Exploring Stingrays and Marine Conservation with Chantel Elston

0:00 Welcome back to another episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. On today's episode, we have Chantal Elston. She is a postdoc student at SIAB. I'll worry about saying what SIAB means during the actual episode, so stay tuned. We're talking all about stingrays, a lot of research in South Africa. It's a great episode. We also talk about her science communication activity on YouTube. She has 25,000 subscribers. We have 462 at the time of recording this. She is amazing. We talk about her success on there and what she likes to talk about all things marine science and marine fun and marine careers. We're going to talk about her career on today's episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. Let's start the show. Hey, everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. I am your co-host, Andrew Lewin, with my co-host, Dr. David Ebert. Dave, are Oh, heck yeah. I love talking about flat sharks. And I love when we get people on like Chantel, who's going to talk who focuses mostly on the flat sharks. We had as many, you know, we had six months or so ago, we had Jalen Myers on there from Australia and who just a flat shark fanatic. And we have another one here with Chantel. And of course, she's also from South Africa, which you know how I am when we get South African people on there. And she did her and she did her Ph.D. She worked with my good friend, Paul Cowley, there in South Africa.

1:17 And she she also went to my alma mater, Rose University. And she's affiliated with the with SIAB, which stands for the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity. I should note, since I because I'm also I'm also a research associate there as well. But now I'm really excited, really excited. She's she's your science. She really does. She does good science. And she's married that with the science communication. And you just said She's got like over 25,000 followers on her YouTube channel, and it's awesome. It's really great seeing somebody be able to kind of compete those two areas and be very successful at it. So definitely 100%. I'm looking forward to it as well. So let's get into the interview with Chantal Elston. Enjoy the interview, and we'll talk to you after. Hey, Chantal, welcome to the Beyond Jobs podcast. Are you ready to Let's go. That's great. Well, welcome to another episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast, where today we have Dr. Chantal Elston, another terrific guest from South Africa. And you know me, if anybody's from South Africa, it's going to be a terrific show today. So Chantal is a marine scientist and conservationist who focuses her research on threatened sharks and rays, and especially on those lovable rays, which we often refer to as flat sharks. Chantelle currently is a consultant for a couple of NGOs, the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Oceans Research Conservation Africa Foundation.

2:50 And she's also a research associate at Rhodes University in Grahamstown and also at the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity. Chantelle is fiercely dedicated to understanding and safeguarding our oceans ecosystems. And she's also very passionate about science engagement and communication. And she believes that by connecting everybody with the ocean, it's the only way to really save it. She manages and engages the public through a local shark and ray citizen science project called Elmo Africa. And she also shares her marine science stories on her YouTube channel, Telly's Marine Tales, which you have to check out. And we'll definitely post that. after the show to check out. But anyway, we're really happy to have her on the show today about her quickly, her education background. She went to University of Cape Town where she obtained her bachelor's of science degree. She also did an honors there. And then she went over to Rhodes University in Grahamstown to complete an MSC and Great, great. So we always like to start off with like, how did you get interested in marine science, sharks, rays? How'd Well, I feel like with most of our stories, it was something I wanted to pursue ever since I was a child. I don't really know who introduced me to even the term marine biologist. I don't know where that passion started from, but I just remember as a kid, my best friend and I, we had a journal and at the age of seven, I

4:23 was writing in this journal that I wanted to be a marine biologist when I grew up. As I said, I don't even know where I learned that term from. At the time, my dad was, he was pretty passionate about the ocean. You know, he was part of our coastal sort of sea rescue institutes. And so I would spend my summers on the beach, playing around in rock pools and that sort of thing. But that always just fueled that initial interest that I had wherever it came from. And then, you know, I was lucky enough to grow up on the coast. And then for university days, I ended up at the University of Cape Town, where at the time I didn't really have much knowledge on sharks or rays or elasmobranchs or anything like that. But in my second year, one of my lecturers, we were having an ichthyology class, and he just mentioned in passing that rays were one of the least studied groups of vertebrates on the planet.

5:16 And I was like, all right. I'm there, my ears were pricked up immediately and it kind of started a love relationship from then onwards and then I was very lucky to be able to pursue my master's in stingrays in a stingray ecology project. It was one of those weirdly serendipitous moments in life where At the time, nobody was really actively pursuing research on rays in South Africa. You know, I, I knew in my honors year that this was something I wanted to do for my post-grad. And so I had approached some of my lecturers at UCT. Oh, I really want to do a project on rays. You know, will you take me on as a student? I have some ideas, but nobody was really willing to go forward with that. So I had actually signed up for a master's on turtle genetics and I'm kind of, I I think my life would have been so different if it ended up that way. But luckily at the time, Dr. Paul Cowley, who you know very well, Dave, he had this amazing project in the Seychelles that was investigating a population of stingrays there. And he was just looking for a student who was interested in rays. And we managed to get in touch through one of my UCT lecturers. And yeah, that was the start of the now 10-year journey into researching rays. So I'm very grateful that that all just seems to kind of like align and come together at I'd ask you to back up a little bit. What part of the coastal, coast area

6:49 Oh, okay. Love, people listen to the show and I love Cape Town. That's one of my, my like, favorite places in the world, I have to say. Yeah, anyway, love there. So So, so nice. You grew up in the, grew up there along the coastal area in South Africa, and then you find, found Paul Kali, who, as you probably know, worked on blue stingrays for his MSc thesis. And that's back when him and I were both graduate students at the time. And South Africa, for those that don't know, there's a lot you can do in terms of ray research. And Chantal can, I'm sure, expand even more today on it. But you managed to get this job, this position working in your MSC in the Seychelles, which is a beautiful place. Can you Incredible. You know, at the time I had only experienced Cape Town oceans, which for those who don't know, are sort of cold water ecosystems, kelp forest dominated. And so traveling to the Seychelles was for me the first time I had traveled internationally and also the first time I had traveled to tropical waters and I could swim in the water without freezing to death and without having to wear a super thick wetsuit and just experiencing the amazing, you know, biodiversity and the typical marine megafauna that you associate with.

