A Career in Science Communication for Manta Rays with Jasmine Corbett

0:00 I wonder if there's a way that I can combine the creative passions from land and then sort of bring it underwater. I did so many sort of fill-in jobs after graduating to actually make it to this point. So kind of working in more commercial underwater photography. I did a lot of photography for tourist boats, did a lot of dive instructing. I spend a lot of time underwater in other roles. How and why I've always just been really interested in the visual media because I know that it can have such an impact in a way that not other formats necessarily can. I kind of think that's really important for people to know so that people can understand You might not have all of the skills that the job Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. We have a special one for you today. You just saw some of the clips from our interview with Jasmine Corbett, who is the media and communications manager for the Manta Trust. Great organization. We've had Guy Stevens on the podcast before. Now we have Jasmine Corbett. She's here to talk to us all about communication, science communication, how she got into the field. And it's not your traditional way as usual. It's not your traditional way that you normally think. But I am your co-host, Andrew I'm doing great, Andrew. I'm really looking forward to this interview today with Jasmine. I've been wanting to have her on the show for a while. She,

1:33 as you mentioned, she's a science communications director for the Manta Trust. And I had an opportunity to work with her in the field with Guy and with Michelle Guerrero, who has the Ecuador Manta Trust there as well. And they're wonderful people. You can check out the episodes with Guy and Michelle from last year. But I was really super happy to have Jasmine on there. And as you said, she has an interesting story, journey to how she ended up in the position she was in. And I think everyone listening today, our audience is going to really enjoy hearing how she came to be the Science Communications Director for And I think this is another story where it follows a passion, right? She had a passion for diving. She had a passion for taking underwater videos, underwater photographs, got into it, went to school for that, then went back to school for science and marine biology. And then just the way she tells her story of how she ended up with the Manitou Trust is not your normal way of applying to a job and hopefully getting an interview and then moving forward from there. She actually had some working experience with them and we're gonna find out in this interview So check out the interview and we'll talk to you after. Hey Jasmine. Welcome to the beyond jaws podcast I'm very excited Well, I want to welcome everybody to the beyond jaws podcast where we have a super special guest today We have the fabulous Jasmine Corbett who's a passionate media

3:03 and communication specialist marine biologist and an award-winning underwater photographer as our guest today. Jasmine is a passionate media and communications specialist, a marine biologist, and as I mentioned, award-winning photographer. She plays a pivotal role in promoting the conservation efforts and research initiatives for the Manta Trust. Jasmine has a background in marine and natural history photography and has spent the past decade immersed in marine conservation and research initiatives in South and Southeast Asia. Her experience includes managing marine conservation projects, working in underwater photography and teaching scuba diving. During her time as a marine biologist in Baa Atoll in the Maldives, she had a transformative experience witnessing cyclone feeding mantas in Hanafru Bay, sparking an enduring passion for working with these majestic creatures. She's worked seamlessly to combine her passions with manta ray research and conservation with compelling storytelling and content creation, effectively raising awareness about the critical need to safeguard manta rays and their marine environments. I've personally had the opportunity to work with Jasmine Thefield, and I can confirm she's an exceptionally passionate person, especially with storytelling, and an outstanding photographer, and I strongly encourage you to go check out her work. Jasmine did her schooling at Falmouth University in Cornwall, and her current position is the Bantitrust Media and Communications Manager.

4:25 Hi, thank you. Thanks for Good. Well, we ask, as we always start off, we ask our guests, so how did you get interested in photography and the marine environment? Yeah, good question. So I grew up in a very creative family. My mum is an artist and a photographer. And I always had this idea that I wanted to go to university and study photography. But in my head, it was kind of, I could only do something that's commercial, like wedding photography or press photography. So I kind of just imagined myself going into that terrestrial world and I did a bit of traveling before I went to university and I tried scuba diving for the first time and like many people I was absolutely hooked and my whole game plan changed. I knew that I needed to do something in the underwater world somehow and so I kind of thought to myself I wonder if there's a way that I can combine the creative passions from land and then sort of bring it underwater and I stumbled across this university degree at Falmouth University called Marine and Natural History Photography which is essentially a science communication and wildlife media degree and I just knew that was what I needed to do.

5:54 So yeah I went to study marine and natural history photography, I specialised in underwater and my final project was I focused on the effects of overfishing and that kind of really sparked an interest for me, understanding our relationship with fishing around the world and the impact that has on the environment but also the livelihoods that fishing creates like there's this whole amazing complexity to fishing that I've always found really fascinating and I'm sure you can relate Dave as well it's like it can give us such a great insight into the species you can discover and the species you can research. So that's kind of how I got into this world and Although I'm very lucky in my job to actually photograph a lot of live creatures, I still absolutely love doing fish market photography and kind of documenting the world around fish markets and the things you can find there, the people that you meet, the fishermen stories. So that's always kind of maintained this real passion in me. So yeah, that's kind of where I ended up Did you before you you pursue decided to pursue like the the national history angle when you're before you actually got into went to university? Did you? We did you do much? Just did you just pick up a camera start doing some early photographing at

7:32 Yeah so before university I studied photography at college but the kind of photography that I was doing was quite traditional. It was like analog and darkroom photography. I would spend like all my evenings in the darkroom just hidden away developing prints. I absolutely loved it and it was quite experimental. I did a lot of fine art photography Which I still love, I kind of always when I was doing fine art photography nature was still my inspiration and that would kind of feed into all of my creative work. And I never really thought at that stage that I would be able to go into underwater because it was still this kind of far away inaccessible world that I didn't really know existed or like I didn't know how you could get into this world so It was it was quite lucky and kind of by chance that I stumbled across that degree course which is at the time when I studied about 10 years ago it was still in its very early stages. Now it's kind of grown in popularity and there's a lot more students in each year's cohorts and there's in the UK especially there's a couple of wildlife filmmaking master's degrees that are available. But yeah, I think sort of like 10, 20 years ago, that just wasn't something you could specialize in for your academic pursuits. So yeah,

