Technical Shark Diving and Predator Science with Dr. Yannis Papastamatiou

0:00 We have a special episode for you today. We have Dr. Yannis Papa-Mustiou, who's on the program today to talk about his career in predatory science, shark science, but really focusing on predator dynamics. He went from growing up in the UK to now living in Florida to study predatory science. We're gonna talk about how he went from there to Athens to Long Beach, California to Hawaii, and now he's in Florida. It's a great story. I can't wait for you to hear it. Let's start the show. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host or co-host Andrew Lewin here with my co-host, Dr. David Ebert.

0:41 Dave, this is a fun episode. We're really getting into the weeds of technical diving and scientific diving here. Something we haven't done, I don't think ever on this podcast, a really important one, because this is something that everybody asks all the time. Do you need a scuba diving certification to do this type of work? The type of work that that you honest does you do, don't you? Yep. Yep. Yeah. Most people come in there, they say, well, I have a certified scuba diver. That's that's good. But most of shark research don't really need to use it. Use be assertive. It helps, but it doesn't really need to be certified stuff. Yani does a very different. It's extreme technical diving. And we really get into it in this episode here.

1:21 And I think a lot of young people will be interested to know just what's involved in it. It's not something you do over a weekend or even a week. It's as you'll find out, it's quite a lengthy procedure to get into it. And but he's had some amazing stories and experiences going all over the world, doing these mesophotic zones, looking at hammerhead sharks and and Galapagos sharks and all other types of sharks and seeing them in their environment like that, that few people ever will. So I really hope people enjoy it and enjoy the conversation today with with with Yani in terms of his his experiences as far as doing technical diving. Absolutely. With that said, here is the interview with Yannis Papas to enjoy and we'll talk to you after.

2:03 Hey, Yannis. Welcome to the Beyond Jaws podcast. Are you ready to talk all things sharks? I'm looking forward to it. Thanks for having me. Welcome. Welcome to another episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. We have an outstanding researcher today. We have Dr. Yannis Papa Stama to you. I was going to work in the name there. He's an associate professor at Florida International University. Yannis was born and raised in London in the United Kingdom, but he spent his teenage years in Athens, Greece. He moved back to the United Kingdom to do his undergraduate in oceanography at the University of Southampton before moving to the U.S. to become a master's degree with Chris Lowe, who's been on a couple of the episodes of the Beyond Jaws podcast.

2:43 He then went on to the University of Hawaii to do his PhD. And then after doing a couple of post doctorates at the University of Florida and the University of Hawaii and a research fellowship at the University of St. Andros, he took a position at the Florida International University, where he's currently an associate professor and he runs the Predator Ecology and Conservation Lab. His studies on the physiology and behavioral ecology of marine predators and use the information for conservation efforts. He's an extremely skilled diver. He uses technical tools to study the ecology of mesophotic reefs using those areas deeper than 50 meters. He's extremely well published with over 120 peer reviewed publications, six book chapters. He's a frequent peer reviewer for various journals and he's mentored numerous graduate students, including Alison Towner, who's also been on the podcast.

3:31 And he's frequently on documentary programs such as Discovery Channel and Nat Geo. Now, top of all that, he's also a black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu. And so so with that, Janis, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So kind of the question we always start off with. How did you get interested in sharks and marine biology? Well, you know, I was born in in London, obviously fairly landlocked, but my father was Greek. So we used to go to Greece every summer. This is where I still lived in the UK and, you know, swim and snorkel a lot. And that's really where it kind of started for me. And then there was a couple of things that sort of added to my interest.

4:12 It really got me into sharks and wanting to do marine biology. And one was actually seeing Jaws. So Jaws had a big positive effect on me in the sense that I was kind of intrigued. And I found this character Hooper, who is the marine biologist, kind of this nerdy guy, but who was basically one of the heroes of the film. And I kind of love that. So that that played an important role as well. And the other one was actually the Nat Geo documentary on sharks, which was from the early 80s. And obviously back then, there weren't many shark documentaries in fact, very, very few. And so this one had come out. I had a VHS copy of it. And there's one that Eugenie Clark was on. And I watched that watch that until like the tape was just, you know, run dry.

4:56 And I actually got to just to go off on a tangent. I got to meet Jeannie at AES in 2003, where you were there two day first time I met you. And I got to tell her that story. And then she also has her kids were half Greek. So we had that connection as well. So it was really nice. I was able to to let her know that. And that, you know, that was a big inspiration on me. And so that's kind of that's kind of where it grew. And, you know, my love for not just the ocean, but for sharks specifically. And did you. So when you started like. But so by the time you were like in high school stuff, you kind of knew you were going to go off. You were interested in pursuing sharks. And I was already laser focused on that. That was going to be my career and everything was kind of set up for that.

5:39 So I got to ask you, because I had the same experience when I was in high school. When you went to see your guidance counselor and you told him you were going to study sharks, what was the reaction you got? You got the look like you were crazy. And now I mean, that's just almost kind of normal, right? I think a lot of people, I mean, everyone wants to study sharks. But back then, it really was not really the case. You know, there was I think shark we could started mid 90s. It started so really hadn't started in the 80s. And even then it was very, very when it did start, it was very, very small. So just documentaries were not, you know, there weren't many. And so that you didn't see sharks from TV every day. It's not like it is now where you can always tell on the television that somebody's not a shark.

6:19 Right. Right. If I just give a quick to you mentioned the Jeanie Clark National Geographic show, I think it came out about 1983 or 84. And I was going to say, I remember seeing that one myself. I was just starting my master's degree at the time. And if any of you have a chance to go find it, if you want to see a really I thought it was one of the best that geo programs on sharks. And I was fantastic. Yes, fantastic. It was fantastic. And she was really ahead of her time. So I remember very clearly they were interviewing her and asking her, what should you do if you if you're in the water and a shark comes across from past years was like, you don't need to do anything. You know, just look at it and be, you know, happy to see this beautiful animal, which again, you'd expect to hear that now.

7:02 But in 1984, that was not that was not a common response to seeing a shark. So she really was ahead of her time. And that made an impression on him. And I remember thinking, well, you know, this if this shark expert says that then then yeah, well, you know, I'll I'll I'll push back a little on that. I think for a lot of people, they're still petrified of sharks. I think there's people who know sharks and watch those documentaries, watch Shark Week and listen to people like yourself and Dave and who know that who are experts in sharks and be like, oh, OK. So maybe we don't have to worry about too much. And we see more videos of people around sharks. So maybe that's it. But when I talk to people here in Ontario, they are like some people like, no, I'm not going in the ocean like there are sharks in there.

7:43 I am not going in. So I think we still have a lot of work to do to to still change that perception. But definitely, you know, Eugene Clark was was one of those who were who started that movement, you know. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say on the side and maybe you honestly had the same experience that I know living here in the Monterey area, people that are around the I've mentioned before, people that live here. You just sort of take sharks as part of the environment. If you go surfing, you just don't think about it. But if people come over like from the Bay Area or from inland to the coast, then they're like you'd mention their sharks out there. They're terrified. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So your experience to I mean, the same thing with like Hawaii. I mean, if you if you're talking to the people who grow grown, I grew up there.

