Remembering Dr. Leonard Campagno: A Giant in Shark Biology

0:00 Welcome to another episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast, and I'm your co-host Dave Ebert. I'm filling in doing what Andrew usually does to introduce an episode, a new episode, but today is kind of a special one for me. It's a bonus episode where I'm going to give a little bit of a talk about my former advisor, Dr. Leonard Campagno, who was really a giant in the field of shark biology, shark ecology, shark taxonomy. It's a little bit of a celebration of life, sort of a little bit of a a goodbye from me to Leonard. And so I hope you enjoy the show. I'm going to share some memories, some stories I've had with Leonard. Some of you may have heard of over the years and you can now you have him for posterity. But anyway, I hope you enjoy the show and we'll get started right now. And welcome back to another episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. I'm your co-host, Dave Ebert, and here with my co-host, Andrew Lewin. And we're going to be talking a little bit. I'm going to be reminiscing a little bit of a Celebration of Life episode for my former advisor, Dr. Leonard Campagna, who passed away on September 24, 2024. And so I'm going to share some stories with you, talk a little about my experience with him. I knew Leonard for over 40 years. And going back to when I was a young master student, really starting out in the Bay Area in California here. And so we'll so we'll get started now. OK, so

1:35 I so I talk about Leonard, he was an interesting character and he's. I don't want to not can't be overstated, but he really was a giant in the field of shark biology, shark taxonomy. He really his classification of how we classified sharks and rays and chimeras or ghost sharks back in his paper he published back in 1973 called Interrelationships of Chondrichthyan Fishes really laid the groundwork for how we classify sharks and rays and that classification is still used today and actually molecular research done by Gavin Naylor and many others over the years have really found that he was his classification really holds up well. And back when he did this, he didn't have a lot of the modern tools such as genetics that we could use today. And so he's quite an interesting character. And he grew up in San Francisco in the Little Italy section. And he was born in 1943, December 4th. And a lot of people don't know that because he spent the last 35, almost 40 years in South Africa. And a lot of people thought he was South African. But he did grow up in the Bay Area. He went to San Francisco Community College. And he went on to San Francisco State, and from there to Stanford University. And some things that people don't often know is that Stanford University used to have one of the preeminent ichthyology collections in the world. And

3:07 it was only in about 1979, 1980, they finally closed down the ichthyology department. and sent all their specimens over to the California Academy of Sciences. Now it's kind of funny because most of the people, the professors there, had either passed away or retired. And here Stanford University had this whole department open for one guy who was still a grad student. Leonard, I think, probably had the record for one of the longest PhDs. He was a student there for about 14, 15 years before he finally finished up his PhD. That's got to be the longest, for sure. Yeah. And he was just kind of squirreled away down in the basement there working away. And finally, the biology department chair realized that they had this whole department open for a grad student. and then a 15 year grad student. And so he went down and he just said, hey, Leonard, we're closing up the department. You're going to need to finish up and get out or get out. But we're closing the apartment. And Leonard told me the story. So I'm just I'm giving you a firsthand account of what he told me. And so he he went from there over to the Tiburon Marine Lab, which is just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco in Marin County.

4:19 And over there, they had some old army barracks. It had become a marine lab. Station for San Francisco State University, but it was really their old army barracks and was old army bearing Buildings from going back to World War two because they had they basically an army army Group base there because they were concerned about People Japanese ships coming into San Francisco Bay. Anyway, they sat vacant and Leonard took over one of these Buildings I mean he literally took it over and I remember as a young grad student. I first started in the early 1980s and My professor at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, Greg Kaye, said, uh, you know, you ought to talk up, talk, give Leonard Campagna a call and, and, and let him know you're gonna be working up in San Francisco Bay. Cause I, I was going to work on seven gill sharks, which are, were very common in San Francisco Bay. So, you know, I was a young 22 year old. I didn't know anything. I thought, okay, great. I'll give Leonard a call. So I just kind of cold call this guy up and I get this answer on the phone. Like, yeah, who is this? And I said, like, oh, hi, this is Dave Ebert. I'm a graduate student at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, and I'm studying seven gill sharks in the bay. I'd like to know if I can come up and talk with you.

5:30 He goes, I haven't got time for this. And he hung up on me. And that was my first introduction to. How old were you at this time? I That was your first that was your first like any kind of response from any kind of interaction with the first interaction with And I was like, whoa, that was a pretty cold and abrupt. And so I went back to Greg and I said, Greg, I said, this is what happened. I explained to him and Greg looks and he goes, well, Leonard can be a little eccentric. I thought, yeah, eccentric and be kind of rude. But so I went about, so I just was like, okay, well, Clary didn't want to talk to me or didn't want to talk to anybody. But I knew nothing about him at the time other than what Greg had told me. So I went about doing my thesis project and probably about About a year later, it was the winter time and I was, I was using the boat at San Francisco state there going out to fish. And so I kind of knew he was based there, but I didn't know where he was based at the time. And I came in one day, I didn't, you know, we're out fishing and we caught a few spiny dogfish, nothing big. It was my brother. It was myself, my brother, and a good friend of mine, uh, uh, out there fishing. We came in there and it was just, it was just pouring rain, just cats and dogs. And so we're trying to clean up the boat, pick up the gear. And this guy walks by and he kind of looks in the boat. He sees these dogfish. I mean, nothing special.

