From Australia to Timor-Leste: A Journey to Rediscover Lost Shark Species

0:00 Ladies and gentlemen and fellow shark scientists and enthusiasts and conservationists, we have a very special episode today. Normally, we have a guest on. Today, we do have a guest on, but he's actually our co-host. Dr. David Ebert is going to be talking about his latest trip for searching for lost sharks. And this is a doozy, because he may have found one. But you're going to have to listen to the rest of the episode to find out. So let's start the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. I am today, I'm normally your co-host, but today I am your host because our guest, Dr. David Ebert is normally my other co-host and he's the guy you've been listening to ask questions to other guests and today he is going to be our guest because I asked him to come on the podcast to talk about his trip his latest trip to Australia, Southeast Asia, to look for more lost sharks.

1:01 And the question when we always look at these types of trips is, are we gonna find sharks? What are the odds that we're gonna find sharks? So we're gonna find that out all today. It's gonna be a blast. Dave, are you ready Absolutely, Andrew. I'm so happy to be here on this podcast with you. Such I'm actually just glad to be back. made it back out of the places I just went to, which we'll get into some of the other adventure parts of the story during this special bonus episode. Absolutely. Yeah.

1:46 Thanks for having me on as your guest this week. You Special guest. Yeah. Always a pleasure to have you on. You're welcome Look this has been you know, it's it's it's always cool because last year you went away to Ecuador and Peru this year you went to Northern Australia you went to East Timor you went to Indonesia she went to Jakarta and Bali I spent a little time in Singapore and then back to to Darwin Australia We're gonna talk all about those trips you know what your goals were but also like the prep for these types of trips because this is a lot of logistics a lot of countries that you don't travel to on a regular basis and so I want to just kind of chat you know and and a lot of collaborations there's a lot of people that you went with different people and of course shout out to Denise who is your videographer and we were going to be coming out with a lot of episodes and a lot of content coming out Video wise on on some some YouTube channels. We'll let you know when that comes out because we got one coming out quite soon if it's not already out by the time we put this up, but This is this is gonna be a lot of fun. So I'm looking forward to this. So Dave Let's just talk about what the goal of the trip was like where you Yeah well first of all, I want to say that this is a Project that's being funded by the Save Our Seas Foundation through

3:17 one of their Keystone grants And I can't thank the Save Our Seas Foundation enough, because they've been really supportive of the Lost Sharks Program and Lost Sharks Project. And it's just really helped fill a niche here to try to get out and find these lost species that we've been looking for. And last year, as you know, I went to Ecuador and Peru. And we'll have more coming out of that as part of a documentary series. As you mentioned, we'll elaborate more in the next few weeks. But anyway, this was year two of the project, and this year we went to Northern Australia, the Northern Territories, Darwin, and met up with a good friend of mine, a colleague, Dr.

4:00 Peter Kind, and a number of students from his lab. And then from there we went on to East Timor, which is also known as Timor-Leste. It's actually one of the newest countries in the world, which I'll talk about a little more in a moment. And then we did a swing all the way through Indonesia, starting in Bali. Then we went on to Jakarta. Then we wound up in the Rio Islands out in far Western Indonesia. And then at the end of the trip, we went and had a day or two in Singapore at the end, which was basically just kind of the jump off point for the end of the trip. And then we came back to Darwin and spent a few days there wrapping up some stuff. But you talk about your preparation for something like this. Yeah. Holy Well, here, let me just start. Let me just let me just start with this, because I mean, the first I've got a lot of questions around around the prep, but like the first and foremost is you want to make sure that there are there are specific things you are going to do in each and every place. Right. So let's let's just name them off and kind of just talk about what you what the purpose of in that and like briefly, you don't have to go into too Right. Now, the basic summary of the project is to highlight these lost sharks, as I call them, these species that may be disappearing with no one really paying much attention to because, you know, Things like white sharks, tiger sharks, they get a lot of publicity and there's actually a lot of protections for them. But the species I'm looking for, and again,

5:33 I work a lot with collaborations, it's huge. I couldn't do what I do without the collaborations I have. And a lot of it's just come from setting up a network over the last 40 years of my career. And so it's really, the overall goal is to highlight these species before they disappear, before they go extinct. And I'll talk about really the first species that is part of this thing I'll get into in a moment. There is one species that we're looking for that actually has been officially declared extinct. And I'll talk about that a little more in a moment. But you asked about the prep into something like this. And keep in mind, this basically covered five countries over the course of a month, basically.