8:25 So, yeah, I mean, they've always experienced sharks around them regardless of anything else. And that's just kind of being you know, if you want to surf, you're going to encounter sharks. But if you haven't experienced that before and you come in, then then it can be a very different story. But I think again, obviously, there is a lot of fear still of sharks. But if you think of like, you know, you can see the videos now of people off the coast of Miami and there's a shark in the water. And sometimes a big one, a big hammerhead, big tiger. People are just sitting there. You same as with the juvenile white sharks off of California. You have people on, you know, on paddle boarding or even swimming. And they're like, you know, they're just the level of fear that you would have seen 20, 30 years ago is not the same. But obviously, again, they probably never be a time when nobody is scared of them.

9:08 I understand. You got to give them that respect, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. You can go you can go too far in the other direction. Of course. Right, right, right. So so you got out of so when you finished up, obviously, went out, went on to university and you picked up the University of Southampton. Is it I didn't know I don't know much about it. She shares a pretty good university for. Yes, Southampton has, you know, has one or at least did one of the largest oceanography centers in Europe at the time. And, you know, it's one of the top programs for studying oceanography. And it's still is kind of amazing to me how often I run into other Southampton undergraduates. So my friend that I did my undergraduate with, he's a professor at University of Miami, Alice, the harbor, who Harbourn is a coral reef ecologist.

9:54 And the office next door to me was an undergrad at South. Oh, Charlie Hoover is who you may know from Australia. Wasn't on the show undergrad from Southampton. So there's a lot of us that came from from Southampton. And again, I wasn't, you know, studying sharks. I actually was working more on deep sea invertebrates. But, you know, it gave me it gave me my initial background in sort of marine sciences. Well, that's what I was going to ask. You know, oceanography and, you know, you know, studying predators as you do now is a lot different. What made you go to an oceanography program instead of a more of a marine biology program? Well, so my my it was oceanography with a minor in marine biology. And again, you know, at the time in the UK, there was very little to no shark work going on.

10:40 I think the only person who might have been doing shark work then was David Sims. And I think it was either maybe still a PhD student. So it was really not much was going on at the time. This was in the sort of mid 90s. Right. So there really wasn't anywhere to go and study sharks per se. But, you know, my my dad was a was a scientist. He was an engineer. And he was actually something which I get to later, which was really true. It's like you don't need to specialize at this point. We think getting just a good background in science. You don't have to be specializing in theology now. Just just do an undergrad that has a solid education. On the basics and that'll be fine before you move on up.

11:21 You know, I just got a diverter saying you mentioned David Sims. I don't know if you knew this or not, but David Sims, Nick Dolby and Jim Ellis were all in the same lab at the same time together. I didn't know that. Yeah. Was it was this at Plymouth? Gosh, I can't remember. I just I don't know if it's Southampton or Plymouth. I'm not sure where. I know. I think David did his PhD at Plymouth. But now he's a professor at Southampton. So, OK, OK, I might have back. Maybe I know Nick. Yeah, no, Nick. Yeah, no, Nick mentioned that that all because I know all three of those guys, you know, you probably know him as well. Those are like you talk about. That was pretty much, I think, the brain trust of shark research in the UK at the time. Yeah. Well, they'd been in pre-d who was the first person to put a satellite tag on a basking shark up in up in Scotland.

12:06 But I don't think he was necessarily a shark person. He just, you know, I had done I'd done some work. This very sort of pioneering work, putting putting satellite tag on a basking shark. But he did he did a little bit too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But definitely there was not much going on when you were obviously a year when you were coming through. The only other guy I really knew before that was John Stevens back in the 70s. And he would he did he went to Plymouth as well. Doing his yeah. And he actually I believe he was in the same. He was in high school with Kim Holland, who was then my my adviser for my PhD in Hawaii. So the Brits, we are here. We will do come from the same region and just spread across the world. I think I was going to say, I think one thing in the shark world, for those of you, those of us that are in it, you understand this.

12:50 But those are not it's it's a kind of a small incestuous world where usually you kind of know everybody. You went to school with them or somewhere you cross paths if you're in the same sort of age cohort. It's it's pretty it's kind of cool in a way because you kind of grow up together academically or research wise. But it's really kind of it's not like you go. There's it's not like there's thousands of people at conference. If you get a couple hundred, that's a pretty good size. No, it really is that sort of sixth degree. What's it called the sixth degree of separation or, you know, it takes very little before you will find somebody connected to academically as you go back in time. Yeah, it's interesting how we see such a, you know, there's such great centers in the UK for, you know, the undergraduate programs, some even masters and PhD programs.

13:37 And then you see a lot of of the UK people to go abroad, you know, just like yourself going to the US, you know, and going into your master's, you went to the US. What was the decision? And is this common with a lot of the UK people coming out of undergrad or even a graduate degree to go abroad and and learn in a different sort of institution? I think it's less so now because there are a lot more labs doing that work. But again, to graduate degrees at the time, there was there was at least to my knowledge, it was very little. This is now getting mid to late. We're actually late 90s. And so then, you know, the main place to go was really, you know, the US where there was a few labs.

14:21 I mean, South Africa, I mean, then Campania was there, but there wasn't too much outside of then doing work in South Africa in the 90s, at least not from a university standpoint. And even Australia, there was there was some, but it wasn't like now there's obviously lots of labs doing shark work, but it was still very limited number of labs doing work. My uncle was a US citizen, so he was living in the States. So, you know, that was also perhaps a driver why I always thought, you know, I would like to make the move to the US. How did you happen to? So how did you happen to pick up Chris's lab? Was that just because it was one of the I mean, at the time is I know he took over from Don Nelson. But as you said, there was not a lot of labs doing sharks.

15:02 No, well, the route. So what happened was I finished my undergrad and then, you know, I just looked around for places to try and do the internships, which I started sending out emails. And George Burgess wrote back to me and said, you know, University of Florida shark attack file, you know, you can come do an internship with me. So my first time ever in the US was in Gainesville, Florida. And I went for a month and I worked with George and then I was looking for grad schools. And this was when to look for like labs, you had to go to the AAS handbook and look up and under by each person's name was a series of letters on what their interests were. So I went through seeing who had a B for behavior and there was no way to know if it was a grad student or for a faculty member or what.

15:43 You just would go and see who was interested. And so I spent ages going through this handbook, seeing who, you know, what labs could I apply to? And George said, well, you know, there's this guy who's just starting a faculty position. And I think he's going to be a really big deal in the shark world. He's just finished his PhD and I would recommend, you know, apply to him. And that was that was Chris Lowe. So I wrote to Chris and, you know, he just started. I'm not honestly I don't think I would have gotten in today with the level of competitiveness now registered by the time there weren't any. So I was like, I managed to get in and it took me about a year because I had to go back and take my GRE exams and all that stuff.

16:27 So I think it was like a year later I went to made my move to Long Beach, California and joined Chris's lab. Okay. Oh, cool. Yeah, that's that's really cool. So so you want to see what you do, what you do, what do you work on when you're at Chris's lab there? Did you do movement studies at the time? No, I didn't. I actually ended up doing digestion in leopard sharks. And what had happened was, you know, I really was into telemetry. And, you know, Chris had when I first got there, he was like, I want you to go and read all the papers on tracking, which in 2000, this is when I moved there, I was able to do in one semester. Imagine if you told somebody to do that now. Oh, my God. I never going to happen. But in 2000, you could do that in a semester.