9:03 You mentioned you worked in the darkroom. So when you started this, were you still doing developing film, I assume, by that phrase? You were developing, so you weren't doing all digital. You were Mm-hmm. Yeah, working with film. I was doing that more than digital at the beginning. So yeah, I miss it. So I've got to ask you, because since some of us grew up during the film age and knew a little bit about some of that stuff, you were in more of that transitional where you went from both working film to digital. I'm just curious what your thoughts are on both, say, Yeah so I think with film photography you always get this kind of It's like this nostalgic feel in the photograph. There's a certain quality to film photography that you just can't replicate with digital photography. It's really hard to kind of pin down exactly what it is, but there's just the look of it. It's so crisp and you can just feel the nostalgia when you look at a film photograph. I think one of the really wonderful things about film photography is Because when you start your shoot, you know you've got, say, a maximum of 36 images. So every

10:34 image you take, you really think about the composition. You really consider the lighting. There's so much thought that goes into that one shot that I think we often lose that way of thinking with digital photography. Because you can just take 10,000 photos in a shoot and pick 10 of them. So I really like the care that goes into each shot with film photography and I definitely think it makes you a better photographer if you dip your toes in that world and sort of start to experience the ways of photography like When you started doing underwater photography, did you do much film with No, sadly not. I've never actually shot film underwater. I know there are a few photographers that are still doing underwater film, but it's quite a challenge, yeah. I think to get your hands on underwater housings that shoot film nowadays, it's Yeah, I would imagine. Well, as someone, I started out on a Nikon is three for doing underwater photography to give you age myself a lot there. But, um, so when you talk about the composition and you have 36, you have 36 like shots to take and you're, you want to make sure like

12:07 they count each one of them. And then you get to a situation if you're dying, if you're on your first dive of say you're doing a couple of dives, you don't want to finish off with like 33 shots and you got like three left. And it's like, because you're going to, when you get up, you're going to have to change the roll of film because you don't want to go back down with three shots. You want to have 36. So, uh, little things to deal with, but yeah, if he ever has fun times, yeah, I try. trying to use a Nikonas, one of those old Nikonas ones, which at the time were super cool. But now it's just, these Well, plus you have the addition of going back to other software and using algorithms and sort of these different predetermined sort of buttons to augment the photograph and bring the colors out or change the background or change the colors. in depth now. Was that a big step from going from film to learning all of these different tools that you can use in post-processing in that time or was it something that just for you because you use film it That's a good question. For me it was quite easy because in the first year of university we were still using film photography and then slowly sort of moving on to digital and post-production and I guess I was just really

13:38 lucky to have some great tutors and great supervision at university that really helped with understanding the post-processing techniques. Since I've graduated I'm at the stage now where I feel like I'm probably quite behind people because it's always updating and it can be quite hard to keep up with the new techniques and like updated softwares and all the algorithms. So it's definitely something that I still feel like I'm constantly learning, just to stay up to date with modern day photography. But that makes it really fun at the same time, like So when you're going back to when you were at university, kind of in your career trajectory, at what point did you Go start diving and realize like, wow, there's this whole world underwater. I want to start. I want to capture on film. Was it during your university or So I started diving when I was 18 and that was on a gap year before university. I went and did a course in Thailand and although I'd always loved the ocean, I'd always loved swimming and snorkeling, I didn't even know that I could do scuba diving at a younger age than 18. I just thought it was something that you reach 18 and that's the point when you can learn. It's like a tattoo. Yeah exactly and now I'm a scuba instructor now and I'm

15:08 like oh I wish I'd picked it up when I was like 12 or 10 and like got into it from a really early age. But yeah, I mean, I tried it when I was 18, absolutely fell in love with it and went on to do my advanced course in the same travels in that trip. And during my degree, I went on to sort of do my rescue course and my dive master course. And after graduating, I was sort of waiting to get into this science communication world full time. So I went and did my instructor course and taught scuba diving in a few places around the world. because it was a really good way to improve my dive experience and get in the water as much as possible and I think having now as a sort of dive professional I think that's also improved my Photographic techniques underwater as well because I'm very self-reliant It's helped my buoyancy kind of be spot-on which is so important for videography underwater. It's like Maintaining that neutral buoyancy is it's really tough when you have a camera in your hands I don't think people realize how difficult I mean you have you know, you have these animals that are moving at their proper speed, and so some of them are faster, some of them are slower. You are moving, you're trying to stay buoyant, you're trying to look out for everything, because you're still scuba diving, so you still need to maintain, like, your safety and things like that, and look around, but then you just have to get that shot. We did it,

16:41 I remember when I worked for the government here in Canada, We used to do these training activities in the fall. Our field team would offer these open sort of, it was like an open way of like if you were a scuba diver, you can go and practice your scuba diving. They would bring out instruments and they would let us, so it was like field instruments and one was a video camera. This is in a 10-foot deep pool where you had to maintain your buoyancy in 10 feet of water, which is very difficult because your body just wants to pop up to the top all the time. And you had to stay still to get the shot. It was so difficult. I did not expect that. How long did it take you to go from diving with a camera, whether it be photography or videography, to really, in your opinion, get to the point where you're like, OK, these are proper professional products that I Yeah, I mean it really took some time. I think when you, you can be a really comfortable diver and say you get up to your dive master and you feel great, your buoyancy is great, your trim in the water, everything feels super comfortable. You throw a camera in the mix and it's like you're a beginner diver again. So you really have to go back to the first point and like feel very humbled and kind of just accept that you know it's going to take some time. I mean I'm still, I still feel like I'm learning but because I kind of, I went from the point where I was in my job scuba diving and doing videography and

18:14 then in a lot of locations we didn't have access to scuba so then you're free diving and doing videography which is like a whole another ball game it's like you know doing everything that you're used to on one breath and popping up and like getting that shot again popping up to the surface kind of getting your breath back and going down again But I think, I'd say it probably took sort of like five years to feel truly comfortable. And then another thing to throw into the mix is every time you upgrade your gear to something bigger, then that's the next challenge. There's more settings. It's like a bigger, heavier setup, which has more drag in the water. Then you get tempted to buy some cool That's really funny because I was watching a video, this woman I had on my other podcast, Aaliyah, she is part of the Finstitute in Australia and she's an underwater photographer and videographer and she was talking about how normally she just goes down with a regular camera with very small, I guess, housing.

