Shark Conservation in South Africa

0:00 Welcome back to another episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. On today's episode, we have Sabine Wintner from South Africa, who was part of the KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board. She tells us about a number of different things, but really what I love about this episode was the fascinating evolution of shark research in South Africa over the last number of decades. We talk about how she's retired now and what she's up to and what her volunteering position is doing. I just think it's a phenomenal interview and it's something that you're going to want to check out for sure, especially if you want some advice on building a shark science career. So let's get started with the show. Hey, everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. I'm your co-host, Andrew Lewin, with my co-host, Dr. David Ebert. Dave, how's It's going great, Andrew. I'm really and I'm really looking forward to today's episode with Savine Vintner. She's retired now from the KwaZulu-Natal Sharks board. I've known Sabine.

0:57 She's a very good friend. I've known her for probably longer. She cares to remember think about but it's been 30 years or so and But you know, she was she was one of the real You know pioneers in the field one of the you know real outstanding women in the field starting back out in the early 90s and she like I did she emigrated to South Africa and to kind of launch her shark career. She's from Germany originally, and when she got her undergraduate degree, she just went to South Africa. And back at this time, as you'll hear in the story, it wasn't like today where there's a lot of people go to South Africa and they work with different NGOs and nonprofit groups and stuff. Back then, there was no such thing. She just went there because she heard there's a lot of sharks there. So that was a very pioneering thing, just to literally get up and leave. have no idea what you're gonna do until you actually get there. So it's a fascinating story, and I'm really happy she had a chance to share her story on her journey, and we'll also get to get caught up and hear what she's doing kind of post-shark career these days, which is something that young people don't think about as much, but at some point, at some point- It's starting to cross my At some point, they're gonna come up and tap you in the shoulder and say, okay, okay, Dave, it's time to go. So it's like, or Andrew, it's time to go. So anyways, I'm looking forward to this interview Yeah, absolutely. What I want people to really think about is that

2:28 evolution of science in general, not just shark science, but the where we've come from where we were even 40 years ago, Dave, you and I talk about this all the time. And, you know, a lot of the time we've come from different generations, and we've seen a lot of changes over that time. and we're always just flabbergasted where we're at right now compared to where we were 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago. And so I think it's really cool to see this just in terms of moving and the communication back home was not as fast as it is now. And so I think it's really interesting just to see that difference, you know, compared to now and how much easier it is to move even though people get homesick. Back then you really got homesick because you didn't have a lot Yeah, I can just tell you when I went to South Africa, I didn't talk to my parents for two years. There was just, you just didn't. Yeah, that's insane. Yeah, so think about that. Was it by letters? Just letters. Letters though? Yeah, we wrote letters. You wrote letters. Yeah, Yeah, because long distance, like if it was available, was Yep. It was too expensive. It was really expensive. So you just didn't really make phone calls back then. So, um, so yeah. And that's, and that's crazy, And Sabine and I just, I left just before she arrived there. So she was in the same situation where you just, when you left, you left and you were just there. So, uh, so anyway, so I, so when you listen to the episode, just keep that in mind about what the times were in a different, you just didn't have.

4:01 Well, it's going to be a lot of fun to listen to this interview. So here's the interview with Sabine Vintner. Enjoy. And we will talk to you after. Hey, Sabine, welcome to the Beyond Jaws podcast. Are you ready to talk about You bet. Well, I want to welcome everybody to the Beyond Jaws podcast. We want to wish everyone a very happy new year as we kick off 2025 here. with our first episode with an absolutely awesome guest, the fabulous Sabine Wintner. Sabine worked at the KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board for about 28 years, retiring in 2019 as the Acting Head of Department for Research and Development. During her career, she specialized in the age and growth of sharks, and she's the only person I know who's published on the age and growth of the whale shark and the basking shark, the two largest fish and sharks in the ocean, and she also published on the Asian growth of the white shark among many other species. Sabine has 70 peer-reviewed publications to date and she's still actively publishing as we speak now and she's also has numerous scientific reports, popular articles and review articles that she's published throughout her career. Sabine's a member of the IUCN shark specialist group and was on the organizing committee for the sixth Indo-Pacific fish conference back in 2001 and for the second Sharks International Conference in 2014. And if you ever need anybody to organize a conference, Sabine's your person. As I mentioned, Sabine, she retired in 2019, but she's kept an extremely busy schedule. And we thought it'd be a great time to catch up

5:34 with her and what she's been doing. She's also, just in her schooling background, she did a BSC in zoology at Munich University in Germany, where she's from originally. And she did an MSC at the University of Natal in South Africa. And Yeah. And so as we always start off with our guests is how did you get interested in marine science and in, and in a All right. Fasten your seatbelts. Um, so when I, when I was, I think six years old or something, I watched a six years old or something. I watched a, um, uh, animal program. And it said, they interviewed somebody and it says underneath, it says biologist. And I said to my mother, that's it, I want to become a biologist. So she was not impressed because in those days, you had to learn Latin in order to study biology. And the small Latin, as opposed to the big Latin, which the attorneys had to learn. But which meant I had to go to a different school, which was a gymnasium, as opposed to a real school. And she didn't want that for me.

6:52 So she wasn't impressed. But anyway, I ended up, I learned my Latin. And then a couple of years later, I just got so interested in sharks. And other teenagers had like Bay City rollers, I'm giving my age away now, posters on the walls. And I had all these shark posters on the wall. So I was very, very lucky that I actually realized my dream Just so you back up, you were born in Switzerland, actually. You grew up in Germany, but you weren't near the ocean at all. No, And you still managed to get interested in sharks, being in where you were from.