8:12 warm water tropical reef ecosystems for the first time seeing sharks and rays and turtles and manta rays and coral reefs and diversity of fish and my mind was just completely and utterly blown and I still have this vivid memory of going out on the boat the one day and it was my first time in the boat and I'm just this naive student and there's sort of a turtle that pops its head out in the water next to the boat and I'm like what wow there's a turtle and everybody's like yeah so what we could see hundreds of them so it was just one of those really eye-opening experiences So you went there you worked on you worked on the porcupine rays which as the name implies or have a porcupine type of skin texture and I presume you'd never heard of those before you started your thesis project No, none of the species that I worked on I had never heard of before. So I worked on three species in the Seychelles in this really beautiful shallow water ecosystem known as the Saint Joseph Atoll. And what was very special about this place is that it's kind of a remote island that is privately owned. And so you can only access it as a researcher or as somebody working there. And so It's this pristine, beautiful ecosystem with just an abundance of stingrays. You walk along the sand flats and you can't help but almost step on them. There are so many of them there. My study was

9:44 trying to understand this population, a little bit about how many individuals there were, but mostly trying to figure out how they all lived together in the space, you know, their movements and their feeding ecology and that sort of thing. So it was these three species, but the porcupine ray will always hold a special place in my heart because it's kind of the only species of stingray that doesn't have the stinger or barb on its tail and so as you said Dave it has this sort of porcupine texture skin where its back is covered in these very sharp almost like rosebush thorn type projections and so it's very painful if you stand on them or if you put your hand on them But the fact that they don't have a stinger or a barb makes them a bit easier to catch. And so what we ended up doing in trying to catch these individuals was essentially kind of creeping up on them as they were hiding out in the sand, buried in the sand, and pouncing and grabbing their tails. Kind of I heard you came up with quite a novel way to catch those things. And that was basically Yeah, we, I mean, we were just in the field and, you know, initially we were using this rod and reel and just sighting for individuals and catching them with a normal hook and line. And then Paul, you know, one day was just like, you know what, we can get so close to these guys. Why don't we just jump them and try and catch them? And so that's what we ended up doing. And

11:16 So this is this is really interesting, you know, sneaking up on a stingray. So were they like, were they timid? Like, obviously, they weren't timid around you, you know, even though they live in a fairly secluded area. How did you like No, and so we're walking on these sort of knee deep sand flat areas, essentially. So it's, you know, on these almost intertidal flat type things. And so these rays, they're sort of buried in the sand, and they rely on camouflage a lot. So they feel like once they're, you know, hunkered down in the sand, that they're safe. And so we could, you know, walk quite Gotcha. So they're just staying hidden while you're walking close. Hopefully that they don't, that you don't see them and then you get them. Okay. I got you. Cause I was like, it must be, even if you're like, whether you're scuba diving or whether you're trying to get after them, they must hear you or they must feel you coming, you know, just from the water being displaced, the waves and stuff like that. I was like, how do you do that? That's like It usually took a couple of tries, but eventually we Yeah. What Sorry, Dave. They had this really fun technique where if you would pounce and you didn't catch them the first time, they would sort of swim around in a circle and dig up the sand a lot and create almost like the sand plume. So they were trying to re-hide themselves in the sand plume. So all you had to do was kind of like look around you and wait for it to dart out and then you could try again.

12:48 Yeah, that'd be, it's almost like they're trying to test you again. It's like, see if you can catch me again, I'm going to really hide from you. Yeah. How intimidating is it when you start a project like that to study three new species that you don't really know much about? I think a lot of times when we hear about students and people studying new species. Dave, you go through this all the time. You've discovered so many species. How intimidating is it when you start from scratch and you're like, I know nothing about these species. Here I am having to learn about three that I've never seen before, never even heard of before. What's that like when you I mean, yeah, it is very intimidating. And especially as a young master student who is experiencing, as I said, all of these new things for the first time, not even to mention, just trying to understand what these three new species are.

13:48 But I feel like As a ray researcher, that's just the way it goes. You know, most of this, actually all of the species, I think all of the species that I've worked on, barring the blue stingray, which as Dave mentioned earlier on, Paul Cowley, my supervisor at the time, did his master's on, they have never been researched, scientifically researched before. So, you know, these species really, there's, we just don't know anything about them. So even now at this, you know, kind of later stage in my career, When I start a new project, it means I'm again, starting from scratch and trying to understand the species. We don't know basic things like what they eat, where they live, how they move. You know, sometimes even taxonomy is a bit of an issue. you know, with these three new species that I did my master's and PhD on, we had assumed that one of them was a specific species. And so throughout, while I'm, you know, writing up my thesis and going through my whole beginning stages of my project, I had called it this one species. But then thankfully we had taken some genetic samples and, and somebody had sequenced them for us and they were literally probably the week before I was going to hand in my PhD thesis, they were like, uh, just by the way, that's not that species. It's a different species. So, um, yeah, it's always, uh, working with rays is always starting from scratch, but it's, it's exciting. You know, it opens up a world of possibilities and something I really enjoy. and why I got into them in the first place.

15:22 Yeah, and something I've talked about, and I think you and I have talked about it in the past, like, you know, that whole Western Indian Ocean, if you're looking for something to do as a student, just stingray taxonomy, just trying to identify what species is what that that's a whole that's a couple of master's thesis or a PhD thesis just to figure out the species you have there. Because what Chantal described, I can attest to, You can be working on something, then all of a sudden you realize like, oh, that's not the right species. It's this other species here. And that's I kind of find it exciting in a way, but it's kind of frustrating if you're about to submit your Ph.D. thesis or a paper and realize like, oh, it's the wrong species. That could be that could cause some problems. But it's it's really anyway, it's pretty exciting to be able to to do that type of stuff. So how many how many years did you Uh, so my work ran over five years. So I started off with my master's and then it sort of grew into my PhD. Um, and so I went on, I spent in total about six months in the Seychelles across five different trips. And then the rest of the time based in South Africa, sort of working up the samples and, and Yeah. How was your, uh, What aspects of the thing, you did some tracking studies and what other aspects of your research Yeah, so we did acoustic telemetry for tracking, so

16:54 passive acoustic telemetry, so We stuck some acoustic tags into, I think we had 60 in total, 20 for each species. Then we had this really nice array of receivers, both within the atoll and then further afield along the bigger bank area that we were working on. So at other different islands and atolls. if these individuals did disperse from it and leave this area that we could track them. So that was a really, really great aspect of the study. And then also looking at dietary stuff. So we did both stomach contents and stable isotopes. And stomach contents, we were really one of the, you know, sort of early people to use gastric lavage for rays. So it was kind of developing that technique for So you spent all these times out there in the Seychelles and stuff and you got your thesis done. So after you kind of, you got your thesis done, what was sort of your next, the Um, so, so after my PhD, I affectionately refer to it as my gap year because I had gone straight from high school through to, um, you know, undergrad through to post-grad, uh, all the way up to my PhD, nine years at university had never really taken a break. So, um, after, after my PhD, I knew I just needed to take a step back and take a little bit of a break, but.