6:16 I had like 10 flights. I covered 12 time zones. And conditions were varied from fairly nice in Darwin to kind of the outback basically in A little rough. A little rough. Rough in terms of like environment, right? I mean, you're talking about some of the places, there's really not any roads to speak of. You just kind of have to go with what's there. And so then you don't have a lot of really great facilities. But anyway, so I had to as far as prep, you know, I had to basically be a travel agent to book all the these flights, because I had a team of people going, which are a lot mostly graduate students from Pete Kine's lab. And so I had different students on different parts of the project. And they were on this project, because each of them is working in a different, different part of the cut Yeah, exactly. They all had they all knew the they all knew the the lay of the land, so to speak, when we go there. So that was important, too. So I had to book flights not just for myself, but for all the team. Then I had, of course, Denise Sotomayor was filming the whole journey as part of the project. And so that was a whole thing in itself. I kind of felt like a travel agent just getting that part together. Then the time goes into researching the whole project, like what we're going. OK, we're going to this location to do

7:46 this. We're going to this location to do that. And as I was researching, a few locations came up that I wasn't anticipating. And probably the biggest one that came up in the whole project was Timor-Leste, East Timor, because I was not originally had that on my radar until a colleague of mine who I had published a paper with recently, I found out she's now, she was based in Palau, but now she's with World Fish, and she's based in Timor-Leste. And she coincidentally started sending me some photos of some sharks and rays, because she's not a shark person herself. And so she started sending me stuff, asking about these things. And so she wanted, anyway, so I was identifying, and I kind of said, oh, what are you doing in Timor-Leste? She says, oh, I live here now. I work here. And so that got my attention because nobody's done any research that I'm aware of on sharks and rays in Timor-Leste. So I, so I worked in that into the whole project and that turned out to be just a phenomenal, a phenomenal story in itself. And I'll, I'll get into talk a little bit about today, but I'll get into, we'll have a future episode where I'll get into this a lot more detail.

9:02 Cause this was a whole, a whole issue. And if you know anything about East Timor. I'm sure a lot of people out there have to go look at a map to figure out where it is, but it's just, yeah, it's just, it's just like about an hour, an hour and a half flight from Darwin, Australia, which is up in the far Northern part. And, um, they, they had a long, I'll just give the short story, but they went through a brutal war And like recently, though, you recently the reason it was as if it was like 60 years ago. No, no. The war in the 1990s, The war, the war, the war just ended in 2002. Yeah. And then they had then they went through some civil unrest within the country, kind of different parties jockeying for power and stuff, trying to figure things out.

9:48 And so they've had a very challenging recent history. They say they only became a country in, you know, 2002, 2003. They actually officially became a country. that it was recognized by the world. And so, the thing is, unfortunately, when the Indonesians left, they pretty much destroyed the country. And so it's still undergoing a lot of rehabilitation, rebuilding. There's a lot of foreign aid you see in there. When I was just there, you see a lot of foreign aid trying to rebuild it. But you get outside the capital of Dili, and I covered the whole country. I mean, we went everywhere. And it's not a big country. but it would take hours to get anywhere because the roads are just so bad. And a lot of places you'd have to drive along creek beds and stuff. And again, I was there in the dry season, wet season, you can't get around very well in a lot of areas just because of the flooding that takes place there. And you also have interesting thing I'll talk a little more about is you have crocodiles are all over the place and you can't get in and out of some towns because there's Oh yeah, and that was a whole other thing is that we dealt with, and I actually dealt with this pretty much the whole trip from when we started off in northern Australia, we had crocodiles, we were out in the boat, we went out, oh let's back up and start off, we started off in northern Australia going out fishing for river sharks, which was a highlight for me, I'd always wanted to see

11:19 these things in the wild, and I come from, this was a species that was thought extinct, for over the past hundred years. And it was only about 15 years ago, Pete Kind and some others got onto the fact that there was kind of a stronghold of these things in Northern Australia. And they've pretty much disappeared everywhere else. So Pete's been researching these things there. And we'll have him talk a little more detail in a future episode. But you go up there to fish for these things. We go up there and we're tagging them, tagging and releasing them with Pete and Julia Constance. And there's so many crocodiles around like you can't even like sit at the edge of the boat. You got to kind of stay in the middle of the boat because crocs literally will lunge out and take you off the boat. And you see a lot and you see crocodiles from things that are maybe four or five feet to 15 feet. Uh, at least one of them was probably 17, 18 feet. And I'll tell you after seeing a lot of 15 footers, you see one is 18 feet. You're like, Holy moly. That's a, that's a big fucking croc.

