Sharks, Science, and Storytelling with Guido Leurs

1:00:00 Guido Lures is on the Beyond Jaws podcast today. We're gonna be talking about his journey all the way up to being a postdoc and talking about not only just focusing in on one shark, but on many sharks and the fascination that we have with visual pictures and being able to connect to visual pictures of these animals and understanding the science behind it. We're gonna be talking about that on today's episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. Enjoy the episode. Let's start the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. I'm your co-host Andrew Lewin with my co-host Dr. David Ebert. Dave, that was a hard intro for me to do. I did it probably about 17 times. Kept messing up Guido's name as well as the podcast that we were on.

1:00:42 I'm struggling. Why don't you tell us how excited you are to have Guido on the podcast. Again, this is the second time being on the podcast. Yeah, we're really excited to have you. Guido is on a couple of years. A few years ago, we had the Global Wedge Fish and Guitar Fish Symposium back in November, December of 2021 and definitely check out those episodes. But we wanted to have him back for a more thorough and in-depth discussion on his research and Guido when he was on before, he was a PhD student. We're still working on his thesis, but now he's officially Dr. Guido Lourd. And so really excited to have him back on to come on. He's an amazing guy and he has a ton of stuff going on. He's from the Netherlands. And so it's not really a place you often think about a lot of shark researchers coming out of, but he did a lot of the typical things.

1:01:28 He went to South Africa. He worked in Bimini and the Bahamas, and he just had this passion for studying sharks. And he's worked in some fascinating areas in Guinea, Bissau, Mauritania. And as we talked today, some of his journey, some of the fascinating species he worked on, including the Mauritania and Wedge Fish, which we'll touch on as well during the interview. And so he's had a fascinating journey in his story, and he just did a phenomenal PhD thesis we'll talk about as well. So really hope you enjoy the show today. And hopefully by the end of the show, Andrew will be able to pronounce his name correctly. I may or may not. I'm not sure if I want to try. We'll see how that goes. Okay.

1:02:08 A little tired, but that's okay. This is going to be a great episode. I can't wait for you guys to listen to the interview. So here's the interview with Guido. Enjoy. And we'll talk to you after. Hey, Guido. Welcome back to the Beyond Jaws podcast. Are you ready to talk about the conservation of sharks and rays? Hello. Yeah. I'm always ready. Sharks. Yeah. Well, that's great to hear. Well, today on our Beyond Jaws podcast, we have a rising star in the field with the awesome Dr. Guido Lures today. And Guido is a postdoctoral researcher, and I'm going to mispronounce this at Vangen University. I apologize for my Dutch, but it's in the Netherlands. And he specializes in ecology and conservation of sharks and rays.

1:02:48 His work explores the ecological roles of elasmobranchs across a variety of ecosystems. Including large intertidal zones, coral reefs, and temperate coastal waters from different levels of fishing pressure. He has a strong focus on the intersection between ecological research and shark fisheries, particularly in regions where shark conservation action is urgently needed. Guido leads and contributes to several multiple international projects, including in Guinea-Bissau and West Africa, in the Dutch Caribbean, and in the North Sea. And while those are like three pretty widely geographic areas, we hope to hear more about. He's also a member of the IUCN shark specialist group. It has contributed to the important sharks and rays areas programs.

1:03:30 In addition, Guido organizes the annual Azores Shark and Ray Safari that teaches divers about sharks and rays and where he gives lectures about shark ecology, also at universities. He has over 10 research publications. He also the frequent contributor to the Red List assessment. And he's also a frequent presenter at conferences, including the American Lazo Branks Society symposium on wedge fishing, guitar fish, which he was actually on episode nine back on November 15th in 2021. So check that out if you haven't yet his current position is he is a postdoctoral researcher at. I won't try to mess up his university name again. And he has he does have a bachelor of science at Denbosch University of Applied Sciences and a master's of science from the same university.

1:04:19 I won't mispronounce and his PhD as well from another university that will not mispronounce again either. Anyway, sorry, but you know, the fantastic guy. I just said my dutch is not very good. So anyway, you know, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. And I'm sorry about the Dutch. Oh, don't apologize. No, I we need to figure this out. So I I have no excuse having lived in South Africa where I was exposed to Afrikaans and Dutch quite a bit. I should have a much better grasp of the language, but I don't apologize. Anyway, we're welcome. We're really happy to excited to have you here. And kind of first question when he started with is how did you get interested in the marine sciences and into shark research?

1:05:02 Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah. First of all, thanks for having me. Great to be back up on the show. Yeah, it all started, I think, with my dad watching specific movies that everybody knows about Jaws, Deep Blue Sea and basically seeing them along the sight lines or like sitting with him, seeing some of the scenes. And that all with fascinating. I think I could tell back then already that Jaws was kind of fake. How they said that the special effects were in that that great. Right. I think at the time that they came out, they were probably amazing.