19:25 And then she said, and here's like my bigger gear, which is like, and then she put the strobes on and she was talking about how difficult it was to maneuver and stabilize. And it was just like, every time she added something, it was more and more difficult. That's like a professional thing around, across everybody, right? Where it's like, the bigger the gear that you see in like National Geographic and things like that, that is, you're getting into advanced and difficulties that we can't even comprehend here Yeah. Oh, totally. All part of the I love that challenge. Yeah, for sure. You mentioned you took like a year, when you really started getting into it, you took a gap year and went to like Thailand, Southeast Asia. Just out of curiosity, why did you happen to decide, like, I'm going to go to Thailand out Why did you happen to go there? Good question. I kind of, at the age of 18, I think it was quite, I mean, I'm sure it's still quite a typical route for people to do, but there's this kind of standard Southeast Asia backpacker route. Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam. So I was kind of just, you know, jumping on the bandwagon and wanted to do a bit of backpacking. and hadn't really even considered, oh on this trip I'm going to try scuba diving and fall in love with it. It was just something that I thought I'd give a go and that kind of like changed the whole perspective of my travels and all the travels that followed on

20:57 from that. I think every trip I've really ever done has just always been Diving and what marine animals I could see so yeah, it's amazing to think that something that you came up with during a backpacking trip Sort of sporadically and just said, okay I'm just gonna try this and see how it goes and it's all of a sudden has changed the way you you live now. It's your profession. It's like you said, every trip you take, what can I see and where do I go? It's amazing how that sporadic thought where like, okay, I'm going to try scuba diving on this backpacking trip when I'm 18 and it's going to change life. You mentioned that you did that while you're waiting to get a job in science communication. You have a degree that is really focused in on science communication. How many, like I guess did a lot of your fellow students get jobs within a similar industry like wildlife and communications or was it did they go to like you know, National Geographic or BBC, or like, what was the path that, like, obviously, we know your path we're going to talk about with the Manitrust, but what were the paths of the other students that you may have known or kept in touch Yeah, that's a good question. It's a real mixture, so some go to sort of like more blue chip style media, so work on big productions with BBC or Nat Geo or Disney and

22:28 others go into the kind of route that I went down, so charity communications or conservation communications, but really it's quite a competitive industry, science communication. It certainly took me quite a long time to finally actually get here, And I know that like wildlife media at the moment, it's such a saturated market. And there's a lot of productions that are kind of slowing down. And I think during COVID, there were so many big natural history productions because it was what people wanted. People were at home looking for something to watch. Then after COVID, people were able to travel more and they weren't kind of like sat down in front of their TVs as much and they were able to get out in nature. And so there's a real sort of slowdown in the industry. And it's I mean, it's really tough because there's all of these people that have got amazing qualifications, amazing skills, tons of dive experience. And there's just not quite a lot on offer right now. Yeah. So I feel I feel really, really lucky that I'm able to do this role full time. It certainly was like it took a really long time to get here. So I'm really grateful to finally be here.

23:46 And I did so many did so many sort of fill in jobs after graduating to actually make it to this point. So kind of working in more commercial underwater photography, I did a lot of of photography for tourist boats, did a lot of dive instructing, so spent a lot of time underwater in other roles before I could So when you were moving along in your thing, did you, at what point did you decide, or was it early on you decided the whole science communication and the photography, you wanted to kind of wed those two passions of yours? At what point did you think like, hey, this is the direction I want to go with it, because some people do more like just the science communication, others just really stick into the photography, and then of course some like you kind of marry the two. At what point did you think you could pull those two, do you want to pull them together, or Yeah, so I think while I was studying, while I was doing my degree, that already sort of formulated the idea for me because the big focus on the course was to be documenting not only the wildlife but the threats that the wildlife are facing and finding creative ways to communicate this that were engaging but also accessible

25:16 to everybody like that's always been such a big priority for me is making information as accessible and digestible as possible. So I think even during my degree I'd always known I want to be involved in communicating things in a really visual and engaging way because I mean visual media has such an impact on people I think compared to, I mean scientific publications are so important, they're so essential, but they are really kind of, they can only really be interpreted by the academic brain and so it means that a lot of really important information is shut off from the world because it's in this format that a lot of people just haven't had the opportunity to learn to interpret. So I think that's one of the really amazing things about visual media is it kind of transcends language barriers, it transcends academic barriers as well.

26:15 It's a way to kind of connect people very quickly to wildlife and the threats that they're facing without necessarily having to be written or read. It's just images that people see and they can start to understand like this is what's happening. So that's kind of how and why I've always just been really interested in the visual media because I just I know that it can have such an impact in a way that not I think it's really interesting too the way you've approached it from a visual media perspective. You know the underwater photography, the videography, A lot of, and you know, you're a science communicator, you're a science communication manager for the Manitrust. And Manitrust has been known to produce these amazing photos and these amazing videos just as you're producing them. And we've seen many of those and we'll talk about those in just a moment that some three to five minute videos you guys have been releasing on Instagram and social media and so forth and YouTube. But a lot of the time, science communication roles don't call for visual media expertise or experience. They require media relations and social media savviness, but also internal and external communication experience and things like that. From your experience, and did you find that that is mana is the manitrust unique