12:22 And they're just, and they're just kind of sitting on those A lot of them are swimming across the river, they're sitting on the banks, they look like they're not doing anything. Believe So this is an interesting part, because we talk about the prep of this, looking at what kind of sharks you're going to look for for each place, right? And here's the thing that I have. These are places where a lot of times you haven't been. And some of them are a little rougher in terms of conditions than others. You have graduate students who've done work in there, so they have a little bit more of the lay of the land. But, you know, you're doing this, you know, associated with Save Our Seas, but a lot of it's just, it's you and your graduate students and things. How do you look out for safety when you plan these things? Because it's almost like you have Oh, yeah. I mean, I can only prepare so much of my, and a part of it is like looking at the species we might encounter, you know, kind of learning, knowing what the red list assessments are in these things and what we might find. And of course, the river sharks was a high priority on this whole thing.

13:33 Timor-Leste was just a complete wide open thing. Now, when you're working in Australia, particularly through the university, you have a whole protocol you have to go through. Gotcha. And so there's a whole thing like, you got to do this, you got to do that, you got to be here, you got to stay here. And crocodiles are just one thing. There's some other stuff too. And keep in mind, We're working on sharks and sharks are kind of like low in the priority. What I'm really worried about, it's more of the other unknown safeties, crocodiles. And if you remember last year, I think I talked a little bit about last year's thing, a whole different set of things in Ecuador, particularly we had a lot of civil unrest when Yeah, because there was like a political part, there was a political election going There was an election going on and there were people being assassinated, political people, candidates. Drug cartels, you know, we got chased out of several fish markets. We were just told to leave or die. And so I'm just kind of contrasting last year to this year where we're more worried about some of the wildlife with So it was less like worrying about people and worrying about sort of some of the major events that were going on and worrying more about nature and just being safe and being aware of Right, yeah. And like I said, in Australia you have They got protocols you have to follow. And, you know, Pete went over all those things with us. And that, and that's when I go to countries like that, you kind of like got a set of protocols and you're aware of that. Now, when you go to Timor Leste, East Timor, that's a different story because there's really nothing there.

15:05 You just have some of the people, you know, again, you're, I'm working with local people there. Uh, the Timorese, uh, with, uh, Dr. Lowe's Clausen's, she's actually a South African who did her PhD at a Rhodes university. where I did, but she's an earlier career researcher, and she actually worked on pipefish and seahorses. And so she didn't really know anything about sharks, and so she contacted me, and now we're actually gonna be doing some stuff on sharks, because she connected, this is why it's really important to work with people in country, because she connected me with all the people at the university, within the government, The person who's in charge of their blue economy unit and everything, and I had a chance to speak with them, give talks, do workshops. And so I was able to do a lot of that stuff while I was there.

15:54 I made a lot for the short amount of time I was there, I made quite a bit of progress in terms of laying the groundwork for what I hope will be some future research over there. And then we went around everywhere. As I said, the dry season, we were just going. It was a little easier to get around, but the roads were not very good. It'd take you hours to go. you know, 10, 20 kilometers just sometimes, just because the roads were so bad. And then, you know, the interesting thing, just not to dwell all on the crocodiles, but there's so many crocodiles in Timor, you'd stop, like, you know, you may or may not be at some place where you could actually have a bathroom facility or something, and you can't actually walk off the road because you might get taken by a crocodile. And you would be like, there'd be situations where I'd be like walking across a bridge to the beach, and you look down to one side of the bridge and you see like this 15-foot crocodile. You look on the other side of the bridge and a bunch of kids are playing in the creek. And the locals have, you ask them about them, they're just like, well, you know, they live here too. And, you know, which I'd be About that. And they have names for all the, the local crocodiles that they're familiar with, they have names for all of them. The thing I hit on was almost every place we went, you talk to people and you get some story of, oh yeah, somebody got taken last week by a crocodile. Somebody got taken a few weeks ago, last month. There's some recent story about somebody at every place we went. And you're thinking like,

17:27 my God, these things are like all over the place. And they're just like, well, you just got to be careful where you walk. And I'm thinking like, yeah, okay. Just be careful. But you know, you can easily forget. You're going along, look at the countryside, beautiful places, look at the ocean. And just so everybody understands, these are saltwater crocodiles. So it's like, yeah, so like we're, you know, on the beach looking at somebody fisherman's catch. And then we look up the beach, like about a hundred meters. And there's this big crocodile comes walking out of the bush, walks across the beach, goes and surf and goes swimming out. And so, um, you realize like, okay, I may not, even though it's like, it's a beautiful looking beach. I may not want to go swimming out here because it might not end well for me. And, um, So, that was kind of some of the prep stuff. That stuff you can't really, all you can do is talk to the locals and be as alert as you can on where you are. I talked a little bit about the megafauna, but you got things you weren't concerned about.