6:56 These are spiny dogfish, you know? And and he says, oh, yeah. Oh, what do you do with those sharks? I said, oh, I am. You know, I'm from Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. I'm I'm studying sharks here in the bay. He goes, oh, really? I didn't know anybody was studying sharks in the bay. And so clearly Well, at this point, I kind of knew I'd never seen Leonard. I didn't know what he looked like. Right. And I thought like, but I knew he was there. And I thought, like, I wonder if this is Leonard Campagna. And then he just started talking. And we spent about the next hour. I mean, it was just raining. And he never said like, hi, I'm Leonard Campagno. He never said, Hey, let's go inside to get out of the rain. We stood there. And of course I was like, I was probably, it might've been 23 at this time. And I was going like, this is my end with chance to talk to Leonard Campagno. And so we stood there for about an hour. And then finally my brother and my friend go, uh, Hey Dave, can we go get out of the rain? It's raining pretty hard here. We're soaked like rats. And I was like, yeah, yeah, can I go? And I go, by the way, my name is Dave Eber. And he goes, oh, I'm Leonard Campagna. He goes, why don't you come over to my office? And I go, where is it? He goes, well, it's that Army barrack over there.

8:13 And this guy would drive his beat up 1964 black Beetle Bug VW. Go look online if you don't recognize it. Some people of a certain age know what I'm talking about. He'd drive it in there and he'd close it. You'd have no idea this guy was there. And so we went over there and I spent another like two hours talking with the guy. My brother and friend were there. it was the most amazing experience I ever had even though I was soaking wet dripping and We just he just went in there, and I really I looked in there. I realized like well. He lives here He basically was living in there had a cot he had all these stations set up the workstations. He was using and For again for those in the shark world you'll know what I'm talking about, but he was working on the the 1984 Sharks of the world book that was published by the Food and Agriculture Organization FAO is a classic reference It was published in 1984 and this is probably about 19 Late 82, you know a winner of 8283 right in that time frame and At the time is like well, it's kind of cool. He's working on this, you know sure he told me about the project he was doing he just been on like this round-the-world tour and everything and And so like I had an amazing visit. He said, Oh, come up, stop in anytime you're up here. Well, obviously I wasn't going to pass on that because he was just like a wealth. And I was literally like having a, uh, uh, an audio version of the encyclopedia at the time. This guy was just could talk, stock, non-talk, stock, non-stop.

9:44 And So I went up there and I met with, you know, I would go up there when I was up there and stop in and visit with them. And for me it was, you know, and I've talked about this a little before in some of the earlier episodes, but you know, when you're traveling kind of in your journey in life, you're really fortunate if you meet somebody who's a fellow traveler on the same road you're embarking on. And Leonard was that guy that, I mean, it has some great people in my, you know, that had met, you know, Greg Kai is the top of the list. John McOsker, if you bet, Leonard was that fellow traveler. He was that guy who was on the road that I was studying off on. And we just really connected very, really well. And I just, it was just, it was an amazing experience. And so I got to know him over the next, you know, a couple of years going up there and talking with them. And sometimes I just go up there and spend like literally my, when I say I've spent a few hours with them, they're more like anywhere from three to six hours just talking nonstop.

10:38 And it wasn't just sharks. It would, we talk on rays, we'd talk on, Chimeras and I was just like this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to learn I did I was was not focused on any one species But I was looking I was want to learn about everything and that's really Laid the foundation for my search for lost sharks Then I really this is going back the early 80s this Yeah, I can imagine. When you were talking with Leonard about these different species, were you talking more about the ecology, distribution, and that sort of aspect? Or were you talking more about where to find them, where they are, At the time, the whole field of shark research was just really, and modern shark research was really The groundwork was being laid. And as I've mentioned before, like myself, Lisa Natanson, Chris Lowe, Greg Skomal, we were like, really that, as I've said, that the Jaws generation of, of, of young shark researchers really started in the eighties. And we really laid the foundation for what came later in the terms of sharks. So I, we talked, so a lot of the stuff people talk about, like shark conservation, they throw that term around now. It wasn't even a term at that time. There was no, it wasn't even anybody's mind.

12:00 It more had to do with fisheries at the time, but we talked about like sharks. We knew at that point that sharks were slow growing and long lived, but nobody really knew anything about, you know, how old they get or how many young they have or where they go. And so all of that was, we were starting, we were starting to lay the groundwork for that. And Leonard was that guy who we could talk on all kinds of stuff. We talked on taxonomy, talked on ecology, life history. And I'll tell you a story in just a moment how just to give you an idea, but Leonard was that guy who would think outside the box. I mean, he really would think of things that people weren't even, weren't even on the lexicon yet at the time. And during, uh, as I, as I got to know him and stuff, and he was like, so at the time he was looking for a job. He was in his, uh, early, early forties at the time. And, uh, he got a job. in South Africa, interestingly, at the South African, or actually it was nowadays, it's the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity.