17:07 And while I was doing it, you know, I read a lot of Don Nelson's papers. Don was a big, big influence on me. And he was speaking about all these ideas he'd had for transmitters that measured things such as pH in the stomach to look at feeding and video cameras, all the things that he didn't get around to doing. I don't think the technology was there for him to do it at the time, but the ideas were there. And so I started speaking to Chris about, you know, making this sort of pH logger to look at foraging in sharks in the wild. And Chris was the one who said, you know, you really need to learn the physiology of digestion if you want to do that. And at first, I was like, I don't want to do physiology. That doesn't sound interesting. But then as I started to look into it, it really started to like, you know, intrigue me.

17:49 And I realized like that, you know, physiology doesn't have to be dry. Doesn't just have to be about cellulobology. Obviously, you need to understand that when it can be a lot more help you understand the ecology and the behavior of the animals. And so I started investigating sort of digestion and free swimming leopard sharks with these tags, which I bought from someone who was using them for penguins. And they would measure acidity in the stomach. And I could basically measure digestion in a shark that was swimming around and then I would feed it. And what they also did was it introduced me to biologuing, which is now a huge part of my career. Biologuing wasn't a term then, you know, there was telemetry, which was using transmitters. But this idea of putting loggers that would store this data, not transmit it, was it didn't really have a term.

18:32 And the only ones really doing it were people working with marine mammals or penguins. And so kind of just, you know, by chance, I started to get into the use of data loggers to look in digestion in sharks. And that really was a big part of my early career. So you went out, you did your did your master's there with Chris. And then then I assume probably because Chris had been out of University of Hawaii, that kind of opened some doors for you to go to University of Hawaii. You worked with Kim Holland, correct? Yeah, yeah. So Chris was Kim's PhD student. And so we had gone and done a field trip, like a three week trip to Hawaii when I was at Long Beach and I had met Kim.

19:16 And so I wanted to do a PhD that involved sort of telemetry and biologuing. And then Kim had all these projects with not just sharks, but he did a lot of pelagic fish or tuna work. I wanted to get into bill fish, big predators basically. And so and I love Hawaii. So that seemed like an obvious place for me. And I made the move over to University of Hawaii. OK, OK. And how that how they go with would you work on? Yeah, so then my PhD was on black-ticked reef sharks. And I continued the work I was doing with biologuing, looking at digestion in this species. The thing that was great, I was at the Hawaii to marine biology and they had captive shark adult sharks adult black-ticked reef sharks. So I could do all these experiments with these captive sharks, you know, on on my doorstep.

19:58 When I was at Long Beach, I had to actually do the experiments in the aquarium, the Long Beach Aquarium, because we didn't have the facilities for adult sharks. But but at HIV, they had these sharks. And then what I also did, I actually kept on working with Chris. He introduced me to some colleagues and we started working at Palmyra Atoll. And Palmyra is this uninhabited at on the central Pacific. It was a Navy base in June, World War Two. And so the US Navy were kind of gearing up for this big fight. They thought the Japanese were going to be coming there to invade. And so they had like thousands of service men and women on this atoll. But the fight never happened. And so then they just got up and left. So Palmyra is like this sort of quintessential tropical atoll.

20:41 And so it's just a uninhabited that time is just starting to claim. So you have all these sort of World War Two bunkers on the beach. They're just sinking into the sand, you know, in the lagoons. You can see army jeeps. There's still ammunition on some of the islands. And it's also been a US federal wildlife refuge since 2001, I think, or 2003. Either way, because it's very remote, it has a fish and wildlife officers based there. The Nature Conservancy runs the island. So because it's remote and protected, it has a lot of sharks. You know, has very healthy shark populations. You can only get there with a permit. You certainly can't fish there. So you have huge populations of sharks, especially blacked reef sharks. So then I started to do my sort of field work looking at the movements and ecology and foraging ecology of blacked reef sharks at Palmyra and then tying that in with what I was learning from, you know, digestive studies and captivity back back on a while.

21:31 So when you're doing all that, you're doing at this point, you're doing a lot of diving in your career. You're really starting to get into the diving. Yes, I started, you know, I actually had been a diving instructor before I went to grad school. But I had a lot of fun with it. I was a little buoy with kilometers of chain, just offshore and they aggregate pelagic fishes. So there's a lot of sort of tracking work looking at whether tuners and billfish are using these these fads.

22:16 And we would dive on them a lot, which I absolutely love because, you know, you could sometimes have huge schools of dolphin fish, huge schools of tuna. Sometimes a billfish. occasional oceanic white dip. So I was doing a lot of diving then, still sort of involved with training for scientific diving. And that was also in Hawaii when I started to get into technical diving. Yeah, I was gonna say, because you do a lot of really extreme technical type of diving, which you go down over, obviously over 50 meters and stuff. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because there's a term people hear a lot about, but I don't know if it's like, how did you prepare for that? How did you obviously you've developed your skills as just diving and with your dive instructor and stuff, but how did you develop the skills to go to that next level?

23:04 Yes, I had no interest in doing that, to be honest. Like I love diving, but I was like, you know, technical diving, it looks like it's carrying a lot of stuff. And for the audience who are not familiar with that term, it basically means if you are diving beyond recreational limits, so that could be diving below 50 meters, where you're gonna have to breathe different gases, you're gonna have decompression. It could be, you know, going in an overhead environment, cave diving, rec penetration, that would all be classified as technical diving, things that recreational divers can't do. And the reason I got into it was actually there was a presentation in Hawaii when I first visited by a guy called Rich Pyle, who was Nick Theologist at the Bishop Museum. He was actually doing his PhD at the time.

23:46 And he was the first person using rebreathers to look at fish communities at depths of about 100 to 120, 130 meters. And he was essentially, you know, almost self-taught with these rebreathers, and he would dive by himself, because no one else was doing that. He would literally dive by himself and he would find all these new species of fish because he was the only person doing it. And he gave this talk and he had this video of like, I think it was silver tip sharks at 400 feet on this beautiful reef. And I just, I saw that and I was like, OK, that was cool. And the exploration side of things like, you know, it's very clear water, but there's a gloominess. It looks like it looks like the best way I can describe it.

24:27 And that was I was like, OK, you know, I know that feeling of you kind of you get to a certain depth and you're told you can't go any deeper than that. And you look down, you're like, you know, I really want to go a little bit deeper and explore. So I was at the right place at the right time because University of Hawaii's dive safety officer was trying to build a technical diving team to start, you know, exploring mesophotic reefs, as they're called. So mesophotic just a basic coral reefs at a below 50 meters. And so I started the training for open circuit mixed gases. So we actually have mixes with helium in there to deal with the sort of narcosis that you would get from breathing nitrogen at depth. And it was a long process. I think it took like one and a half to two years before, you know, we were kind of fully certified trimix divers with open circuit and it was great.

25:14 I mean, we used to go and do these training exploratory dives. We were checking out, you know, unknown wrecks at 300 feet, taking scooters and then scootering back up the slopes. You know, you would do these free ascents. You would drop down 300 feet into the blue, hit the bottom. There'd be this unknown wreck and then you scoot up the reef and do decompression. And it was it was fantastic. And then Noah, because we were doing a lot of work in the northwestern Hawaiian islands, which are the uninhabited islands sort of north of Kauai. And they're basically atolls. And most of them have always been uninhabited. And it's also a U.S. monument. So also very protected, very remote, lots of predators. So I was really working with Carmaya at University of Hawaii.