27:47 in that aspect where it requires one the visual media, but does it also require the other experience that I just mentioned that traditional or other science, I shouldn't say traditional, because it's all Yeah, so the role that I'm doing is really diverse. As you said, it's kind of like I do the visual media, the photography and the videography, but I also do the press relations and the website design and maintenance and the kind of graphic design. Social media, luckily I have an amazing assistant who helps out with the social media and other comms elements. So, I mean, it's such a diverse role that I didn't actually have all of the experience of before starting the role. And so there was a lot of learning on the job. There was definitely a lot of YouTubing. I'll be totally honest about that. There was a lot of YouTubing, how to do my job. But I think that's, I kind of think that's really important for people to know so that people can understand like you might not have all of the skills that the job listing requires and a lot of it you do need to learn on the job. Like I'd never, even though I'd done photographic jobs before. I hadn't really ever had experience in press relations before starting the role. I wasn't a graphic designer and that was very much like starting from the ground and working up very quickly. But it was the best way to learn. I learnt really fast. Had

29:20 a lot of challenges, yeah. Had a lot of challenges at the beginning but I'm also really grateful to have such a diverse role because then I can kind of understand all aspects of the comms and kind of interlink them and interweave them really nicely in the charity which is great. And I would say the charity, the Manchester Trust, is really supportive of learning on the job. They knew that when I took this role that I didn't have press relation experience or marketing experience and they were really supportive of me learning as I go. So I've been really lucky with that. I think other charities, depending on the size of the charity, If they're a much bigger charity, they'd probably have one person allocated to the content creation and the visual media, and then another person that's just for press liaison and marketing, and then another person for the web and graphic design. But smaller charities like ourselves are very much... all elbows in, all hands on deck, you know, everyone gets involved in Yeah that's a good question. So I was working as a marine biologist in Bar Atoll in the Maldives for an organisation called Reefscapers and they focus a lot on coral restoration and coral propagation and sea turtle rehabilitation

30:52 and our headquarters was actually shared with the Manta Trust team And I kind of, on my days off, I would sometimes help out on the Manchester Trust research boat and we'd go to Hanifaru Bay, which for anyone that doesn't know, is essentially where the largest aggregation of reef manta rays gather in the world. So it's this incredible hotspot for reef mantas. it's just an insane place there's not really anywhere like it you get cyclone feeding manta rays that were feasting on this plankton soup that you're swimming in and it's it's just incredible and after spending some time there i just knew like okay i'm obsessed with mantas i need to work with them and just from being spending so much time with the team I just really respected the Manta Trust's ethos and their ways of working and the kind of focus that they had in mind. I just got really close with them, got to know them, and luckily for me I then got offered a position with them to manage one of their research bases in Lamo Atoll, so that's south-central Maldives. and I worked there for a couple of years managing one of the research projects but at the same time I was doing photography and videography for fun because I had an underwater camera. I

32:22 was using it also a lot for the research elements because a lot of our research projects use photography like imagery for the data so it's really cool I got to I was very much involved in the science but all of our all of our research equipment involved cameras in some way so I loved that but because I was doing a lot of photography and videography for fun and making short form content about the charity When the previous media and communications manager was leaving the role, the charity founder and my now boss had seen some of the content I created and they were like, huh, Jazz, you do photography, right? Would you want to switch over to the comms side? So it was all kind of quite organic. I didn't really necessarily ever before working with reef scapers think oh there's this organization the Manta Trust that I really want to get a job with it was just kind of quite natural got to know them in the field and was like wow this the work they're doing is incredible and I really respect their ways of working. And also never really thought I want to be doing the media for them and never thought I'd have that opportunity and it just kind of organically flowed to that point. So I'm very lucky that those opportunities came about because I didn't really ever imagine I would get to So was this an opportunity that you applied for or that you just discussed just

33:58 So the media and comms role I didn't apply for because for people that are working internally already with the charity, if they have the right skill set, there's the possibility to move on to different roles in the charity. I'd always known that I wanted to get back into conservation communications in some way, but didn't really go out searching for that. So it was kind of just when I got offered the opportunity, I was like, sweet, I can get back into science communication. And I'm really excited about that. And I think I was really lucky to have worked in the research side as well, because now that's really informed all of the work that I do today, I have a much better understanding of kind of the backbone to a lot of the projects and like the complexities of working in manta ray conservation that maybe I wouldn't have experienced so much if I wasn't working in the research role with them before. So it's been a really nice way to kind of have the experience of two Just getting back to your sort of dual, like doing photography for art and photography for science. How different is that when you're using a camera for science compared to trying to make the most beautiful image ever? Like how, from

35:28 your perspective, learning it from an art perspective, now using it for science, Yeah, I mean, it's totally different. So just to give you an idea of when I would do a research dive in Lamu Atoll, when I would drop down in the water I would have like 10 pieces of equipment strapped to my body and that would include like a few um like we would call them RUV cameras, remote underwater vehicles essentially, so like we would be putting loads of GoPros down on the reef and either doing time-lapse photography or just running videos and that was, we'd put those cameras down on a manta ray cleaning station and the idea is that the manta passes by and we hopefully capture a shot of their belly spots so they're identifying features essentially but aside from that we were also measuring the wingspans of manta rays using a device called a stereo video photogrammetry device which is a super cool thing it's basically this bar with a gopro either end slightly angled in towards each other and it's calibrated to measure the wingspan of a manta when you're swimming behind it. So it's just recording this imagery that can transfer into this insanely different data than just taking like a beautiful image of a manta ray. And then another piece of equipment we had was this contactless underwater ultrasound scanner, which

37:01 was so cool. We were basically using water as the transmission medium between an ultrasound scanner and the manta ray's body. and essentially it would feed through to an iPhone. So you're looking at like a screen underwater and you're receiving the live sonogram. So that was another way that we were using imagery and visual media underwater for research. So it was like, it was crazy. It was like we had all of these different cameras with all of these different functions. But they were there to collect research imagery. So you weren't ever thinking like, OK, how's the composition of this ultrasound?