1:05:44 But yeah, now, yeah, not that much anymore. But yeah, from from that, I started reading up about charts myself. Saw documentaries like Sharkwater coming from an early age. And I think for me, that was the film that showed charts in a completely different way. I loved seeing Steve Irwin on TV also. Yeah, that's all where where it started. Oh, okay. Okay. Oh, that's cool. So so when you got you grew up there and you decided to go to like decide on universities and word schooling. Yeah, you pretty much focused on those areas that would try to take you in that direction.

1:06:30 Yeah, so that's yeah, it's kind of tricky because we the Netherlands is not really known for a sharks. I also grew up 200 kilometers from the from the from the sea, which is, I guess in the US, that's not that much, but that's basically our entire country. So yeah, it was mostly books, movies, started reading a bit more scientific books also. At quite a young age, and then decided to go into applied biology. And I remember really well, like one of the first days into that study, one of the teachers asked, okay, so why did you decide to study biology?

1:07:13 So I want to I want to work for charts. And she was like, Yeah, we'll see about that. That's probably going to change in the four years. And yeah, yeah, that never changed. Yeah. Yeah, that never changed. Yeah. So when you're when you're going to the different universities, they go, because you stayed in the Netherlands, I know other some people have had on have gone to like Australia and other places, but you stayed in the Netherlands. Was it that did they the programs you went to they had just had was they had good biology programs or ecology programs? Yeah, and I think I wasn't in that sense. I wasn't ready to leave the Netherlands also. I mean, I like the Netherlands, it doesn't have a lot of sharks, but that it's a great country.

1:07:54 But it's also like the applied biology bachelor that I did forced us to like a fixed program was that you had to go abroad for six months, at least. And that could be Belgium or Germany, but it could also be in my case, South Africa. And I did a little project in the Bahamas as well. So I really like, yeah, I stayed in the Netherlands for almost all my studies, but I whenever I could go abroad and do a project with both I am at a chance. They went to South Africa, I guess it was white sharks you were looking at when you were a volunteer. Yeah, of course. What else would you do? Yeah, exactly. It was a great experience. It was seven months in in comes by.

1:08:38 And yeah, I worked on one of the cage diving boats. I think that nowadays, I'm not sure if they're still still operating, but that was a great experience. I learned a lot. So a lot of sharks. It's a beautiful country. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's for sure. So you went there and then you went to when you went to the Bahamas was a sunny group are still there when you had. I don't think he was. He wasn't. He wasn't there at the moment because we definitely went to the I didn't go to the shark lab. We had our we worked with the great hammer had sharks. Oh, okay. I worked with Craig O'Connell. Okay. We had a smaller our own expedition, basically, but we did go to shark left and he wasn't there at the time. Okay. Okay. Didn't know if he had a chance to cross path. So he went. So you did these volunteer projects in South Africa and the Bahamas. And obviously that did not diminish your enthusiasm for sharks. And so you came back. So when you came back to that, and this was all I presume this is before you started your graduate studies.

1:09:42 Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay. It was, it was all like, yeah, these, these projects really motivated me. I got the freedom also to publish. So that was very nice. Nice. Relatively early in my career. Good support from, from supervisors. So that was, that was very nice. Yeah. So, so when you came back, okay, so you came back, you started pursuing, how did you, you're obviously working at, I know that I think you're, you got some very diverse projects in different areas and stuff. So, and was it the, how did you wind up in Guinea-Bissau, which is not some place it's on the off on the beaten path, let's say. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, that's a bit of a long story. So I'll try to keep it short.

1:10:27 But that's what the podcast is for. You can keep it as long as you'd like. Yeah. We want the juicy stories too. So it's actually, the project was a bird focused project. So it was completely focused on shorebirds and the funding also came from like shorebird related, related work, but it basically started at my university at the time. One of the professors knew I was interested in charts. He went to Mauritania. So a bit more north in West Africa to work on large intertidal areas and mostly focusing on the shorebirds migratory shorebirds that migrate from the Netherlands, a big intertidal area in the Netherlands, that migrate every winter to West Africa, spent the winter there.

1:11:20 And they basically, they use these intertidal areas for feeding or fueling up to make those long migrations back to the Netherlands. And what they saw there during their expeditions was every year they went there, they saw a bigger and bigger shark fishery. So they saw that local communities were catching more and more sharks. And we're talking about they've been working in those areas for the last decades. And at some point he heard like there was somebody interested in sharks. Maybe let's let's take him on one of our expeditions. So I joined him to the Bangladesh in Mauritania. And I looked at the shark fishery there and we got this idea of like, so what if sharks in these large intertidal areas might be feeding on the same resources in these areas and the birds?