25:55 And we were tracking sharks and reef fishes along the Hawaiian Island chain. And each summer, Noah would run these cruises and we would go and we'd stop off every single atoll of the chain and we would go and tag fish and put receivers down and dive. It was all shallow work. And then they started to get interested in exploring the mesophotic reefs. And so when they really put together, you know, the sort of full on technical diving team to go in, I think it was 2009, there weren't that many scientists certified. And so there was a few. There was six of us. I think there was like three or four Noah divers, Richard Pyle, who was the whole reason I'd gone into it.

26:37 And then and then I was fortunate to also go myself and join that team. And so that's really where my my great interest in mesophotic reefs came from. And then as I progressed, you know, I switched over eventually to rebreathers, which are diving units where you recirculate your gas. And so that means it's kind of silent because there's no bubbles and it's also very, very efficient because you're reusing oxygen that you're breathing out. So that means that, you know, what you would need many, many tanks to dive deep with open circuit with a closed circuit, rebreather. You can just take a few small tanks and those will last you hours. So then I eventually had to work my way back up with rebreathers to also then get to those depths using that tool.

27:22 How long did it take you for the certification for the mixed gas and then the rebreathers? So the mixed gas, again, you know, there's a series of stages. So you can you know, you start off with, you know, advanced nitrox and then you get some experience there and then you go to technical nitrox and then you get some experience there and then you go on to try. So the way with technical diving is often sequential. There's a series of qualification courses and in between you get a certain, you know, you get experience in a certain number of hours before you move on up. Gotcha. With the rebreathers, it's even more specific. Like once to take the initial course for the rebreather course is probably a week and then you'll be a certified rebreather diver diving to recreational dive limits.

28:05 To move on to mixed gases, you need 50 to 100 hours on that unit before you can then take the course. Gotcha. Same with, you know, when I moved to University of Florida, I was kind of landlocked. And so again, never had any interest before, but I got into cave diving there. And same thing. It's a series of sequential courses and then you get experience before you then move on to the next course until you end up with a fully engaged four cave diver. Gotcha. So when you when you're doing this, like, for example, if you're diving, just take us on an example, like, say you're diving to 100 meters, for example, like how how long can you spend down there and what's like the decompression time and all of that?

28:48 Like what's what's sort of the process of that? Yeah. So the 100 meter dives I was doing open circuit. So those tend to be pretty short, like 10, 15 minutes or so. And then we would have like an hour and a half of decompression with rebreathers. You know, we can do much longer. Generally, the rebreathers, I work between 60, 75, maybe 80 meters. I don't go. I at this point, I haven't gone to 100 meters or below that. And then, you know, we may spend like an hour at 60 meters and you would have two to three hours of decompression. And again, as long as your rebreather doesn't fail, that's no problem at all.

29:29 And you can get with by with the gas. But that's why. Well, the reason I said that is because that's why we do have to carry all these. You'll see when I do those dives, I still have open circuit bottles clipped to me. So although I don't I've only ever had to bail out once for the most part, they're not getting used. But you have to have them there because I'm like with open circuit, there's a couple of things with a rebreather. If they go wrong, you cannot use that unit and you have to go off it. So you have to have what we call bailout gas so that in an emergency, you can you can basically bail out. And that's why we do carry those tanks. When you're when you talk about decompression, do you do you come up like I know, like when I'm doing like diving, you come up to hang out at like three meters, got in for so long or for an hour and a half.

30:13 But can you work your way up there? You work it out so you can like work it at do some some of that depth where you're. Yes. So so now, you know, there's various decompression models. The old ones used to be they would just rocket you up to like 10 meters and then you have like two hours at 10 meters. But that rocketing it up is not good. So the models that we have now will have you start your stops generally much deeper than that. So the way you would do it is your initial stops will be deep, but short, like one or two minutes. And you basically can think of it. You're going to start, you know, let's say if I'm doing a dive to 200 feet, probably my first stops are starting at like 110, 100 feet.

30:56 And then it's going to be approximately, you know, you might initially have quite big jumps like 150 and then 100. And then it's going to be every 10 feet. And as you're getting progressively shallower, they're getting longer and longer and longer. So the longest stop would be at like six meters. But now, if you're on the way up, do you try to do you try to work it out to your like at a certain depth on the reef or you just hang it out in the open ocean? It completely depends. So the way we would do it in Hawaii was we would have to do because you have to go out a long way to get to the mesophonic reef. So you do a free descent, which also means you have to do a free ascent. So what we would do is, you know, sometimes 200 feet fire a flow on a reel and you fire it up to the surface and then you just start ascending.

31:42 So you're doing a decompression in midwater. So you have to really have your buoyancy down because you basically have to do these stops. The only reference you've got is real. And that's it. And so then the floats on the surface and the boats, the surface boat will just be following that surface flow. And then hopefully they'll be there when you get up. It, you know, the nicer way to do it, which is, for example, French Polynesia. Now, the way we can do it is because you have these steep slopes. You can just drop down and then you can just do your decompression up the slope. So in Rangi Raurav project now, you know, with great hammerheads, we'll go down to 200 feet. And then I don't even need the boat to pick me up. I can end my decompression underneath the dock where the hotel is.

32:26 Oh, wow. I just find out. Yeah. So that's much nicer and safer because you're just coming up the reef. There's more stuff to see. Bluewater depression is it can be pretty boring. And then so it's just it's just more stressful because if something goes wrong, it's quite a bit harder to deal with. Right. And a lot of times you're diving in areas that are somewhat remote. So it's not like you can get to a chamber if there's if something goes really bad. Yeah, we try. So, you know, like Noah was probably the most remote places we were diving and the boat there actually carried a chamber on board. And so for the most part, you try to have a chamber within two hours. You know, other times we're going really remote.

33:07 Like I've been a few times with California Academy of Sciences has a really great mesophotic team. And they work much deeper than me. They're working down to 500 feet. So they're doing five hours, five hour dives. When they go to these remote spots, they actually bring a a transportable chamber. You can actually have these these chambers that they're only enough for one person that you basically unpack and then you fill up and then but they will they will pressurize. So there is almost always a chamber within a couple of hours of the dive site. Gotcha. Now, when you're diving on these things, you're working on large predators, typically sharks and other other species. What kind of what kind of data information can you collect when you're down there for even if it's for 20 minutes or some kind of data?

33:54 Yeah, there's been a variety. So one of the things we're doing is tagging. So actually tagging great hammerheads and getting tissue samples with like spear guns. And so you can get the samples from using using spear guns or pole spears down down on the bottom. Obviously, a lot of stuff involves like doing transects and counting fish and getting sort of community data. And the other thing is also when we're doing like stable isotopes where we're trying to figure out we use stable isotopes to kind of look at the diet of predators and see where they're feeding. Are they feeling shallow or are they feeling deep? And that means you've got to kind of sample some of the prey of these predators at the sites where you think they might be feeding. So in a mesophyte reef, we also may go and do I've done, you know, spearing trips where I basically go and collect reef fish at depth and then bring them up with me.

34:42 No. Well, obviously brings up a question if you're looking at great hammerhead sharks and silver tips and these things and you're spearing fish. I assume the sharks get a little frisky sometime about possible dinner. You know that I've never had a problem with them from spearing. And when we first started to do it in the Northwest One Islands deep, I was really concerned about it because we had these, you know, hour long decompression in blue water where sometimes you'd have 200 Galapagos sharks around you. So I was like, oh, God, you know, I've got for like an hour a bag of fish that's going to be really bad. So I bought I bought dry bags, you know, and my plan was I take a dry bag with me, get my bag of fish at the bottom before I go up and I'll stuff it in the dry bag and I'll seal off the dry bag.