7:40 What part of Germany, you weren't near the ocean where you grew up in Germany, right? Okay, and so we've had a number of guests, and you see, you end up going, why'd you happen to pick like University of Munich to So in Munich you can't choose, well in Germany in those days you couldn't choose your university. So whatever you had a matric that you had to pass that level in order to apply for that particular biology or whatever it was, obviously you had to have the right courses, And then you went into a big system and they will tell you then at which university you're studying. So you could be in Munich and you've been sent to Berlin to study there. So then there is a lottery system where people then, you know, the other way around are in Berlin and when sent to Munich, you can then swap places. So I started in Munich and then after my fifth semester, I wanted to go overseas to study for one year. And then because I could only speak English and Latin, it reduced the number of universities I could choose. And I could not afford, I mean, James Cook University was the one I wanted to go. And even in the early 90s, they had separate fees for non-Australians and all that. So I couldn't afford UK, I couldn't afford America, I couldn't afford Australia, and the only English speaking country I could

9:14 It's kind of interesting, so when you were going through your high school and stuff, you had to score certain marks in school to go to certain universities. Now, did Munich have a particularly strong program? Was it marine sciences you were looking for at that time, You do biology and it's compulsory, it wasn't compulsory in those days, it's biology, it's zoology, botany, genetics, physical chemistry, inorganic chemistry, chemistry. So that is your foundation. And after you do your full diploma, after four semesters, then only then can you choose to go into botany, zoology or genetics. And I was just kind of interested because most people coming from the U.S. and I think it's probably the same in Canada, if you decide after high school you want to go marine science or something, you can kind of pick the university if you have the grades to get in. But in Germany, you're kind of already tracked in kind of to where you're going to go. before, by the time you finished high school. In those days, yeah. So you wanted to, so when you finished, when you were finishing up your degree at Munich, you wanted to go overseas. You mentioned James Cook, and then how'd you happen to pick South Africa next on your, as Well, as I said, I couldn't afford any, so I didn't finish the degree. I was in my fifth semester. We

10:45 normally study 10 semesters, five years to get our, and then the equivalent to an MSc. So I was in my fifth semester and I wanted to study one year in a foreign country and I could only speak English and Latin and I could not afford any of the other universities so I ended up picking South Africa because it was English speaking and it was the cheapest university fees. So when you came down to South Africa, you went to, how'd you happen to, I know it's a bit in the weeds, but how'd you end up with like Durban versus Cape Town or University of Port Elizabeth or some Okay, that's also an interesting story because one of my friends went to South Africa quite often and he was in Durban and he offered to pop in at the university and pick up some application forms. In those days, we didn't have email.

11:55 So, he did inquiries on my behalf and that's how I ended up in Durban. He brought those back and then I contacted the Durban University and as I said, they put me into the third So you're saying, I think this is really interesting, because times have changed now. I deal with people who look at careers all the time, look at graduate school, and they're emailing different schools. So your selection was based off of not only what you can afford and what you can go from English speaking, but also where your friend went as a trip to pick up an application, because otherwise you may have had to call and get it sent to you, but that was really what it was determined by. I think that's really fascinating with just the way things have changed nowadays. They all complain, you know, well, I sent an email, I didn't get an email back. Imagine not even being able to use email, probably not even a phone call back, then you have to have a friend who went there, grab an application, and then send it back to you. That's remarkable. But you mentioned you were doing your master's at the school and then you switched over to your third semester. So did your master's change over to Durbin and then change into No, no, no, no. So in Germany, I did the full diploma, which is four semesters. So I was in my fifth semester, decided to study overseas for a year to increase my market value.

13:27 So Durban University then thought, oh, this chick's coming from Germany. She wants to do her BSc in South Africa. We're going to put her into the third semester because it's a three-year course and you have to be at that university for two years in order to get it. And then I kind of, the mismatch in the level, I kind of jumped the whole system, both on the German side and the South African side, and then I went straight into an MSc, because it was just not working. So I got special permission from my German university to do a MSc in a foreign country, which at the time they didn't allow, but the head of the department was English speaking. obviously could only do this thesis in English. So he agreed to make an exception. So they allowed me to start my MSc at the University of Natal then. And then I decided I'm gonna jump the system again. I'm gonna stay in South Africa and told the German university, thank you very much for your offer, but I'm gonna finish now in So how, like, you know, you talk about that as if it was, you know, you just, this is how it went and this is, it sounds very easy.

14:42 But I've known, like, universities are not easy to do this kind of thing, especially when you're doing something new. What were your stress levels like during that time, like going back and forth with different universities? You talk about jumping the systems. Universities don't like you not jumping systems and things like that. Was it difficult to coordinate with both Look, we're talking about 30 years ago. So things then were not as difficult as they are now. So, yeah, we didn't, it was more difficult in terms of contacting, you know, you had to have money to phone South Africa. And obviously I can't even remember if there were emails. I don't think so. I think it was done via phone, but it wasn't that difficult. You obviously, I had to get all the German, qualifications up to the stage or course proof translated into English and that kind of thing. I didn't think it was a major mission. I just felt bad that I took everybody You got to do what you got to do, right? You got to do what you got to So you went down to South Africa. Originally, you were just going to go for like a year. Was that your plan originally? and then go back and then, of course, here you are, let's say a few years later.