18:21 I did. I did kind of still stay in the field, but just doing a few other things. So we have a great NGO here in Cape Town called the Shark Spotters. So, you know, they have these amazing people who sit on the mountainside and monitor the water for the presence of great white sharks. So it's kind of like an early warning system to get swimmers and bathers and surfers out the water if there's a great white shark around. So I spent a bit of time just helping them with some, you know, basic research and, and data collection. And then I spent six months in the Philippines, completely different working on, on coral reef surveys for an NGO, NPA Wow. Tough, again, tough, tough life. I'm sure it's, Yeah. Every, every listener at home is gonna be going like, oh God, it's like, so you got to go to the Seychelles for five years. You gotta go work on coral reefs in the Philippines. I just really hate this marine biology Terrible. Now what, so to do that, like what was the decision behind that or the rationale for the decision behind that? How did you find that organization?

19:34 Why Philippines? You know, why coral reefs when you've been Yeah, so as I said, I kind of wanted to take a break from academia and just do a little bit more, I guess, you know, work based type stuff. And so I had belonged to this newsletter that went around where they advertised these sort of jobs in marine conservation and, And that sort of thing. And so this position came up and I was like, oh, six months in the Philippines. Okay. It's a bit of a long time away from home, but, you know, and it wasn't a paid position. So, you know, this is one of the things where, especially in this field, unfortunately, if you're trying to gain work experience and you're just trying to like develop your CV. Sometimes you have to take unpaid positions or do these weird and wonderful internships.

20:27 So, you know, even though the six month position I was working unpaid, I got to live and scuba dive for free in the Philippines, which for me was worth it. And, you know, really working on coral reefs and specifically You know, the Philippines is a great example of where marine conservation happens from the bottom up. So they have these really small villages called barangays. And the fishermen there, you know, it's their livelihoods. They know they rely on fishing as a source of protein and income, but they also understand that, you know, they need to sustain it for future generations. And so they have this huge push towards setting up these marine protected areas in the country, but there's not a lot of input from government down. And so these local villages want to put marine protected areas in, but they just don't have the expertise. They don't have the skills. So, you know, we would go around and run these surveys and just say, Hey, look, okay, we've surveyed here and we think this is where you should put your MPA. It was a lot of community engagements and a lot of involvement with, you know, local fishers and government officials. And so I really learned a lot from that project. And I, it was definitely a highlight in my career, even though it was completely separate from Elasma Branks and completely separate from what I have gone on to do. I learned a lot of skills that then transfers, you know, across no matter what For sure. Do you find your travel to the Seychelles, you know, during your master's. helped you with traveling

21:57 to a place like the Philippines because you mentioned earlier, it's a far away of home. It's a long time away from home. I don't think we as marine biologists acknowledge how difficult it is to work away from home. People get homesick and you're used to certain ways and how to do things a certain way. You're going to a completely different country, completely different culture. Here you're doing a completely different topic But, you know, which is a benefit to you in all the ways, but it's also very, like, it could, it could put yourself out of your comfort level. Do you find going to the Seychelles helped you, you know, prepare for the Philippines? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think, I think when you do it once, it becomes a little bit easier the next time. But as you say, it's still a completely different environment, a completely different language, a completely different culture. But you know, that's an aspect that I love about it. And I have really enjoyed and especially I feel like in your twenties, you know, that was happening all in my early and mid twenties. So you're not like fully settled yet. And you have this more spirit of adventure. Now I'm in my 30s, would I spend another six months in the Philippines? I'm not too sure. But at the time, it was a perfect opportunity for me. And, you know, it was really roughing it. I think that was the hardest part. So even within the Seychelles and then in the Philippines, we were living in this place that didn't have running water, you know, didn't even have sort of like glass in the windows. It was really open to the elements. You're completely out of any kind of not

23:29 even luxury, but just day to day amenities that you're so used to. But I think that builds character. And that's part of the experience. Yeah, and even from like a conservation perspective, too, right? It's sorry, Dave, even from a conservation perspective, you, you look at how a lot of local communities have to deal with the problems that they're having, and to be able to help them, and probably helps you understand how conservation will work sort of in the, in like away from academia and out into, you know, local communities like the Philippines or like the Seychelles and be like, okay, this is how people, a lot of people live. You know, this, this kind of brings it into perspective and more of a reality of Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's very easy to, you know, we typically as marine biologists and conservationists, we're obviously on the side of trying to save everything and protect everything and put marine protected areas everywhere and stop the fishing and stop that.

24:28 But as you say, there are these really real people and communities. whose lives are so affected by these decisions that we just almost sometimes willy-nilly try and put out there. And so just having an understanding of not only the ecosystems, but the larger scale ecosystem. We're all part of the ecosystem. We as humans and the people who rely on these resources and just understanding everything and how it works together is really important in any conservation Yeah. We've had this discussion on some other episodes where people like yourself go to these areas And you get a really different perspective on how it is with people that their base, their livelihoods, or if they can't catch fish or whatever that they don't eat. Basically, there's no going out to the store. And I think I think a lot of organizations that don't have people that experience that they tend to be very think like, oh, well, we just got to stop the fishing here, stop whatever's going on. And they tend to not look at the people involved, the human the human element of the whole thing. And so I think you're going out and experience that say, as you say, give you a more rounded experience on how people really live in a lot, in a lot of the world, including of course, including lots, a lot of Africa as well outside, say South Africa, where people are not, not fishing or catching stuff. They, they just don't eat. So yeah,

26:01 yeah. So that's, I think it's, I think it's, I think it's important. I think a lot of people, and as you said, it's, It's good to do it when you're young because after you experience that, after that, it's kind of like you want to stay at least like a, say a three-star hotel I've definitely found as I've got older, my level of discomfort or my willingness to experience discomfort Oh yeah, for sure, for sure. You want glass on your windows now and the regular Yeah, it's like they ask you, Your friends ask you to go camping and it's like, what start, what hotel we staying at for Oh no, I'm always down for a camping trip. Camping and through hike backpacking, I'm down for. But short time Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. I can, I can totally, I can, I can understand that and stuff. So, so as you got along, you've, you've gotten, you've picked up some really good experience going, uh, obviously in the spending time in the Seychelles and then in the Philippines.

