From Ohio to Oregon: The Journey of a Shark Scientist with Dr. Alexandra McInturf

0:00 Hey everybody, we've got a special episode for you today. This is going to be one for the books. We have Dr. Alexandra McInturff on the podcast to talk about the Big Fish Lab. This is a lab at Oregon State University. It is The stuff that we talk about is all over the place in terms of fish and sharks. We talk about basking sharks. We even talk about a ship strike on a basking shark. There's so many things that we talk about. It is going to be a lot of fun. So I don't want to delay it anymore. Let's start the show. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. I am your host or co-host, Andrew Lewin. And here is my other co-host, Dr. David Ebert.

0:45 Oh, I'm excited about this one, Andrew. I'm really looking forward to having Alex on the show here talking about basking sharks. Um, as, as you know, and some people know, I, her and I coauthored a paper on basking sharks and involved a lot of citizen science a couple of years ago. Um, just, she's just a real dynamo and are really looking forward to, um, having her on there. Just, just a really. Pumped up exciting, uh, uh, up and coming shark shark superstar. I think, you know, she's really on the ball. And we learned some things about it. I didn't even know, I didn't even know about her at, we're looking forward to, and so we're really, we're excited having Yeah, it's going to be great. You know, we talk about her athleticism and and how that impacted her life and how that's kind of driven her life to be so successful. This is going to be definitely one for the books as you mentioned. So here is the interview with Dr. Alexander McInturff. Enjoy and we will talk to you after. Hey Alex, welcome to the Beyond Jaws podcast. Are you ready to talk about The answer to that is always. Thank you so much for having me. I That's awesome. I want to welcome everyone to another Beyond Jaws podcast episode today, where we have another rising star in the fantastic world of sharks. We have the fabulous Dr. Alexandra McInturff. She's originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, which I believe is landlocked, last I checked. Alex graduated from Cum Laude from Williams College. with

2:18 a bachelor's degree in both biology and English. She received her PhD in animal behavior from the University of California, Davis. And recently, she's been a research associate at Oregon State University's Big Fish Lab. Her research generally focuses on how marine organisms respond to biotic and abiotic environmental variables. And she uses this information to contextualize and predict behavior, movement patterns, and survival. And she explores this topic in relation to threatened marine species. For her PhD, Alex studied salmon sharks and, believe it or not, seven-gill sharks. So we've got a lot to talk about today in California. And basking sharks also in Ireland. She currently examines a foraging ecology of salmon sharks in Oregon and Alaska, including microplastics ingestion. the distribution of Chinook salmon and their overlap with salmon sharks, the movements of Pacific spiny dogfish, the social lives of sharks in general, and many more species and topics. She has a dozen publications and is presented at numerous conferences. She does outreach through organizations such as the Gills Club, the Irish Basking Shark Group, and previously served as editor-in-chief for the Ethagram, which is the official blog of the Animal Behavior Graduate Group at UC Davis, while supervising a team of editors and contributors and maintained a media presence for the blog. Alex is an avid science communicator and has developed and led graduate-level courses on the topic. In addition to her own personal PSYCOM endeavors, she coordinates the Irish Basking Shark Group, an outreach, research, and education organization dedicated to basking sharks in Irish

3:51 waters. She's a frequent guest on various media platforms, including print media, television, and podcasts. She's currently, as I've mentioned, a research associate at Oregon State University's Big Fish Lab at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Oregon, which is an absolutely beautiful part of the country. I actually love it. I'm jealous there, but I live in Monterey, so it's not too bad. So anyway, I told you we're going to go through your entire life. Wow, thank you. Yeah, you really did. I feel like there might have been some internet stalking Just a wee bit. We do our research. We do our research. We do our research. We want to be prepared. So I'll start off with our usual question in that, how did you get interested in marine science and sharks? all of that whole, the wonderful world of the marine environment from Cincinnati, Ohio?

4:52 Yeah, that's a really good question. I get that a lot. And to be honest, my mom still asks that question of me every time I visit. She is so baffled by my career choice, but of course was very supportive, which is how I ended up here. I think I got into shark science in the same way a lot of the other folks y'all have interviewed got into it. And I'm finding my story is less unique than I thought. I, like many aspiring scientists, I wanted to be a shark biologist from the time I was 12. Growing up in Ohio, I didn't live near the beach. And so I really knew I wanted to study animals when I was young, but my parents didn't even know what a marine biologist was. I distinctly remember wanting to be a vet, because that's what I knew. And we had dogs, and they went to the vet. So that's what I figured the options were for working with animals. And then one year we went to Florida and I remember just being at the beach and thinking, oh, this is so fun. This is like my favorite place to be. Also, the ocean is a little bit scary. And I think I asked my dad, you know, one way I've learned since then that I probably cope with fear is to learn more about the things that scare me. And I said to my dad that day, I said, can you study the ocean? And he was like, I think you can. I think it's called a marine biologist. That's the job you might be interested in. And like any 12-year-old who's very stubborn, I decided that that was going to be my job for the rest of my life. And I'm pretty sure that Shark Week was happening the week I was in Florida, which, of

6:24 course, that's the scariest thing when you're that age. Well, I think it did prompt. It prompted the curiosity, for sure. Um, yeah, from then on, I was always known as the shark girl throughout, you know, middle school and high school and into college. And, um, my high school friends are still baffled by the fact that I'm living the childhood dream that I set out to live. And again, people in Ohio just don't understand for the most part. I've got, I've got out. So I, I don't mean to interrupt you, but I just got to ask you, like, so when you were in high school, cause I had this experience. When you went and saw your guidance counselor, sort of like your junior, senior year, and they asked you what you were going to do, and you told them you were going to do shark science, To be honest, I don't quite remember. So this is a little complicated. I was a soccer player, and I was getting recruited to play. So my priority, you know, my ability to prioritize sharks and research generally was a little bit delayed because I was an athlete first, kind of student second. So I remember primarily having conversations about soccer but not sharks with my guidance counselor, and that being my focus. And my husband says I really can only talk about like two things, and it's soccer and sharks. That's still Not bad things to talk about. That's what I'm saying. They're Absolutely. Did

7:57 I did, yeah. I played at Williams, yeah. So When you say you played soccer, now that's like at the college level. That's playing soccer. That's just not in a house league kind of thing. That's high level. You're working out. You're living that. Like soccer basically. Yeah, I was living soccer for quite a long time. Um, and yeah, williams is in massachusetts So I left I knew I was gonna leave ohio regardless and I was looking at schools kind of everywhere for undergrad But again soccer kind of drove That choice and so, you know williams college didn't have a super robust, you know research program They were not an r1 university. They were a liberal arts school, but their soccer program was like Top 10 d3 schools for women. So I was really trying to get recruited by them and Then I figured at some point later I could focus on Sharks, but while I was still being a soccer player, I really wanted to see that through Okay.