18:22 You prep as best you can for it, but you got things like malaria, dengue fever, and those types of diseases from mosquitoes you got to be concerned about as well. So, you do the best you can in terms of those types of precautions. you have to realize some places, I have Yeah, that's crazy. I would not have thought of that, especially Timor-Leste, right? I mean, yeah, the main town, yeah, the main town, you speculate, yeah, no problem. But yeah, so we got, we were in some pretty remote areas and you still could get, most places you could get some internet, which was, which was amazing to us. So I was glad we could, because in case there was some issue we could I don't get a hold of somebody. I don't know who is going to come out there because they don't exactly have like emergency services. It's a beautiful country. I really enjoyed it. And I say, we're going to try to get some more. I'm going to try to follow up and do some more research there. We're going to work with Lowe and some of the other people I met there in the dive community and with the government and the university, try to develop a project to document the species that occur there. So that's, that's kind of looking like a really, really potential long term, interesting project. And we're already, we're already seeing some really interesting species that they've been catching out there. So I won't go into it here, but there's some really, there were some lost sharks we definitely stumbled across out there. And so there could be some really interesting. more things to come. So kind of stay tuned on that

19:53 Well, let me let me ask you this, too, because you're in a number of different countries, a number of different cultures, and you've done this before. You've done this for quite some time now, like, you know, 30, 40 years of going to different countries, you know, meeting new people. Sometimes there's language barriers, sometimes there isn't. Especially now, we talk a lot about parachute science. A lot of people are concerned about that. Because back in the day when you were first starting off in science, and sometimes it even happens today, there are certain scientists and organizations who will go into a country. I'm just defining what parachute science is. They go into a country, get the data that they want, publish on it, work it out, publish on it, and not really give back to the people there. But you tend to work with the people when you go there. You interact with people, you have a lot of friends that still to this day, like in Taiwan, all over Africa, not just South Africa, but all over Africa where you've done workshops and things like that. When you go into a new country, like Timor-Leste, How do you approach the people who are taking you around, not only just the graduate students, but the local people who you met? What's the process there that you take that other people can learn from when they go into new countries so that they don't, you don't wanna disrespect anybody, you wanna make sure that you're thankful and just share that data

21:29 A lot of it's just a lot of us come from networking and you know you just haven't over the years I just get to know people I network and if I don't know somebody directly I'll I'll talk to someone else in the case of this one with um actually for the whole trip it was all people I knew contacts and like and even the Timor-Leste which had never been explored I I did a paper about a year ago with uh with Lo Clausens who's with World Fish and she was based in Palau and then it was and it was kind of a little bit of a fluke It doesn't always happen this way, but she contacted me about identifying some sharks and rays they were seeing. And she mentioned she was in Timor-Leste. And then that led to, oh, what are you doing there? And she's, oh, I live here now and I'm doing some work. And so I was, so I started, we started communicating back and forth and then she hooked us up, hooked me up with some of the other people there to get by.

22:21 Cause you know, World Fish is an NGO and there's a lot of countries like Timor. There's a lot of NGOs in there. There's a lot of aid. Programs in there and so like and so she was able to hook me up with some of the government people the head of their blue economy unit for example some of the people at the university there and So and so we just started corresponding and I said like, you know, hey, I could you know, we can do some workshop I can do a workshop there just a short at least an introductory thing on how to identify stuff We got it. We got buy-in from the dive community there So I had like I have a I got a fairly wide net cast there, but it was all because of this one individual, Lo, who I knew from a previous project I'd worked on. She basically connected me in there. So we had correspondence. It goes through sort of the get to know each other phase. And then so I went there and had a chance to go explore the whole island.

23:22 There are a couple of Timor people who work for World Fish because they have local people working for them as well. And so they were kind of invaluable in the whole thing, really, because they know the terrain very well. They obviously speak the language. The language wasn't as big a barrier, because most people could speak some level of English there, and where they couldn't, these guys were great. Actually, Portuguese is the main language over there, so it's not even a... And there's Timorese, a local language as well. They've got a few languages, but English was able to get around. Yeah, so there was a couple of guys, Junior and Sam, who were on the whole journey with us. Another guy named Jerry, they're all local Timorese people, and they work for World Fish. And we spent some time going over things to identify them with.