1:12:12 These large intertidal areas they full dry every six hours or every four hours. These big sandflats they full dry. That's when the birds eat crustaceans, worms, shellfish. But then six hours later, those sharks and rays might have access to the same prey species. And so this whole hypothesis, we thought out this whole hypothesis of shark fisheries indirectly through the fruit map having an impact on those micro-toreally raters that we're trying to protect in the Netherlands. And that's all like long story short. That's how we got into a project in the Bangga again in Mauritania, but also in the Bijepus archipelago, which is another large intertidal area in the Bishau.

1:12:57 Okay. So you went to both both Mauritania and Guinea Bishau? Yeah. So Mauritania was mostly during my my master's actually. We did most of the field work already during my master's and then in Guinea Bishau that was mostly during the PhD. So every year of the PhD, we did two expeditions there. Nice. Was there any specific you were you just trying to basically document what you were seeing? Was that part of the part of it? Yeah, so I think when we first went to the Bishau archipelago, of course, we started working with the National Fisheries Institute. We looked at what what have you been collecting and what they've been collecting on sharks. And we saw that there was almost no species specific information.

1:13:46 So that was basically the first part. We came in with these big ecological questions. And of course, we saw that we needed to take a couple of steps, steps back. So, yeah, we did we did a study using EDNA to sort of to try to quickly come up with a species list, but also looking at the fisheries. We started with the National Fisheries Institute. We started an observer program. So landing site surveys. And of course, yeah, for the food web related questions, we started catching animals and taking samples from animals that were captured in the fisheries and then doing stabilized analysis. Yeah, so it was very diverse.

1:14:28 So I guess so obviously one of the big critically endangered groups there are the wedge fish and guitar fish. And one of the unique species there of people that not listening in may or may not be aware of is called a false shark ray. And it's a genus that was just described in 2016. Rinko, Rinko, Rina, Mauritania, I'm trying to remember. I know it's Rinko something I can. But can you tell us a little bit about that? I mean, I've never seen it, obviously. Yeah, I wish I wish. But I think there's only a couple of photos of the species I've heard of people like, of course, we asked fisheries observers there in the Bangla Ghen because the species is only known from the Bangla Ghen also not even outside that that specific intertidal area in Mauritania.

1:15:27 Yeah, we asked the fisheries observers and some of them said they've seen it. I'm wondering how accurate that is. But I definitely one of the fisheries observers helped me that that he saw it. And I think he also provided one of the pictures that made it into the publication. But yeah, I've never seen it. We never picked it up. There are EDNA in any other area. But yeah, did you did you see any of the other any of the other guitar fish? Isn't there a one of the one of the wedge fish there? Liberti occur in that area?

1:16:08 Yes, Liberti is African wedge fish. Yeah. OK. So we when we had the fisheries observer program running in the beach because archipelago in Guinea, the south, that is, we had at some point, we had three local students that worked on our project. One of them did the landing site service and two of them did interviews with the with the fishing community trying to reconstruct like very roughly population trends based on their experiences over the past decades. And while they were doing one of the interviews, one of the fishermen said, like, I captured this Casa play in the sea.

1:16:50 Casa play is this local, the local name for a guitar fish. And he said Casa, I've been data, which means like a guitar fish with with speckles like with with dots. And luckily, everybody has phones nowadays. So he made a couple of pictures and he showed it to us and the students and send it to me. And I think it was just before Christmas. And I got this this nice surprise on WhatsApp. And unfortunately, it was too late for us to take samples. But yeah, we were able to confirm that it was African much fish. And I think the previous record of that species in the beach goes from 2006.

1:17:34 So that's that was quite a nice, nice record. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you're so you spent so since then, are you used to you still go back there now pretty regularly to Guinea Bissau? Is it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I did my PhD mostly focused on on the food webs of these large. Yeah. If I can if I can give you if I can just give a plug, this is his thesis. And thank you very much for sending me a copy. This is an amazing. This was just an amazing. He has a thesis book. I've never seen one that detailed before. And that like that looks like a textbook you could sell to to people. I actually had people ask me if they can buy one. But of course, I'm not allowed because it's university property. But right. Yeah. Right.

1:18:18 It was it was an it was I just had to shout out. That was a very, it's a very impressive thesis you did on that area there. It's super impressive. So and again, thanks for the layout. Like what made you decide to do that type of layout? Like that, like I said, like the usually with it with a with this thesis, like my master's thesis was the traditional, you know, you just get it bound by what the university kind of gives you. There's no illustrated photos. There was like it was all, you know, black and white and so forth. I guess what made you decide to do this? Was that it was that something with the university that did that is just something special, the or you decide to make it, you know what, I want to I work so hard on this. I want to make sure that people get you said.