12:57 But at the time it was known as the J.L.B. Smith Institute of Ichthyology. And for those of you that don't know, J.L.B. Smith was the guy who discovered the coelacanth back in 1938. Old Four Legs it was called. And so he, he was, that was his sort of name recognition. And J.L.B. passed away in 1968, but his wife, Margaret Smith, which is a whole story I'll tell in just a moment. She actually drove and got this whole funding and everything for what was later called the J.L.B. Smith Institute of Ichthyology, which opened in about 1980, 79, 80, I believe it was. Or actually, I think it might've been a couple, it might've been 77, 78, late 70s when it opened, when it officially opened. But anyway, Leonard got a job at this place, and this is in about 1985. Uh, you know, I'd finished my master's and I was looking around what I was going to do and I was working a few different jobs, but I was still going up there collecting data and still going up there to see Leonard. And when he told me he was taking this job, you know, I went up there and saw him and, you know, kind of say goodbye. And I've, again, I've told this story before, but as I was kind of leaving and saying goodbye, I said, well, Hey, you know, Leonard, if, if, if you need anybody to carry a suitcase or anything, Give me a call. And, you know, it's a complete throwaway line. You think nothing you'll never that, you know, Oh, well, you know, good luck on that. You know, maybe see him sometime in 20 years. Well, about eight months after he calls me up from South Africa and says, you know, Hey Dave, I have a PhD

14:30 position here at the, it was a road university, but it was, it was JLB Smith Institute. He goes, I have a PhD position. Would you like it? And, you know, It took me like a nanosecond to say like, hell yeah, um, I'm on the way. And so, uh, and so it was just one of those crazy things in life. This is, this was in 1985. He called me up and I went, I went to South Africa, I went to South Africa in 86. So it took, I had to, I had to go through and apply for, uh, apply for the school and I had to get all the paperwork together, the visa and all that type of stuff, which took me about nine months to do. I died actually closer to a year actually, but I so I finally went in 86 and it was the most transformative time of my life and Again to kind of put perspective into people certain age will understand this but it at that time South Africa wasn't a place people were generally clamoring to go through because it was on the world stage There's apartheid was going on. Yeah, and there's a lot of stuff going on at the time And here I am like, sure, I'm going to go to South Africa. And I, that was all I knew is I'm going to South Africa.

15:39 I'm gonna go study sharks. That's all I cared about. Cause I was really fulfilling a dream. And I had, again, I've shared some of these adventures. I won't go into all of them today, but I, I have a number of adventures I had at the time that were very, uh, life getting sort of life changing. And I kind of tell the story that I was on basically like a four plus year camping trip when I went to South Africa. So yeah, I literally had not been there know anything about it other than what Leonard told me and so I just literally got on a plane and I went and It was an amazing experience. I Got to Graham's town and then you know, I Got set up got going right away was out in the field looking for stuff and I kind of funny stories and Graham sounds kind of a I come from a small town in California. I thought oh great now I'm in another small town in rural town in South Africa. And the reason the Institute was there is because J.L.B. Smith was based at Rhodes University. And, uh, and so now actually another side story of the whole thing is when I was first there, my first Christmas there, I was house sitting for Margaret Smith, whose husband J.L.B. Smith was the guy that did the coelacanth. And of course, Margaret was, Margaret was actually 20 years younger than him. And she was a young, uh, she'd had been a chemistry student at his, uh, because he used to teach chemistry as well back in the 30s when they got married. And so she recounted the whole story to me. I was house-sitting for her and her sister Flora, who was a vaudeville performer. And I had a separate room they had set up for people to live there.

17:11 And I was house-sitting for a couple who lived there. And every night about 7 o'clock, Margaret and her sister Flora would come next door, literally bring tea and crumpets, which is about how English can you get. And we'd sit and talk for about a half hour, 45 minutes. And she would share stories with me about, about JLB and her, uh, do studying fishes in Southern Africa. And some of the stuff people would be horrified to hear these stories now, but Margaret, when she was a young woman, she was a very good swimmer and stuff. And she would go out in the field and JLB was older, 20 years older, and he had some health issues. And so stories that tell me is like they'd go out on these pristine reefs like in Mozambique and this is how they used to do things so don't be horrified about this but they would he would dynamite the reefs and all these fishes would float up dead and so margaret being a swimmer she would swim around she'd go swimming around collecting all the fish And she asked me the question, she goes, you know, Dave, there used to be a lot of sharks would come in around, swimming around us, collecting the fish. And I kind of look at JLB and I said, is it okay here? There's a lot of big sharks swimming around. He goes, oh, don't worry about them, they won't bother you. And so the guy has his wife swimming around in the water, collecting all these dead fish that were coming up. And he said, I don't worry, sharks don't bother you, they won't bother you or anything. Which is mostly true, I'm sure. I don't know what kind of sharks they were, She said some of them are pretty big, but she'd share some of those stories and I really became to appreciate this thought

18:42 like here's this young woman in the 30s and 40s and 50s really still going out and collecting his stuff and she made quite a name for herself and she was very accomplished in what she did and she did she illustrated a lot of the the fishes that JLB would describe. And, but it wasn't, it really, she was kind of in his shadows until after he passed away and set up this institute that she really kind of came into her own, but she's a very accomplished woman. If you ever, again, if you ever want to go look up some of the stuff she did, um, she, she, she, but she really helped drive his legacy. Um, so anyway, a little bit of a side story there, but this was the kind of, Opportunities I talk about like, you know, I went to look for lost sharks, but I had some amazing stories like, you know, meeting Margaret Smith and I met several, a number of other people. You know, I talk about going to the grocery store and standing there getting some groceries and I'm, I got Desmond Tutu standing next to me. We're kind of standing in line at the checkout counter, just shooting the breeze, very casual and stuff. And, uh, cause I was, I was there at a very dynamic time in South Africa's history.