24:12 I gave them a copy of my field guide, the sharks of the world. And just show you know spend a little bit of time showed him what to do talk with the fishing community So it's just really networking talking to people and I you know I never go in there like I'm gonna like I never go in there's like I'm gonna crusade to do something I always take more of the Approach of you know, hey I can provide information You guys need to decide what you want to do with it Yeah, you know as far as with the government like I'm not in there telling like don't fin don't fish sharks this is I just You know, right, especially in Timor, where we don't know anything, we're developing like a list of species now, and we're seeing some really interesting species, we didn't even, we had no idea. And so like, all this information will collate. And then, again, I, you know, I've already been in touch, you know, met with the head of their Blue Economy Unit and stuff and, yeah, university people. So I'm just going to provide this information. I'll work with them, I'll train the local people with them. Hopefully we'll be able to get some additional funding so I can go back and do a more deeper dive. I mean, I only had really, it doesn't sound like a lot, but I had five full-on days, five, six days really full-on just going through the place.

25:23 I mean, look, I could cover the country in that time, and I went to all the main areas, made the contacts, and hopefully I'll lay the groundwork for some future work and go back and do some more training there. Hopefully, out of this whole thing, we'll be able to develop a database of species, what's being caught. And then, you know, I'm like, kind of done my part there. And, you know, hopefully, we'll get a few scientific papers out of it. And, you know, I'll collaborate with the local people there to write up some papers as they want. And then, kind of, here's the information. And hopefully, they'll, they can decide as, Yeah, that's really cool. I mean, I think that's it's a really interesting way How long did it take you to learn to do all this? you know what I mean, like, you know you sometimes you were traveling when you were young and and and you know, I would say not to be an insult but like naive of You know what the like what you know now right like you've gathered so much information and so much experience You know Like for some people who are listening to this who might want to do the same thing, they want to discover new species or they want to describe a new species, they might be doing it just as you have suggested in the past is like pick something that you don't know, we don't know much about and study that. Sometimes those are in countries we haven't really explored before. And so like how would you recommend and how did you sort The first thing is I kind of just got it. I mean, I learned a lot working like with my doing my master's degree

26:56 here in California. Right. I just because I was working with people, I kind of, you know, I just work with mainly the fishing community. Yeah. And so I just learned to like work with people like in the fishing community and like and it's a little different in different countries. But, you know, some of it translates very easily. And then after that, from there, I just got to know People, like, you know, I've mentioned this story, and I knew Leonard Coppagno, who was in San Francisco, and he took a job in South Africa. And that kind of led to my, really my next step in my career, was going to South Africa. And then just, I would just go to fishing communities around there, villages and stuff, and just talk to the people, and just kind of get to know them, and, you know, made friendships, you know, as I went along. And it was just literally, and most people, you kind of show up there, Especially if you're a foreigner, they kind of like you're you're sort of a novelty, like especially in areas where they haven't really seen too many foreigners. And, you know, like out and the kind of towards the end of the trip was out in the Western Indonesia, which is very, you know, I mean, they you go out, they see very few Westerners, you know, out there, very, very few, very, very few white people. I mean, you see any others or no other white people out there when I was there and I was working with Naya Simone. It's one of Pete's PhD students. And she's been on the podcast talking about wedge fish and stuff. And she was really the guide. She really helped make things happen throughout Indonesia. Because we started off in Bali. And I know Bali's a bit of a tourist

28:28 destination. But I was not in the tourist parts of Bali. But we were in the fishing part where they still have fishing going on. And we found two spectacular sharks critically endangered species there was one we're kind of looking for and we spent some time talking to the fishermen and again this is where Naya was really you know she knows the terrain she knows the people we're talking with people and everything we kept getting is uh we haven't seen these things for years and these were species well one of them we thought was you know maybe you know on the serious decline well it's critically endangered and the last day we're there it was it was a this is how it happens sometimes you know one of the team members, Julia Constance, carrying some sharks. And we go, oh, let's go check those out. Went over to where they brought the sharks. And the next thing we see are all these other sharks that we're looking for. And we're like, oh, my God. And then it turned out the one we're looking for, we found. But it turned out there was a second one there that we didn't, that now this is even rarer than the other one we're looking for. So we kind of got a twofer. So that stuff keeps me going. I mean, I've been doing this for years. I get so pumped up with that. But then the thing is, the thing just disappeared. They took it and they're taking it away. And so I had to follow them, and Naya followed too, because literally, and this is kind of the thing is, 30 seconds either way, we'd have missed them. Either too soon, too late, we'd have missed the whole