16:09 Thank you. So anyway, you went down there and you started, when you arrived in South Africa, had you ever even heard of the shark sport at all? Yes, yeah, yeah, definitely. So that was my first, yeah. When I realized I was mismatched at the university, I went straight to the shark support and asked for a job, well, for an opportunity to help Did you work as ... Yeah, just to set some people, because a lot of the young people listening, everybody goes to South Africa now because they have all these white shark conservation groups and NGOs. People go volunteer and everything. Back in the day, It was not that way in South Africa. It was pretty much, there was a sharks board, there was this program, research center where I was in Cape Town. So it was just very different than it is today. It wasn't like people, like say the young people go down today, it was just a very different. Plus as Sabine was talking, you had to actually write a letter and put it in the post office and mail it there and hope it got there in time. at some point in time. So when you went to the sharks board, did you work as a volunteer at first or were you able to get hired on fairly No, so they didn't have any volunteer positions.

17:41 What happened is the head of the department at the University of Natal was also the acting head of the department of the research department. So I went for an interview and I said I would like to work here and help out. and they hired, they needed somebody to do, to catalogue their vertebral selection, collection. So I was hired as a tochleber and I think in those days it was 250 an hour. And so I would skip, I would not go to the classes because I've already done this stuff and I would go to Sharksport and just sit with these vertebrae and write down on a piece of paper the numbers and didn't have a computer. So that's how it started. And then after a year or so, they employed me as a temporary staff. And then I had, and that was like three-year contracts, and I was on two or three three-year contracts, temporary, and And you got out, when you went out, what was your sort of entry, formal position there? Was it as a researcher, or when they In those days, the levels were different. It was called Assistant Nature Conservation Scientist. It Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that era fairly well.

19:09 You've been there, yeah. I've been there, so. So you got on there now. Did you start early on into, when Yeah, so they originally wanted somebody like a student just to go into the vaults and record what is there. And that's how I started. And then I obviously read up on how to age because that was the ultimate goal. Once we knew what we had, we then wanted to age all the species we catch because that's part of the impact assessment of the nets. If you have a species which lives 60 years and reproduces every year, 50 pups, whatever, then you taking out 15 animals per animal is going to do nothing. Whereas if you have another species, you know, whatever. So, the first thing was to catalog and then the second one is they wanted somebody to look at aging and I sort of naturally got into that.

20:16 And I remember faxing Lisa once in Yeah, I was going to say like you at some point I know in there you contacted Lisa Natanson who was on one of the first episodes we had there as retired NOAA fisheries and she was kind of the age and growth person at that time. Did you say you faxed her? Yeah. I faxed her. It was a little faster than sending an actual mail, letter by mail. at Everything was post and now suddenly you stick a piece of paper on this side and it comes out on the other side of the ocean and another country comes, Everybody had a fax number. Every office had a fax number that you could fax to and for those of you listeners who haven't heard of a fax before, fax machines were like the email of back in the day before we really had internet, I guess. And it was a phone number that you would call, and you could put a paper in this machine. This machine would literally fax it over, like you said, overseas. And it would go to the next machine. And you would print it out. And it wasn't always easy to use. It didn't always work. But people used it quite a bit. Every office had a fax number and a phone number. And I thought it's always interesting.

21:41 It was revolutionary at the time, because it was just like, wow. I'd already left South Africa at that time, but it was like just, yeah, with almost instantly you could get something across. It was like, so you couldn't even imagine like, wow, where can we go from here with a fax machine, beyond a fax machine. Obviously that's changed a lot now as we're recording videos now for podcasts and other things. And I can remember somewhere in there, after you got corresponding with Lisa, that you and I Connected at some point because and we're but we're still writing letters at that point in time For a few years kind of in the late 90s and I was I'd been home in, California and then It was just back then you just that's all you do it was fax if you had a fax option to the fax or yeah, I'm just writing letters and so so it was still like it was several years actually before you actually I know you and I first met in 2001 at the Indo-pacific but It was a number of years before even people like Lisa and others, you actually got a chance to meet in person, correct? Some of the people you're corresponded with?

22:51 That was actually in 2001 then, when we had the Indo-Pacific in Durban. And that's where people I corresponded with like Greg Collier and George Burgess and yourself. It was the first time I've met these people I've Yeah. And when did you, and when'd you actually finally meet Lisa? Cause you I fixed in 1999. I think I still got the original fix. I'm If I could just jump in for a second, I just say that because Sabine will literally pull up emails that I had with her from like 20 something years ago.

23:37 and send me these emails that I thought were long gone. I forgot about it. Remember back in like 2002, you said this or whatever. And I'm like, oh Jesus Christ, I forgot all about that. Anyway, so I Love it. Anyway, but I know it was quite a few years actually for you guys. I know at the Indo-Pacific in 2001, you finally got to meet some people. And then I know like Lisa was years later on that. So let's back up a little bit. You started working at the shark sport there. Now, a lot of the sharks that you had the vertebrae from were sharks that were caught in the shark nets, which nowadays is kind of a, it depends on some quarters, it could be it's a bit controversial. and everything, and it's been kind of a back and forth over the years. And just, again, I don't know, maybe you can give a little bit of the history in the shark sport when it kind of came into prominence was in the early 60s, I believe, after they had their sort of, sort Black September, yeah, they had like a, what was it, like five or seven attacks over a couple day period. And that's really what kind of started the whole shark sport thing. Could you talk a little bit about Yeah. Um, yeah, so it was a black December and then the Easter, I think it was a total of 21 shock attacks or