35:23 And that way there's no sort of effluent or any sort of blood going out. And then, you know, at about 100 feet, 180 feet, I would hand the bag off to safety divers who would come down and meet us and they could take it back up. But I actually never needed it. The blood would bring them in and they would get curious, but they never came in aggressive and I never had a problem with them responding to spearing in an aggressive manner. I'll tell you that the the what I've seen rile up sharks the most was when Carmira and I, we were starting to do a project tagging grouper, the Hawaiian grouper up in the Northwest Islands, which in the main one is you generally see them pretty deep.

36:07 But by the time you get up to Midway at all curate at all, which is far north, you're seeing them at 30 feet and they're an important predator. So we started tagging them. And initially we were trying to catch them to bring them to the surface to do the surgery on the boat. And, you know, the barotrauma with all the sharks around, that wasn't just it just wasn't good for the fish. So we're like, you know, we're going to do the surgery underwater. We're going to catch these group underwater, do the surgery and then we can put them straight under a hole. They can recover. There's no barotrauma. And that worked very, very well for the grouper. So the surgery went great. They would all recover. What we didn't realize was the first time we did it was just colonized and a struggling grouper is the sort of the loudest dinner I've ever seen for sharks.

36:48 I remember like, you know, we were doing the surgery, I looked up and we were getting dive bombs by sharks. I mean, they were just everywhere and they were a completely different state than what you were used to just from spearing. I mean, they were agitated and they were just, you know, we were listening back to back just going up, trying to push them off because they were such a state. And after that, I had to make sure we would bring like just special I'd have three safety divers whose only job was to make sure we weren't going to get dive bombs while we were doing the surgery. That's so that was that was a dinner bell, but the actual like spearing fish was not so bad. Oh, that's that's fascinating. That's fascinating. But are you still you still got these projects going on the one you're talking about out there?

37:28 And so I don't I haven't worked in the Northwest on islands in quite a while. So at the moment, the project I am working in Randy Roroe. So we're doing this this work with great hammerheads, which, you know, there's these channels and these hammerheads come in there. There's lots and lots of gray reef sharks, a lot of eagle rays. And then, you know, the beautiful thing about great hammerheads is they're really shark killers. I mean, they they like to hunt sharks and race. And so they come there to hunt in this channel. And I've not yet been able to see a great hammerhead hunting gray reef sharks, but several divers have. But although you can see them shallow, if you want to be able to do any tagging and interacting with them, it's generally on this ledge that's about 50, 60 meters deep.

38:11 Hmm. OK. Now, that's I got to ask you. So you've seen the eagle rays out there. You do anything with the rays or is it just strictly sharks or looking? No, no, no. So we're starting to work with the rays now. So we're starting off this. This actually I'm going back in March. And so hopefully we're going to be getting muscle biopsies from the rays to look at that. We've already collected muscle boxes from the sharks to kind of see what proportion of the hammerheads diet is these eagle rays based on unstable isotopes. So the next the next stage is to is to get some muscle boxes. Hopefully into the future, we can start doing some tagging of the rays as well to really look at sort of movements of predator and prey. So when you have like graduate students come in, say in your lab, they're like, and do many of them do the technical diving or because it seems like it take them like a couple of years just to get through that.

38:59 Yeah, I know they don't. I have a couple who have by themselves are certified on rebreathers. The two the two reasons are one is, as you said, it's not the sort of thing, especially if you want to do deep stuff, that you come in to grad school and you're going to learn how to do. I think really, if that's what you want to do, you need to have the experience and training before you start with some do, you know, it's not it's like, you know, having zero boat skills at all and then coming in and having to to to drive a boat offshore. You know, you just you need to have a certain foundation to do projects like that. Also, you know, to be honest, and this is a little bit selfish of me, I just it's I don't really want the liability of a grad student doing that stuff of my students on me.

39:42 And again, I'm not telling not to I just don't really personally what you know, it just is something that would bother me if it was for one of my projects and somebody got hurt. That would that would that would, you know, just be be tough. So for those reasons, no. Well, it's it's a dangerous skill, like even the process of it can be dangerous, you have to be very aware and like you said, have the experience to do it. And sometimes people come in, you know, early 20s, and they just don't have the like, they may be divers, but they don't have the time to get that experience right and just just because of their age, right? I mean, so if you if you follow the rules, I mean, it's not it's, you know, if you have a properly trained and have the proper equipment and follow the proper procedures that, you know, the risk is actually you can actually keep it pretty minimal.

40:31 And I'll give the example more of cave divers. I mean, if you look at cave diving fatalities that we have, I think 80% of those are untrained cave divers, they're open water divers who want to go into a cave and die. Very rarely do we get trained cave divers dying in caves, because again, for the most part, if you follow the rules, and you know what you're doing with the right equipment, it's very safe. Of course, that's almost easier said than done. And you know, things do happen and people do make mistakes, experienced divers, good divers have made fatal mistakes before, right? And that always happens. So the thing to, for me, at least, is to just try to never get complacent about it, because that's really when mistakes do get made. And especially because you get used to nothing happening, right? You do, you do a lot of them for the most part, nothing ever happens. And then you start to think, well, nothing will happen. But obviously, it takes one thing to go wrong once. And then that's a different story.

41:27 Another thing I just kind of curious, I'm just kind of curious from doing, I used to do a lot of just regular diving, but like, how do you work like with hypothermia when you're down for a long time, even though you're in a lot of tropical areas, you're still at depth, and you're even ambient water temperature in the tropics is still going to be lower than your body temperature. How do you deal with that? So I've only done deep diving in tropical areas. So I've never done it in somewhere that's cold. And some of these places like, you know, the Marshall Islands, for example, it's it's so warm, even on deep dives that it's almost too uncomfortable to wear a wetsuit. So I have, yeah, so again, there's different levels of technical diving. I mean, if you look at the technical divers in the UK or Europe who are doing 80 meter dives in the Merck on wrecks in cold water, I don't want to do that.

42:15 And that that's a whole different level of, you know, skill. So technical diving is a continuum, obviously, I mean, there's easier ones to do, like the ones I do, there's easier ones in the tropics. And then there are places where it's it's frigid. And at that point, you know, you're gonna have to obviously have dry suits. Some of my colleagues from France were doing, you know, you know, relatively deep dives under ice in the Antarctic. And so they had a very special tailor made dry suits to deal with the fact they had these long dives in very, very cold conditions. So cold that with at least one of one of my colleagues, the moisture, he was suddenly found a hard time breathing through his rebreathing.

42:59 And so he was having to break up the ice so that he could finish his decompression. But luckily, it was very, very serious and figured it out. But I'm not doing that either. So how did everyone go? How did I would love to dive Antarctic? I would love to dive Antarctic. I'd love to dive the Arctic. But I think means, you know, deep dives Antarctic. That's probably, yeah, probably too much. I think that's the antarctic. That's probably, yeah, that's uh, seems really risky. Yeah, that'd be, yeah, I know that these Mosse Landings have a, have a pretty active antarctic program. They'd have people go down every year and they used to go diving under the ice and everything and uh, I would love to do that. That's one of my, one of my regrets. I'm not really sure I'd have the opportunity now but not, not taking it a chance to go and die the antarctic because that would be something else. Yeah, that would be, that would be pretty, the only, the only thing that I'd love to do at the time, because I'd love to have gone but they're like, it's, you're down there for like three months. So if you're going, yeah, yeah, that's why it would be easier when you're in your twenties to go and do that, you know, and, and, um, be able to take the three months to do that unless of course, you know, antarctic is your main research area but obviously it's not mine and that would be the problem. I, I couldn't at this point imagine justifying a three month trip there and uh, visit that's yeah, I was saying with me that I just, I could have gone but I just three months of doing uh, you know, benthic meal in fauna study with it. I just like had a blood and leopard seals, leopard seals, that would be cool to study. That would be interesting. Longer, longer than that.