29:58 thing. And so we ended up finding two species that haven't been seen for years. And so now we've been able to document them. And we talked to the fishermen. We know where they caught them, where they are. We got some more information. talking more about that later on and some stuff we're doing with this project. But anyway, that was Bali. And then we went on to Jakarta. After that, I met with another colleague of mine who I've known for years, Fahmi, who has his doctorate. He's worked for the Indonesian Fisheries Service Agency. And so we spent time going through his collection. He's got a phenomenal collection. And I found a few species that he's recently collected that well he knew what they were he he showed me what they were and i was like oh man we haven't seen these in years and and and then and interestingly pulled out a few deep sea sharks that um he was trying he hadn't been able to identify yet and a couple of them turned out to be range extensions like big range extensions and one of them looks like it's probably a new species So that was kind Oh yeah. Just to be able to find it and be like, yeah, I think that's new. I haven't seen that one before, Yeah, I know. And so we kind of got the whole, then from there after Jakarta, and well, let me back up a bit. In Jakarta, one of the things we went there for was to look for where had been the Java stingray, stingray.

31:23 Right. And that was extinct, or there was a published paper Yeah, Julia, who was on the show at the beginning of the year in January, and Pete Kine, And I published a paper, I have a paper, actually it's in press now, declaring the species extinct. And it's the first time you've had a marine. Big news around. It's huge, huge news. And so we went out and wanted to go see like, why is this thing probably gone? And because it was, so we went to the location in Jakarta where this thing apparently had been landed. You know, it was landed in 1862. So we're doing the best we can to identify it. But we went out, we did a lot of looking around and Talking with Julia and interviewing her and Naya as well, pretty much the habitat for this species was pretty much probably wiped out by 1900 once Jakarta started to build because they did a lot of it as land reclamation which took out a lot of the mangroves. Right.

32:17 And so pretty much this species. I'm after being where I was and looking there. Yeah, it's probably gone. It's we went out, we did stood out, went out, do those surveys out on the boat there in the Java Sea. But it's it's habitats gone. And so she expects this thing's probably been extinct for over 100 years now. And again, this that this highlights what I do, because this is a shark that there's nobody's thought about. And yet here it is gone extinct and almost until we raised some awareness of this and Julia did this paper, nobody even knew this thing. And, and so kind of what I do is to try to find these things before they go. And I mentioned a couple of sharks we found in Bali. Okay. Even though they were, they'd been caught by fishermen and they were dead. We know like where to go look for these things now. So we could go back with bruvs or whatever to find live ones, but we know where to go look now. And then, of course, I had a great time. I've known Fahmi for a long time. We've described new species together. He's just a wonderful guy. I keep coming back to this theme you asked about how I know what to do when I go there. I've just learned over the years, Andrew. And it's just getting to know people.

33:32 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I ran identification training workshops 12 years ago that Fahmi was at. And we've known each other before that. So I've had opportunities to meet these people and get to know them. It's building relationships with them and that takes time and it takes, you know, I'm not showing up there like, okay, I need to get this, this, this, and this. You know, I go out there, I have tea, I have coffee, have lunch. You build a relationship. You build relationships. And so these people, cause I may not see these guys for years, but they'll contact me when they got something new. Yep. So, yeah. So anyway, so after Jakarta, which, I have to say, of everywhere I went, I don't need to go to Jakarta again if I don't have to. But everywhere else was lovely. We went out to Rio Islands, which was fairly remote. And I was running some training identification workshops for a lot of the Indonesian CITES inspectors were out there. So that was a great chance to make a whole range of new contacts, you know, having whatever 50, 60 people in the room. Going over and it was like a two three day Thing where I went through and we lectured and I was most of us understood English, but Naya was she also spoke But she was translating into Indonesian for us and because I don't that's the thing too is I don't speak these languages I have no problem going in there. I got somebody that knows how to Interpret that helps that helps a lot So I was able to go out there and do you know do some of that's do that do this training