1:19:01 It's a bit of a it's quite common actually in the Netherlands that that you design your thesis and that it's also still printed as a book. I love it. Yeah, so it's really nice. But I, I mean, I always say I spend I can I can spend days designing a graph or a paper or something. So I really like visualizing stuff. Awesome. So then, yeah, of course, I also want my teachers to look at look a certain way. But I had help from a designer. So that was that's, that's awesome. Because you don't see that often. Like, well, I don't see that often. And, you know, you write your thesis, and then you kind of set it aside, you know, and you use it. Yeah, look at the pictures. That's unreal. And that's the back of the book. Yeah, that's the cool because the drawings on the back there made by by one of the master's students that did this project with me and then the drawings on the cover is another master's student.

1:19:54 Love it. So it was really, yeah, really nice. Yeah, for those who are listening to the to the audio version of this, I highly recommend that you go to our YouTube channel. Check it out because it's a really cool and look at the photos. That's awesome. That's amazing. Yeah, but I think this is this is important if you want people to know what your thesis is about, right? If you just put it up in the school library or whatever in the University library, people may not pick it up just to see it. People are visual. A lot of people are visual learners. They want to see the pictures. They want to see the effort put in. I really, really like this. This has got me all jazzed up. I really like the way to did the University pay for it. Did you have to go over and pay for it yourself?

1:20:37 Well, it was a bit bigger than normally. So in that sense, no, but like we we got some project funding also for it and the University plays it. Awesome. So yeah, so that's really, yeah, really nice. And I also think like it's really important because of course we work on species that often sell themselves also. But of course, they're so fascinating. And yeah, if you can show that in such a way, I really like to do that. And I also try it in lectures or presentations I give is like make it very visual and not too much. There's a lot of text in this book. Well, just so people know, there's like there's like 11 chapters, which I gather to me probably about 11 papers out of that. And they're all they're just, yeah, I just started going through it. I thought when I first got it last year, I just like just about pretty much gone through the whole thing, whole thing, like front to back was frickin amazing.

1:21:40 Amazing. So it's good. It's good to hear that at least somebody is reading it. Yeah, I just was. Well, it's so nice when I got it. I was like, thanks for sending me a copy. But it was just like, I just read through it. I go like, wow, this is like freaking amazing. So thank you. Thank you. But anyway, so hopefully, I just get it. I don't know how much how many of those papers you've published so far. But yeah, yeah. So the first thing I got back to the 11 chapters. The first one is the introduction. And the last one is like a synthesis kind of chapter. So, you know, we don't publish those. But yeah, there's there's one. I'm waiting for the for the proof. And then there is one more that I need to submit.

1:22:24 So, and then they're all published. Yeah, that's yeah. That was that was pretty, I said it was pretty awesome. It was pretty awesome. Not knocking other people finishing their thesis, but it was it was pretty awesome, though, the way the whole thing looks. So anyway, anyway, but now you just finished like last June, was it about almost about almost a year, about a year ago, yeah, almost a year ago, even though this episode will probably end of Aaron and June. So it'll be about the one year. And a voracious thing. But we're, yeah. It's scary to think that it's already one year ago. Yeah. I won't tell you how many years it's been since I finished mine, but it's been a while.

1:23:04 So, yeah. It's been over 20 years for Rhymaster, so. Yeah, I know. It's funny how that sneaks up on you. All of a sudden it's like, oh, it's been a year. And then suddenly it's been 20 years. And then it's been like, then it's been like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, a lot longer than that. Okay, so I should be happy. It's just one year. Oh yeah, I know, be happy. Yeah, it's still fresh. Yeah, it's still fresh and get it, and just, yeah, get some of the stuff out. So you got, so you finished that. And this was all, it was all, you know, based in your Africa work, but you're also doing a lot of some work in the, in like the Dutch Caribbean. Like where, where are you exactly working there? Yeah, yeah. So now after my PhD, so I'm also still working in the Guinea-Bissau actually as part of a post-op, but I'm also, I'm actually started doing that in my master's already.

1:23:53 I'm involved in more like a movement ecology project in the Dutch Caribbean, Islands of Saba, Cinderstasius and Saint Martin in between. So yeah, we basically have a big dataset on acoustic telemetry of Caribbean reef sharks, (indistinct) bear sharks, some tiger sharks. Yeah, and that's a dataset I think spans back almost 10 years now. So, see, and that's also confronting for me because that means 10 years ago, I think, I did my project.

