WEBVTT

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Thank you very much for inviting me here,

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and thank you to Carlin, wherever she is,

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for tracking my progress and deciding
this was a story worthy of TED.

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I think you've seen basking sharks,
hands up.

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A few of you. Okay.

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Basking sharks are awesome creatures.

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They are just magnificent.

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They grow 10 meters long; some say bigger.

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They might weigh up to two tons.

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Some say up to five tons.

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They're the second-largest
fish in the world.

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They're also harmless
plankton-feeding animals.

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And they are thought to be able to filter
a cubic kilometer of water every hour

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and can feed on 30 kilos
of zoo plankton a day to survive.

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They're fantastic creatures.

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We're very lucky in Ireland,

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we have plenty of basking sharks
and plenty of opportunities to study them.

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They were very important
to coastal communities,

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going back hundreds of years,

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especially around
the Claddaghduff, Connemara region

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where subsistence farmers used to sail
out on their hookers and open boats,

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sometimes way offshore
to a place called the Sunfish Bank,

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about 30 miles west of Achill Island,

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to kill the basking sharks.

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This is a woodcut from about the 1800s.

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They were very important,
for the oil out of their liver.

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A third of the basking
shark's size is their liver,

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and it's full of oil, gallons of oil.

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That oil was used especially for lighting,

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but also for dressing wounds
and other things.

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In fact, the streetlights in 1742,

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of Galway, Dublin and Waterford,

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were lit with sunfish oil.

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"Sunfish" is one of the words
for basking sharks.

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They've been around a long time,

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they're very important
to coastal communities.

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Probably the best-documented
basking shark fishery in the world

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is that from Achill Island.

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This is Keem Bay up in Achill Island.

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Sharks used to come into the bay,

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and the fishermen
would tie a net off the headland,

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string it out, an old Manila net,

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and as the shark came round,
it would hit the net,

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the net would collapse on it.

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It would often drown and suffocate.

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Or at times, they would row out
in their small curraghs

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and kill it with a lance
through the back of the neck.

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And then they'd tow the sharks
back to Purteen Harbour,

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boil them up, use the oil.

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They also used the flesh
as well, for fertilizer

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and also would fin the sharks.

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This is probably the biggest threat
to sharks worldwide --

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the finning of sharks.

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We're often frightened
of sharks, thanks to "Jaws."

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Maybe five or six people
get killed by sharks every year.

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There was someone recently, wasn't there?
Just a couple weeks ago.

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We kill about 100 million sharks a year.

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So I don't know what the balance is,

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but I think sharks have more right
to be fearful of us than we have of them.

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It was a well-documented fishery.

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As you can see here,
it peaked in the '50s,

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where they were killing
1,500 sharks a year.

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And it declined very fast --
a classic boom-and-bust fishery,

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which suggests that a stock
has been depleted

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or there's low reproductive rates.

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They killed about 12,000 sharks
within this period,

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literally just by stringing a Manila rope

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off the tip of Keem Bay
up in Achill Island.

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Sharks were still killed
up into the mid-80s,

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especially out of places
like Dunmore East in County Waterford.

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About two and a half, 3,000
sharks were killed up till '85,

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mainly by Norwegian vessels.

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You can't really see,

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but these are Norwegian
basking shark hunting vessels.

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The black line in the crow's nest
signifies this is a shark vessel,

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rather than a whaling vessel.

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The importance of basking sharks
to the coast communities

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is recognized through the language.

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I don't pretend
to [know many Irish words],

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but in Kerry they were often
known as "ainmhide Na seolta,"

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"the monster with the sails."

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Another title would be "liop an dá lapa,"

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"the unwieldy beast with two fins."

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"Liabhán mór," suggesting a big animal.

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Or my favorite, "liabhán chor gréine,"
"the great fish of the sun."

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That's a lovely, evocative name.

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On Tory Island -- a strange place
anyway -- they were known as "muldoons."

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(Laughter)

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No one seems to know why.

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Hope there's no one
from Tory here. Lovely place.

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But more commonly all around the island,
they were known as the sunfish.

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And this represents their habit
of basking on the surface

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when the sun is out.

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There's great concern
that basking sharks are depleted

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all throughout the world.

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Some say it's not population decline,

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it might be a change
in the distribution of plankton.

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It's been suggested

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that these sharks would make
fantastic indicators of climate change,

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as they're basically
continuous plankton recorders,

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swimming around with their mouth open.

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They're now listed
as vulnerable under the IUCN.

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There's movements in Europe
to try and stop catching them.

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There's now a ban on catching
and even landing them,

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even landing ones caught accidentally.

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They're not protected in Ireland;

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in fact, they have no legislative
status in Ireland whatsoever,

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despite our importance for the species

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and also the historical context
within which basking sharks reside.

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We know very little about them.

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And most of what we do know

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is based on their habit
of coming to the surface --

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we try and guess what they're doing
from their behavior on the surface.

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I only found out last year,
at a conference on the Isle of Man,

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just how unusual it is to live somewhere

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where basking sharks regularly,
frequently and predictably

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come to the surface to "bask."