8:59 Yeah, we've had a number we've had a number of people on there that were there both our college athletes that played in fact I was that was I little similar to you because I was a I was a I was a college wrestler at Humboldt State, which was a top five D3 when I was there. It was the same sort of thing that I like. I wanted to do sharks, but I loved doing wrestling too. So I think the thing is, you probably found the whole thing, the discipline of like trying to be a student athlete at the college level, it's a whole different world than a Yeah, totally. So it's actually something, being a student-athlete I think has had resounding impacts throughout my career more so than I think I realized at the time, right? Like you start playing your sport from the time you're five if you're a woman soccer player who's going to play in college for the most part. And so growing up, you know, I took my SATs in high school at recruitment camps on the road. I took all my AP exams, like, in different buildings around the country as I was trying to get recruited. And then, you know, I would come back for finals. We went to the... This is just kind of a funny aside. We ended up going to the national championship my senior year, and so I actually was planning to go to grad school immediately out of undergrad, but couldn't because I couldn't submit the applications. I had to come back from that game and take my finals that year, and I didn't have any time to put applications together.

10:28 But you know, you have practices in the evening, you're lifting in the morning, you know, your whole life revolves around performing well athletically. And then also, Williams was a top-tier academic institution, so they really wanted you to be the full student-athlete. Like there was, there was, you were no less the student Yeah. Now getting a BA in biology and English, Those are quite different subject matters, definitely complimentary to each other. And obviously English is always great to have. What was, why English? I can understand the biology just based on what you wanted to do, but why English So I got my English degree kind of on accident. I really like to read. I love to read and write. Those are two things. I like to say my brain thinks more on the writing side. I'm not as good at things like math and stats, unfortunately, for me. which is definitely a weakness I'm aware of in my current career, but I do love to write and I was taking all the courses just for fun anyway. I was taking like Shakespeare and you know.

11:37 Nice. Irish poetry. And I just remember thinking, you know, the liberal arts education, they really encourage you to pursue all these different opportunities. And I just thought those classes were really cool. And then at some point I realized I had only like two more classes to take before I fulfilled the criteria for the major. So I just kept going. So, yeah. So I think it was it was not really on purpose, but Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That even complicates being a student athlete and getting two degrees like that that are in kind of very different areas, really. So you've got to be pretty disciplined and dedicated in that in that realm. I can I can definitely attest to that. So so you have these two degrees. You already knew you were going to go to graduate school when you finished at Williams. You already had that in mind. Yes. And so, I mean, I I kind of think I know, but why don't you tell us, well, how'd you wind up at UC Davis out in Cal? So you went from Massachusetts to Yes, very different. Well, so I can kind of tell you the story of how I, how I got there after this, national championship debacle. So again, I thought I had my whole life planned out and I knew from the get-go that I wanted to get my PhD. Like I really like school. I like learning. I knew I might want to go into academia someday. So I thought PhD is the way to go. Realistically, I also thought that's where I'd make the most money. I have now learned a lot about my

13:10 career and those options. But when you Google salaries, when you Google salaries when you're like 15 and they say you have to have your PhD and you can make like 100k or more a year. I thought, you know, that's I have to get my PhD. We can get into that later. But so anyway, I knew I wanted to get my PhD. I had actually already been emailing a bunch of faculty, you know, as you're supposed to do. And I'm sure you all have talked about this. you are supposed to kind of reach out and network with folks. And I had started to do that with a few people prior to this game. And so I had to email them all again and say, I actually can't apply. But then I was at a loss. I think this is the only time I've ever been truly lost in my life because I'm a planner. And I was like, I have a whole year ahead of me where I don't have any job prospects or any idea of what I'm going to do. That year actually ended up being really formative for me. I ended up going to the Bimini Shark Lab and working with the Oceans Research Program in South Africa that year, which got me that hands-on experience with sharks, and that was super incredible. And then sort of in between to kind of support myself, I coached stalker, I nannied, I worked in a cafe, I was a freelance science writer for one of my professors, and then I applied to grad school. And so once I got to the point where I could start, you know, thinking about applying, I reached back out to all those folks. Pete Klimley at UC Davis was one of them. And for folks who don't know, Pete was kind

14:41 of one of the major fathers of telemetry for sharks. Or so he would say, I think. And so, you know, I was really impressed. Pete's Let's put it this way. I've known Pete since he finished his PhD at Scripps. I was a young, just starting out. I was just starting my master's when Pete finished his PhD. I've known Pete for a little while. Anyway, so Yeah, totally. And he was actually my top choice of mentor. I applied to a few other places, but he was really doing the stuff I wanted to do. And he seemed really eager to have me as a student. And one of the projects that we had talked about together was this Irish basking shark group project so he actually had just done this whole big stint this like speaking speaker series in Ireland they had brought him over the Irish basking shark group had brought him over in part to do that series and so he was looking for a graduate student to kind of bridge the gap between his lab in Ireland which is how I got my basking shark start And so I ended up at UC Davis in the animal behavior program, but I actually had to interview from Bimini. They told me I had an interview while I was in Bimini and they flew me to Davis from Bimini. But I didn't know that was going to happen. And so I ended up having

16:14 to be dressed by everybody at the field station because I didn't have any clothes. Right. So I had to borrow somebody's skirt. I had to borrow somebody's shirt. I wore flip flops to my interviews. I was very tan. But I think it made for some really incredible stories with the faculty there. It's California, too. So, you know, Beach Boys and stuff. Anyway, yeah, that's but that's certainly did you were you based out? Would you spend much time out at the? Bodega marine lab at all when you're I Didn't mostly because I wish I had I love working at Hatfield right now at OSU's campus because being at a marine lab is so special It's like a very cool environment and I didn't get that during my PhD I think for a few reasons namely I was trying to go to Ireland to study basking sharks So I didn't need to be on the California coast Um, but also COVID hit during the last two years of my PhD. And so I was pretty confined. Yeah.

17:14 To my house, uh, for, for most of my PhD, I Wow. Okay. Okay. But you were, you were, you were obviously able to get out to Ireland, at least enough to get, collect data and get your, do No, so this is my woe is me story. So basking sharks, I love them, but they're so incredibly finicky. And Dave, this is why you and I are authors on my dissertation chapter paper, because I ended up having to collect or work with data that was already available in California, because I went to Ireland for three summers and saw no sharks. No, I had the funding. I got the funding to go. I had places to stay.

18:05 I had a skipper. All the logistics were aligned. And basking sharks, they don't always show up when you want them to show up. So I totally had to pivot during my PhD. I ended up working with Dave and a few other folks on the basking shark data they had collected in California. I worked on a salmon project. I worked up some old sevengill shark data, you know, just to try to get the analytical skills I needed. But it wasn't until I started my postdoc that I actually saw basking sharks in Can I just ask you this? When you have a PhD and you have a plan for your PhD, and you mentioned you're a planner, so you expect certain things to, you plan out and you expect certain things to happen. Then this happens where you go three summers, you don't see a basking shark.