1:24:35 So that is, yeah, the start of my master's. Yeah, so, so you see how it sneaks up on you. You went from one year for your PhD to 10 years. So, yeah, it won't get any better. Yeah, so yeah, it sneaks up on you pretty quickly. And you're still actively working on some of those projects now you said? Yeah, so we have, we have funding to, to continue that project. So where I think this November we'll go there, focus on some different shark species. We have a big dataset on Caribbean reef sharks. Wow. I think in total, I wouldn't say like over 50 individuals with transmitters.

1:25:18 So I think we have enough of those. So I think we're going to focus more on, on tagging near sharks and tiger sharks also. Oh, okay. Yeah, I look forward to that. We do some trophic ecology there as well. So really trying to explain niche, niche overlap using the telemetry, but also looking at stabilized types. Specifically, I was actually doing the analysis just now, juvenile silky sharks and juvenile peruvian reef sharks. So that's quite interesting. Are you doing much diving on that project? Not really to be honest, because while I wasn't working on this project during my PhD, I was involved with the data analysis.

1:25:58 Hopefully next time we go there, there will be some diving, but Dutch law is a bit complicated when it comes to diving for your job. You need to have a lot of training and insurance. So that's a bit of a hurdle that we have to take first. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and then the other project is a newer project you mentioned is in the North Sea. Yeah, yep, yep. So, okay. Yeah. What are you doing there? Yeah, it's a bit of a diversity in projects. If we talk about it like this. So that's actually a project that still has to start, but over the next three years, we'll be looking at also acoustic telemetry of quite a range of species.

1:26:47 So we have toque, smote hound, small spotted cat shark, but also some skate species, common stingray. So it's a combination of acoustic telemetry. I do that with two good colleagues of mine who focused more on that part. And I will be more looking at the food drive role and segue isotopes, diet of the species. And it's a really integrated project to see how then movement ecology of the species also explain their diet, for instance. Well, it seemed like, I did a little of this. I did actually a lot of this when I was young, like yourself, starting out, like working in these sort of temperate cool water, tropical temperate.

1:27:34 It's, I always found kind of fascinating just sort of trying to look at the ecological role of different species in these different systems. And so even though some of the tropical ones are probably more diverse, you probably find the same sort of species or different species, but fill in similar roles or niches, but just in a very different thing. Yeah, we see that like, for instance, if I compare Guinea-Bissau, like that's the whole reason that we first went to the Piccicosa Archipelago. It's that it resembles a tropical version of our Waddensie coastal area that we have in the Netherlands. But of course, species richness wise or species composition wise, it's completely different.

1:28:19 It has much more sharks and shark species than what we have in the Netherlands and much bigger also, completely different food availability also. It's also very similar in a way. Well, even like the rays you'd have skates are probably more common, pretty much the common species there. And you don't probably have as much, I don't even know if you even have any like a guitar fish or anything up in that part at all. We have the Dasyat spasinaka, common stingray, but that's for the rest, they're all skates. All skates, yeah. And then down in Guinea-Bissau, you probably don't have any skates you're dealing with at all, I'm guessing. No, I've seen one skate species.

1:29:02 And now I don't remember the species name, but in one of the fisheries databases from the Bongna Gensa, Mauritania. Okay. But it's, yeah, in Guinea-Bissau, I've never seen a skate. Yeah, they probably, I'm sure most of them are offshore, deeper, deeper water. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, well, that's kind of cool. So you're doing, I was reading some of the stuff you're doing, like what type of stuff you do with hammerhead sharks? Is that more in the crib, back in the Caribbean again? No, that's more in West Africa. Okay. Yeah, so we actually, I just came back, what is it, two, three weeks ago from Guinea-Bissau. We set out to find black-chimed guitar fish and scalloped hammerheads, to put pop-up archival tags on them.

1:29:51 We couldn't find the hammerheads, unfortunately, but we did before, but they were too small to be tagged. We did find a lot of black-chimed guitar fish, so that's good. We got all our transmitters out. But it's, yeah, it's quite interesting. The hammerheads, I have quite a batch of fin clips of all the sharks and rays that I work on. But we had some students look at them, the fin clips from our hammerheads in Guinea-Bissau, thinking they were all scalloped hammerheads based on their morphology, that they're all juveniles. And I think half of them, even ones that I had in my hand, I was convinced they were scalloped hammerheads.

1:31:00 They came back as great hammerheads. I think scalloped is still more common. I've seen a lot of great hammerheads before, so I always thought I can differentiate between the spaces quite well.