19:50 And if people, again, if they know anything about like, you know, February 11th, 1990, um, Nelson Mandela was released from prison. and came down and gave a speech at the Grand Parade in Cape Town. I was there because I, and it wasn't, I just, cause it was all this stuff was going on. I thought, Oh, it's kind of interesting to experience some of this stuff. You know, I was kind of the outsider making right where everybody knew that. Yeah. Oh yeah. And I, and where I was based at the South African museum, I used to look at, uh, parliament was literally right, right outside my front window. And so I would, I have to walk by there every day to go to the gym I was going to at the time. And I would see all these guys, Mandela, Tutu, several other people, you know, de Klerk. They'd be going in and out for different parliamentary meetings at the time. And so I was there at a very transformative time. And that was some of the big rewards I got out of that, working with Leonard, you know, having the opportunity to go there and work with Leonard. But talking about working with Leonard, that was an interesting experience as well. because Leonard was an interesting guy. Like if you knew him, like when I knew him in California, he was a really good guy. If you got to know him, he'd be very generous. I learned a ton of stuff from him. But when I was a student, it was a little different in a sense. And I won't go into all the details here. It'll be in my forthcoming memoirs.

21:14 But he would, I could go to his office and I'd sit there and ask him some questions and stuff. And I'd get like, uh-huh. Yeah. Uh-huh. Okay. Yep. Sounds good to me. Very little, very little interaction. But then him and I would go out and have dinner usually, you know, two, three, four nights a week. And, you know, this is when I was in town. And then I just wanted to like have a tape recorder going because it would just be a complete data dump. He just go on about this and that. And just, and I was just going like in, in one of the papers that I, I recommend, if you look on my Instagram posts and on Facebook, I was a 1990 paper he did on alternative life histories, styles of, uh, Condric the and fishes through time and space. It is, if you are any kind of a serious shark researcher, conservationist, this is like a mandatory paper you need to read. And you can go into my Instagram and you can find the citation there. It's Environmental Biology of Fishes, 1990. But it was him and I would spend hours there long after we'd finished a pizza and stuff and just talk about this. Because he was bouncing ideas. I realized that he was bouncing ideas off me. And I was just like a young PhD student. And he's asking me questions about about different, different things. And so that was really an exciting time. And again, just reinforce with me, like, this was the guy I needed to meet on my journey that made the huge difference. And, and one of the more direct things. So that was an amazing, that was really amazing. Like

22:45 I said, going out and having a pizza, we'd have lunch. And it was just like, we'd, we'd spend hours. I mean, literally like three, four hours would go by, they'd be closing down the pizza place. And, and I just, and then we'd kind of go for a walk, walk back to the lab. And he was just at that point, he was real chatty. Um, for me personally, one of the coolest things I experienced there was one of the things that people got to know me early on was I did, I did a lot of, uh, observational field studies on foraging, hunting and hunting, hunting and sharks. And one of the things I came on was that big sharks will hunt in packs. And the main one was seven gill sharks, but I've seen other white sharks and other sharks.

23:27 People don't realize, but they will hunt in groups in coordinated groups. Um, I refer to social facilitation and I was just trying to, and this is again, the beauty of working with Leonard was that I was talking with him. you know, a couple nights they were having out having our pizza. And I said, like, you know, Leonard, I'm watching these sharks feed. I've seen this all over the world, California, South Africa, Namibia. And I go, they're not just randomly, you know, random killing machines, as you know, the Jaws movie suggested. But there's a coordinated effort that's going on. And it wasn't just this one lone marauder shark. That certain types of prey, like if, for example, if they were taking a sea lion, that the, that the seven gills would gang up on him. And he said, he goes, I got a couple of books for you to read. And this is where Leonard was. He's known as a shark person, but he could talk to you about wildlife in general, birds, all kinds of stuff. And so he said, I got a couple of books for you to read. So he went back, went back to his office and he gave me a book, um, called the, uh, the spotted hyena by, uh, Hans Crook and another book, uh, called the Serengeti lion by, um, um, George Schaller. And I could, I literally went back to my office and I couldn't stop reading.

24:43 I just read through these books in over a couple of days. I just couldn't stop reading them. And I was just like, went back to Leonard and said, Leonard, this is it. Because in those books, it talked about how lion prides and hyena groups work cooperatively within the group. And it talked about how they got into a lot of how they hunt as a group and, and, and just all the strategies. And I was just like going, this is what these sharks are doing. Just the problem is because they live in a marine environment that we can't watch them all the time. We can't, you know, you can watch like hyenas and lions feet. Cause you sit in a land Rover and at a distance and watch what they're doing, how they hunt. And I was just like, this is what, and again, lions and hyenas will, depending on what they're hunting, they will work in a cooperative group to take down large prey. And I'm like, this is what the seven gills will do. And other large sharks that if we're, if you're taking on a large species that one couldn't do.