25:10 shock encounters now politically correct. Um, uh, and seven of which I think were fatal. And that was at the time we're talking 19 early sixties. the tourism industry was just, everybody just left Natal, the coastline. And that's where the, and then called the Anti-Sharks Measures Board was formed in order to, how can I say, help do something about this perceived problem. And they got their cue from the Australians and they put in nets, It started off with encounters like rigid cages at the Durban beachfront, had one in the early, I can't remember, and then also lower south coast. And now we've got a very high energy cost. So those structures didn't last long. They corroded, the waves smashed them. So eventually, the then-Antonin-Natal Shocksport, whatever, they then decided to go with the same system as in New Zealand and Australia and introduced nets. And we had huge catches when they were introduced because it was a pristine population along Durban. It started off in Durban and then it went along the coast down south and north. And that was basically the concept of the shock nets. So you're reducing the population. Instead of having a thousand sharks on the beach, you only got a hundred sharks on

26:43 the beach. So your probability of being bitten is less. And they have worked over a 50 year Now when they had the, you know, and just so people understand, they're listening, like the coast along Durban and KwaZulu-Natal, there's a lot of river systems. And what you get is a lot of like, you get basically bull sharks, or Zambezi's they call them, they're coming up the rivers and stuff. And so you have these large sharks, bull sharks, coming up in areas that are bathing areas. And that's where you had a lot of the shark, shark, shark attack, shark encounters. And at the times of the year, summertime, when there's a lot of activity going on, the water in a lot of those areas is not very clear. And so that had, so it wasn't, it was an area where you had a lot of, a lot of shark activity, big shark activity. And And so like a- So this is why shark spotting doesn't work in our province. You know, the shark spotting program in Cape Town is very successful because they've got crystal clear water because they've got no rivers. And they've got the brooks, the mountains to have the vantage point to look down onto the ocean. That concept does not work in our province because of, as you mentioned, all the rivers going in there, we are as flat as anything. Shark spotting, it does not It's difficult, yeah. It must be really challenging. And the bull sharks, just so people know, maybe not shark

28:15 people, but the bull sharks tend to get more aggressive when the visibility is low. If you're in clear water with the bull sharks, they'll kind of tend to stay back. But as soon as the visibility goes down and you get this muddy, sort of murky water, that's when they tend to get really aggressive. They get really aggressive. And again, the Natal coastline there And also, don't forget, we had a whaling station, eh? Yes, that was, and again, we've mentioned this before, but if you ever watch the movie, it's a classic, Blue Water, White Death, came out in 1971. They went to Durban to film at the whaling station there, because they would pull in these whales, they were still whaling in the 60s, and these big white sharks, oceanic white tips would follow the whale carcasses in, and they had a little bit of history. off of the South Jetty, I think, Sabine, where they used to have the 1,000-pound club. Fishermen used to go out there and catch these white sharks off the beaches near the whaling station. They called it the 1,000-pound club. It had to be a minimum of 1,000-pound white shark they would catch. It's amazing how many They used to catch quite a few sharks. This is all rod And on bamboo, hey? Bamboo rod and reels, not graphite rods.

29:41 What was the reaction of having all these shark encounters and so forth? What were the reactions of the people that were being affected by these shark encounters and shark bites? Were people scared to go in the water? even in the rivers like and then was it you know like you see it in Australia now it's like they go out and kill all the big sharks was that the reaction of of the government is if there was an encounter you go and you say okay well we're gonna try and find this one that that has a you know quote-unquote taste for humans okay As I said, it affected the tourism industry and it had financial implications for the province. So, they formed this board to look into measures how to make it more safer. for the bathers. So we, you know, Florida is different because they've always had incidents and they never had a program like that. We had incidents in the 60s. We built this program and it then obviously evolved into a huge organization. And, and the people know this for the last half a decade, well, 50 decades, five decades. And, and you can't, it's very difficult to play around with a system like it.

31:04 Yeah. So there was, I mean, obviously they're through the, you know, dynamite and, and, and cages and they did all this stuff, you know, but, and then what happened then was the nets and that was the most successful way of producing the huge, pristine number Gotcha. I think she was still there, but the person that really got the whole shark sport going was a person named Beulah Davis, who was really well known, certainly in South Africa, and even globally she was known. She was the one that really set in the sixties and which used to be all still there when you when you arrive wasn't she she's actually she just retired uh... so i've met her and she just kind of left and i started in nineteen ninety one but she still came in and you know for the christmas and she wrote uh... wrote christmas cards for all those female staff and all that so and and uh... kudos to her in in those days uh... south africa's is uh...

32:17 in those days was a very chauvinistic country. First of all, and it still is, I'll be honest. But as a woman, to put that off in those days, she Yeah, yeah. Yeah, for sure. I knew her a little bit. I knew her a little bit. She was still there when I was still there. And then, as you mentioned, she retired shortly just after I left. But South Africa was interesting, because they had Beulah Davis, who really I mean, certainly back in those days, now, that was a very male-oriented society, and to have a woman like Beulah set up and run the Sharks board, and she ran that baby with an iron fist. I mean, there was no – some other day I'll have some other funny stories I can share there some other time, but also they had – I've mentioned Jeanette Daubry, who worked at the Oceanographic Research Institute, another woman. She led actually the shark research part in South Africa at that time from about 1959 through the 60s and into the early 70s. And with her and John Bass and Nat Kisasami, they published some monumental works on sharks in South and Southern Africa. It actually included Mozambique and Tanzania and Madagascar, but it was just Revolutionary stuff, and again you had a couple of very dynamic women in South Africa at a time when there wasn't many women anywhere globally.

