily protected, literally armed protected now. So yeah, what else what else you could do? It's it's the best enforcement you can get, but for the wrong reasons.

1:36:07 Exactly. I know what I mean. Yeah, but no, but it was besides the exciting of the discovery. It was it's fascinating to hear. I think again, people that don't do this type of research or work in these parts of the world, it really emphasized that you need to have good relations with the local people there you're working with. Yeah, if you're going to try to try to do anything there. And and I was an exciting discovery. I yeah, you know, like I said, when she brought it up, we had her on to talk about Tiger Sharks a few weeks ago, like this sort of came up and I was like, yeah, oh, this we got to have her on to talk about this one. And and she didn't disappoint. That's for sure. That's for sure. Well, I think what's interesting, too, for a lot of the people who are listening to this, who want to get in shark research, they're still, you know, we've talked about this a lot of episodes.

1:36:49 There's still so much to know about sharks and discover about all different types of species about sharks. You know, Rachel brought some great Tiger Shark in the news last time she was on now. She's bringing, you know, this this information, you know, about about this, this shark is selfish, right? And so it's interesting how all these things come about. But like, I should also mention, we should also mention that like Rachel lives in Panama, you know, like she she's entrenched in the community there. She is part of the community now that's been living there for a very, very long time. And so she understands the dynamics of the country. She understands the dynamic of the local communities. She's have she has a lot of experience.

1:37:30 She works, you know, she employs some of the people from Panama and then other places where they work, whether it be Mexico, Belize and Honduras and so forth. I think that's an important part. It's not as if, you know, Rachel and her team are just coming in and saying, hey, you need to do this, this and this. This is this is something that she probably had a conversation with somebody and they said, hey, you know what? We've seen these sharks here before. Okay, let's see how we can how we can discover. And I think for people who are listening to this, we always mentioned that the young people in there who are listening to this. It's important that you work with local communities when you do this type of research or when you're trying to do this discovery to go in on your own one can be very, very dangerous and without knowing the lay of the land or the lay of the water and the community in the culture.

1:38:16 And to you get more responses. You get better studies when you work with local communities. It is absolutely critical to do this and Marlines is a great example of the way they work with that. And I think, you know, we had Rachel on a few years ago. Yeah, we can find we could post up the her episodes, tell her whole story. But she has a whole her whole career. She didn't just one day wake up inside. She's going to go to Panama and do this stuff. She her whole career has been working in a lot of these developing countries. Right. She's spent a couple of years in Madagascar. She's worked in North Africa. And so she's just you learn from experience doing that when you start out as a young person and and you just sort of learn. And that's like if you're a young person starting out and you want to be a young person.

1:38:57 And you can always talk to someone like Rachel or myself or other people can give you some guidance. I mean, I know I think with Rachel, I know with me, you just kind of got thrown into the deep end real quick, but you learn. There's finally I�ve found out here. culture is already huge is actually awesome. It's like Occupy, and it's somehow planning.

1:39:39 First of all, we say we'd like to do something. I think if she wants to work with somebody else, she's naturalized her life and I encourage her to say some of the end of the day. I like. So you mentioned, you know, right, I mean, Goine at certain times she just said, I Integrated. We kind of understand how such works compete with people like that. their episode. Rachel is one of the first people I talked to because I know she lived there for two years and she gave me some real good insight into where to look in Madagascar. So anyway, it's a good training ground, especially a young person you want, especially you got a little bit of an adventurous side to you. It can be fascinating to go try and work in some of these places and learn about, learn about the, you also learn about the cultures of the world. Absolutely. First hand, there's nothing you're going to be able to read in the book or watching a movie or see on YouTube. No, it's amazing to experience.

1:40:23 So yeah, absolutely. It was great to have Rachel on this would probably not be the last time she is on if no, the way she does the, her work and the way her Marlines does their work. We might have some, I mean, Ivy's been on as well. Who's part of the Marlines and, and so we'll, we'll probably have some more people on to, to highlight some of the studies they've done there. And if people want their studies on and, and they want, they're interested in being on the podcast to talk about their experiences in shark science and their careers in shark science that we may or may not know. I mean, Dave knows a lot of people within the shark science industry and most of the people that he's knows are on the podcast. I know a few more as well. But if you're interested in talking about your research, either you've been on before or you haven't been on yet hit Dave up at lost shark guy, what that's on Instagram, Instagram, Facebook, and, and you can also go through the San Jose state university to contact me as well as the beyond jaws podcast on Instagram or on the YouTube.

1:41:17 You can try to hit us up, hit me up from there and catch us and you could, no guarantee we'll put you on, but if you have something interesting you want to share, let us know and we'll consider it. So, absolutely. Yeah. So, so hit us up there beyond just pod on Instagram also. And don't forget to subscribe to the YouTube channel. And if you're, and if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast app, hit that follow button. So you don't miss the next episode. We want to thank you so much from David and I for joining us on today's episode of the beyond jaws podcast. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.