25:36 They all work in a cooperative group. And so that was one of the most just amazing experiences I had, uh, learning stuff. And that was just one example of, of several I could give where Leonard was just thinking outside the box, which is where I was going. We're like, okay, here's some cool stuff. And he asked about like the, where I got onto the lost shark stuff. It was all during these, my informative years, um, grad school. And because besides people knowing me for doing a lot of that, cause my background was really in ecology for, you know, feeding ecology, uh, reproduction, but, you know, looking at how these sharks hunt. But one of the other things, uh, people got to know me for is I was the guy who would find these weird sharks. We didn't use the term lost shark at the time that came later. But I was, I was like, if you want to find the weird or the unusual, the little known sharks, just follow Dave. And cause I would go out in the field and I'd find these things and I didn't know initially at first I'd find these sharks, wow, this guy had an interesting one. And I'd bring it back to the lab and show Leonard and Leonard would go like, Oh geez, we haven't seen this shark in like, you know, 80 years. We haven't seen this shark in a hundred years. And so, you know, again, this is back in sort of the late 1980s. I was, people were already, I was, so I was, you know, like, oh, wow, this is kind of cool. I got onto this, like, okay, so there's this need out here that people are, you know, these, where I'd go, we're catching sharks that people weren't aware of.

27:08 And again, there was no real field of shark conservation at the time. And so again, people kind of got to know, like, oh, if you want to go find some weird sharks, go follow Dave. And people would go to like Namibia, people go to Taiwan, you know, California, and they'd go like, where's Dave been? because they knew wherever I'd been, that was where they were going to find the weird sharks, if I haven't found them already. And so that's kind of how, really, how the whole lost shark thing started, was just me going out, finding these things, and Leonard saying, oh, we haven't seen this shark for 100 years. And then also, I bring back a lot of species that Leonard would look at and go, well, this is an entirely new species to science. So I thought, well, this is kind of cool. Cause it was totally something nobody was doing and nobody really does today. Still goes and looks for these lost sharks. They don't really, I'm just, I mean, it's been a process you, you pick up over years to, you know, decades really to learn this type of stuff. So that was real, that was a very, you know, really informative thing to do. And kind of during the course of this thing, I talked to Leonard about. Villages I'd go to a place I travel around Africa and about different about you know I was trying to explain to some of these people like how to identify things and of course this again is the 1980s so you didn't have Resources like you do now like PDFs and email and cell phones So we ended up writing I had some like keys by has some identification keys that may or may not have been up-to-date Right, right.

28:37 So we had so there really was nothing to you. So there's this book called Guide to the Sharks and Rays of Southern Africa that kind of really sprung from this need for this field guide. And Leonard being a birder, we set the book for like a bird guide to make it simple and easy for the average person to be able to key through it and to be able to identify the sharks. And Anne Hecht, who is a wife of another advisor of mine, a key person, Tom Hecht, who's head of the department, did all the illustrations, which at the time, They were really, really amazing. And again, the thing in this book, because it was published in 1989, I mean, I'm a grad student. I'm writing my first book. I'm still in my 20s. And I've talked about this. The one thing that made it was so good working with Leonard was that on my own, I probably wouldn't have the confidence at that age to do my own book. But working with him, I learned how to do a book. And it really gave me confidence for later on when I went and did my next book, which ended up being a solo effort years later. But we were doing that book and again, this was like Leonard thinking outside the box. We'd start with him and I'd be having these discussions and we got into this whole area of talking about like, Uh, you know, I go to these different villages and places in Africa and I would see things like sharks being finned, you know, um, sharks being the livers being taken for oil and right. You

30:10 know, nobody was even thinking about shark, you know, you know, you know, they've been Chinese been using shark fins for soup for generations, like literally like hundreds of years. But nobody thought about it. And Leonard grew up in San Francisco. He grew up near Chinatown, so he'd wander around as a young boy. He'd see the, he saw the Finns, basically him and I arrived at the same place, just in different routes and different paths. But we were, but we thought it was kind of curious. And this led to a whole discussion on like, well, how many, how many sharks are killed a year? So we've gotten this whole discussion and, and like, you know, nobody, I mean, who, nobody in the 1980s was thinking about like, how many sharks are caught in bycatch and are killed?

30:51 No, nobody. And so I ended up writing a section and I've posted this before on social media, but I'll just hang it up. I'll show it up here again. Um, if I can find it here somewhere. Uh, Let me see here. I should have marked this before we came on the air. But anyway, in this book. No worries. Now, Let me see here. OK.

31:49 There it is, sorry. There's a section in the back of this book, if you get a copy of it, it's a classic book now, page 143, called Conservation and Management. And that was the first time that I can, I didn't know this at the time, but that was the first time anybody had ever written anything on the conservation of sharks and rays. And in that section, so I mean, that was, I can't explain how revolutionary that was. Nobody had ever done that. Sarah Fowler, who's been on our podcast, and she was really one of the really founders that laid the foundation for future conservation in sharks and rays. And she was kind of heading in that direction at the same time, but I don't believe anybody had ever published that. And in that section, I commented on like, well, how many sharks and rays are caught a year? And Leonard, being Leonard, went home after our pizza night and wrote up this whole thing, just some calculations. And we estimated that between 10 and 63 million sharks a year were caught in bycatch fisheries.

32:53 And, and, and we figured on average, there's probably around 38 million somewhere in there. Well, this is 1989. It was in the early 2000s, like 12, 15 years later that a colleague, Shelly Clark actually did a more quantitative estimate and calculated that about 73 million sharks were caught a year. Average was around, you know, I think she came up with a similar average of that's around 38 million or so as well. I don't remember the exact number, but I know her numbers were almost spot on with what Leonard and I had calculated back in 1989. And so that was pretty good, but that was really the first estimate ever published on the number of sharks caught a year. And that was in 1989. Again, people weren't even, I can't even explain this to young people. It wasn't even on the radar.