44:39 Well, how, how was it like when you were, um, you talked about how Jaws was an influence on you and everything and, and obviously we're in Chris Lowe's lab and Chris is, you know, like they filmed Jaws out there when he was a kid where he grew up there in Martha's Vineyard. Um, did that how is it? I'm sure you didn't know that when you went out to work with Chris. How is that? I, I didn't know that and not only that but Chris Lowe's uncle is in Jaws. He's one of the council members at the, at the meeting when they're, when they're, when they're trying to hire, um, hire Quinn. Um, so that was his uncle was actually in one of those seats. Hilarious. Oh, of course. Um, the other connection is that Steven Spielberg did his undergrad at Long Beach. Uh, and actually the commencement speaker when I, when I graduated, um, but the rumor is, and I'm not entirely sure if this is true is that they filmed a scene because obviously then, you know, Don Nelson was one of the very few shark labs in the US. I mean, there was Don, uh, Sonny. I think he was at U.N. at that point, but there weren't, there weren't many for sure. Yeah. And I believe because of that Long Beach connection, and the, I think it was, uh, I think it was at the University of Long Beach.

45:37 Um, and I believe because of that Long Beach connection that they filmed a scene that was meant to be Hooper working in the lab that was in Don's lab at Long Beach that was ended up, you know, cut from the final, um, final film. So I'm not 100% sure if that's true or not. I actually met Richard Dreyfus once and I meant to ask him and then I forgot. Okay. You, uh, you may know this but I don't know if you knew but Leonard Capanio actually helped design the mechanical shark Bruce in the movie. Well, I did know that he's acknowledged at the end of the film. So when they're swimming when when Hooper and Brody are swimming back to shore is does thank length and Panno in the credits. Yeah. He's the last one that came up. Yeah.

46:18 Yeah. I would have did you know I don't know if you knew Leonard very well or did you? I met him a couple times. Um, but that only at meetings in passing. He was a, I've heard people tell you said the podcast for he was a character and would have been a fly in the wall to see Leonard and Spielberg running around in that shark. I went to an amazing play in New York called the shark is broken, which is about the filming of Jaws. It's the three main characters and it's just basically they're filming the scene on what's the name of the the boats that the very end. It's, um, so the all cut. Yeah, I think it is. It is. It is an orca. Yeah, I think it's a comment. But you know, the quince boat and the whole thing was about, you know, the shark wouldn't work. And so they were having to redo a lot of these scenes and the play was absolutely incredible. The guy playing quint is actually Robert Shaw's son. So Robert Shaw played Quinn in in the movie. And so his son looks almost identical to Robert Shaw. And at the end, and you know, he does a whole.

47:22 You know, recitation of the Indianapolis speech and it's like you're watching his dad on stage in front of you. I mean, it was it was I don't go to too many plays, but that one really blew me away. Oh, man. So I gotta ask you since Jaws is an influence. You we talked about the Nat Geo. Did you ever see a blue water white death? I did. I did. And you know, that was also an amazing documentary. And my two stories for that is I actually first of all, you know, there's the I love that film or that show as sort of historical ecology because there's the scene where they go diving with oceanic white tips. And it's like, you know, I think it's a really interesting thing.

48:13 And I think that's something you'd never see today. And just to kind of show you what I think I was off with Durban. I believe it was off Durban. Yeah. Yeah. And to show you what it used to look like back in the 70s. And then the other thing is actually when I was at HIV, Stan Waterman, his name, he came by he came by the lab. He was quite quite old at that point. And he came by someone who brought him by and I just showed him a satellite tag and some biologous and I spent a little bit of time showing him all the different tags we used. And I told him that, you know, that documentary was a was a big influence on me. And a month later, he sent me a signed copy. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah.

48:54 I think it was probably about 12 years old when that movie came out. And I remember going and seeing it. I just thought that was just like an amazing movie. And then, as you mentioned, if you watch the movie, and just for young people that haven't seen it, it's pretty graphic. It's not like things you see today. They go through the movie. They go through the movie. And they're like, oh, I'm going to do this. And I'm like, oh, I'm going to do this. And I'm like, oh, I'm going to do this. And I'm like, oh, I'm going to do this. And I'm like, oh, I'm going to do this. And I think, you know, the reason they went to Durban was because because they used to get a lot of big white sharks come in, because that's where they used to have a whaling station there. And they'd pull the whales in that they'd harpooned. And the white sharks would come in there. And I when I was when I was a grad student in South Africa, you go look at some of those pictures, there were some massive white sharks. And that's why they went there. But as Yanni mentioned, they saw at that time, there was just oceanic white tips as far as you could see, they were literally like, they'd get hundreds of them coming in. And it was just it was nobody done anything like that before, where they actually went out to film white sharks or just film sharks in the wild. And you mentioned like Stan Waterman, that Rod and Valerie Taylor, Peter gimbal and Peter gimbal. I mean, it was a crazy time because like Peter gimbal was getting bent on TV, like he was coming up with decompression sickness, refusing to go in the chamber. They were like forcing him.

49:57 They were having it. They were like, we're not filming anymore unless you go into the chamber and stop because he just wouldn't stop. And I think that the funny thing is they didn't find any white sharks in South Africa, even though if they'd gone further south to South Africa, they would have found them. And they would have probably found them. So they ended up Australia, I forget where they actually did the white. It was dangerous. They finally ended up in dangerous reef, South Australia. But they went to Sri Lanka. They went all over the place. All over the place. But they finally found dangerous reef. It was where they found the white sharks and everything. And but you know, but as I mentioned at that time, Durban, because of the whaling station, they used to get a lot of big white sharks in there. And they had the fishing club there. And you can go to the beach and go there even today. They have what they call the thousand pound club and guys would fish off the jetty there to land if you landed a thousand pound white shark and there's quite a in the fifties and sixties, they landed quite a few of them there and they're I mean, they're massive sharks. Um so there was a yeah, I realized like the way if they got down towards Cape Town, Hans by they would have definitely run into them but but they weren't known then. No, no, no.

51:04 Well, yeah. Yeah. Well, I think the story of the locals down there. Yeah. Yeah. They knew about it. Yeah. I I tell the story when I was a student there, the locals would tell me about oh, you know, the white sharks out here breach. I was like, what are you talking about these breach? Because nobody ever filmed that before. And then Chris Fallows like after about a couple years after I left, he started filming it and um but I'd seen it there and like people thought you're if you tell people and I remember telling people like Greg Kye, John McOsker, Bob Lee that the sharks are breaching and they thought like, no, you know, I said, yeah, they really are reaching down there and um well and I just I went to South Africa in ninety nine. So, it was very shortly after Chris Fallows has started, you know, uh he was just starting to to make a name himself with these pictures and we were just for the first time kind of seeing seeing these these aerial uh white sharks. Yeah.