27:14 And so when you came back from the Philippines, what was your sort of next, what was your next step? What was your next plan Yeah, so I was very fortunate in that, um, you know, Paul Cowley, who was my supervisor for my master's and PhD, he had kind of always envisioned me coming on as a postdoc, um, after that whole process. And so throughout, you know, my PhD years, actually, he was just tagging a whole bunch of stingrays in South Africa. He was like, right, I'm going out, I'm fishing, I'm tagging stingrays, the What you want to know Yeah, exactly. Did you have an idea after the Philippines, even after your PhD, did you have an idea of what you wanted to do in terms of marine biology in general? you know, obviously, you have a lot of you have a lot of likes, which we haven't even gotten into in terms of, you know, science communication. But just like in general, like, you know, going to the Philippines doing reef studies compared to going to the Seychelles doing Laszlo Brank studies and Ray studies, and doing more application than, you know, compared to academia, did you have an idea about what type of job you wanted to work at after that, or even throughout your PhD? Other

28:46 Yeah, so I think I think really that year after my PhD, I kind of came to the realization that I didn't really want to go into academia, I wanted to be more on the NGO application based side of the world. And so I finished up at, in the Philippines towards the end of 2019. And then I came back to South Africa and I actually got a job where I'm based now in Plettenberg Bay, which is a small coastal town, heading up the research program of an NGO based here. But that was, I think I started February, 2020. And then for everybody who Just a little thing. So, um, you know, March, 2020 rolled around and everything here in South Africa was locked down and the rest of the world. And this NGO that I had just started my job at relied on international volunteers as their main source of income. And so I lost my job through that. And at the time, you know, as I said, Paul had kind of been setting up this postdoc for me. And so we had done this sort of funding application or this fellowship application, which then came through.

30:00 And so then I got offered this postdoc position, even though I knew I didn't necessarily want to carry on in academia, it was a great position that came at the right, again, just came at the right time for me. And Paul had been tagging these Stingrays, and I knew I'd always kind of wanted to try and carry on with research in Stingrays. And so it aligned with my research interests and again right time and so I ended up doing my postdoc. So I started my postdoc in March 20 or no I think it was then April 2020 when I officially started. And so for the past four years, it actually just finished last month, I've been doing my postdoc on rays here in South Africa which was really a great project for me because It was the first time that I was really conducting research in South Africa, in my home country. And so it was just really special for me and working on stingrays here, again, doing acoustic telemetry on a couple of different species, adding in these major knowledge gaps that we still have on these animals. And then through that, I also managed to set up my own little project here in Pettenberg Bay in collaboration with that NGO that I had had a job very briefly with. And so I got some field work experience setting up a project here on a local estuary where I was doing some surveys, trying to figure out what stingrays lived in the estuary. And that turned out to be a really, really successful project and what I'm hoping to carry on with going forward. I don't know, my whole career, I kind of feel like has been just right

31:33 things at the right time. And I feel like I've just been very, And yeah, if you know, if I could, if I can add in like you're one of the few people that didn't go into the white shark route with things and you got into an area and you found it, you found you literally found, I say a niche, but the rate, the bad toys are so diverse. And I always comment on the, on the program about how you have South Africa's got one of the five most diverse chondrichthyan shark and ray faunas in the world, and everybody wants to do white sharks. But you are one of the few people, you know, and I kind of followed you a little bit through your career, through Paul, because I've been kind of aware of what you're up to. And I always thought it was really cool that there was somebody who actually had a passion for rays. because there's so much to do there.

32:20 And you obviously got on to that whole, found that whole niche and been pursuing that. And it's just, as you've kind of talked about, it's just, it's kind of wide open what you're doing. And now you sound like you're trying to raise more awareness to the public and everything through these different NGOs. What's this, this one group, this ELMO Africa, what can you talk, what's that about? Can you talk a little about that? Yeah, Alma Africa is a little passion project of mine. It's a citizen science project here in South Africa, and it was actually started by somebody called Lisa Skruta. And so back when I was in my master's day, I kind of came across this citizen science project in South Africa, which was dedicated to sharks and rays and their conservation. And so essentially the ethos of this project is that whenever a member of the public along the South African coastline encounters a shark or a ray, either through angling, fishing, scuba diving, boat trips, anything like that, they kind of just let us know. And then also through collecting their egg cases, which are more affectionately known as mermaid's purses, people just walking on the beach, pick up an egg case It's kind of just like this place where people can send that information through. And so it's this repository of citizen science shark and ray sightings in South Africa. And so back in my master's, I kind of, you know, volunteered for the project and I ran school trips with local schools and we went on shark egg case hunts, which was really

33:53 a lot of fun. And so I kind of like been helping on and off with the project. And then when I started my postdoc, Lisa, who, you know, started Elmo, she just didn't have the capacity to carry on with it anymore. And so I was like, cool, I'll take it over. So since then I've kind of been running the project and managing the project and growing it and working with local NGOs who also run various citizen science projects along the coastline and just kind of collecting all of that shark and ray information. into one central database that then can be used in by various scientists or Cool. That's awesome. So how did you, so you're, you're, you're, you're Telly's Marine Tales, which is your YouTube channel. And I, and I'll, if you, everyone listens, you got to go check out this, this is an amazing YouTube channel she runs. Can you, I've got to hear the story about that, how you got that going. I need to hear more about that.