33:39 And also in that section, we talked about the whole shadowy, referred to as a shadowy fishery of shark finning. And again, nobody was really talking about that until 20, 30 years later. Nowadays, people talk about shark finning and Shark liver oil, but here we were writing on this. It was more from a how's this impacting shark populations? We didn't know but we put it out There's a question and we wrote up that this was going on and species like again I would see these like sawfish for example, you know, they were kind of a nuisance if they were caught in African villages But also at the same time, you know, it'd be food for the for the community but also like they could they you know, you have these Chinese buyers would go around buying up the fins and And so with the fins, with these fins that were being, uh, landed, uh, they impacted because then there's worth a lot more money. And so that was, again, that was some of the stuff with Leonard. I shared a lot of these different stories, but that was the, that was the uniqueness with Leonard.

34:38 That's what set him apart. And that's the kind of stuff that really made him a giant in the field. And I don't say that lightly. He really was a, okay. He was a big guy personally, but physically he was a big guy, but he was, um, But he was just really that guy that's thinking in a different plane. And, you know, I finished and eventually I finished up my PhD. We did a lot, a lot of stuff at Leonard's. One of the, I've very heavily published with Leonard and kind of a cool thing years later, as I mentioned earlier, when he was doing the sharks of the world, the FAO guide was published in 84. I always thought like, well, that'd be kind of cool to do a, do my own book on the sharks of the world. Well, in 2013, you know, Leonard and I co-authored a book with Mark Dando and Sarah Fowler on the sharks of the world. And so that was kind of brought my journey full circle in a way with Leonard. At that point, Leonard was kind of on his way out in his career and he didn't really do a heck of a lot, but he was pretty much retired. He was starting to have a lot of health issues at that time, but it was just kind of nice to have that one little You know having done that and of course I've gone on a lot of other things now, but it was nice And I have just a lot of good Memories it was a lot of funny stories that are probably a little off-color to tell on the podcast But I'll put that somewhere else catch me at a conference over a beer. I'll tell you some some other ones, but he had He had some some interesting stuff one story. I will share I think I've shared this before I know Andrews heard this one, but Paul

36:09 Callie, and I want to make give a mention to Paul Callie who was kind of my partner in crime with the At the time we were co-grad students together and Paul and I just had some amazing experiences With Leonard and stuff. But one of the things I talked about some of my public presentations is Paul and I'd go off to Namibia And at that time there was nothing there. There's no communications. No GPS no cell phone And so I'd tell Leonard, which is a little sketchy, and tell other people that we're going to be gone for eight weeks. And if you didn't hear from us in 10 weeks, you might send somebody to look for us. And off we'd go. Well, again, this is back in the late 80s. And you didn't have things like when you had your student bursary would come through each month. Nowadays, it's automatically deposited. Well, back then, you had to physically go pick up your check. Well, when you're gone for eight weeks in the field, there's nobody there to deposit your check. And on our first trip to Namibia, we literally, we wound up in a place called Luderitz, which is literally like the end of the world. If you want to get lost, go to Luderitz. Um, and, uh, it was a, at that time it was a wild West town.

37:17 Literally. It was like a, why they'd be like drunken bar fights. There'd be people passed out in the street. It was, it was a wild West town, but there was a, there's thousands of seven gill sharks in the lagoon there. And so we spent some time there and we ran out of money. I mean, literally neither of us had a penny in our accounts. And so I had to, we had like 3000 kilometers to get home. So I bumped some money off one of the guys there we knew. And, you know, just like there was like three Rand, which was like, you know, two us dollars at the time. And I made a phone call back to ask Leonard if he could put in a couple hundred like literally like 300 Rand, so we had gas to get home. And I got a hold of Leonard. He asked, of course, Leonard, brevity was not synonymous with Leonard. He could talk. And so he would share all the, he'd say, oh, how's it going, blah, blah. I'd say, oh, yeah, it's going really good, Leonard. But if we ran out of money, can you put some money, a few hundred Rand, maybe 300 Rand, so I can get home, just for gas, not even for food. And he's like, well, you know, money's kind of tight. And he hung up on me. And that was the second time he hung up on me. I told the story earlier. And so here you got a couple of your two grad students at the time, 3,000 kilometers from home in the a hole of the world place.

38:39 And I don't want to say that to be disrespectful, but it wasn't, it was a tough place It was a rough, it was a rough place. And so I, here I have to go back and bum another few Rand and I called Tom Heck back at, who was the head of the department at the time. And said, Hey, Tom, I, um, I need some money to get home. And he's like, well, did you talk to Leonard? I said, yeah. And he says, what happened? I said, well, he hung up on me. And you know, Tom being German, he's like, there's silence at first. He's like, no, no problem, Dave. I'll put, I'll put 500 bucks in your account tomorrow morning. You'll be able to withdraw it. you know, welcome home, have a safe drive. And so, but that was like, that was like Leonard. He just had, didn't have like a lot of empathy, like, oh, well, you're stuck. You know, oh, well, you know, good luck.