35:03 workshop? we went out to the a couple of the fish markets there, the traders. Found a number, oh man, somewhere probably about 10 species that are critically endangered at this market, including a couple that were really rare to find. And so that's going to be a whole other thing we did. But it was great because here I'm actually doing what I like to do. I'm showing, training people Not that these people don't already know a lot already because they're societies inspectors but I'm giving a little bit of nuance that I think I like to feel is kind of helping them out and They're very grateful for it. And now I got a whole bunch of other contacts all spread out through Indonesia to work with and we also went out to some of the islands there where Naya is doing some of her work and Because a big thing, you know, she's looking for the wedge clownfish, which she showed me some that she'd found last year And this is a species that we thought, another species we thought was extinct because it hadn't been seen for years. And now we have a few records of this thing within the last two, three years now. And so that's, that was really cool. But, and there's some, you know, fascinating being out in these villages, because let's say most of them have never seen a Westerner or met a Westerner before. And so it's really kind of cool for me interacting with them and kind of things that make kind of really makes you feel kind of warm inside is like, you know, these people don't have like a lot to begin with, but they're so graceful, like to have a chance to meet somebody, you know, from like the United States. And

36:34 that, you know, they're offering me like, you know, give me a little Coke is a sort of a, you know, you know, thanks for coming by. And I'm like, Oh, no, you don't have to do Coke. No, Coke. No. C-O-K-E. Coke. Coca-Cola. Oh, okay. Yeah. I was worried it was a different type of Coke. Coca-Cola. Get your mind out of the gutter. I just wanted to confirm just to make sure people think you're not going on these crazy things. Just wanted to be sure, just try to do my duties as But it's the kind of thing that's almost more rewarding to me personally, just the kindness of these people and like their kids come in there and they come from school. I had some pictures on social media and it was just great.

37:34 Yeah, and if you saw some of the pictures I post, it's like it's You talk about some of the, I talked about crocodiles and diseases, like just trying to navigate around, like look at the little bridge they put in there to get out to the docks. I think I got some pictures posted on Instagram. Uh, you know, you want to be really freaking careful cause you could fall and hurt yourself really badly out there and stuff. And, I mean, I think I think that's that's really good. Like when you get to make those connections, it's part of the process, right? It's part of the trips. It's not just finding these sharks that haven't been found in a while. It's it's meeting new people. It's understanding different cultures, being a part of like being exposed to those different cultures. And I think that's that's a really cool part about being a scientist, especially when you're traveling internationally, is to have that openness and have that You know urge to be able to learn from different people and connect with different people all over the world Yeah, I think a thing is It's like it's been I've got an explorer heart. I like to explore and I like yeah, and I like to not just go in there Just like okay. I'm gonna find the shark. Okay. I mean, that's a cool thing to do But like just the connections the people I meet those are the memories I probably take away more than anything with some of those things. And those are the most rewarding things. Feeling like I'm able to, especially at this point, too, in my career where I'm working with some really dynamic young grad students and I'm able to pass along a

39:05 lot of my knowledge and experience to them. And they're very grateful. I mean, I had three of Pete's grad students for basically, I don't want to say held hostage for like three and a half weeks as we were traveling around the place, but I think they they didn't have a chance to work with me, you know, going around the place, I think was very, it was good. They really enjoyed it. They enjoyed that, having that connection, that time together and everything. And, um, so, so yeah, that's, that's really the big reward to me is just, uh, the people to work with and the people I meet and, uh, be able to pass along that knowledge. So yeah, it was, it was a, it was a wonderful trip. And, uh, we're, as, as you mentioned, and I mentioned, we, we documented this thing as a part of the save our seas, uh, Project and we'll be put we'll be having some videos coming up in the next few months some little video stories about the journeys the difference different things about it talking about some of the Hardships and some of the rewards of doing the whole of doing the whole project And you know, I just want to again just give a big shout out Thanks to save our seas because they're just there's just not a lot of organizations that will fund this type of type of work that I do and You know and again One thing you mentioned too about knowledge is like, you gotta know a lot of the species and I really worked my whole life trying to learn all the different species I can as best I can, it's a That's awesome. A couple more questions before we end this. The

40:36 first is, the way you describe when you find a new species, it happens so quickly, right? And a lot of times, unexpectedly, on the trip. You know why you're out there and you want to discover something, but you've already mentioned a couple times where Fisher's going by and he's got something and you're like, well, what is that? Hold on a second, can I take a look at that? All of a sudden you're like, oh my gosh, I don't think I've ever seen this before. I don't think anybody's ever seen, your colleagues are there, the grad students are like, wow, what is this? What's the feeling that goes through your body? What are the emotions that you feel when all of a sudden you're on the verge, I think this is something that's it's kind of a mix between this absolute adrenaline rush and Christmas. Okay, waking up waking up Christmas morning is a five year old. And just, you know, what Santa leave me? Yeah. And, and then just having this, like on this, like on these trips here, it's like, it's like a, it's like a, it's a total adrenaline. It's just you're just every day, just pumped up to go out there. And I mean, it's kind of One of the comments, uh, you know, some of the students made is like, they were just, yeah, they found it. They thought it was a little bit inspiring that every day we had long, hard days and like every day, I'm just ready to go. Like, let's do this, man. We're going to go do this. And they found like, that was, they thought that was pretty cool considering I'm, I'm the age of most of their parents running