18:55 How much are you freaking out at this point? Like I know you pivoted and it worked out, but how much were you freaking out and what did you learn Well, let me add another wrench in this picture. So Pete also got me set up at Davis and then retired after my first year. So not only did I have to deal with COVID and then not seeing basking sharks, but then I didn't have, there was no other shark person at Davis who could advise me. So I ended up being adopted by two tremendous mentors at Davis, Damian Cayo and Nan Fungi. Damian is a primatologist. He studies mountain gorillas in the Congo. But he's really good analytically.

19:37 And I think that's where my interest in social behavior started. And then Nan is a salmon physiologist. And so that's where my interest in salmon started. So all of this was obviously very stressful, but I think Having supportive supervisors, and this is something I say to all the students I mentor, makes such a world of difference. I knew that they were going to help me to graduate regardless of what it took, and frankly, I graduated with a salmon chapter. Damian helped me with the hydrodynamic modeling that I did with the seven gills. You know, they really supported me through that process, so I didn't ever really feel like I was going to fail. But of course, when you're in Ireland sitting around, it kind of sucks, right? You go to dark mental places. You're mostly alone. It's a new place. Even if it's beautiful, even if the environment is awesome, you can't help but feel that it's a little bit of a personal failure for a while. And in fact, I wasn't sure if I wanted to go back when the opportunity presented itself for my postdoc.

20:36 I was so just, I think, a little bit burnt out from trying so hard with that project that I didn't Really have a So, you know, we're in a good place now I would have thought like Ireland Ireland in that area is like probably one of the best places that you can usually count on seeing basking sharks Well, clearly I was had the wrong information since you didn't see one Well, no, you have the right information for now. And this actually has sparked a whole new area of research for me, where I've now been looking at trends in Ireland sightings as compared to the trends, Dave, that we looked at in California. Because you don't see them in California anymore, and you are seeing them. We had record numbers of basking sharks this year reported to the Irish basking shark group.

21:26 Yes, now Ireland is one of the best places to see them, ironically, and I'm so glad that I stuck it out and did end up coming back because we've been able to have tremendous research opportunities there now Yeah, I was going to say one thing on the project we did, you know, because a lot of it was citizen science based, and I think I've talked to you about this before, but whenever, again, at the times of year when they're usually around here, If you put out any kind of a media thing, like they run a thing on the local news or the newspaper, we'd almost always get a few sightings, a couple. But if you don't pester them to like put something out there, you don't hear anything about them. And then you think like, oh, we're all the basking sharks. Not that there's like loads of them out here, but usually you'll pick up some sightings if you get the word out to the community. This is kind of the Central California area I'm talking about. But it would just go quiet, nothing. And then you get a news story out there, and then suddenly you get like two or three sightings.

22:22 And so I don't know if that's something I think I wanted to just emphasize a bit, where citizen science could be a huge help in really helping people like us be able to gather data, because we can't be out in the water all the time. And so anyway, I just wanted to, you know, and as you notice, like it's not like Ireland where you can see them like you could. Right. Right. Well, even in Ireland, part of the reason I do what I do with the Basking Shark Group is to raise awareness. We have a revamped website. We have a strong social media presence. And part of that reason is so that people know to report their sightings to us. And we're having this same sort of challenge in Oregon right now because the Big Fish Lab was established in 2019. mid-pandemic, essentially. And so we are trying to get people to pay attention to the sharks in Oregon. Most people don't associate Oregon with sharks, right? Same thing with Ireland, actually.

23:17 So you really do have to do a lot of community engagement What type of community engagement do you do? Do you go out to festivals? Do you go out to libraries? What type of community engagement do you have to do to let people know that there Totally. That's a really good question. So actually, I'm very fortunate in my group. I work with Dr. James Sulikowski and Dr. Taylor Chappell. They're both really supportive of science communication. And so I'm actually part-time funded to do community engagement, which is one of my favorite things to do. That's amazing. So I am currently planning a Sharktoberfest event that will happen here in Portland. which is really exciting. So that's a good example. And we do a lot of in-person dissections as well. We've had like 600, 700 people at both of our events this summer already.

24:11 So we do try to target that. We also do a lot of social media. So we have a Big Fish Friday feature every week on our platforms at Big Fish Lab. We really try to make sure that that gets enough attention. I think a lot of people try to do SciComm and it often fizzles out because there's only so many hours in the day and so much effort you can really dedicate to that. So we actually have a rotation for the social media in particular where every week it's a student or me who's doing it. So I only have to be on social media like once every two months. But it means that I dedicate a lot of time the week I'm on it. So there's a lot of strategies you can implement for this sort of thing. And we're I think this is great. I'm a big Psycom person. Obviously, a couple of podcasts. This is the platform I like to use. When you're on social media and you're talking about, is it just basking sharks that you're talking about? Because at some point, somebody's like, how much can you talk about basking sharks in a week, let alone two months I mean, I could talk about basking sharks forever. So I would say that's my answer to that. Whether people want to listen to me talk about basking sharks for that long is another For the Irish basking shark group, we are a little more selective. We're much more active during times of year when the basking sharks are known to be present. That is a little bit less structured and more opportunistic. Here in Oregon, it's all Oregon species and even beyond. So some weeks we'll feature a publication. Some

25:44 weeks we'll do like a creature feature where we talk about one of the species that we have here. Some weeks we're just advertising for our outreach events. And some weeks we're like following people in the field. So And so who becomes your, like obviously you have a kind of split between two audiences, the Irish and sort of people in Oregon. How do you, do you like really focus in on them through social media or you just post and hopefully the people who listen, I guess like say if you did an in-person event they'll probably follow you afterwards so you get that audience. But do Totally and I should clarify So because I do the organization of a lot of the Big Fish Lab outreach, I also do a lot of the organization of the Irish Basking Shark Group outreach, but they are separate accounts. So we do, I feel really strongly, yeah, in targeted social media. And we do like lab discussions about this, right? Like no jargon, you know, making sure we only use visuals, making sure that we're targeting specific audiences. We do have a Facebook group, not because we're on Facebook a lot, but because a lot of the fishing community is on Facebook. So if we're trying to target fishermen, yeah, we're going to go where they are. And so we primarily use socials to reach like, it's, I don't want to say general audience, cause I hate that term. There's really no such thing, but to reach the folks more broadly, even beyond Oregon, we get a lot of people beyond Oregon and it's people in our professional and personal networks.

27:09 And then the basking shark group page targets primarily folks ideally in Ireland and we do have a researcher in our group who is learning Irish So we try to share that in Irish and English just to increase accessibility to information How did you how did how did you have we What how did you how did you happen to go from you? So you finished up Yes, so I feel like even though there were a lot of obstacles during my PhD, the rest of my journey so far has been pretty linear. I knew of Taylor Trappell because he also went to UC Davis and so you know like in many academic buildings there's posters everywhere of the students who have been there before And actually, Pete Klimley was on his committee. And so it's a very small world, as you know. And I had seen his name. I'd read some of his stuff. And then it's a very long story. But long story short, I ended up in Monterey on a white shark boat because I was donating some equipment to a project that was going on over there. Something had broken, and we had a replacement at UC Davis. And part of the agreement was if I bring you this piece of equipment, I get to go on the boat, right? and Taylor was actually running the boat that day, unbeknownst to me.