39:28 See you back. See you sometime. Hope you get home. And, um, but I had, yes, but that was kind of the, some of the funny stories we'd have. Paul and I just had an amazing experience. We'd go, Leonard and I would go out. We used to go a lot of times. just wildlife looking. We'd go out to game, we'd take a couple days. Leonard liked to bird, I liked to look at the game animals. We'd go out to a lot Yeah, we were definitely fellow explorers. And as I say, it was an amazing time in my life. And Leonard and I remained good friends. But the last sort of 10 years of his life, he declined a lot health-wise, physically and mentally. And, uh, so I, you know, I didn't get, we kind of really lost touch there just cause he was just, he was in South Africa and wasn't in good health. The last time I saw him was about 10 years, years ago. Um, but you know, even though he's, he's gone now, I have just a lot of very fond memories working with them. We published a lot together. Um, we coauthored about 10 species together and, um, it was an amazing, It was an amazing time. And it was just, you know, I kind of, if I had to impart anything off to any, any young people there, you should be so lucky when you're early in your career to find someone who's that real fellow traveler, because, you know, he, he, he just, he, he, he wasn't just an advisor, you know, he was a mentor and above all, he was a friend. And, um, you know, his,

41:01 his late, his late wife, Martina, probably one of the Biggest compliments I ever received was we're out. I was showing her here out visiting California one time before she passed away in 2006 and we're talking at a restaurant and Leonard went to go use the bathroom and I kind of apologized to her because she was a cephalopod biologist. But I kind of said, oh, I'm really sorry, Leonard. I just blabbing away nonstop. And she goes, Dave, don't worry about it. She goes, Leonard. Everybody at Cogtex Leonard wants something from him. You're like his one of his few true friends out there and I just that really touched me a lot and it was very You know very nice to hear that because you know, and that's true Leonard had a lot of people were not always looked out You know for his best interest and just hearing that from him was very much was very it was very genuine and And I know, you know, and I know other people could share similar stories. I have a whole bunch of stories. One of the things I think we got a little clip we'll have with Gavin Naylor here. And Gavin was a young PhD student. In fact, Gavin had finished before me. And he'd come to South Africa when I was still there. Which I won't go into the stories today because it's just a bonus episode may all share in some other future episodes But he came to South Africa in 1989 he was there for about six weeks and we had It was an we had just as some incredible experience with Leonard and Gavin and I still to this day laugh at some of the stories that took place that time work with Leonard because I say he

42:32 was Leonard was a character if you if you had the chance to meet him He was a character is the best way I could describe it And, uh, as I say, uh, Gavin, uh, we're both young students at the same time. And I know he had also had a profound effect on him as well. And, uh, in fact, Gavin's done a lot of the genetic work that show that Leonard's 1973, uh, classification really has held up over the last 50 years. And so, um, anyway, I just, um, appreciate people listening to I was just going to say before we kind of end off here, like, you know, from some of the stories you mentioned, I didn't know, you know, with with the relationship you had with him, but also he's the reason why you're the lost shark guy. I think that's pretty cool. You would go to him to, like, bring back the specimens that you had. And you would be like, what is this? And he'd be like, oh, we haven't seen this in like 10 years. And it's kind of interesting, because before we recorded, we were talking about how people come to you now to be that person, that authority to come in and say, hey, I found this. What is it? And you'd be like, oh, well, we actually haven't seen that in five years. Or we haven't seen that in 10 years. Or we haven't seen that in 20 years. Or this is a new species. Let's work on this together. And I think that it just goes to show that you're kind of like, continuing the legacy that Leonard had in terms of just knowing the species so much and being so interested in all the species, not just the iconic sharks, not just the great white shark, which there's nothing wrong with that. It's just he

44:04 just had this impeccable knowledge of and detailed knowledge of all the sharks, hence the book, The Sharks of the World, and what you have lived on in terms of that legacy and continued on with that legacy and built your own legacy as the lost shark guy. For a reason because you're the one you're the one who continues on that curiosity That you both had and you both shared and I think you know it's it's really funny because there is this relationship with a Supervisor and and a student that a lot of people have and sometimes it's good and sometimes it's bad But you got to see him in two lights you got to see him at work and in the office But you also got to see them outside of work where he was seemed to be a little bit more relaxed and a little bit more in like He's interested in talking about science. He's interested in talking about sharks that he'd had a genuine interest birds, whatever species game species. And I think that's, that's really interesting to hear, to see like a supervisor who has that kind of relationship with student where you guys were not only colleagues or not even student, like mentor student, but you were genuine friends. And I think that's, that's Yeah, no, he laid the foundation for, let's say we didn't use it back in the eighties. I didn't think about the term lost shark. guy or any or lost sharks, but he really laid the foundation. And if I hit, if I impart some of the young people listening to shows like be knowledgeable about all the sharks and rays, don't focus on one species, you know, just be knowledgeable. You know, the, the wider, the broader with the knowledge you have, the better, you know, the, the more you'll know, and the more you learn, the more questions you could ask. And as I say, I just, you know, I mean, I never thought I

45:36 was going to, you know, the direction I've gone, I'm kind of a direction I never thought about. But when he's learned more about all the different species and I started bringing back these different things that people hadn't seen I thought well That's kind of a cool thing. Nobody else is doing this and it just was Larry says I've been started doing that and I started focusing I didn't focus in on him because I just go look for what was there and document stuff but then when Leonard started telling me like a number of these species had not been seen for decades and You know 20 30 years or more Then I started like going like, okay, I, and I started paying attention to and started, you know, keeping a database of like, well, how long are these, some of these sharks haven't been seen. And there were sharks that I'd saw. I can tell you there were sharks I found back in the eighties that haven't been seen since I found them. I mean, I know where to go back to find them, but you know, it's like, you don't, cause I know where they are. And I think that they're, I call them lost, but I think if you just bother, if someone bothers to go look for them, you know where to go, but I've just kind of carried on with that. And that led to my. sort of moniker my brand now, The Lost Shark Guy, you know, over the last couple of decades, that's really what it was led to.