34:57 Well, and before you do, and before you do, I wanted to kind of give you your flowers on this because like, you know, when a lot of people, like I have a YouTube channel, you know, we have a YouTube channel for Beyond Jaws. And, you know, we get happy when we get a new subscriber and we're like, okay, we're, you know, we're getting up there. We're almost at 500 subscribers and we're like, oh, this is awesome kind of thing. And I see a lot of people in marine biology or in that science communication field with the ocean. You know, you see people with, you know, a thousand or a couple of thousand. You have 25,000 subscribers. I don't know how many. I think the channel has 1.9 million views.

35:37 That's incredible. From someone who tries and tries to get views and all that kind of stuff, that's absolutely incredible. Before you started with that story, I wanted people to get that context before you started because this is, in my opinion, a highly successful sort of channel for marine science and marine biology. So Thank you. I really appreciate that. You know, this is something that is something that I've been working on for a really, really long time. Again, since my master's day, which was, I don't know, even though 10 years ago now. And so I feel like I don't know, I have this almost love-hate relationship with my channel where sometimes I'm all in and I'm go, go, go, go, and then sometimes I can't even look at it for months on end. So, you know, I think the reason why it has become so successful is purely just because I've just been slowly plodding along for many, many, many years.

36:39 It is by no means you know, an overnight success or anything like that. But yeah, I started it back in my master's day. At the time, you know, I was doing my research in the Seychelles, but I was doing the rest of my, you know, in-country work in South Africa correspondence based. I wasn't based at my university that I was registered at. And I was kind of just looking for a bit of a marine biology community to tap into and to learn from. And at the time, you know, I was looking for other marine biologists on YouTube and I couldn't find any. So I was like, okay, well, I guess this is a gap. So I don't know, I'm going to try. So I tried. Um, and you know, it took a really, really, really long time for any kind of subscribers count to start going up or views to start going up a number of years. And but you know, it's been great. It's been such a fun learning experience, learning how to just try and communicate science to a really, really broad public, how to try and, you know, it's, sometimes it is a bit of a popularity, well, not a popularity contest, but you're trying to find topics or thumbnails or titles that people are going to be interested in and people are going to click on so it's kind of a bit of a uh, trying to find the right balance between, you know, having a more. Scientific balanced, uh, what you want to talk about, which for me is raised, but most people don't really care about raise versus trying to attract people

38:11 to your channel and trying to get people on board so that then you can start talking about, you know, some of these other things that people are not familiar with. So that's kind of been, I think the most challenging part of the channel. And really it's only been in the last couple of. years that it's seen any kind of real success. And I had quite a crazy video go really viral a couple of months ago, which I still boggles my mind. Um, it's just, it's been fun. I haven't taken it with any kind of seriousness or I don't have a very strict scheduling, you know, uh, thing that I stick to just whenever I have some time and whenever I'm feeling into it, I post some stuff online and then whoever watches it, watches it. That's kind of the ethos I have And I do I do like I respect that because I know the amount of work it takes and the amount of time it takes to put, you know, a YouTube channel together, you know, even even like consistently posting, you know, weekly and things like that. So I know, I know how difficult that is. And even just to be able to put a video together, and you know, doing the editing and the you know, whatever it's the scripting or talking or whatever you come up with the idea all the way to the publishing takes a long time. And I do love the fact that you're just kind of like, yeah, when I have an idea, I'm going to, I'm going to talk about it. And I think it's, I think it's going to be, it's going to be great. And every once in a while, like I'm looking at, as you were talking, I was looking at your channel and some

39:43 of the views and you're just like, It's interesting because I was like, you're right, there's not a lot of marine biologists and probably more now than there were when you first started, but there's not a lot of marine biologists that are on. And it's interesting to see, I assume like your target audience is sort of like the public who wants to know more about like there's stingrays, there's like ocean discoveries, stuff on PhD life. You had one go, I don't know if it went viral that day, but you have 197,000 views on software apps I used as a PhD student. Did you expect that to get that many views? I don't think anybody did. Was that right off the bat or has that been over, because this was five years ago, was Yeah, definitely accumulated. When I, when I first published that, it really did nothing. And I think it took about a year and then, I don't know, for some other reason it kicked off and then it kind of blew up a little bit, but it took a long time and it has been this sort of gradual growth This is not like I love the fact that these go because it's like if that's a helpful video, I would imagine for a lot of PhD students, people starting what what what software do I use? What kind of tools do I use it? I think it's really helpful. You had one go. I'm not sure if this is the one you were talking about that went viral. That was really interesting. But it was about six months ago. Why marine biologists know dolphins are scarier than sharks. And I have to admit, the thumbnail, there was some really interesting

41:15 thumbnail. You talk about thumbnails being such a big part of it. It has demon dolphins on it, and it has little horns on the dolphin. These eyes, these devilish eyes. And normally, you see a dolphin, you expect it to be smiling or something. And you got it really going. I can Yeah, the whole point of that video was really, you know, because that's the perception that people have, right? That dolphins are these friendly, smiley animals and sharks are these bad things with sharp teeth that are out to get me. But actually, you know, the reality is oftentimes reversed and dolphins are causing injuries and, and having these negative effects more so than sharks. And so it was just really just a fun play I like it. Have you ever read the – there's a deepseanews.com article on dolphins and it was like 10 reasons why dolphins are a-holes I think is the title of the thing. It went viral back then. That was I think like early 2010s or maybe even earlier than that. But that went viral back then. I think a lot of people are always wondering like why are dolphins like so mean and why do marine biologists not like dolphins? But that's a thing. There's a In doing the research for that video, even I was shocked at some of the stories that Yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure. I know if you ever talk to anybody that does, I don't know if they have any place

42:48 where they maintain dolphins in captivity, because I know it's not a big thing anymore, but people used to handle them in aquariums and stuff. you know, where they when they put on the shows, if they would tell you that each one has its own personality, there's like different people. Some are really fine. You can be OK with others are just really a-holes. Basically, they just can be really bad. And it's almost like it's very each one has a very distinct personality, which I thought was really interesting to deal with. I don't know if you do ever talk. I've just got a side note. Did you ever talk with anybody that handles marine mammals when you're doing like that, that video or do you just kind of do your own research and when No, not for that one. I just ended up doing my own research. But yeah, I think that would have been an interesting spin to For sure. Now, the other one that I wanted to talk about, and I think this was the actual one that you went viral that you weren't expecting. And I'm not surprised at this video going viral at all. David, not sure if you had a chance to see this one. It was done three months ago. It was marine biologist weighs in on farm salmon versus wild salmon debate. Now, this is always a contentious issue, especially I live in Canada, BC, open salmon farms.