28:27 So we ended up starting a conversation, and this was about two or three years before I was ready to graduate, but he followed up with that conversation and said, when you're ready for a boat stop, let me know. And so it was pretty simple. I emailed him and a few other folks who I really admire and was interested in working with, and a lot of them knew each other, because a lot of them had been working in Monterey, and so I ended up on a big collaborative project about salmon sharks, with a lot of those people, with Taylor as the lead PI. He was new at Oregon State, and I was his first postdoc, and When did he start? He only started up there fairly recently, Yeah, now we have a massive group. We've grown dramatically Yeah, or yeah, Oregon literally went from like nothing to now You got all these people like running around doing sharks and rays up there at least doing sharks anybody doing rays at all They'd be working on rays Well, we did have a postdoc working on skates dr. Kyle Newton, but he recently moved on to a new position I think so Yeah, we don't have anybody actively working. We did have a master's student, Josh Filman, looking at chemical communication and bat rays. So that was an experimental setup and that should be published soon. But

29:58 Okay. I just kind of curious. So I just got to back up one more little thing. So tell us about your 7GIL Okay, I will say I don't consider myself a sevengill expert by any means. My PhD chapter about sevengills was primarily opportunistic. It was a data set Pete had collected but hadn't written up. And so it was, as you know, to look at movements of sevengill sharks in and out of San Francisco Bay and to try to see if if there was any correlation with different tides. And to do that, we essentially demonstrated a method where we created a hydrodynamic model, which is just a fancy model that visualizes water moving in and out of the bay. And we overlaid the seven-gill shark tracks on top of that to see how they responded. It was just a really interesting way to retroactively contextualize data, because obviously they were collected much before my time. And so being able to observe that in real time is really hard, and it was kind of a cool opportunity to get to explore different methods of doing that. I am now dabbling in seven gill shark work, but primarily leaving that to the PhD student in our lab, Jess Schulte. She's really talented, and she's been focusing on them in Willapa Bay in Washington. So, yeah. So, It's one of those things, I see seven gills, you know, that was kind of my starting point

31:30 in the whole journey. So I had to, I just, I see seven gills, I just got to bring it up and ask, cause I was like finding a fellow traveler, like, Ooh, cause somebody to talk about seven gills for. And you think you can, you think you can talk about basking sharks? Get me Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I mean, so Oregon's kind of an interesting place because California's had a fairly active shark program. Washington state has had, uh, over the years, some different, different stuff going on. And of course, up at, uh, in Vancouver, but Oregon's been kind of a black hole in a sense that nobody's really done stuff there. So it's kind of, exciting that you guys are doing a lot of work up there. What are some of the things you guys are finding or some of the interesting projects Yeah, totally. So I guess my general answer is that we've learned why it's a black hole, which is that it's really hard to do work there. Oceanographic conditions can be incredibly challenging and visibility is terrible. The water is cold, so not a lot of people in the water. And what we're finding is that there are about 15 shark species there.

32:51 And hypothetically, that did used to include basking sharks, although I have not heard of a basking shark report in recent memory. And we didn't see any in our data set, Dave, when we were looking at that for the West Coast. What we are finding is that shark presence there is pretty seasonal. And it totally depends on the species you're talking about, but we see a lot of taupe and blue sharks, some spiny dogfish and salmon sharks. Those would Yeah. We had, we were doing the basking shark stuff. We would get, I'll just mention this to you, but we would start to see like the basking sharks would show up in Southern California off like San Diego. Then they'd show up off LA starting around April, May. Then usually about June, July, we started getting some sightings up this way. And then, but once we got kind of up to Marin County, just over past San Francisco, it just kind of went blank because there's just nobody, wasn't really good communication up there. It was hard to get the word out to people. And then you get further north up into Oregon and there's nothing. And then you get into Washington, you get a little bit going on in Washington state, but yeah, the Northern California and Oregon is just, it's just a blank. You just, there's just not enough. There's people out in the water because they're fishing communities, but just getting, Sure people that report stuff, you know, that's that's what we found, you know, and Yeah, and I think that's definitely true. That's like that's exactly what we're finding. I think you know we say we're Oregon's dedicated shark research program. There really,

34:23 there have been like Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and a few other entities that have sporadically done shark projects, but having a consistent shark monitoring effort there is really critical. I mean, we are still learning about who was showing up when. We are relying on fishing reports. We get a lot of dead animals washed ashore. So salmon sharks and blue sharks in particular, I was out on the beach for like three days this past month, like, getting dead animals that were finally reported to us. But the big challenge, as you say, Dave, has been overcoming that communication barrier and letting people know that we're here. And I don't care what state that shark is in. I want to see it. I have driven from Willapa Bay in Washington, just over the border, back down to Newport, which is a four-hour drive, with a seven-gill shark that is dead and wrapped in a tarp in my car, like, extending the length of my car such that I can rest my elbow on its tail.

35:15 Here's what I'm thinking about. So it's not a pickup truck that you have. You actually have a car, so it's inside, like this dead animal's inside where It was. It was. And I was just thinking the whole time, I'm driving down the 101, and I'm thinking, I need to go fast because the shark is thawing. It was frozen. But I'm also thinking, if I go too fast, I'm going to get pulled over. And this looks like a dead, it's a dead body, right, in the car. then that's going to take even longer. So I'm like trying to figure out how often I can speed to get the shark back to the freezer. And it was a really big shark. So yeah, we do that all the time. Um, that's a really good question. I feel like it was at least like 8 to 10 feet.

36:05 Yeah. If I remember correctly, and I might be exaggerating a little bit, but it felt quite big to me at the time. Um, yeah, it was big. Yeah, for sure. Um, but we do that a lot. Like I, the other week had to go collect, I went on a trail run and then got a call from Taylor and he says, Are you anywhere close to this area? There's a salmon shark wash to shore and we like to get the salmon sharks whole if we can. I've been doing a stomach content analysis series on them and we also collect tissues for stable isotopes and a variety of other things and we use them also if they're in good enough shape for public dissections as an educational tool. So I said, yep, you know, I'm sweaty already. I'm just going to go grab it. You know, I don't have anything. I don't have a tape measure. I don't have a bag. I don't have a knife, which is important for the story because I show up and this woman walks me a quarter mile down the beach and I say, okay, the shark is not in good enough shape for me to take the whole thing. It's been a little bit eaten by some birds, like parts of it are missing, but I would need to take a muscle sample. Um, and I need to take out its eye because we're doing some eye studies. So I said, do you have a knife? And she said, I do. And she came down with like a Cuisinart bread cutting knife, like a kitchen knife. And was like, here You know her knife is going to get thrown out after? I know. You probably won't I know. That's what I said. I said, are you sure this is what you want me to use? And she