46:48 And, you know, I get, I have such a network now, I get, I get people all over the world contact me every week. I go a few days a week. I get emails from people asking me to identify stuff from them. And you know, a lot of times it's like, Oh, this is, this is this, this is that and stuff. But sometimes they get some really cool stuff that, Hey, we haven't seen this species in 40 years. And they show up here and I'm like, so then I can, I can help them out and provide them some more information. So It's kind of cool. And you know, one of the thing with Leonard is like he always, and I think people listen to podcasts or hear me talk, you know, I still have that enthusiasm, that passion. I had it when I was five years old and Leonard was the same way. He was like eight. Leonard was, he would have been 81 this December.

47:31 Um, but he was, he was, he was just that perpetual kid. Um, or he was just, he never lost his enthusiasm. And I had that same thing where I still feel today. Like, you know, I'm going to keep going until, I can't, which, you know, will probably be when they drop me in the ground. And I love it, you know, and that's not anytime soon. Well, if you listen to the recent podcast I did on my trip to Indonesia and Timor Leste, you can, you can tell that, you know, and I have a, I think one thing with the Lost Shark stuff now is I really, I enjoy working with a lot of the young people, you know, like the crew I was just working with in, in, in Indonesia, Timor Leste. I love working with young people and passing along. Because now it's my turn to pass on that information to all these young people. And they'll hopefully be the new Lost Shark guys and gals in the future. And that would be my biggest legacy is to leave impart my knowledge to a lot of these really up-and-coming people, many of whom we've had on the podcast. So I just keep going on. And all that was instilled with me with Leonard. You know Leonard some of these days we'll I'll see in that big shark park in the sky one day and we'll I'm sure be back having a pizza and a coca-cola even though I don't really like coca-cola I was talking and talking so um but yeah it was phenomenal experience and uh if you're and I'll just one last shout out if you ever see you guys particularly young people if you see me at a conference sometime just come up and say hi I'm pretty approachable and Just

49:03 want to talk about Leonard stories and some of the stuff born happy to share sharks shark and sharks. Yeah, and just Talk to you about stuff. And so so anyway Andrew, I appreciate it. I everybody I just listened to the show and thanks for having a chance to part some of my stuff because It was a really a big thing in my life met Leonard and getting to know Leonard and I I just hope to see him again sometime in the sometime in the next life. So anyway, thank you very much. Thank you everyone for listening and keep I love it. Well, Dave, thank you so much for sharing these stories. I know this is a hard time for you. You know, you can tell in your voice, you can tell that Leonard had such an impact on your life as well as others. You know, when you posted in the American Alasdair Brank Society the notice of that he had passed, there are so many amazing things that people have said about him, you know, recounting stories and how much of a legend that he was in this industry and in this field. So you're not the only one who feels this but definitely you had a different relationship with him because you were his student and you did his PhD with him and obviously a lot more than that. So we appreciate you being vulnerable with us and you letting us know more about Leonard and I appreciate it definitely as a friend and we hope for the best. And like you said, one day you'll be reunited and having a having a coke, having a pizza and talking shows. It's awesome. So thank

50:38 Thank you. David has asked me to comment on the contributions of Leonard Campagnolo, who passed away last week. I've known Leonard since I was a graduate student. And He's certainly a very unusual person. He was frankly obsessed with sharks and rays. He wanted to understand everything about them. He wanted to understand their anatomy, their behavior, their life history, their taxonomy, and he would pursue any avenue to learn more about them. We're familiar with Leonard because of his influential publication record. But I put it to you that that really is the tip of the iceberg. What Leonard published was a tiny fraction of what he knew. Instinct is nothing more than a capacity to access a huge amount of context-sensitive information. And it seemed that Leonard had tremendous instinct for understanding these animals, and that's because he had huge knowledge about

52:08 these animals from all of his work. On a daily basis, he would be trying to find out more about them. As a person, he was fairly diffident, fairly shy, and really, uncomfortable in public settings. But if you were somebody who was interested in the same things as Leonard was, he was amazing. Whenever I would meet with Leonard, I'd really look forward to it. Because just a few minutes with Leonard would provide tremendous insights.

52:49 He would make these casual observations about sharks and rays as if everybody knew about them. but they might be casual for Leonard, but there'd be profound statements to the rest of us. So I'm particularly sad that Leonard passed away because he carries with him so much knowledge of these animals. And also, I don't think that he's as widely appreciated by young scientists as he is by all the colleagues. Many young scientists I've talked to never even heard of Leonard, but he's somebody to look up to, to aspire to be like.

53:36 He was primarily deeply curious and I for one will miss him. It's a huge loss to Ik Theology