37:43 With that, you're trained to share this media with the world and showing all these wonderful images and what the ocean world brings. When you're doing this type of research, I guess there's a lot of pressure for people saying, hey, scientists, when they gather fieldwork, they should share their data. Now, some people don't want to share their data if it has to do with scientific research until they publish and so forth. Was that ever an issue to share? Like, as you say, you got these images from an ultrasound, would you feel like, oh, we should share these? And was there ever like, maybe we should wait until we publish on this in case, you know, who knows, right? So like, was there pressure to like, hey, let's, let's share this, let's show people what we can do? Or was it just more of like, let's keep it down until Yeah, that's a really good question. We try and be as open with our data as possible at the time. Some data that we were collecting would be for someone's like PhD or an upcoming publication. So in those instances, we knew like, okay, we can't quite put this imagery live until it's formed into a proper publication. But anything that was not sort of like locked by publication, we share as much as possible because I think it's It's so important to show your followers and show the world what you're currently up to. I've always just thought it seems so sad to have

39:17 this amazing resource of data and have all this amazing information just locked away on a hard drive. how can that make an impact? So yeah I mean in one instance we're sharing a lot as we're going along in the field but something else that we've really focused on in the last year with our publications is Like, we've always thought it's a bit of a shame to have publications locked away in journals that have a paywall and we always try and make our publications open access, but for ones that are not able to be open access, we basically recently created a managed trust research portal where we've put all of our publications in this one directory of resources. And even for the publications that are behind a paywall, like we include a summary of the publication and an abstract and all the key figures and kind of like related press or media and it's very visual. So we try as much as possible to present that information in a really accessible Do you have a thing on like ResearchGate or anything for your scientific publications? Because you can go The ones that are behind paywalls, you can go on there and request. If you don't know somebody, if you know somebody, you can email them. But if you you go on there and you can request a publication, you can directly send it to them. I don't know. And I

40:51 Yeah, so we do have a research gate. Something that, I mean, in a way, the inspiration of the ManchTrust Research Portal was to create our own ManchTrust Research Gate, have it completely open to the public. So we've kind of, yeah, it's like a little equivalent manta ray version of it. I'd highly recommend to everyone listening, search the ManchTrust Research Portal. It's It's such a great Manta Ray Research Directory resource. It's really wonderful. So yeah, highly recommend checking You can find all of our publications on there. We'll post links to that with this episode. We'll post links there so people can go there and click on the link to bring it right there. Perfect. Because I know people in the field, that's a great...

41:40 I haven't been there myself, but that sounds like it would be a great resource to be able to go there and get all that type of information. in a place like that. Now, you guys do these photo identifications with the manta rays so you can identify them. You So I'm not involved. I mean, I was when I was in the research role, not as much in the media role, but we have an entire database team that are managing our global database. And they, I mean, they do an incredible job. There is an insane amount of submissions that we receive through our ID the Manta platform, which you can also find on the Manta Trust website. And as of yet, they have all been all of the ID photographs that we have from around the world. have been manually identified by our team, so it's an insane amount. Just to give you an example, in the Maldives alone, the database of reef manta rays is more than 6,000 individuals, and the oceanic mantas is over 1,000 individuals, and those individuals have been identified from over 80,000 photographs. so and that's just one small country so our global database is massive but something really exciting that

43:12 we're working on that will hopefully be ready early next year is an automated software that is identifying these spot patterns for us because that's going to save our database team a huge amount of time And the really cool thing about this platform is that people, instead of sending their images directly to the global database team, They can have a profile on our new platform where they submit their own images. They can kind of be in like a leaderboard so you can see like, okay, I'm the top submitter of this week. Gamified. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It's the best way to motivate people and it's the best way to get people involved in citizen science is like showing them like, you have your own page, you can see all the mantas you've identified. I mean, it's so nice when you can make science fun for people that aren't necessarily scientists, but say there's like scuba divers or snorkelers that go on holiday. Yeah, such a cool way to get involved. So yeah, Yeah, and that's great. It gives them the opportunity to be like, I've contributed to this. I've contributed to identifying individuals or continuing to track individuals and probably discover, I'm sure, from the database and the identification, you discovered distribution patterns a little bit better or understood distribution patterns a little bit better. The software, the recognition software, is that similar to the one, I know there's recognition software that was used to identify whale sharks because of their patterns near

44:45 their dorsal fins or on the dorsal side. And then I think the same pattern or very similar algorithm was used to do the same thing. I think it was on six gill sharks on the side of their gills. Is it a similar software to that or is this It's a brand new algorithm that we're using but it's a similar concept to like the whale shark spot pattern. It's a similar concept that we've got with the manta ray spot pattern but there are a lot more challenges involved with the manta ray spot pattern because obviously When you're photographing a manta ray it's on its belly, so you're usually underneath and it's like this big shadow above you. So the spots are often very hard to actually see in a photograph, especially if you don't have strobes or a flash. and usually if a manta ray is feeding it's in this kind of plankton soup so often the plankton inconveniently looks like spots on the belly so yeah it's been it's definitely been quite a challenge not saying that whale shark researchers have it way easier because they still they've still got a lot of whale sharks to identify but the whale shark pattern next to the gills is super defined you can in in the software that you use for the whale shark ID you can kind of like trace the lines and then the spots So it's a little bit easier to identify them whereas with mantas sometimes they can have like

46:17 a really clearly defined spot and then they'll have a splodge and then lots of teeny tiny spots and Yeah, so it's taken us many, many years to develop that algorithm and get it to be reliable. And it's And even the photographs, do you put on workshops or instructional videos for some of the divers and some of those photographers to get the Yeah, so on our ID the Manta page on the Manta Trust website, we've got a clear sort of guide on that page on how to get the best ID shot, what kind of area people should be looking for. We're super lucky because we received some really incredible submissions as well.