33:49 You had those two, you had Jeanne Clark in the United States, and there wasn't many others beyond that. I'm sure I'm missing someone, but there was not many women at that time in certainly the 60s and 70s that were kind of leading in the whole realm of shark research and everything. So I just wanted to mention that, raise that issue there. So for yourself, when you got in there and you started working on the aging growth, I always thought it was kind of cool that you actually had, I think, the unique experience that you did the aging growth of the whale shark, the basking shark, and the white shark, which are probably three of the most charismatic, high-profile Okay. Qualify here, the Baskin shock, eventually Lisa was the lead author on that paper. So I really, it was a very difficult long-term project trying to get these vertebrae from different museums and get them sent. And so, and then this, it was very difficult. And at one stage, well, during the data analysis, And Lisa and I spoken often because I said, I don't understand this growth curve.

35:07 How come is it two per year, one per year? What is happening? And eventually I said to her, listen, you run with it. And she ran with it and established that it's got nothing to do with age at all. So it's a structural thing. So the white shock was, I think my blacktop shock was for my thesis. And then I did the white shock And the whale shark, because we had all these whale shark strandings. So I went to cut the vertebrae out, and then you're interested, how old do they get? And you start x-raying and try different techniques. So yeah, that's Yeah, I know you did a number of other species, like the blacktip shark, Carcharhinus lumbatus was for your MSC thesis. But the fact that you were involved in three very Prominent shark species. I don't think anybody else's can have that click and state that claim to fame Anyway, but the Back a little bit on the on the the black tip shark just jumping over that for saying it was that a species that you just had a like a lot of access to vertebrae for Because of all the different species in vertebrae at the sharks A long time ago. I can't really remember, but I think it was also depending on our catches, you know, so, so

36:37 obviously the sharks would wanted to know age and growth data for species, which they caught commonly. So for like a great hammerhead catching for a year, we don't need to know the age and growth for them because it that small catch has got no impact on the greater population in the Indian Ocean, Western Indian Ocean. So I suspect that the black tip was A, we had enough vertebrae, it was a species of, you know, we catch, concern maybe, and then obviously went to more the white shark was also in those days, 1991, it was protected in South Africa. So that was also then a reason to look at that particular animal Yeah, Okay, so you guys, you still, when you were, so throughout your career you worked on the different agent growth. Did most of the common species that you guys caught in the nets, did you guys work out the agent growth for most of those during Well, yeah, I spent, I don't think we did, well the reggae was then later with the bomb carbon, but so the zambi, the tiger, the white shark, so we wanted to do the three, potentially dangerous species on our coast, so that was, and then blacktip, we did the spinner, we did the scalloped, which was also a high-catch species, yeah, and then the reggae was way back later in 2000-some, well, Yeah, yeah. Was there any other, was there any of the ones you did the

38:10 Asian growth on, were there any of them that kind of stood out? We talked about the basking shark a little bit, but were there any of the other ones that kind of stood out, that kind of surprised you? that you're working on? Yeah, look, the nice thing is with the white shark, we had our first tetracycline recapture, which corroborated the ages in that part of their lifespan. And we obviously know now that it's changed. And then we also were very lucky. We had tetracycline recaptures for the tiger shark. So I think my most surprising one was Reggie, although I did not do that aging, because Ken Goldman at the time was the only published paper on Reggies. We call them Reggies Santagas.

39:05 And his maturity age was a certain age. And Jeremy Cliffhead at the time, he started tagging Reggies up at 11 point. And those were mature pregnant females. And we started to get recaptures like 20 years later. And I think the most was 28. And then I said, I looked at this and I said, there is no way that these animals matured, that there's something not right. And then I contacted, you know, Michelle and all them. And I said, you know, I've got this recaptured vertebrae as well. And this age needs to be re-evaluated because it cannot be based on our So now you guys went through a lot of those Asian growth stuff. Did you guys, where did you, like over the course of your career, were you still doing Asian growth or did you guys kind of start doing more tracking and doing other types of studies kind No, no tracking. No tracking. We didn't have the money for this. No, we did have a tagging program. It's just normal dot tags, which are in as well. And only later, We did get some money for pingers, but we didn't have any, I know that's very sexy and all that, we never had that. We had basic plain dog tags and that was our tagging program, which was, I mean, we had a couple of thousand sharks tagged over a This might be a little, you may or may not know this,

40:37 but like there's been a lot of talk about how like the white sharks in the Western Cape have declined and there's a lot of talk about whether it's orcas that have caused it or some people think they've moved more to the east coast here. During the time you were involved, did you notice any upticks or decreases in white sharks off the KZN Look, we catch the juveniles. We used to catch the juveniles up to two and a half. I would lie now if I say something, but I don't think there was any decline because I also kept tabs on the catch trends and we would have, I don't know what it is now because I'm out of it for five years, but we would have, I would have picked up something where we alarmingly suddenly don't catch. And you have to keep in mind that this is a, 40-year data set, so there is a huge fluctuations.