44:02 It gets nasty when you start talking to people, depending on how you look at which side of the debate and things like that. That had almost a million views, and I'm sure it's going to hit. Right now, Dave, it's at 922,000 views. That's huge. So what made you talk about that subject matter? Because when you look at, you cover a wide variety of issues and subject matters. What was the reasoning behind that? And I'm sure I'm going to ask, but I'm sure you didn't expect this many Yeah, so I was just trying to think of a couple of topics that are more relevant to people, you know. So obviously we get people who are interested in science and who are interested in marine biology and conservation for what it is. But at the end of the day, if you want to try and reach a wider audience, you have to talk about things that are relevant to people. what is more relevant to people than the fish that they eat, right? This is something that, you know, is a part of almost, you know, their daily lives and, and it really has a huge impact. And so while I am not necessarily a fisheries expert or a I'm definitely not a salmon expert. At the time, I also just wanted to do my own research because I didn't know much about salmon.

45:24 I mean, I knew a little bit about salmon farming and I'd watched a couple of documentaries. And so I had this very one-sided view of salmon and salmon farming, but I wanted to do a bit more of a deeper dive and do all of this research and kind of come to my own conclusion about whether I would want to be eating salmon going forward. sharing that message to a wider audience. And for that video in particular, because I'm not necessarily a salmon expert, I didn't want to come at it from a science says this, I wanted it to come from a more personal perspective and my thoughts and, and my journey and why I came to that decision. And so, I mean, I, I knew that the video would do well, because it would, it would reach a wider audience, but never in Yeah, I could imagine. Yeah, I could. Yeah, I saw that. I haven't watched it, but I did. I did see. I did see it just. But I go. I worked for I worked for several years in aquaculture, so I've got a lot of opinions on the whole aquaculture industry and from like developed countries to developing countries and a gamut in between, because it's it's sort of like going into artisanal fisheries in developing countries versus first world countries. There's a whole gamut in between, but I'll have to check it out because I saw the topic there and I thought, oh, that's going to be an interesting one to check out. So Obviously very controversial with lots of different opinions.

46:56 6,014 different comments on that. And that's an interesting thing, too, because a lot of scientists you know, when I first started going through science communication, you know, in the early 2010s, it still wasn't a thing where we, you know, scientists would really talk publicly about their work in terms of like trying to you know, educate people and make people more aware of their own work or even other work. There were there were a few people who were doing before, obviously, but it wasn't necessarily like, you know, my advisor would not like advise me to say, hey, why don't you go out and talk about your things? Because we'd always get comments. And especially nowadays, you can get some pretty nasty comments that can cause you know, you see you see creators all the time, you know, going through mental health issues with the comments they receive and things like that. Now, with a hot topic such as this, You're going to get 6,000 comments. Not all of them are going to be. I'm looking through a few of the top ones, and they're actually pretty good. They're pretty tame.

47:54 Do you ever worry when you post a video like that that some of those comments are going to be against you? Because I know any time I post anything about climate change on any social media site, it's like a bot comes right away, hits you with it. This is denial. Watch this YouTube video. This tells you everything. Scientists are wrong. This and that. Blah, blah, blah. And it just kind of gets me sometimes. You're just like, man, like I wish people would stop doing this. Do you ever worry about that when you post a video and then when you get this amount of views, do you ever go through the comments or do you just kind of be like, I'm just going to stay away, let people have their own sort of a platform to air Yeah, so this, this again is kind of why I said I have a love hate relationship with my YouTube channel, because, you know, there are these really, really awful comments that come out of things. And actually the first time I had any kind of real experience with that was a couple of years when, uh, you remember the documentary Seaspiracy? Oh, yes.

48:58 So, um, so I made a video just kind of, again, just airing some of my opinions about that and why I disagreed with a lot of what was said in the documentary. And that was the first time that I really experienced that, you know, really, really mean side of YouTube and a lot of really awful comments that came my way. And at the time I just shut myself off from it. I was like, I, you know, it's, I'm not going to read through these comments because as you say, it really, it can take a big toll on your mental health. And at the end of the day, there's almost kind of no point because those bots or those trolls or whatever you want to call them, there ain't no way you're going to change their mind or have any kind of meaningful and productive conversation in the comment section of a YouTube video. So. I just completely step away from it. And I kind of did the same thing with the salmon video. So, you know, in the beginning, I started looking at comments. And as you said, actually for that video, for the level of controversy around that topic and different opinions and different views and the amount of comments that I got, It was actually surprisingly positive, a lot of the comments, which I really enjoyed. But again, I kind of just got a bit scared. And so when I when it really started going viral, I just take a step back and I don't even read the comments. So on a video like And what's interesting, I'm kind of reading through quickly as we go through. What's interesting though is a lot of people are just kind of telling their own experiences. Somebody went to a restaurant, asked if it was wild or farmed, if

50:30 it was fresh. Other people who grew up in the industry and sort of looking at how it's changed. It's actually It's a very interesting context when you look at the comments here. Obviously, there's going to be some that are probably going to be horrible, but I'm surprised. It's a lot of just sort of like personal stories of their involvement or their I guess, personal views of whether they eat salmon or not, you know, one said they read a David Suzuki book, and ever since then, they haven't touched salmon, which that's their opinion, right? They've, you know, they've been they will, they did their research, and they looked at it and, but doesn't look like there's as many nasty comments as I thought it would be, which is kind of Yeah. It was nice and refreshing, for Well, I think that that's the one thing like with the social media, because you can people can literally sit in their little basements downstairs and just like go on there and just be anonymous and just put out all kinds of stuff. And you don't really know. Like I think sometimes people are just like they're just looking to cause controversy somewhere. And I know people at Andrew and I've had on the shows that, you know, like we had Forrest Galani on there and he has obviously gets a lot of people comment on his. He just goes, I just he just ignores it. He goes because he found out early on as soon as you As soon as you engage with somebody to try to give you a give, it just goes bad. So he just stopped doing it. And other people have said the same thing. They just don't.