1:31:43 Sometimes you just never know, right? It will always test you. What's been the most interesting shark array in the Guinea-Bissau and the Martina? What's the most interesting one you've come across so far? That's a good question. I think there's two, like I really like juvenile bull sharks. We find them in like really shallow waters. There's this story that we, like we walked onto these intertidal mudflats during low tide because of other work. We wanted to sample the food web, so we had to go onto these mudflats to collect worms and by those and stuff.

1:32:28 But just before we did that, we deployed one of our fishing nets just off that sand flat in like knee deep water, expecting the tide goes up and then we start catching something. And we were on that mudflat for maybe 20 minutes or so. And I walked back to the boat, but the boat was further out, was too shallow for the boat to come and pick us up. So we were walking through that water and I see something in the net. And yeah, it was a bull shark and it was just there in what, 40 centimeters of water, maybe 50 centimeters of water. And it was, yeah, that was my first realization. Like these animals really use those in the tidal areas and they also really go into the shallow waters.

1:33:18 And I think also my colleagues had to get used to that idea because they didn't work on sharks. They didn't expect juveniles bull sharks there when they jump off the boat into the water. So when you say it's juvenile, like what size are we talking about? Juvenile. A meter. Oh, meter. Okay. Small, small. Small, small. Okay. Okay. Like that wasn't like a meter and a half, two meters. No, no, they were like, I think we caught three on that spot and they were really within a centimeter from each other. Okay. So like, 100 centimeters, 102, 103, something like that. We also see the big ones. So now in our most recent expedition, we had one that was two and a half meters. Yeah, so I just, I really like bull sharks, just because of the connectivity with freshwater systems and they're very common in Guinea B. So we see them, we see them breach.

1:34:14 There's one specific spot where we see them jump like two and a half meter bull shark. So it's one specific channel. I don't think I've ever heard about, heard that for bull sharks, other species. I don't think I've heard for bull sharks that that would be pretty cool to catch on film sometime. Get those, get those, get those jumping, get those literally jumping and stuff. So you have, so you have, so, so you're still, you're still like, how you're still in the middle of this project here, obviously. You go, you go say twice a year, you go there, Tae? We try to, yeah. We try to, of course, during my PhD, we had, we had COVID also. So I didn't go for quite a, quite a while. But now for this project runs another two years, we, I tried to go for two expeditions a year. Yeah. Okay. And what, and so what are your, what are your, what is it with your, with your plans as far as like going forward on that project?

1:35:08 What do you, would you have any goals or any new goals you're hoping to achieve in the next couple of years? Yeah. So I think the biggest, how do you say the pillar of that project or the biggest deliverable I would like to have is, is really, we're setting up this database on, on small scale fisheries and specifically their shark and ray catches. So I'm designing this whole database. There exists a survey tool that they collect the data with. And then the idea is that that data is automatically analyzed and feedback to the national fisheries institute. So that all the shark and ray data is species specific and readily available. Yeah. Are you working with the obviously you're working with the community there?

1:35:54 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, and the big, big part is that we, we also train master's students. There's two master's students on the project now that are doing the masses in Portugal. Okay. And the idea is that they will be trained using this database and actually also taking the lead in that when the project is done. Okay. Okay. And what I got to ask in that part of what's the, what's the primary language in that part of Africa? Is it French? Portuguese. Oh, it's Portuguese. Yeah. Yeah. So actually, in the region, it's quite common that countries like that's French is the main language, but maybe some Portuguese. And then they also speak Creole. So a more local language. And then on the islands where we work, they also speak Pichigo, which is completely different to the other two languages. And I don't speak any of them. I don't, I understand Portuguese. I don't speak it.

1:36:48 Right. So, and I see that that's a good way for me also to really work with local students and really making them part of our expeditions and also making sure that when the project stops or when I am maybe not working there anymore, that they can take over. Right. Right. Yeah. Especially you get to get this long-term database going to be good to have people, especially local people to buy in on the whole, whole project and stuff. So where do you see you got all this stuff going on now? Where do you kind of see your career going from here? Oh, well, I'm in the postdoc now. So I hope to, well, finish those projects first. But at some point, yeah, I've quite a clear path that I would like to go to. I think my fascination is really in the, how do you say that the ecological role of shards in these large intertidal areas, but also on whole reefs.

1:37:48 Maybe also more like looking at a comparison and the influences of fisheries on their ecological roles. But that's really something that like now the coming years, I want to really think out my own research line and work towards that. But yeah, hopefully I like working at the University and the research Institute that I'm at. Hopefully I can stay. Hopefully you stay on there. Well, let's get what kind of advice would you have for like a young person just starting out even though you are young, you're just a kid to me, but. But if someone say younger is like maybe starting college and stuff wants to pursue a career, what advice would you have for them?