41:39 And Jeremy published a paper about El Nino and El Nino effects on the white shark catches. So if you get something going down, you're going to have to monitor it for a while before you have the red flag running, because it might just be inter-annual variation. Right. Yeah. I was asked, because I know a few years ago when I was there talking to some of the dive groups off KZN, they were saying they were seeing white sharks more frequently than they used to see them in prior years. And of course, that coincided with people in the Western Cape saying they weren't seeing the white sharks as much there. And so I was kind of wondering if there might have been a, if you'd noticed any shift in terms of what was being like in cotton, where you see more white sharks caught in Let's get Toby Curtis, let's get Toby Curtis over here and check if they also got a shift like on the east coast of Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Well, we've had an office in California here where we see a lot more of the juveniles up in central California than we used to, than we ever did when I was certainly growing up. And I don't know if it's a change in the water temperature or if it's just the population is doing better. I know the marine mammal population has gone crazy out here, which I think in, in New England, we had Megan Whitton on a few months ago, and then we had Greg Scobel on, and they've seen increases in the marine mammal population.

43:04 So I didn't know if there was something similar you noticed off in South Africa during the course of your career. I know, well, back when they had the whaling station there, they certainly seemed to have no problem catching white sharks, the fishermen, off the beach near the whaling station. So they certainly, the white sharks knew where to find a meal. For sure. Yeah. So as you went along now and you sort of, so what kind of sort of research, like sort of the latter part as you guys started knocking and doing a lot of the aging growth stuff, where did you, did your research focus shift at all during your career from the aging growth Yeah. Now it has. you know, aging shocks and Steve Branstetter said that once to me is the art of smoke and mirrors. And it is very labor intensive. And then what happened over the years is we got a lot of requests, you know, as research evolved, we had a lot of requests for tissue samples. And people wanted to look at pollution, people wanted to look at isotopes, genetics, you know, as research evolved, So we had a lot of requests because we catch these animals and we want to use them. And it caused quite a consternation in the lab because Joseph from Australia sent his vials and it was with this formalin

44:34 and he wanted that. And then Joseph from UK sent these vials and he wanted those samples in that particular buffer. So it we then I decided that's it we're going to standardize this whole thing we're going to take everything from every single animal which comes in and it's going to be standard and Demian Chapman helped me quite a bit there back in 2000 I think it was when I met him at the AAS from the genetic point of view, how to sample and how to store long-term storage of these samples. And so when we get a request, we can just go and open the fridge and say, okay, which year do you want? Which species do you want? Do you want males, females, whatever? It's all sorted. It's in a database. You can pull it out. And that's then started my transition into all sorts of other things, isotopes, pollution. We did a lot of pollution stuff with Nigel Hussey's students, mercury, organo stuff. We did a lot of isotope of Nigel as well. And then I even dwelled in the dark science of taxonomy with a particular prominent, prominent Well, I say that was a actually just a kind of

46:06 jump off on that a bit we did a few years ago Sabine and I and Peter Kine did a co-authored paper on the checklist on the Chondrichthyes of South Africa, which I think was an update it hadn't been done in quite a few years and it kind of like really laid the foundation for what species occurs in in South Africa, which is important from developing like any kind of a national plan of action for any countries and stuff. And so for me, it was kind of cool to be able to do it in South Africa and to be able to work with you and others So one cool paper I must mention is the one where we looked at catch related to turbidity, moon phases, and temperature. And I've worked with anglers for quite a long time.

47:03 And as an angler, you know tides and play a big role in catching. And I was particularly interested how these three factors affect catches. And I've gotten together with somebody from DEF then And we called things murky waters and temperature, what affects sharks, catches, and how sharks sport. And there were some really interesting trends with some species. Some caught more new moon, some caught more full moon. Some species were significant, whether it was murky water or not, and temperatures differed with some species, not with other ones. So that was another totally different research You're touching something too that we've had other guests talk about. You worked a lot And you found out they were, and I presume they're, how, how is that working with them, working with the angling community from your experience?

48:02 Well, that was when we, when we started, um, the tetracycline tagging program, because you know, when you age sharks, you obviously in those days, early nineties, you have to validate your, verify your counts. So the only way to do that is injecting them with tetracycline, which we did do in the nets, but now we need to tell the anglers that if they catch one of those sharks with a different kind of tag, because up till then they were always yellow, so now we suddenly got an orange tag, and if you catch one of those and you gaff it badly and it dies, don't chuck it back, we need the backbone. So I went on an awareness of things. I went on all the national rock and surf. I went on two international competitions held in South Africa just to create awareness about this particular program. And then obviously, you also inject the animals on the beach to supplement what you And did you find it was pretty good? And I presume like the anglers, when they would catch something, one of these sharks that had been injected with oxytetracycline and stuff, did you end up provide, when you guys did all the analysis, everything, were you able to provide information Yes. Well, I mean, the guys who take that white shark, I trained some taggers then to inject on our behalf. And the guy who take the only world wide white shark, was

49:33 one of these anglers and he tagged it at Sunday's river and we caught it back in our nets. So that was very historic because I think to this day it's an injected white shark which has been recaptured. And you obviously got, these guys got Yeah, that's really good. Even though I know you've been retired, do you keep in touch with any of the anglers still at all? Do Yeah, the odd angler. I stopped going to the competitions in about 2000 or something. I went for about 10 years. I'm still a friend of Eleanor Bullen. She was a tagging officer then at Ori. I'm still in contact with her. I visited her the other day. Some of the anglers are Yeah, okay. So now that you've, since you've retired, I know you keep a pretty active schedule. You're working out at the Ushaka Aquarium there and you're Yeah, so when I retired, I wanted to volunteer somewhere because I was bored stiff. And I started off at the Center of Rehabilitation of Wildlife, which predominantly birds.