51:51 It's hard to engage because as soon as you engage and you start really kind of almost stir the pot, make it make it a nothing to into something. So, yeah, it's unfortunate you can't you can't have a respectful conversation. But I think that's just the the Internet and the social media realm right now. Probably because it's also so new, people haven't really figured it out. A lot of elements to it as well. For sure. But so I No, just one last comment on this topic. You know, for me, you know, I've learned how to deal with these sort of like negative comments and internet trolls and things like that. But I think oftentimes the scariest thing for me when I post a YouTube video or something like that is how my scientific peers will think like, think of me or view me, right? Cause I don't really care what some internet troll says or thinks about me, but when it comes to my scientific peers who are looking at this, and as you said, there's not very many people doing this. And so what will they think of me? Do they think I'm being silly? Do they think this is a complete waste of time? Am I just like, am I no longer a real scientist because I do YouTube? And so there's a lot of those thoughts that go through my mind. And that actually is for me, the scariest part of my whole I completely agree on that. Sorry to just step in. I

53:22 was the same way when I first started. I actually didn't talk a lot about my podcast, the How to Protect the Ocean podcast when I first started because I was worried about what my peers were going to say, what my advisor would say, and people like himself. Even somebody like Dave, who's perfectly fine with science communication, loves it. I mean, we were doing a project together. This is what we do now. But you worry about people who have been your mentors, the people that you see as heroes, and you worry about what they'd say. And then I went to a conference, and everybody was like, I really love what you're doing. And you're just like, oh, OK. This is really good. And then I've changed it to, you know, why am I actually doing it? Is it for the scientific community? No, because I'm preaching to the choir there. To be honest, I look at the people who I talk to, I'm not talking to the trolls, because there's no point. I'm talking to the people who want to know more and just can't find that information on YouTube, or for me, it's podcasting, right? And I think that's the views that you're getting, or you're getting people who want to know more who want to share their story. They may not always agree with you, and that's fine. But they want to know more. And I think that's what I like, that's how what I focus, what I learned to focus on instead of, because if not, it's scary to like, talk in front of your peers and just be like, and talk it at a level that you're talking at, right?

54:40 And to be like, is this right? Is this, people are going to agree with this? Are people going to like me after Yeah. You know, if I could, I can jump in here cause I'm, I'm a little different generation than each of you, but you know, like when I was coming up, it was, you know, there was no internet or anything like that, but you were definitely, it was, you were not encouraged to do like any kind of science communication. It wasn't even a thing really. but you were all, you know, go to professional conferences, but it was, if you kind of did anything, try to sort of step out and do stuff. It wasn't really like viewed really well, um, from, from our, my advisors, you know, whether, you know, for most of my, and what the one guy, the one exception at the time, and I've mentioned him a few times as, uh, as Dr. John McCosker, who is the director at the Steinhardt aquarium, who's from that generation. He was a mentor of mine, but he was doing, Again, they didn't call it science communication, but he did that. He would go on like popular shows and communicate. And he and he was an excellent scientist, really top scientists. But he could break things down very simple. So the average person on the street got understood it. And a lot of that was a lot of people in that generation. And even in going into my generation, they they would talk a too technical of terms and people wouldn't get it. And, uh, and so they would, but there was a lot of discouragement. Um, and I gave, I've told this story before, but I, there used to be a program on in South Africa. Maybe you might remember Chantal called top sport. This was years ago. I

56:10 don't know when it was, you may not have heard, might've been before your time, but I used to be on that quite a bit, uh, just as a fluke talking about doing like quote science communication, but that would get, that was used to get frowned upon. And, and I would just, and it was literally, I would go to angling competitions. And they used to cover all kinds of sporting activities in South Africa. It was like an ESPN thing. And they used to cover competitive fishing competitions. And at that time, I was sort of, this is the late 1980s, there was this American student going to competitions. And so they would start asking me just like couple minute interview, and it got to be a regular segment on there. But that got kind of to your point, Andrew, is that that was kind of frowned upon by a lot of it, you know, and I thought it was like, well, I'm just kind of communicating to the average person out there that was interested in they caught a stingray or a shark, just just some trivial stuff about it. But people found it really interesting. But it was it was definitely discouraged.

57:06 It was definitely like, oh, what are you doing that while you're selling out your science? And I'm like telling somebody about a copper shark's not really selling out my science, you But anyway, I'm sorry, I did. It's an interesting way, like, it's an interesting evolution that science communication has made, especially as it evolves with the technology, and it makes it easier, although it's still a lot of hard work. not to take away from anybody who's doing it, it's still easier to do it than it was back 30, 40 years ago, even 20 years ago. So I think that really helps in getting people to talk about it. I love it. I love seeing it. I love seeing the passion that people have doing that science communication, and I think it's great. So with that said, Chantal, as we kind of wrap up the interview here, know, you what Dave said at the beginning, you know, as he's introducing you, it seems like you have, like you're a consultant, and you work with, you know, WCS, and you work with other organizations, and, you know, working on your own research and your own nonprofit organization. So was this always the vision in terms of when you like, as you went through marine biology, through your undergrad, through your graduate work, and post grad work, that you would be a consultant working for different organizations? And just from a logistical standpoint, like how do you do it? You know, like a lot of people go, okay, I'm going to get a job with one organization, work with them for a little bit. Sometimes it's contract work, sometimes it's not, you know, try and get a full time job. But this is we're in a very different situation when we speak about your career. So was this always the plan? And then sort of, are

58:38 you happy with this plan? And is this like, how do you manage It was definitely not the plan. So, you know, you, you always kind of have this idea of your typical career path from like one position to the next. But I don't know, things just always. for me have kind of just evolved as it goes along. And so towards the end of my postdoc, you know, I talked a little bit about it early on where I had set up this, you know, my own little project here in the estuary where we have a year round population of stingrays, which we had no idea that they lived in the estuary here. So again, I just kind of like, landed in the right place, did this project where it's the first estuary in South Africa where we've identified that we have a year-round population of stingrays. And it's a super great place to work because it's like really shallow water. It's very clear. You can hop on the boat. I hop on my SUP board, my standard paddle board on the weekends, and I like SUP around stingrays. As a stingray ecologist, landing in this place where there's just this amazing population of stingrays, again, I've just been very lucky. And so for me, I really want to carry on with my research here because I feel like I can really try and understand these species a lot more and add to this knowledge that we just don't have in our country.