37:39 Great story. That's a, that's a, that's a good story. So, so what are you, so you're, so you're focused on like things like the salmon shark you mentioned there and, and basking sharks are, are priorities. Are there any other, uh, any other, any other sharks you're really, you're, you Yes. One study that we just recently started with Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is on Pacific spiny dogfish. Those are your smaller species. One of the smaller species we get in Oregon, right? We usually get them about a foot or two long. They have that characteristic spine in front of the dorsal fin. And this is kind of one of the more applied projects I'm working on. I am really interested in everything from behavior to movement. But actually for this project, Noah is really interested in learning about catchability. of pacific spiny dogfish so how often their surveys are actually catching them to inform the stock assessments because currently the pacific coast stock of spiny dogfish is actually in a really dire situation the numbers have dropped dramatically and there's a lot of concern due to bycatch with other fisheries that there's going to have to be some intervention with fishing activity. And so we're actually working with the stock assessors and ODFW to try to put some tags out on these dogfish to figure out where they're going and how often they're in Oregon versus leaving Oregon and how we can sort of mitigate that human wildlife interaction with the fishery and also tell NOAA where and when they should conduct their surveys to get better information about dogfish numbers. So this is actually a really cool way

39:12 to jump into some of the, I guess, understanding how stock assessments work and the data that's required for those. So Okay, nice. Do you do much outreach through the aquarium there in Newport? Do you Yes, I think yes, it depends. You know, the Newport Aquarium is awesome and we definitely do a lot of research with their research team, which is cool. They've been undergoing a lot of transition and construction in the last couple of years that has made it, I think, hard to host events there. But they do something for Shark and Ray Awareness Day. They will often, I'll go guest lecture in one of their classrooms for some of the courses at OSU. There's definitely capacity to build there, and I'd like to do that for sure, but I think they're I'm curious about the outreach. You said you were half funded to do science communication. Just partially, not fully half, yeah. Okay, so partially, but that's still difficult funding to get these days. You know, there's not a lot of people get funding to actually have that incentive to go out and do that type of outreach. Can I ask how that, like, what made you think, or what made the lab think of getting that funding, how it came about, if Sure, yes. So I'm funded in a variety of

40:44 different ways. I guess to start by answering that question, and I'll get back to that, I should describe how our lab kind of operates and the structure of our lab. So Taylor founded the lab in 2019. He has a few grad students. I came on as his first postdoc in 2021. And then Dr. James Zolikowski, who is one of the world's experts on shark reproduction, joined as the director of our department in I think June last year. So he very recently joined. We were super psyched when he got the job. And since then, we have just had a lot of big ideas. So it's basically James and Taylor. I've been hired on now. I finished my postdoc as a research associate. So I'm basically- Oh, congratulations. Thank you. Yeah. So I just say it's a glorified postdoc position, but it does mean I am research staff. So I kind of sit underneath them, and the three of us do a lot of communication about the future of the lab and all sorts of research projects, but also education directions. And then we have a bunch of really tremendously talented graduate students and undergraduates. I've been just super impressed by everybody that I've worked with in that lab. I think everybody has also developed a lot in the last couple years, which is really cool to see. But when James joined and said, I'd like you to stay on as research associate, he and Taylor and I were envisioning ways that I could potentially be funded, which is certainly on some of these projects. We definitely write in to all of these projects some funding for

42:14 the education and outreach. But what really made a difference was that I co-wrote my position description with all of them. So me, James, and Taylor co-wrote it. And we were able to say, all of us value science communication so much that we were able to say, part of your salary or part of your position will just be dedicated to science communication. And that's just an understanding that all of us have. So it is written down. X% is mentorship, X% is science communication, X% is research. And then I'm just funded my stipend generally on all these projects. So I feel like this is a really cool and unique position. It's something I didn't anticipate falling into, but I really love it. And I think Part of the reason I love my job so much right now is, again, mentorship, as I said, is so critical.

43:00 And James and Taylor, we're all really aligned with the goals of where we want the field of shark science to go, how we want to make it That's amazing. Seems like you're getting everything that you want, like Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. You got some pretty good stuff. So you talk we talked earlier. You had a fairly High-profile paper come out here recently on boat striking a Yes, totally. So I have now seen basking sharks equally as many field seasons as I have not seen them, which for me is a win. I'm even.

43:44 And I'm hoping to break even in the positive way very soon next year. So this year, like I said, we had a record number of basking sharks in Ireland. And we were trying, we were kind of running low on funding, to be honest, but we were trying to maximize the amount of funding we had. And one of the things we've been working on is developing a method of putting animal-borne cameras on the sharks, along with an accelerometer unit that can essentially be attached to their body to measure how their body is responding to different environmental variables that we can see in the camera. So they have this attachment on their body, we've developed an attachment method over the last few years, and then they're towing a camera behind them. and we had a few of these cameras out over the course of this past field season which took place in April but we only had one out at a time because we often had to recover them and it's a whole big thing and one day we got one of the cameras back and we were primarily interested I should say in foraging behavior at this point.

44:42 So we are using these cameras to see what the energetic cost of basking shark feeding is. If you haven't seen a basking shark feeding, it just looks like they're opening a giant parachute that is their mouth, and that is surely causing a lot of drag. So we're asking a lot of questions about how that might have evolved to be an effective foraging tactic. So we're looking for feeding and non-feeding on these cameras, and my colleague Dave Cade, he's the camera guru, and was showing our skipper some example footage of what the cameras produced. And I just made a comment. I said, oh, that shark must have rubbed up against a boat because there's blue paint on its back. And that is not uncommon for basking sharks in this area. There's a lot of boats around. And so typically they just seem pretty superficial or just like they've rubbed up against the hull of a vessel. It's the anti-fouling paint there. And then didn't think anything of it. Dave jumped back to an earlier clip and there was no paint. So we said, oh, something must have happened in between these two clips. on the camera that captured this encounter with the vessel. And then we actually found it and it was pretty sobering. So what ended up happening and we ended up publishing these results this past summer. is the one tag we had out in this area, which had been recently designated as Ireland's first national marine park, the camera captured a vessel striking the basking shark. So what you see is the basking shark swerving to get out of the way, and then you see the hull of the vessel, the camera starts tumbling through the water, the

46:15 basking shark is spinning, it seems like, and then the basking shark bolts. and you basically see darkness and then you see the seafloor and that unit that was on the body actually captured this response. It really actively shot down to the seafloor and we were able to sort of recreate the shark's track with that unit and we were able to see that it had bolted offshore and rested on the seafloor essentially. swimming really, really slowly for the duration of the deployment. And we actually don't know what happened to the shark because the tags were designed to pop off within a certain amount of time and they popped off a couple hours later. and when the shark was still on the seafloor. So that was a pretty big deal because these cameras are used widely and for other species as well. For whales, Dave primarily works on whales, our camera guru, and he said he's never seen that before captured on camera. So it was a pretty big deal. It definitely got the attention of the Irish politicians and management and folks over there as well as actually globally, which was a little bit of a surprise to some of us because a lot of people don't know what basking sharks are. But I was glad that it kind of got the attention that it did. I think Ireland's at a big turning point in its policy for basking sharks and protections for them. So I think it was maybe a good reminder It's a crappy story because it's a hitting of a basking shark, but it's an amazing story that you captured it