51:01 And then a friend of mine suggested to, why don't you volunteer at Ushoka? And I know everybody in Ushoka. It then was the Ori Aquarium. So I know all the curators and the staff there. And I also knew from my time at Charlesport, I knew the people who run the dangerous creatures section there, which is a very, very good exhibition on snakes. And we do have scorpions and spiders as well, and some monitor lizards and stuff. So I wanted to do something different and it was a standard joke that I arrived at Ushoka and not, not volunteer in the aquarium. So I volunteered with the snakes and I've been with them for four years now. So I'll go there once a week, maybe sometimes twice a week. I also assisted with a veterinarian team. They poached me from the, snake people, so I worked for them for a while. So it was cool stuff, you know, ultrasounds on dolphins and endoscopies on dolphins, seal health examination. So I learned quite a bit and obviously on the snake side, I've also learned a lot on those reptiles and And a lot of the snakes there are actually poisonous, right?

52:24 That you work with? Venomous, venomous, venomous, not poisonous. Yes. Venomous. Sorry. Thank you. Yeah. Correct me. So So I just realized I was on mute. Sorry. Yes. Let me let me ask you this. When you retired, did did you retire for a bit where you weren't volunteering and then you decided, no, I'm bored, like I'm going to volunteer? Or did you say before Okay. So it was just more of like, Hey, I've got nothing to do. I want to do something that's Some new skills, that kind of thing. Yeah. That's good. I Yeah. Yeah. I was good. I was going to say besides your, um, Snake, you keep pretty active. I know you're into skeet shooting, fencing, and archery, so you keep, and I know you became quite Well, not so much skeet, actually, more trap and sporting. There's different disciplines, but I'll shoot anything as long as it's orange and blue. But, so, yeah, I've, qualified for provincial colors in three years, but I didn't, I choose not

53:55 to accept it for a number of reasons. And I shot on three world championships, two in South Africa, one in America. Yeah. So I enjoyed, I've turned, I've shot the circus for about 10 years. So I've turned down now. The archery I did for a while, And the fencing, I'm still with I think you're much faster than the three of us. I'll tell I was going to say, if you're going anywhere and you need security to bring with you, you Handle venomous snakes. Now you just need to get into mixed martial arts and You did? I did try. I did knife fighting, Knife fighting, great. Yeah.

54:59 You haven't lacked for adventurous things to do since you were, quote, retired, if that's what you want to call it with from the shark sports stuff. So that's, is there anything, so with all your, so now are you still active with the, at Ushaka, working in Yeah. I did weigh a puff adder yesterday. I did catch some crocodiles, some small crocodiles. And what else did we do? Crocodiles. Caught crocs. And I fed a monitor. lizard. Yeah.

55:40 So that was, that is pretty, that's kind of cool to say that you did all that. That's pretty cool. That's one day. That's Yeah. Pretty kept pretty, pretty busy. What, so what do you have any other, what else do you have coming up that you're going to try? What's Hmm. Wow. That's a good question. Um, um, I'm fully booked. I'm quite busy. My I know you were just in Uganda and you saw the mountain gorillas a couple months ago. And I think you're going to Nepal next? Yeah.

56:26 So in between... Yeah, go So you saw the gorillas. a couple months ago, and then you're in the next, in whatever, February, so you're going to Nepal, and what Okay, so I'm going on a tiger safari, because I want to see tigers in the wild, yes, and that is in India, and then after that, I'm going to Nepal, and I'll do some trekking there in the most remote a Exactly. Exactly. Is there anything, is there anything particular you're tracking in Nepal? Is there anything in Look, any, any new species of animal, whether that's a mammal, a bird, fortunately they don't have reptiles. So I'm a photographer, I love animal photography, so I'm trekking there to see as little people as possible and as much wildlife as possible. And because there's so little people, I mean, I'm hoping for a snow leopard, I know, I know. I'll be absolutely jealous if you see red pandas. That's one You will be the first to see it. You

57:58 I'm sure I'll see it on my WhatsApp. Like, yep, there it is. Damn it. Well, obviously, you've got a lot on your plate and a lot of stuff coming up. And you've had a fabulous career. What would you, for someone coming up, starting out in the field like a Okay, so is it must I say truthful, be just be honest, be truthful. Okay, so in my opinion, work your ass off. Yeah. And that gets noticed. So don't come up with an entitlement attitude or right work hard. And establish good relationships. Sometimes, and I said that to a lot of my students, it's not what you know, it's who you know. And that is important, unfortunately, but don't take no for an answer. But I'm coming from an era where I really had to compete against male, well, not compete, but I was in a very male-oriented environment, which But there's a lot of competition out there. It doesn't matter male, female, any other gender. People are applying, they get hundreds of applications, if not more, to each job application, right?