47:05 When you get that perfect ID shot, it's like, yes, thank you. It's great. And sort of like moving back to what you were saying previously, we're so lucky because so much of the data that we have from around the world isn't actually from our researchers. It's like so much of that information is from just keen divers, people that work on liverboards, just keen snorkelers. It's such a vast amount of information that we've got that we wouldn't be able to have if it was only our researchers in the field. Our database would be so limited. So That's amazing. That's awesome. Now, you know, what's what's interesting with a lot of the research, you have a lot going on at the Manitou Trust. There's there's research that's going on. There's this community feel with getting people engaged. But there's some complex information out there through your portal, you know, for the research and so forth. And it's your job and your team's job to tell the stories of those. Do you do you look at each study that's being done and be like, Okay, where's the storyline here? How can I get people our fan base, our constituents, they may not be all scientists. They're divers, they're tourist operators, they're people who are just interested in manitrust in general. How do I get the storyline out there and put it in such a visual way as you've done with these videos that you've released recently? How

48:38 do you go about getting that storyline and pulling that out of that research? Because the research is supposed to be boring in a way for a lot of people as they read through it, right? How do you pull that storyline Yeah, that's a really good question. I mean, with every project or publication or thing that we need to communicate, we always come up with like a communications campaign or like, we kind of think about who's our audience and what do we want our outputs to be? And then we take a step back from that and then think, okay, best ways to communicate it. But I think with everything that we communicate, I still think it's quite good to keep it quite simple, like have a beginning, a middle and an end to a story in every campaign we do. So our beginning, say we're making like a promotional video about a project, the beginning is explaining the full context. Who are the people involved? Who are the communities involved? Why is this so important? Your middle is kind of like the threats that this animal is facing or like the issue at hand and then always trying to end it quite positively so like okay telling people what's the solution how can you as an individual contribute like how can you be involved in this and I think those three sections always kind of guide every video or every campaign we do is you know like we have to show people what's the ways that you can get

50:11 involved and make a change because otherwise if if I mean a lot of manta ray conservation in reality is quite depressing because a lot of the a lot of the manta ray projects that we work with are fisheries projects where manta rays are being hunted and targeted for their gill plates or even their meats and I mean they're super slow to reproduce and it's kind of the way we present it is it can be quite challenging because in reality it's a massive issue to tackle and I think if we just show people the really depressing side of things and show that there's not much hope then we're not getting anywhere so we always have to show people there is an element of hope and there is a way that you can be involved so that Now last week we had World Man Today, I think it was on the 17th of September, which is an annual thing, and you guys had quite a big event at the Natural History Museum in London, which if I can just say, if you're ever in London, if there's something you have to do is go to the Natural History Museum. It's one of the most awesome places I've ever been, and I've been to a lot of museums there, but it's pretty impressive. Jasmine, Sure, so we were super lucky to be able to host, yeah, World Man Today at the Natural History Museum.

51:40 Something I never thought we would be able to say because it is just the most incredible venue. Somewhere that I, as a kid, I would just walk around there and be like, I need to be involved in this world somehow, this place is insane. So we, I mean, this year's World Man Today, the theme was the power of storytelling. And as the media and comms manager, you can imagine, I was super excited about that theme. I was like, this is my thing. I really cannot wait to promote this theme. And this was kind of based on recent conversations we've been having about how visual media is so important and storytelling is so important in conservation and how it's really integral to making change and changing perspectives around the world. So yeah, that's kind of why we decided that this year's theme was going to be focused all on that. And initially we thought we're going to just do like a small event, maybe show some films, show some media, do an exhibition. And we were really lucky to have support from one of our partners focused on nature, who are also partnered with the Natural History Museum. So they suggested let's do an event there. And we jumped at the chance, as you can imagine. and the founder of Focused on Nature is Prince Hussain Aga Khan who is a really passionate underwater photographer and conservation storyteller. So we did a big exhibition

53:12 of his prints and also sort of like an educational exhibition of all of the work of the Manta Trust. and we were super lucky to have our patron Steve Backshall who's an incredible wildlife TV presenter, again another amazing conservation storyteller. He and Prince Hussein were our keynote speakers for the night so it was just a really incredible evening where we spent the whole time celebrating storytelling and visual media and it was just so much fun because as I sort of said before it's such a great way to connect an audience to your goals and your ethos and what you want to achieve is by presenting them incredible imagery and people can just connect to that a lot more easily. So yeah, it was, it was pretty special. I'm still kind of, when I think about Yeah. And also you were a, you were, you were a finalist for this ocean photographer of the year. that just have also right around just before or just right around the same thing. Can you share a little more about that? That Sure. Yeah. So I mean, I never really enter photography competitions. And I know I should do more. But I think it is a bit of a self-confidence thing. I think I'm not going to enter. You know, there's like way, way better photographers. There's not much point. But

54:45 I saw that in this year's Ocean Photographer of the Year Awards, they had a newly introduced conservation impact category. And I thought, OK, maybe I'm going to submit some of my fisheries imagery, because as I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, I've always been really, really interested in documenting fish markets, particularly shark and ray fisheries. And I was out in the field earlier this year with one of our affiliate projects, the Mobula Project Indonesia, who are based in Java. And they're doing really incredible work in the region to try and mitigate shark and ray fisheries. And they've been there for about 10 years. They work really closely with the fisher community. And they've created a new project called the Sustainable Seafood Network. and what they want to do is partner up fishers with resorts and hotels in Bali that will pay a premium price for sustainably caught fish which will then help the fishers to reduce their dependency on the shark and ray fishing trade, which for anyone listening to this podcast that doesn't really know why this is occurring, most of it is feeding into the Asian medicine trade, which is hugely detrimental to shark and ray populations. So sharks, for example, they're targeted for their fins, which