52:02 So, it was anyways just just a bit of I know it's a bit of historical thing for younger people but you know, some of these programs you mentioned like blue water white death. Of course, Jaws probably most people have seen but the Jeanie Clark Nat Geo from 84 when it came out. Those are just if you want to get a historical perspective of things what was going on. Those are just a couple of I made my my graduate student Candice is studying the best in conservation biology of of oceanic white tips specifically in the Bahamas but I I made her watch blue water white death. So, you can see what it what it used to look like in some places. Yeah. And what's she what does she think? Yeah. So, you know, again, you know, and and Cat Island Bahamas is a place where we work and that's actually, you know, kind of unique in that you can go out there and I've seen up to maybe eleven oceanic white tips on a dive and it's an ecotourism site. So, it's a combination of it's a natural aggregation area for these sharks and that every year but then there's also ecotourism on top of that that has conditioned them. So, you can go to some sometime then see like eleven oceanic white tips which is extremely rare anywhere else. Um but then you see blue water white tips. That's a whole different. That was not a baited shark dive. That was like they just jumped in the ocean and there was there was this wall, a wall of oceanic white. Wow. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

53:17 That's and that's and that's and that was off Durban where they have they had the well, the white ticks are usually offshore but they have the the the netting off the beaches and stuff. Yeah. You at that time, if you went up toward like say Mozambique or Madagascar, just been wild to see and they're there are stuff you read some of the stuff by John Bass and some of those guys going off a little of a tangent but but there is some historical information that document what how it used to be like for the oceanic white tips on stuff and so you're actually doing a lot of stuff on oceanic white tips now yourself. You know, they're they're my favorite shark. Um yeah, it's my favorite shark and so, you know, I started getting interested in them in when I was in Hawaii which we would see them sometimes and in Kona, you would see them following um pilot whales um and then really um you know, I was able to join the oceanic white tips where they were satellite tagging oceanic white tips off of Count Island Bahamas and I was really interested in what interested me about them was the fact that they live in this basically the oceanic equivalent of the desert. Right. I mean, that's open ocean.

54:20 Very little food. It's very patchy and they're very unique shark to me in terms of how they look morphologically. You know, these beautiful rounded fins and then also how they behave. I really when when I went in the water with oceanic white tips, you just really feel that that is a shark that is figuring you out and you really should be on your on your toes because it's just like uh it's very um I don't want to use the term smart but but you kind of that's what I'm implying. Basically, it's a shark that is just like really on it and um so I was really interested in in um you know what adaptations they have to live in in this desert. So, we wanted to put you know these biologos that include video cameras, et cetera, swimming speed sensors and we could do biomechanics um and try and see what these adaptations may be and so, you know, I joined their team um and we started to put biologos out on oceanic white tips in the Bahamas. So, I've worked there a lot and then uh recently, I was you know uh involved with some colleagues who just started um satellite tracking um uh oceanic white tips in French Polynesia as well. So, so I gotta I gotta share quickly a story with you on my oceanic white tip story when we were when I was a grad student, we were doing some deep sets long lines up up on the Mozambique border with South Africa. It's in the late winter. There was this one survey we did.

55:39 There was myself. There's Paul Cali, Jeremy Cliff, uh Sheldon Dudley, kind of the brain trust of the shark, young shark guys and Leonard Copanio except for Leonard who stayed in the boat. The rest of us when you're kind of waiting for the long lines to soak, you jump off the back of the boat cuz you're in the tropics and it's hot as hell and you just so we're snorkeling around there trying to maybe spearfish some Mahi Mahi or whatever and after an hour or so, we got out of the boat and the whole time we're diving, this is up. Blue I'm like, oh, I'm still there. Get in the boat and within like five minutes, somebody goes, hey, check this out. And there's freaking oceanic white tips under the boat, just swimming around. And I'm just going like, oh, I probably saw half a dozen.

56:21 There's I don't know how many. Probably at least a half a dozen under there. Wasn't like hundreds, but there was a few of them swimming under the boat. You know, one's one's enough, but it was like, but I just remember thinking we all kind of looked at each other and go like, these things didn't just show up all of a sudden. And we were diving and none of us saw them. We're all we had. We had Matt. We're snorkeling. We were snorkeling around out there. It was probably 1500 meters, the depth where we were. And it was, but yeah, I don't know if you had any. I have. And in fact, similar to being in water a few times with them, where you've seen them and they're very, very calm and swimming around and it's been a really great experience and they disappear and you don't pay attention.

57:02 And then the next thing you know, they're kind of rocketing up behind you. And I'm not saying they would have come in for the bite, but they definitely were behaving differently when they had, when they had come up behind me. And I really did feel like, you know, this shark was kind of perhaps giving me a full sense of security and then, you know, checking me out when I wasn't looking again. I'm not implying it was coming into bite me. No, but it was behaving different. I mean, I wouldn't even say like ones, I wouldn't say they were like particularly aggressive, but they were just like, we just like, there's like half a six of us in the water. Nobody saw a shark at all. And then all of a sudden we get out, we get out in the back of the boat and the transom and all of it. And we just look over like there's these oceanic white tips swimming under the boat. It's like, what the hell these things come from, you know?

57:44 So one of the, and I did get bit by one and that was on the boat. It was one I was tagging. It wasn't in the water, but it was the first time that I had gotten bitten by a shark and it was the one time I, you know, the golden rule when you're tagging sharks is you never take your eyes off the head if you were holding the picture orphans. And this shark had basically we put a camera tag on her dorsal fin and as we were releasing her, some line had gotten wrapped around the camera. And for just that one second, I was just all I was concerned about was a $10,000 tag and the data. I was like, I don't want the camera to be offline. So I turned around to reach around and untie it. And then she, she had grabbed me, grabbed my hand.

58:25 Wow. So I got to ask you one question. Just a couple more questions here. I don't want to, it's been a terrific interview, but so you do, you're, you're very involved in Brazilian jiu jitsu. How do you, does that help you mentally, physically for any of the diving stuff you do, or is that just a separate, a complete separate activity? No, you know, I've always loved martial arts. You know, I grew up in the eighties. John Cole, Van Dam, Bruce Lee, you know, that was like Chuck Norris. I mean, that was, so I've always been into martial arts and I was always into like more, you know, kicking with Taekwondo and then boxing. And I gradually switched as I moved to Hawaii and I started to, you know, pick up grappling. And so I started Brazilian jiu jitsu when I started my PhD in 2003. And it certainly is something like now.

59:08 I mean, I really can't imagine being without it. I mean, I still, you know, obviously how can I can train to be limited by trying and still do two, three times a week. And both physically and also mentally. And it does help me under pressure because the thing about Brazilian jiu jitsu is, you know, you grapple a lot. You actually spar with a opponent, people who are not, you know, trying to let you win, who are going to try and beat you. And I like, you know, I often go against people a lot heavier than me and you get the fatigue and then you're dealing with like very uncomfortable situations of having, let's say, someone much heavier than you, smothering you, you got fatigue and panic can start to set in.

59:51 And especially I'm a bit claustrophobic. So it really does. So it helps me to to have those situations and try and stay calm because the fact is with with a lot of these things, I'm talking about, you know, technical diving, for example, I mean, panic is what will get you. And I'm not saying I wouldn't panic because, you know, it's one of those things that you just don't know until it happens. But at least I feel like it helps me stay stay grounded mentally. And then obviously, you know, physically gives me I'm very like I can be inherently pretty lazy. So if I don't have exercise, I enjoy doing. Yeah, I'm just going to make a quickly lose interest in doing it.