59:23 That's why I work hard. I can attest to this, having known Sabine quite a while, is that when she started out, she was definitely one of the female pioneers in the field, because there were just not many women in the field at all. And you really, especially being in South Africa, you really had to work to get ahead, especially if you're a woman. So I just want to really very accomplish what you've had to do. And it's obviously just changed a bit today, but I think the work hard ethic is still something you And Sabin, what do you mean by work hard? So say if you have someone who just graduates, right? And they may or may not have a lot of experience. Say they graduate from an undergraduate degree or maybe have a graduate degree. What would you mean by work hard? Is it once you get the job, work hard? Or do you mean like get as many volunteerships or internships as Yeah, so try and get as much volunteer programs. Okay, obviously some of them you have to pay. And if you get into that, then don't ride it as in, oh yeah, now I can take some sharks and suntan myself on the boat or something. So really stand out by being a hard worker, diligent worker.

1:00:49 Obviously, you're going to have to have some brains and also some kind of field physically fit and wanting to get stuck and do it because that's what people remember of these programs. If you've got five volunteers and one sticks out for really working hard and doing a job in no time and can think independently, it doesn't have to be the handheld. undergraduate student doesn't need to bum work. And then that one sticks out. And then looking for three years later, there is a job application maybe as a lab helper. And that person comes in with the application. I remember that person. And that's also how I chose a certain student. is also tenacity, you know, so if certain people wrote to me on a regular basis, okay, can I get a volunteer job? And I said, sorry, we don't have anything at the moment. And if their personal aspects six months later, and they've got a nice CV, and they've got a nice what this is what I've done, blah, blah, blah, blah. then I will, when something comes up, I will then choose that person Because they're persistent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Good.

1:02:14 Yeah. Well, Sabine, it's been fabulous having you on the show today. I know it's been long overdue and we just really enjoyed catching up, hearing your stories and stuff. And I hope you come back sometime. We'll have you have back on when you've got your next adventure going on. I don't know if it's crocodile wrestling or whatever. We'll have some reason to have you back on. But thank you so much for coming on Thank you Sabine for joining us here on the Beyond Johns podcast. Dave, we talk about differences between like when you like in the 1980s and early 90s to now and we talk about like it's a completely different ballgame, not only from the technology standpoint, but from the interaction with the local community. It seems a lot different now. It seems like it's much more as part of the solution, as part of the conservation, as part of the science. I mean, just coming from your career too, you have a lot of experience with that. Uh, you know, what was your reaction to Yeah. Oh yeah. I could, I could really relate to say, as I said, the opening intro, you know, I, Sabine and I just missed each other. I, she literally, cause we compared, no, she literally arrived a few months after I had left South Africa in the early nineties. And, um, it was, uh, it was unfortunate. We missed each other. We did, it was several years before we actually connected. And of course that was by writing letters at the time because there wasn't internet. Yeah, even in the mid 90s, it was just kind of a new thing. Um, but

1:03:44 yeah, she just like, as we said at the outset, she just, you know, packed up, decided she wanted to do sharks. And again, there was not a lot of, you didn't have the opportunities like today. You can go down, you can, you know, hook up with some group down in South Africa and go down and play around with white sharks if you want. She just went down there and just looked around and managed to get on with the, uh, with the, uh, KwaZulu. Well, at the time it was the Natal Sharks board. Now it's the KwaZulu Natal Sharks board. Um, and where they do a lot of the netting. And she was one of, you know, she's one of the science officers there and she had a, she had an amazing career and the different things she, she had done. And we hope, oh, the other thing I hope people picked up on, she has a very diverse background. She, you know, especially since she's retired, she's gotten to a lot of different things. She does, she does fencing, does skeet shooting. She's works with venomous snakes and, um, and she's just kind of an adventure too. She just, you know, she's out and, uh, going out and just goes on these trips and stuff and goes on these, like, like even the, even still now she's retired, she has more time to do that kind of stuff. So that was, uh, she has, she's had a very amazing journey throughout her career. And, um, um, if you say she, and she still goes to America, Laszlo Brink society meetings. And if you happen to be there and you're a young person, definitely find her and have a, Have a beer with her, she won't turn you down, I'm sure. She might have a glass of wine instead, but definitely. But no, she's really, she's one of those, when she started, there were not a lot of women in the field at the time, but she's one of those extremely accomplished women that really was ahead of her time when she came in to do shark

1:05:17 research. And so you really want a good historical perspective of where things have gone over the last, whatever, 35 years almost now Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. It's a lot of fun I was I was really happy we got to interview her It's it's not we don't get a lot of interviews with people in South Africa, although we've been pretty good with that But we haven't had one in a while And so it was really great to to see Sabine and hear about her career and her better advice So it was a lot of fun. So with that said we'll put all of her links. She's not on social media and but we'll put what you can get all the information from our podcast. But Dave, Best way is through Instagram at Lost Shark Guy, but you can also find me on Facebook at Lost Sharks and ex Lost Shark Guy and on LinkedIn, Dave Ebert on all those forms. So, yeah. Oh, and by the way, please go to our YouTube channel. Beyond jaws and subscribe and you catch a lot of the catch a Yeah which we've passed 500 subscribers, by the way. We've passed as of this, like we were at like 514 or something like that last time I checked. So thank you so much for all those of you who subscribed. And if you want to see us and you want to see our guest, you can do so on YouTube. You can check it out. We'll put the link in the show notes below. We really appreciate all your support in listening to us over the last few years. We're going to continue on and bring you more shark scientists, probably bring back some of our other

1:06:48 shark scientists that we've talked to before and conservationists. and really get going on these shark conversations, as well as career updates and seeing where people are and how they got there. So thank you very much, everybody, for joining us. And Dave, of course, thank you so much. And Sabine, we really want to thank you. And from Dave and I, thank you so much. We really appreciate listening to the Beyond Just podcast. Have