47:51 Yeah, that's what we said. We were at the pub when this happened. We were at the pub with the computer showing the videos at the time that we found it. This is doing field work in Ireland. It was such a casual post-field Yeah, I could imagine. I could imagine. Did people at the pub look in with it? No. No. We kept that under wraps for a little while, mostly because we've made we've made a really big deal out of the fact that we're not villainizing anybody because I think that's also really critical. It could happen to anybody. It could, it was not, it was not our boat. Um, and we have a really knowledgeable skipper, but if you don't know, basking sharks are around, they can be really hard to see. So we've made a big deal out about like, we're going to, you know, make sure we I know I've seen this, you probably can confirm this, but basking sharks spend about 90% of their time below the surface. They're not really at the surface all that much in terms of their overall behavior. Is that correct? Is that what Well, you know, that is really interesting. It depends, I think, on where they are. So when they're in Ireland, they do spend a substantial amount of time at the surface. But to your point, Dave, like relatively speaking, it seems like they're spending a lot of time there, but they don't have to necessarily. They tend to do that when they're feeding in Ireland. But that's one of the challenges of working with them is you know, a lot of what we know about basking sharks

49:23 is based on what they're doing when they're at the surface. And most of our distribution models are based on that. And most of our, you know, observations of behavior are based on that. But certainly, you know, we find that they go to depth for sure. And we've been actively tracking a few this past year, and we know they're around because we can hear the pings from their tag, but we can't see them anywhere. So I don't know about 90%, but Yeah. Yeah. I just that's just a figure I I've seen. But I don't know. I really didn't know for sure. I know. I do know that from what I when I when I people have studied him in the past, they say they spent a lot of time. But unless you get up high and see down, which is kind of not untypical where sharks sometimes are there just below the surface and at boat level, you can't see them generally. But if you're up a little bit with a drone or a plane, you can you can pick them off. And so I didn't even know, which actually leaves me a question. Do you guys, have you done much, tried to do much with drones Yeah, totally. I think you're totally right that the aerial component is really helpful. There's been times when the sharks have been around and we can only see them because we can see the body of the camera that they're towing because they're sitting literally just such that their dorsal fin is like two inches below the water. But I think what we've noticed, and we particularly noticed this as the Irish basking shark group during the pandemic, a lot of people were taking walks And a lot of people were starting to play around with drones. And so in Ireland, what we were seeing is a lot more reports and a lot of really incredible

50:55 footage of behaviors like the tourist behavior. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's a bunch of sharks swimming around a bunch of basking sharks swimming around in a giant mass. They're not feeding. It's thought to be like a courtship ritual, but you should Google it. It's like T-O-R-U-S. It's a really incredible phenomenon. And then also we see what recently has been coming out is a lot of like splashing and interacting. And so again, part of my research is on their social dynamics. Part of the reason for that is because of all these really unique ways that they swim together. They will follow each other around. They will swim in the giant torus. Sometimes they'll swim right next to each other in sync completely to the tailbeat. And it's clearly non-random. So that's a question that I and a few other researchers are really interested in.

51:37 Yeah, it'd be very interesting. Yeah Yeah, they're definitely sharks. Yeah, sorry one more time as I said who knew basking stars had such personality I did not I did not until I saw them There there's a you may be familiar with this but I'll throw it out there just if you weren't but Back in the mid-1970s, Sonny Gruber actually published a paper on bonnethead sharks, and he found that he had a group of bonnethead, and he gave names to each of the sharks, and he found that each of them had their own individual personalities. Are you familiar with I thought you might be. I don't think I'm familiar with that exact one. Yeah, but there's definitely been a few. Animal personality is a very cool component of the field of animal behavior. But Yeah. He was the first. He was the first. There may be another. This is probably says like 1975 or 76. But it was the first paper that I remember when I was a young grad student in the 80s. Remember reading. And I thought that was kind of interesting that he. And again, there's all captive stuff.

52:43 But he noticed that each of them seemed to have a different behavior. You know, I came or the number he had. I remember all the details. But it might be some interesting just to see. But it was one of the first papers I can recall where somebody was actually looking at sharks and noticed that they had different behaviors, individual behaviors there. So you can imagine, and those are bonnet heads, which are obviously little sharks compared to like a basking shark, which have much more behavior patterns. Do you Yeah. Do you see him working up like when they're in an area where there's where they're feeding and stuff? Do you see him kind of moving any like uniform patterns or behavior where they're kind of in any kind of a coordinated fashion Yes, for sure. Like. I know it's almost certainly coordinated and actually this is a really interesting component.

53:35 So to your point about like animal personality, that's something that so UC Davis has a really big animal behavior program that I was in and a lot of people were studying animal personality. in Dr. Andy C's lab using primarily smaller animals, right? Like using stickleback fish, like super tiny animals you can keep in captivity and manipulate their environment. And so studying the personality or even just associations among individuals in the field is so hard and I think the field has come really far in the last couple of years but it's definitely still growing. When we see the basking sharks in Ireland they're very rarely alone and I think that's really important because what we found in our paper Dave was a decline obviously in the number of sharks sighted simultaneously along with the decline in sighting. So group size was decreasing as was the number of sightings.

54:28 Potentially indicating that this associative behavior is maybe really important for their population to persist right why that is I don't know But it's an interesting correlation Yeah, I was gonna say just my own Observational stuff over the years I think most shark species from white sharks to seven gills to spiny dogfish to I think they they generally have a group behavior, it's not a schooling behavior, and you might be able to elaborate more about this, because I never had any kind of an animal behavior course, but I definitely was pretty good about observing and watching what went on with groups of sharks, and even though you may not see two next to each other, if you see one, like a white shark, and I live in South Africa, and if you see one, there's almost a guarantee there'll be at least one other one around. They're never solitary, like people tend to think, And I don't know if you've seen, I know you mentioned talking about basking sharks. I don't know if you've observed this in any other shark species you've, I know Pete Clemley, of course, did hammerhead sharks, scalloped hammerheads in the Gulf of California, you know, way back in the day. But have Yeah, absolutely. I, we're noticing it with the spiny dogfish part of the problem. with their stock, we think, is that they school in these massive numbers. And so when they are buy caught, they're buy caught in large amounts. And I think it's actually really much more common

55:58 than people think for sharks to aggregate. And I say that term really carefully. We actually had a paper come out last year on how to define aggregations in sharks, because that is a really hard thing to do, right? Like, how do you determine if shark A can even detect shark B, and at what distance do you see them apart, right? And so I think that's something that people need to pay more attention to I mean, the term I used back when I was doing my Ph.D. on seven girls was social facilitation. And I don't know if that's a proper one that you guys at Davis would use, but it was a social facilitation is what I use because there are some I could just see these things where there is a coordinated behavior with them. And the best way I could analogize it, and you might have had some of this at Davis, was having read up on and seeing lions and hyenas and other land predators hunt cooperatively. And if you know anything about them, and I sound like you probably got a little experience with this, you watch the sharks, and they're like, yeah, this is not a random behavior, what they're doing. There definitely is a coordinated behavior.