56:17 are used in a shark fin soup. Manta rays are targeted for their gill plates, which are used in a tonic. And its supposed medicinal benefits are not. There's no backing, no scientific backing whatsoever. So it's all a pseudoscience. It's hugely detrimental to shark and ray populations. But unfortunately, with commercial fish stocks depleting, a lot of these fishes resort to this other trade, the shark and ray trade. And so Java where they work in East Java is one of the biggest shark and ray landing sites in the country. I was on assignment documenting their projects and doing a lot of interviews with the fishers to understand the complexities to the trade, the fact that they really have no other options currently. I mean it's a struggle being a Sharp and Ray Fisher. Their life is hard. They receive pennies and it's the middleman and the people at the top of the trade that receive the big bucks. And so a big part of that project was really trying to show people how yeah how complicated the trade is because I think it is it's very easy to if you don't really understand how the trade works it's so easy to vilify the fishers and think that they're the demons and you know they're causing all the problems because they're the one catching sharks and rays, whereas it's far more complicated than that and

57:48 a lot of them don't want to be doing it. They'd much rather be catching commercial fish, receiving a fair income, not having to fish late at night and catch relatively dangerous shark species far out at sea, so a big part of the project was documenting that. But the image that I shot that made it to the finals was an image of shark fins drying on a roof in Java. Luckily, I had access to the location because of the Mobula Project Indonesia team. If I was just a photographer in the area, I would no way have that access. It could be dangerous. Yeah, totally. I mean because it's such a complex trade and it is technically illegal in lots of places, a lot of the trade is mafia run and there's so many middlemen and it's just it's so complex to understand as a scientist how this all works and so it's very hush-hush. But I was really lucky because of the trust between the Fishers and the Mobula Project Indonesia to be able to go and photograph this scene. So I entered that image into the conservation impact category and I was so lucky to make it to the finals because at the event they showed all this imagery on the Piccadilly lights in London. You can take this really complex and impactful image and then take it to the streets of London in

59:20 one of the busiest places in the world and introduce some people in the city of London to the shark and ray trade. One of the really big complexities with fisheries for me is so many people have such a detachment from the ocean it's out of sight out of mind so a lot of the issues with fisheries is people in big cities getting fish from a can in a supermarket, they have no idea of the roots that that fish has come from. Yeah, totally. And it's not really necessarily the fault of the consumer, unless they're educated of these things, they don't know the impact of the fish that And it's hard to explain too, like when you talk about, I was just in Indonesia, but I've been to other places like you have, It's hard to explain to somebody like in London or in California what it's like when you're in Indonesia, what people really go through trying to get a little bit of money for the fish they catch. As you said, as it goes up the chain, the middle guys and the higher up, those guys are making more of the money than the actual fishers are. They're just kind of getting by. And as you say, you're in London, you just go pick up a tin can of fish and open it up. way you go so it's it's uh that that's a whole story really in itself to just show the fish being caught and then track it all the way to where it

1:00:53 ends up on your grocery store that that would be that Yeah, totally. I mean it's something that I would love to document because it's really cool with those kind of things you can show not only the impact on the marine life but the human impact as well because I think with a lot of these big commercial fishing boats that are far out of sea, because of it being out of sight and out of mind, like human rights violations are insane in the high seas and that's something that I guess growing up as a kid when I was eating fish like freely I never really would have considered because for good reason people hide this information from you they don't want you to know that you know there's like insane amounts of human rights violations going on on fishing boats from the fish that you're eating from the supermarkets. It's still going on today.

1:01:51 It's not as if it's stopped. It's very hard to control. Yeah, Yeah, that'd be a fascinating story. Yeah, that's good. Jasmine, this has been an amazing interview with you. I could probably go on for another at least hour, but we don't want to keep you too long here. What advice would you have? Well, we'll have you back on the show. Talk some more but particularly about some of this story we just talked about that with fishing and everything and sort of the chain of trade on these things, but for now, what advice would you have for some person starting out in the field is kind of interested in Becoming like a wildlife photographer doing Yeah so I would say I mean if you can go and study a degree course that specializes in something like this because it can give you so many different aspects of experience that you need for the field. But then at the same time, I would say that you don't have to go down the academic route. There's so many incredible wildlife photographers that I know that haven't studied this academically.

1:03:04 There are so many resources for being self-taught. Like, as I sort of said earlier on the podcast, a lot of what I've learned is from YouTube. And there's so much great stuff on YouTube on, you know, how to shoot underwater and camera settings and the equipment that you need. But if you are wanting to get into underwater, getting your dive skills spot on is super important because it's really, really challenging otherwise. But even if you're not a scuba diver, but you're interested in documenting ocean conservation, there's so many ways you can do it from land as well, which is really cool. Because a lot of science and conservation happens above the water, even though it's like ocean focused. But I would say it's really important to kind of find your niche, like find something that you're really passionate about and learn as much as you can about it. Because with every conservation project or every conservation issue, there are so many complexities. You really want to learn from all of the researchers involved, all of the communities involved.

1:04:16 Find a way to learn from everyone that's involved in the thing that you're interested in and then that will make you a better storyteller. I think it really improves the quality of your storytelling is when you're listening to the people that are from that place and working in that field. Because yeah, conservation is so complex. You really have to understand all the layers to it. But I think one other thing I would say is a way to stand out is to kind of have your own style, and it does take time to develop. But one of the best ways to do that is, say you want to be like a journalist, like a science communication journalist. you've been reading, I don't know, amazing Nat Geo articles all your life, is finding those writers that you're like, I really like their style, I like what they're doing, and pick up on what they're doing and try and replicate that but also develop it into your own and it's the same with videography like if you've seen a video that you know has been really impactful to you have a good think about what it is that that videographer is doing and how it's impacted you and then try and kind of emulate that in your own work. It takes time to figure out your own style and something that makes you unique from the crowd But I think as

1:05:46 long as you're documenting and communicating about something that you're really passionate, then your style just kind of comes, it starts to shine through, Absolutely. Okay, well thank you so much Jazza for coming on the show. Good luck on your future endeavors, and we'll definitely have you back on. If you have something exciting come up, let us know. We'd definitely like to have Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure. I love the podcast, so it's You bet. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jazz, for joining us here on the Beyond Jaws podcast. It was such a great interview. It was so interesting to see how people go into sort of shark and ray, and in this case, manta ray conservation, in very different ways from very different passionate backgrounds. Photography and underwater videography is like an art form, especially underwater.