1:38:33 Yeah, that's a nice question. I get quite some students now and that makes me feel older. So quite some students asking me like, hey, can I do a project with you? And I would say like, especially for like students in the Netherlands also, it's, as I said, it's not a country that's known for charts. If you really want to pursue something like that, be prepared to work your ass off. You have to really find the projects and travel a lot. But also try to be part of those projects from an early stage.

1:39:18 Early stage. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And get a lot of field experience. Yeah. And see if you can publish with your supervisors at an early stage in your career, because that's really where you learn all the all the parts of what it's like to do research. And don't like what I what I often get from students is that they want to do field work. And I, I understand that because that's often the nicest part. But if you collect a lot of data in the field, but you can't make sense of it afterwards on the computer, then. Yeah, that's not going to work. Yeah, that's true. Publish the guys that published. That's great. That's great.

1:39:59 That's great. You know, I really want to thank you for coming on the show and sharing your experiences and everything. And we'll definitely have to do it. Sometimes I've got to go with you on expedition, see if we can find this this false shark ray sometime. That's like I think you will love it. Oh, regional. So yeah, it's yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Another lost shark guy episode. Lost shark episode. So a shark guy. Yep. Check out. Yep. Absolutely. Anyway, thanks. Thank you very much. Guido for joining us today and best of luck on your on your projects there. Thank you for having me. Thank you very much. Absolutely. Look forward to having you back on. Thanks.

1:40:39 Thank you, Guido for joining us here on the Beyond Jaws podcast. Dave, you know, I love the fact that we have a researcher on that's talking about that's doing research on a number of different species. I think that's a real asset, not only for his career, but also just for sharks in general to have somebody who's looking at questions that go across different species. How important is that to shark science? Oh, it is. You know, he's he's he's covered a lot of different tax. And you also in a good in addition to working in all these different aspects that he's covering, he's also working in a part of the world. There's almost nothing known about and you know, that sort of West African area, Guinea Bissau and more attainable. I mean, these are as he explained, these are not easy areas to work in. And you go in there. It's it's you're out. You're out in the field there where I know he's told me in the past, like, you know, they got to find certain areas to just to try to even get like an Internet connection or anything if they're out there. Of course, when I used to field work, we didn't have Internet.

1:41:31 So you just learned to suck it up in my opinion. But but, you know, he's he's going to those places that most people could not get into. And he's looking at he's looking for species that there's almost nothing known about that. There's nothing known about them. And yet there's these are some of the most critically endangered species in the world. Some of these, some of these, especially some of the guitar fish and wedge fish that he's he's found out there. His search for this, the more attaining wedge fish. We talked a little bit about which is one of definitely a priority for me to like like to join him in one of his expeditions sometime and see if we can go find this thing. That'd be amazing. I mean, that's the species hasn't been seen in decades. And, you know, we kind of worried about that one. But he's got a fascinating story. Is it coming from the Netherlands? He just did a school in there, found people that he could work on, they could work with.

1:42:19 And he's just he's he does. He's super busy. He goes out. He does these eco tours out to the Azores with people for diving with sharks. He goes to Africa. He's teaching. He's lecturing. He's starting to mentor students. I mean, he's just just he's kind of doing it all right now. Of course, he's at that early stage of his career where you're pretty young and enthusiastic. And you know, it's why not figure things out, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. He loves the best. Yeah. Yep. Yep. And that was fascinating story. I was really glad we had him on. Well, definitely he's definitely will definitely have him back on later on and see how he talks about some more in depth as few as his projects. But yeah, it was really good. And I tell the audience to it took us like close to a year to after.

1:42:59 Close to a year to actually get him on because he finished his PhD last year and I wanted to have on right then, but he was just so busy and on the go that we just it was just taking us, like I said, probably about nine, 10 months to like finally find a time we could all meet up. So yeah, anyway, good at least a good last month and a half. We're just trying to like, when are you? Well, I'm in the field for seven weeks. Oh, okay. That's yeah. We're jealous, but that's good to hear. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me ask you this, David. It's a bit of a tangent, but it kind of goes off like, you know, Guido looks for, you know, critically endangered species and new species. Obviously, it's something that you have in common with them. You've made a career out of it. It seems a lot in the news lately that, you know, biodiversity is under attack species at risk or newly discovered species or species who have gone extinct or have thought to gone extinct as many of the ones that you've seen. Why is it so important that we focus in on these species? Not only from like a science and discovery point, but also from a particular protection standpoint. And I'm being a little selfish here, Dave, because in in Ontario, they've just they've just gutted a species at risk and endangered species in Ontario. And, you know, a lot of people aren't really sticking up for it because it's like, well, we need to develop and this and that. And they're destroying habitat and they're destroying this and that. Why is it so hard to sell biodiversity on people? And why is it so important for biodiversity to be protected? You know, to me, it's it's kind of a it's not just selling it. I think a lot of times it's the people selling it that don't do a very good job on it.