57:00 But social facilitation is the only term I could come up with. But there's a coordinated behavior. of behaviors going on there. So it's interesting to me hearing you say that because that's the same conclusion I'd had came back a Yeah, well, yeah, it is. And it's really important. And I think part of the reason this all ties back into science communication, too, because when I say to people sharks have friends, I'm obviously really simplifying that process. But yeah. For someone to see a shark and think, oh, friend, that's actually a weird association, rather than sharks as these solitary, mindless, man-eating machines, right? And I think, so I've really been trying to highlight this concept of this coordinated behavior, this ability to recognize individuals, hunt cooperatively. Like, there are so many ways you can start to describe these behaviors that actually really Yeah, absolutely. I think that's an interesting way of looking at it when people think of sharks, they think of danger, killing machines, like those are the type of word associations you'd probably have when you start to put them in as, hey, you know, they coordinate with other shark species, not just within their own. That is something that's probably difficult. You get people who are just like, no, I don't believe that.

58:22 Actually, I have found, luckily, I don't get a lot of pushback. I think what I have found is that folks who are non-scientists tend to be really receptive to information, mostly because I think a lot of people have the same sort of paradoxical feelings towards sharks that got a lot of us into shark science. I think a lot of people are really afraid of them, but also fascinated. And so I think that's why our events are so well attended. I think that's why people want to see shark dissections, because they're just This is their opportunity to see a shark in an environment that feels safe with people who seem to know Yeah, I say a lot more. I got a lot more interest in the public So it tends to be less less less rigid in their thinking and stuff.

59:06 So, um, yeah Yeah, for sure I'd say anyway, alex has been a fascinating discussion here. Um, do you have any kind of like thoughts on what you would get you how advice you might give for some some person starting out and my other question is like where do you see yourself in the next 10 20 years? Um, I liked the first question and I don't know how to answer the second question. Um, um, I think my first question, my first, the first, my answer to the first question would be, um, you know, networking went a long way for me. Like learning to network early was really helpful getting into shark science as someone from Ohio who didn't have people to guide me for quite a long time into this field. I was able to find mentors both in shark science and otherwise that really And mentorship, as I've said multiple times, really matters. As a quick note, I also want to say that as much as I say, you know, people from Ohio, you know, don't understand why I do what I'm doing, both Taylor and James are also from Ohio. So together, we form. And yes, no shade to Ohio, but it is kind of a coincidence. Yeah.

1:00:29 I think in the future for this field to be more inclusive and welcoming, I would just advocate for people putting positive energy into their interactions with people. You're going to get back what you put out. I do see a world in which shark science becomes much more diverse and welcoming to people of a lot of different backgrounds who may or may not have initial accessibility into this field. I think generally I'm seeing a lot of folks in this field are very collaborative these days, especially among the folks that I've been able and been fortunate enough to work with, and I hope to see that continue. So I would just advocate for future researchers continuing the collaboration. I think that's really important for pursuing, I think, a greater knowledge of the species we're working with. Yeah, and then where am I going? I will say, you know, I took my postdoc and I thought this is going to help me figure out what I want to do. I was working with folks at agencies. I was working with obviously people in academia. And so I actually for a little while thought I might want to pursue an agency position. I wasn't sold on academia. And I will say this postdoc has taught me nothing about that. I actually don't know. I should say it's taught me a lot. It's taught me a lot about that, but not enough to help me make a decision. And so I think yet. So for now, I'm really loving learning, being able to learn in my position as research staff in the Big Fish Lab. I feel like

1:02:01 James and Taylor have offered me tremendous opportunities to learn about different technologies and different species. I really, I think I'm a lifelong learner. Like I really like continuing to learn, especially, you know, because I didn't grow up by the ocean. So I constantly feel like there's more to catch up on and I feel like I will probably be here for a little while. If I could run a research lab one day myself, I think that would be awesome. I think a challenge I see with academic institutions is you are obviously required to wear a lot of hats. You have to teach on them. And I love mentoring, and I actually like teaching. But I would love to see a model by which you could just do research, and that would be acceptable. And so maybe if a position like that opens up in the future, that could be really cool.

1:02:48 Sorry, I just have to ask one little thing. You started out this podcast by talking about your soccer career in university. Things have changed quite a bit with soccer, especially women's soccer since that time. There's now a National Women's Soccer League. And I was just looking up because I wasn't sure exactly where all the cities were, but there is a team in Portland not too far from where you are. So do you still play? Do you still follow now, especially now that there's a National Women's Soccer League close by? Are you I do. I think something about time, and this would maybe be a recommendation for students also to tie into my first piece of advice, I think that you have to build your own work-life balance and make that a habit as soon as possible. I think it's easy to sacrifice a lot of your life for your job. And for me, I'm the type of person that if I sacrifice my whole life, I'll stop liking it. And so I know that about myself. And that's maybe not true for everybody. So I do spend a lot of time being active.

1:03:56 I build that into my day because it's something that makes me happy, probably the student athlete thing. And I will say I haven't played soccer too much. I used to play a ton in grad school, but then COVID hit. And since then, it's been hard to find a team in Newport because it's a very small place. But I've taken up some other hobbies like trail running, and that has been really fun. And you said you're running a marathon, a trail, or you're practicing Before I run it, let's just say I'm practicing to run the trail marathon. And then if I run it, we can say that I've trained Yes, that is coming up. A regular marathon is difficult because it's, I'm trying to think, it's about 46 kilometers, so Oh, 26 miles. 26 miles. So maybe it's more than 43 kilometers. Okay, that's a long way on a flat plane. Now on a trail, why You know I have been really into the vibe of trail running. I am super competitive and so I did road running for a long time. I've never run a road marathon but I did like you know Olympic distance triathlons and I did a couple half marathons and I get so competitive and focused on pace and those that sometimes it takes the enjoyment out of them. So trail running is really good because you just kind of have to accept what the trail is going to throw at you and you're not focused on