1:00:33 And so the fact that I have something that I just like to grapple means I'll go and do it and I'll stay disciplined. I've stayed disciplined with it for 22 years. I didn't have that. I would just sit on my couch. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I know. The question is the question is at the next conference that do a shark conference, maybe sharks international. Are you going to get in the ring and compete against Britt Fanucci? She seems to be beat the head out of a Christian. She's a competitive type boxer. Yeah. And my brother was a pro type boxer. So I've seen how they fight. And I was like, oh, look, if you're going to kick my shit. I just I tell you anyway, I think she's probably beating me up. Sorry.

1:01:14 Well, Yanni, this has been really terrific. One last question for you is like, so what advice would you have for a young person starting out that wants to do marine biology sharks? Would you have any advice for him? I do. I think my advice is don't get too focused. Don't get too obsessed with like, I want to study sharks or this species of shark, even if that's the animal you want to work with. And I say that because especially I don't say I'm saying it's more from an academic standpoint, if you want to go into academia, if you want to get, let's say into a faculty position, they don't advertise for shark biology positions. That's not what universities are looking for. They're looking for like a predatory college or a conservation biologist or whatever it may be. So a lot of my work is with sharks when those are my favorite animals, but I actually don't call myself a shark scientist. I don't like to use that term because it really just kind of pigeonholes us. So I'll call myself like a predatory colleges or an animal ecologist or also something broader. So I try and tell students to think broad, don't get just too focused on one animal. And really, some of the most interesting things I think I've done has been when I've collaborated with people from other fields, statisticians, particularly people from like math backgrounds or engineering backgrounds. So really don't neglect your math background.

1:02:30 So really don't neglect your math or your physics. You may not like it. You may not think it's important, but I really wish that I had a stronger background in those fields. I find good people to collaborate with. But I think especially coming up, think broad. I really love theoretical biology now. It's never something I thought I would say. But go out and read the broader literature. Don't get too tunnel vision. Just for sharks. Yeah. Can I ask like some of your former students or some of the students have come through your lab, like what types of jobs did they get when they came out of the graduate programs? Yes, I mean, several of them go on to do postdocs. I've had some are now working for NGOs. Some are working for NOAA. And I think that's a really good thing.

1:03:24 And obviously, you know, there's many things you can do with a PhD doesn't have to be just academia. It's just it's good to start thinking about what your long term goal is because again, especially once you get to the PhD level, you just want to start thinking ahead as to what I want to do. After this. Yeah. And the fact is, especially for academia, it just continuously gets more competitive, right? I mean, yes, very competitive. You know, when I was coming up, and it's way more competitive now, because there's a lot more very qualified people out there for the same number of jobs. So you really got to start planning these, you know, ahead of the time. To try and be, you know, to increase your chances of getting the position you want.

1:04:07 Absolutely. Great. Absolutely. Thank you. It's been terrific. Well, definitely have to have you come back on. No, my pleasure. Around some more. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks. Thanks for having me enjoy the chat. Thank you, Giannis, for joining us on the Beyond Jaws podcast. Really great to have you on. Dave, like to be able to dive 300 feet below the surface to see sharks like a lot of people won't even go five feet under the surface to see sharks. He's going 300 feet with colleagues to do this type of work. It's dangerous. It's you have to be very skilled and very well trained to do this type of stuff. You have to be calm, you know and be able to handle being in those depths. What did you think? Would you ever do that? Well, probably when I was in my 20s and 30s, I would say they didn't have that. That really wasn't an option back then. I used to I still die. But yeah, I would say to never have done that. I mean, I think I'm a national champion. So I hope you have a great day.

1:05:03 When I was a young person, I would have probably gotten into, Okay. Hadn't gone in that direction. But it was, they didn't really have that, those types of technical stuff he did that was not available when I was coming through in the eighties. And of course he came through about 20 years later when they had a lot of those techniques. And even as he explains, like a lot of stuff, they were still making it up as they went along, essentially, trying to develop it. Cause they really didn't have a formal protocol now, which is now they do. So there's a little bit of, you know, gosh, and by golly, we hope Yanni comes back in the dive. (both laughing) I mean, it is like, let's be honest, like the people have passed away from that before. It's a, it's a dangerous situation. You really have to know your stuff and you have to spend the hours it takes to understand how to use the equipment in various, you know, situations.

1:05:51 It's not always an easy, calm dive. And sometimes things can get panicked and you have to, you have to stay calm. And obviously Yanni has been able to do that over his career. It's, it's impeccable to hear. I think Yanni, like you talked a little bit towards the end about is, is a jiu-jitsu and stuff and how that kind of helps mentally as well as physically. Cause you gotta be physically, you gotta be in really good shape to do that type of diving. But also mentally, you've got to be, in addition to the experience, you got to be able to, be able to, be able to push the limits without panicking. I mean, there's obviously situations that come up, as he said, where you, you know, you, you never know what's going to happen until it happens, but the better prepared you are, the better physically and mentally fit you are, your chance, if something goes bad, you'll, you'll be able to deal with it better.

1:06:37 And I think that was kind of the whole sort of mind body thing and that's, this technical diving is really where it takes place where you've got to have a whole combination there to really, to be able to go through and to do that type of extreme diving, but yeah, I would have been, it'd have been kind of a little envious, you know, if I was younger at the time, when they had that would be really cool to do, to experience that. And I think the other thing to us, want to touch on as you, we talked, and we've done this a few other episodes, talked about some of the stuff, Yani mentioned how, you know, Jaws really got them hooked onto sharks early on. And we tell you, you talked about how the Nat Geo show with Eugenie Clark back in the eighties was a very inspiration. I remember seeing that as, when I was a grad student in the mid eighties there, it was very, it was, it was a really well done show.

1:07:20 And then of course, once again, we talked about blue water, white death, but for younger people, like those are, from a historical standpoint to see kind of where things were in terms of shark research and shark knowledge, going back to the seventies and eighties, it kind of gives you a different perspective or a better perspective to today, where we are today in terms of shark research. And I think Yani touched on it too, like when he was coming through as in certainly when I was there before, there wasn't a lot of options there. You just had few, very few labs. Even today, you don't really have a lot of shark labs. People find ways to make it work. But there was all back then in the eighties, nineties, it was almost almost nothing. You'd count on one hand the places you could go do sharks.

1:08:01 Yeah, no, 100%, 100%. No, it was definitely a wonderful interview. We would like to hear what you think of it. You can contact us on Beyond Jaws Pod Instagram and Dave, if they want to ask you questions, how would they get ahold of? Yeah, you can go through my Instagram account, LostSharkGuy. And I now have a YouTube channel up, LostSharkGuy. And we just posted our first video documentary, searching for lost sharks. And I hope people go there and check out the episodes and subscribe to it and subscribe to the Beyond Jaws podcast, YouTube channel as well. And you'll get all the shark stuff you want to get from those two sources there. So, absolutely. Looking forward to it. And we're going to put the social media sites for Yannis on there.

1:08:45 So if you ever want to follow him, get to know him a little bit more, you can do so. And if you're interested in predatory science, that would be the person that you would want to go to. So thank you so much for Dave and of course, Yannis for joining us on the on the podcast. And of course, we would thank you for listening to the Beyond Jaws podcast from Dave. And I really appreciate it. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.