1:44:29 Because this goes back to the falls back to a lot of the NGOs and foundations that claim to support biodiversity. And, you know, again, you know, you and I have been friends for a while. So you kind of little my my histories. It's not easy to get funding to actually do biodiversity. Everybody talks about it. But when they come down to it, they're always back on to white sharks or tiger sharks or, you know, some high profile species, but trying to get funding to do like what I do or like what Guido is doing. And there's some others out there. They're doing it. But it's really difficult. So we talk about how, like some of the local provincial governments or state governments, let alone at a higher federal level, don't get behind it. It's it's the grassroots level.

1:45:11 It's really not well done. And I think you get a lot of lip service. I mean, the only couple of groups that I'll just mention, they've been supporters of mine is the Save our Seas Foundation and and more recently, the Ocean Census. I mean, they've been really they've like Ocean Census focuses on describing new species, Save our Seas Foundation. I think I've described at least a dozen new species, thanks to their support. And I think it's a great question, too. So you have a couple groups, but in the bigger picture, you just don't see a lot of a lot of get more lip service, I guess. And so it's kind of it fails at a lot of levels, Andrew, I guess what I'm saying. Because we don't make a big deal about these species and we don't like profile these species enough in terms of from a communication standpoint, I feel that when it does come time for politicians to gut an act or to take away policy or to destroy that policy, it's an easy sell for them to do it because people are like, well, like, OK, so these species are going extinct anyway.

1:46:09 So why would I need to why would I need to be important? What they don't realize is the habitat that gets protected because of the protection of these species can be extremely important to whether it's on land or in water to your local environment. You have no idea how important it is. Yeah, it's like, you know, it's like the it's like the song and another brick in the wall. It's like you don't know. You don't you really don't know. And I hope I'm not an agent myself. So you know, you know, I'm talking about Pink Floyd. So for the for young people don't know. Yeah, but but yeah, but but that's really what it is. It's like, you know, I always also refer to it like, you know, it's like you've got all these different bricks there and like you start taking them away. At what point do you wait till the wall falls down and say, hey, we got a problem here. And, you know, oftentimes when I speak publicly, I talk about by the time it gets up to a level where you notice that there's a problem with like white sharks or tiger sharks, these top predators.

1:47:02 You've got a whole bunch of whole suite of species that have probably been impacted. Yeah. And, you know, and if I use it, I haven't realized it yet. Right. And I give it just a touch. You know, I if a little bit of a plug for the YouTube series that Andrew and I are working on on my YouTube channel at Lost Shark Guy. But this whole thing about searching for lost sharks, I kind of outline a lot of the reasons in those in the series. Why, why it's important to know these know about what what you're losing. And so, you know, so it's like you it's it's impacting a lot of what's going on here. I think one of our earlier episodes with Chris Fallows talked about that, that he thinks more with this effect in the white sharks, a lot of the other shark lower level trophic level shark species have disappeared. Yeah. And so I and so I think there's something to that.

1:47:53 And I think that it comes back to, especially if you're a young person starting out, work on something like, you know, like what Agrita is doing or some of the stuff I've done and others that they're not that they're not the high profile charismatic ones, but that's really it's going to have a more broader impact, I think, from a conservation and from a biodiversity standpoint. Agreed, agreed. I want you know, this is this is the the beauty of doing these types of podcasts. We were talking about we got a little bit of a tangent because of this this question that I had. And we get into a conversation. That's what these podcasts spark. And so it'd be nice to see more biodiversity podcasts come out and start talking about this kind of stuff because we need to really put a high profile on these species. So I think it's really important.

1:48:36 David, this is this was awesome. You know, we want to thank you so much for not only, you know, talking about your journey, but sparking this wonderful conversation that will probably clip and put elsewhere. But we're definitely going to bring it back to, you know, we'll obviously have him back to talk about some of his projects on the species to highlight those species before people start to say, hey, let's just destroy this habitat and forget about these species. That are unknown to a lot of the people. But David, I want to thank you so much and, you know, thank you so much for joining us. Dave, people want to get a hold of you. You mentioned the last shark guy YouTube. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They can search lost shark guy. And if they want to go to get connected with you, I believe it's Instagram, right? Yeah. Instagram. Instagram is best ones. Also lost shark guy. So Instagram and YouTube and go subscribe and follow and keep up on the latest shark discoveries.

1:49:20 Absolutely. And we'll put in Guido's social media links if when he gives them to us. And so we have those. And I want to thank you so much, guys, for listening to this episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast from David. I want to thank you very much. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.