1:05:26 pace, you're focused on not falling. So I think it's really good for me to learn how to heal that inner athlete and competitiveness Very nice. Sorry, I had to ask those last couple of I got a feeling we're going to be having you back on here at some point, Alex. I think so. We'll definitely want to have you back on. There's a lot more stuff we could probably cover, but thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing your journey with everyone. We really appreciate Thank you, Alex, for joining us on the Beyond Jaws podcast. It was great to have you on. Dave, there's so much in that interview that we discussed, you know, her career, the studies that she's done, her athletic ability and the D3 soccer and the national championship and all that stuff and how that affected, you know, how when she went to graduate school and how, you know, COVID messed up her graduate work. retiring. It's just so much going on there. Where do you even begin when you talk about this Yeah, it was amazing, Andrew, and it was interesting. We've had a number of our guests on there who were college athletes like Alex was, and there's always that discipline they have in there and that very competitive spirit they have to them. And it was obviously very evident, listen to Alex, share her career journey and Yeah, just just everything

1:06:58 she has, you know, she's doing she's run these trail marathons now and just finding other which I think she gets you talked a little bit about her kind of work-life balance and stuff and found other things that she enjoys doing Outside the shark world and you talked about she likes to put on podcasts that have nothing to do with sharks when she runs and mm-hmm and so she just Very just really enjoy very enthusiastic and she's another one that she kind of got interested early on Especially being from Ohio, which is landlocked as we know But she just got it. Just got really interested in this whole thing and I have to say She had her career. She benches was very linear. She kind of which is unusual for most the people we've interviewed Yeah, it's never a straight line. I mean she had a couple little Bumps along the road but relative a lot of people we interview which have had to take major detours To get doing shark. She hers was fairly fairly.

1:07:52 I don't say smooth because she had kovat she had to do a lot of work up a lot of data that she wasn't able to collect. So it was, so she had her challenges. I don't want to, you want to make light of it, but she, but she, she definitely had in some, some regards had a little bit of a, didn't hit some of their challenges, others did, but in the same way, she, I think we'll have more people in her sort of cohort have What I think also, yeah, there's definitely that aspect, but I think also she has the, and she said, she mentioned it later on when she gave the advice, she had the ability to, and the fortune to network early in her career. And I think that's what allows it to do. I mean, you've mentioned it before with some of your master's students when they were looking to get a PhD, that you recommended a lot of them to colleagues of yours because they either met them once or twice or you said, hey, this graduate student is so good that you should take her on or take him on. And they would end up going over there. And whether it's across the country or whether it's right down the street, it didn't matter. They took it for your value. And it seems like she did the same thing. She's got to meet people, got to volunteer and work for people. Sometimes it's sort of kismet that when you you know, when you work with somebody or you come up with a job or you do some volunteer work and you're working with somebody else, they like the way you work and they're like, hey, why don't you just come do a graduate work with me? And it's sometimes that simple, you know, and I think that's what's really interesting. And she obviously put

1:09:22 in the work to network with a lot of people and email people back and forth, as she mentioned. And then when she had to delay because of that national championship, then she was able to reconnect with them a year later and do some work in between. That motivation, again, the athleticism, being a college athlete, that motivation to succeed just continues to allow her to progress. You know, whether you're a college athlete, whether you're just an athlete in general, or you have that drive, if you really want to do something, you can kind of put it in your own way. You can kind of make your own terms at some point, you know, by doing all these things and putting yourself out there. It's not always easy, but when you do it, it opens up the doors for you, you know, when you work hard and you network. you kind of present opportunities to other people as well. So I think that, I think really, you know, seeing that throughout the interview and like, as we followed her life so far, I think we're Yep, absolutely. I think, you know, persistence, I think is one thing you find with a lot of people in this field in general. I think if you're somebody that was, especially if they're an athlete and stuff, you really got to be persistent because there's those long days of just, you know, getting up at five o'clock to start your, you know, usually you got to practice three times a day. And then you got classes, you got labs, so it's pretty disciplined. And I really hand it to people, having done it myself, and hand it to people like Alex, who've gone that

1:10:53 road and stuff. And I think it pays off dividends later on in their career. And I think we'll see that with her. And so, and she's very, the only thing too, I think, don't wanna pass it, but she's very into, which I think a lot of the younger people are getting more into the whole social science, science communication with things too. Which I think is very much something that, It was definitely not, well, it was a very different landscape early in my career. It was a whole different thing. It's not even comparable now, but seeing people in that sort of cohort now where she's at, that it's a bigger issue, especially if you want to get grants. You know, if you want to get grants or get noticed, you've got to have that presence on social media now. And she's obviously doing And I think what's interesting, too, is it's not just science communication online. It's science communication in person and getting the community involved. It seems like what she mentioned, Newport and even Portland. Newport's a smaller town or smaller city, maybe. More interaction with the local university and the labs there. But it also helps, you know, in gathering people, like when you do live dissections or in-person dissections, not as if the animal's live. It's passed away. But, you know, you're engaging. And then so just as we post this, they're running their Oktoberfest fundraiser. And that's where they invite a lot of people that they've interacted with before. And

1:12:24 they come and they celebrate. And it's not necessarily all about science. It's about interacting with each other and getting to know the community. And I think when scientists are interacting with the community, it makes it even better, especially local community. It makes that relationship that much more special. Turns into a bit of a fundraiser. They get to do more things, but also they get to engage more with the community. I think that's That's really, we don't hear about labs doing that locally as much as we would like to, I assume, right? I mean, you've been, you've seen that more and you've had more interactions with lab, but that's one of the first times I've heard that happen for Yeah, I've been in that kind of that juncture where I've kind of watched this evolution over the last 20 years from basically nothing to or I just say nothing but fairly minimal but you didn't have 20 years ago you didn't have a lot of the social media platforms like you do now and then they were kind of more of a novelty to where now it's become part of the whole your lab if you want to get get any kind of promotion out there in terms of promoting the science you're doing uh grants as we mentioned and uh just to you know inform the the public it's been an interesting evolution so it's something to talk, which could be an episodes time we talk a little bit about the whole evolution of that and talk with people like that. Did it were involved more before this whole evolution? Like I said, I've kind of transitioned through it. And then people, younger people like Alex, who they just, it's just like part of the program with her, you know, doing the whole science communication stuff. So yeah,

1:13:59 Definitely. Yeah. Definitely an interesting episode, no doubt, and we're looking forward to having Alex back to talk more about her career, what she's been able to do, maybe even talk about some of the big news that comes out of that lab every so often, or a lot of the times. So we'll have her, maybe some of her lab mates on as well, and that'll be a lot of fun. And we'll put all her links so you can be able to find her on her website, on her social media, as well as the lab website. But It's Lost Shark Guy on Instagram and X and on Facebook it's Lost Sharks and then just Dave Ebert on or David Ebert on LinkedIn. It's the best way to follow me and to find out what I'm up to, Absolutely. Wonderful. And if you want to get a hold of us, you can do beyond jaws at beyond jaws pod and our YouTube channel, go ahead and subscribe to that channel, uh, and like the, and to hit that notification button. So you get to hear all of our episodes because this will be on video as well. Just go to just put in beyond jaws pod. There's a link in the show notes. You can check that out. And, uh, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of the beyond jaws podcast.