42:06 around with them. And, uh, and I'm just like every day, I'm like, let's go, let's do this, man. You know, I was like, cause I I'll sleep in the plane when we head home and I've been catching up on some rest since I've been home. But yeah, if you can just imagine this overwhelming adrenaline rush combined with being a five-year-old on Christmas morning. That's the best way to describe it. And speaking of which, not calling you old, but you're not as young as you were in your 20s, doing a trip like this for a month where every day you're going out, You know traveling through some pretty gnarly terrain Look at me being old and trying to use gnarly as a word describe but But you know like it takes a lot on the body for any anybody by any age you've been doing this for quite a long time But like going out for like a month and doing this straight, you know You're always meeting new people talking new people going over just different terrain if there's a lot to experience in one of those trips How do you get through You know at this point in your career bring young enthusiastic students with you And try and keep up is that it well, I honestly I I keep a pretty regimented Workout and sort of a health care just take care of myself in general in general and then I keep a pretty I work out pretty,

43:37 pretty good for my age and I won't mention it specifically, but it's north of 60, let's say. And, uh, and so, but I 39, we'll just go with an even that perfect, even maybe 40, maybe 39 is good. Uh, no, but I, I just, it's, it's really, it's, it's a lot of it. A lot of it is mental. You got to have a positive attitude. That's why I say like, it's having this overwhelming adrenaline rush and, and like a kid at Christmas that, that helps you got to have the right mental attitude. And then I say, I just keep trying to keep my body in shape as best I can, you know, and just try to work out and just eat right. And so like I can, you know, my goal is always to keep up with the kids. And so, you know, and so if I can just, so that's my goal and I don't, I'm just going to keep doing it as long as my body holds up and I can do it. You know, my dad's 93 and, you know, he's still climbing around on the roof and doing stuff. It makes me more nervous than him, so if I can be 93 and doing that, you know, at my age now, I can still keep going and I'm just gonna keep going until I can't, you know? It's just, yeah. So that's all So quite the crazy trip, amazing trip, all the words you can use to describe it, the ups and downs and very, very interesting. Just to let everybody know, we're going to be able to show some more content on

45:10 that visually. We'll have some videos out and a number of different episodes, not only the trip that you just went on, but the trip that you went on last year. We have some videos coming out. very, very shortly. And so keep an eye out on this podcast. We'll announce when they're published. We'll put up links. And so you can actually see what Dave experiences when you're on these trips. And I think it's really important for people to visualize the different fish markets, what it looks like, how you interact with people. Even some of the things you probably like, you may not like to see, you know, as in dead sharks or dead flat sharks and things. Yeah. But then you, you have to, you know, you have to deal with it and, and sometimes, you know, you may discover a new species just, just from those piles of dead sharks that you see. And it's, it's, it's interesting, definitely as a scientist and, and as you said, like, you know, a bit of an explorer.

46:03 And so love to see that so I can't wait till we get those out for everybody Dave if people want to you know find out you know how to Follow you you've been putting up a lot of cool things on Instagram lately as you normally do but about the trip So people want to find out how to do that how to follow you how would they do so Instagram's best just Also, you find Lost Sharks on Facebook. I do post on X occasionally, but mostly Instagram, Facebook, but you can find Lost Shark, Lost Shark Guy on, on X. And then also I post on LinkedIn. So any of the, any of the major platforms, but I would suggest go to Instagram Perfect. Dave, thank you so much for sharing this and going on these trips and being able to discover more sharks. And we thank your colleagues, the graduate students that went out with you, Pete Kine, everybody that was out on the trip with you. And I can't wait to hear more about it. I've already heard a lot about it, and it's always interesting, and I can't wait for everybody else to get to see what you've been able to see over the last couple of years. Just a piece of your career, but something that's absolutely remarkable. So Absolutely. How about next episode? You could co-host. How about that? Perfect. Perfect.

47:29 I'll co-host with you. Wonderful. Thanks a lot, Dave. We'll talk to