1:06:51 It's a very difficult thing to do. It takes a lot of practice. It takes a lot of patience. And then getting a science background to be able to tell a story from a different perspective, I think is a really important thing to have when you're working with an organization like the Manitou Trust, right? Like how do you feel about that kind of communication? Like you grew up old school scientist, like that kind of stuff, but you're very big into the communication. When it comes to this type of artwork and I think it's, I think it's great because, you know, obviously, you know, today it's just a different era now where you have a lot more avenues to do this type of stuff. Whereas when I was coming up, there really is very limited in what you could do. Um, you know, just even the camera equipment stuff, the diving, uh, it was just to even get these, to get the videos, let alone try to tell a story in it. Um, but no, I'm, I'm very much in favor of this. I think she has a, has a terrific story. She, as you said, she went back, she got some, uh, she's, uh, get some background in the marine science. She learned, had the background in photography and filming and she was able to kind of marry those two passions of hers. And then it was just like a lot of, a lot of stories we hear, Andrew, it's like, she didn't have any kind of a grand plan to wind up as science communication director at the Manta Trust, but it was just, it was just kind of circumstances and happened to know somebody and having an opportunity to go volunteer and do some trips with them. And, and then when a position came up, she, managed to get that position. And

1:08:23 it's a great story. And as I say, it's one we hear over and over again from people. And that thing we comment on too is like, it's never a straight line. That's the thing, a message to relate to young people is it's never like, oh, I'm going to go here, go do this, do that. And then I'm going to get this great job I've always wanted. There's always some kind of windy road everyone has to take. Yeah. And go off in some different directions to get, but, you know, just staying focused Absolutely, and I think what was unique about this story for Jasmine is the fact that she didn't necessarily have all of the skill sets required for the media and communications manager, right? She had a lot of the artistic aspects, so the videography, the underwater photography. She had that experience and great experience at that because she didn't go right into the science world after she graduated. She did a number of different projects for different people, so more commercial tourism, that type of stuff. Then, you know, when she had the opportunity to work with the manager, she learned on the job a lot of the times. And that takes a lot of patience, a great work ethic to be able to say, hey, you know what, I've got one half of the job. I may not have a lot of writing experience or PR management or the connections you would normally have. As this and she even admits it in the interview. She's like I had to learn it was a big learning curve But I had to take the time to learn that aspect and then she got better and better and better She continues to get better all the way through and now, you know, she's a rock star in in the industry, right? and so not only does she have the underwater background, but she also has that

1:09:56 community all around communication strategy and you know, PR strategy, all that type of background, because she learned it on the job. And I find that a lot of us, we look at job ads, and we look at what's required, and we go out and we look to get that experience, but sometimes you don't have to have everything. on the job ad. Sometimes you may have a connection or you may have a working relationship with one of the people who work there who are empowered to hire and then they're willing to take a chance on you. She just put herself in the position for people to take the chance on her. She volunteered with them because they worked in the same building. As well as her I don't remember where she was working before that but they worked in the same building She's like, yeah, I'll go out with you I'll go I'll do an underwater dive or scientific dive because she had the experience and she gained more and then like hey We've got this position coming up. Do you want to do you want to try it? And she's like, yeah, like for sure and jump at the opportunity now She's been working for you know, I forget how long but it's definitely almost a decade or even more and she's working with the manitrust like traveled all around the world and to Yeah. And I think the other thing too, is that, you know, she, um, she, she has opportunities, but also I think the, the, the math from the man of trust perspective, like with, like with a lot of employers or potential employers, they had a chance to work with her in the field. So they kind of know what she was like to work in the field. Cause that's, that's one big thing when you go for any kind of a job interview is how are you going to fit into their, into their ecosystem? How are you going to fit in with the group there? And so she, the fact that they'd had that opportunity to work with her, um, I

1:11:27 think was probably huge. And I think most job positions, if somebody's had a chance to work with you in the past, they have some idea of what, what, what they're getting into by hiring you. And that's, you know, fortunately, unfortunately, not everyone always has that opportunity, but she, Jasmine has an opportunity and she made the most of it. And, you know, again, something to, something to keep in mind that, you know, we have that opportunity, you Yeah, absolutely. And let's not get twisted like that was it's not an easy thing to do to get caught up and to learn on the job like that, because you have your regular, you know, job responsibilities. And then you have the extra things that you have to learn to include in your overall responsibilities. And there's it's a quick pace, type of learning situation is probably high pressured. And so she had to learn that on her own, try and figure it out. I'm sure some of the colleagues helped her out. But She did that all on her own. I think that's a great testament to the work ethic that she has and we see in her work with the Manitrust and in her photography and underwater videography. So it was great to be able to have Jasmine on.

1:12:29 Loved having her. Can't wait to have her back on and be able to watch her work. If you want to connect with her, we're going to put all of her Twitter and social media sites on there and you'll be able to get access to that as soon as you watch this video and click on it. And then Dave, if people want to watch The best way is Lost Shark Guy on Instagram. You can also find me on Facebook at Lost Sharks and then on the other usual platforms. X and LinkedIn. It's either it's Lost Shark Guy or Dave Ebert. You can find me on any of those ones, but Instagram's the best one to connect with me. And I just also want to mention out to people too that, you know, we just went over 500 subscribers on our YouTube channel and we hope that you're listening to the show. Thank you. If anyone listening out there, please encourage your friends, family, everyone to go on and subscribe and We really appreciate your Absolutely. Yeah. Go on there. We'll put the links in the show notes and you can probably get it on this video. But yes, thank you guys so much.

1:13:36 If you wanted to follow us on on Instagram, it's Beyond Jaws Pod. But thank you so much for joining us on today's episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. Thank you again to Jasmine. And thank you, Dave, for joining me again. It's always a pleasure to be able to talk with you about sharks and shark science and careers. And we want to thank you guys for listening. So thanks a lot. This has been a great episode. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time. And happy conservation.