1:00:02 So I'm really passionate about carrying on with my own personal research here in Plettenberg Bay. And so I have an NGO who's kind of like supporting me and funding me and I'm heading up their research program, but you know, how it is in marine biology, you know, there's oftentimes not enough money from you know, that sort of side of things. And so that's kind of where the whole consultancy thing came in. And I was very lucky with my colleague, Rhett Bennett, who kind of brought me on board with WCS. And, you know, he just said they have a whole bunch of data that they're trying to work through and he knows I, I'm a strong data analyst and I love analyzing data. So I'm just analyzing a whole bunch of data for WCS as a consultant there. And, and so just trying to. have a couple of these different things going on so I can financially support myself, but also carry on with the research that I'm passionate about. And that's kind of how I've ended up now where I am with a few different consultancies. And I'm still trying to figure out how to manage it all. You know, I just started really, um, this last month. Um, and so just trying to like figure out how to manage my time in the best way possible and how to get everything done and prioritize. And so Yeah, and I think it's interesting because a lot of people look from the outside in and are like, oh, this is really cool. Chantal is being able to do the projects that she wants, which it's amazing to be able to drive your career with the questions that you have and

1:01:32 the questions you want to answer and working these different consultancies. But it's also it can be logistically challenging to be able to manage all of these projects. Consultancies is A lot of times it's like boom or bust. And so it can be challenging at that time. But would you say like the fact that you've been able to, what it sounds to be, you've been able to network and use your connections and your skillset to be like, hey, I could be advantageous in this process or with analyzing data here. And then I want to do this project here. So you must have had some sort of, you know, relationship with that NGO that's that's supporting that project. So would you find that the networking is a super important part to Super duper, duper important. I think every opportunity that I have come across has been through networking from you know, just starting out my master's project where I went to all the, every single lecture at UCT. And I was like, Hey, I want to do this project. Do you know of anything to, um, like networking at conferences and meeting people in, you know, working in different spheres and, um, and.

1:02:47 Different countries, you know, I just had this incredible experience. I was able to go across to Florida for six weeks. and work with a scientist, Kim Bassos-Hall, who does work on white-spotted eagle rays in, you know, in the Gulf of Mexico. And that whole relationship came about through networking at a conference. And so it really is just about putting yourself out there and really just talking to people and saying, Hey, I'm available. I That's awesome. That's amazing. That's terrific. Well, I don't want to take up all your time. This has been an amazing interview, Chantel, and we'd sure like to have you back on to pick up the next part of your life's journey on this here. And can't thank you enough. This is this has been I knew it'd be a good, good episode here, especially talking about stingrays. And so anyway, thank you so much for coming on and say, well, we're definitely going to have you back here on at some point. And definitely keep us posted as you're doing your your different posts and stuff, because we're happy to repost on our our fledgling channel and social media as well to Thank you for having me. It was a fantastic conversation. I love chatting Raze.

1:04:11 Thank you, Chantal, for joining us on the Beyond Jaws podcast. Dave, what a fantastic interview. What a quite like just a unique individual with a unique career path, you know, in that she just kind of lets things follow her, you know, one after the other, and it just kind of opportunities open up. And she doesn't have necessarily a traditional path in terms of like a nine to five type of conservation job. She does a lot of consulting. She's doing a postdoc. You know, it's a very interesting way of doing things, you know, in today's world. And I think it's, you know, driven by what she's interested in. I thought that was that was really interesting. What Yeah. You know, she's like, you know, a lot as we those as we know, and anyone listening to the podcast can hear, you know, we don't have a lot of There's not like a lot of jobs in the field. And if you're going to really pursue the field, you need to figure out a way to do it because, you know, the chance to get a job or are really remote. And so she's just figured a way to do it, to, you know, build it, to do consulting for a number of different groups. She's also gotten on with her, with her social media or science communication. So she's kind of hitting in two very different areas. And, you know, as you say, she's got 20 over 25,000 followers. Is she hopefully able to monetize some of her? her science communication there, but she's also been able to hook up with a number of groups to do the science and to consult on them. And I think with her, because she does raise and not a lot of people do the raise and she works in other species that are, let's say, not the charismatic ones. She's created a niche for herself where

1:05:42 she can, you know, she's in demand to do consulting there. And so I think that's really good. She's very, very entrepreneurial, which I think you have to be in this field these days. to get around, in addition to doing the science, you've got to have a bit of an entrepreneurial bent. And it was a fascinating interview. I just really, you know, I've known her for a little bit. I don't know her real well, but I've known her for a while. And it was just, yeah, I was really, really excited to have her on and to hear about her journey, which is, as we find out more and more, it's like, it's never a straight line from having that passion to where you Yeah, well, and it's just what I love is the fact of, you know, she, like you said, marries that science communication, follows the questions that she wants to answer what's interested in her. You know, she's really discovered sort of a unique research interest.

1:06:29 that people don't have and that they need. And I think that's really great. I think she's going to be in a great position for her career. And I'm looking forward to seeing how that just continues to blossom, not only from the science communication point of view, but also from the scientific point of view as well. So I think that's just a great way to do an episode. Right. And tell us all about her career. So Chantal was great. So again, thank you very much, Chantal. We'll put any links that she has to her in her social media and of course, her YouTube channel. So you can check that out. You can subscribe. Speaking of subscribing, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at Beyond Jaws podcast on YouTube. We'll put a link in the show notes as well. And Dave, if people want to get a hold of You can follow me on Instagram at Lost Shark Guy. Lost Sharks on Facebook and Lost Shark Guy on X, Twitter, and also on LinkedIn. So any of those main I love that. That's fantastic. And everybody else, thank you so much for joining us on today's episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time. And