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It's a fantastic opportunity
for a scientist

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to see and experience basking sharks.

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They are awesome creatures.

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It gives us a fantastic opportunity
to study them, to get access to them.

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What we've been doing for a couple
years -- last year was a big year --

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is we started tagging sharks,

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so we could try to get some idea
of sight fidelity and movement

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and things like that.

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So we concentrated mainly
in North Donegal and West Kerry

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as the two areas
where I was mainly active.

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And we tagged them

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with a big, long pole.

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This is a beachcaster rod
with a tag on the end.

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You go up in your boat and tag the shark.

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And we were very effective.

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We tagged 105 sharks last summer.

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We got 50 in three days
off Inishowen Peninsula.

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Half the challenge to get access

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is to be in the right place
at the right time.

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But it's a very simple, easy technique;
I'll show you what it looks like.

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We use a pole camera on the boat
to actually film the shark.

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One, it's to try and work out
the gender of the shark.

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This is a picture
that you can't really see

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because we cut off the green tag
on the shark from Kerry.

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We also deployed some satellite tags,
so we did use high-tech stuff as well.

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These are archival tags.

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What they do is store the data.

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A satellite tag only works
when the air is clear of the water

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and can send a signal to the satellite.

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And sharks and fish
are underwater most of the time,

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so this tag actually works out
the locations of shark,

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depending on the timing
and the setting of the sun,

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plus water temperature and depth.

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And you have to kind of
reconstruct the path.

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What happens is,

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you set the tag to detach
from the shark after a fixed period --

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in this case, eight months --

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and literally to the day,
the tag popped off,

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drifted up, said hello to the satellite

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and sent, not all the data,
but enough data for us to use.

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This is the only way to really work out
their behavior and movements

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when they're underwater.

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And here's a couple
of maps that we've done.

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In that one, you can see
that we tagged both off Kerry.

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Basically, it spent all its time,
the last eight months, in Irish waters.

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On Christmas, it was out
on the shelf edge.

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Here's one we haven't ground-truthed yet

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with sea-surface temperature
and water depth,

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but again, the second shark
spent most of its time

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in and around the Irish Sea.

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Colleagues from the Isle of Man
last year actually tagged one shark

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that went from the Isle of Man
to Nova Scotia in about 90 days.

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Nine and a half thousand kilometers --
we never thought that happened.

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Another colleague in the States
tagged about 20 sharks off Massachusetts.

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His tags didn't really work.

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All he knows is where he tagged them,

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and where they popped off.

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His tags popped off in the Caribbean,

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and even in Brazil.

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We thought basking sharks
were temperate animals

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and lived in our latitudes,

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but in actual fact, they're obviously
crossing the equator as well.

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So very simple things like that,

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we're trying to learn
about basking sharks.

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One thing that I think
is a very surprising and strange thing

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is just how low the genetic
diversity of sharks is.

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I'm not a geneticist, so I won't pretend
to understand the genetics.

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And that's why it's great
to have collaboration.

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Whereas I'm a field person,

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I get panic attacks

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if I have to spend too many hours
in a lab with a white coat on.

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Take me away.

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So we can work with geneticists
who understand that.

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So when they looked at
the genetics of basking sharks,

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they found that the diversity
was incredibly low.

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If you look at the first line, really,

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you can see that all these different
shark species are all quite similar.

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I think this means they're all sharks

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and they've come from a common ancestry.

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But if you look at nucleotide diversity,

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which is more genetics
that are passed on through the parents,

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you see that basking sharks,
if you look at the first study,

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was order of magnitude less diverse
even than other shark species.

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You can see this work
was only done in 2006.

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Before 2006, we had no idea of the genetic
variability of basking sharks.

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We had no idea: Did they distinguish
into different populations?

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Were there subpopulations?

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And that's very important
if you want to know

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what the population size is,
and the status of the animals.

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So, Les Noble in Aberdeen kind of found
this a bit unbelievable, really.

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So he did another study
using microsatellites,

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which is much more expensive,
much more time-consuming,

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and to his surprise,
came up with almost identical results.

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So it does seem to be
that basking sharks, for some reason,

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have incredibly low diversity.

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And it's thought maybe
it was a genetic bottleneck,

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thought to have been 12,000 years ago,

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and this has caused a very low diversity.

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And yet, if you look at the whale shark,

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which is the other
plankton-eating large shark,

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its diversity is much greater.

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So it doesn't really make sense at all.

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They found that there was
no genetic differentiation

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between any of the world's oceans
of basking sharks:

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even though they're found
throughout the world,

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you couldn't tell
the difference, genetically,

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from one from the Pacific, Atlantic,
New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa.

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They all basically seem the same.

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Which, again, is kind of surprising;
you wouldn't expect that.

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I don't understand or pretend
to understand this;

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I suspect most geneticists don't either,

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but they produce the numbers.

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So you can actually estimate
the population size

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based on the diversity of the genetics.

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And Rus Hoelzel came up with
an effective population size:

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8,200 animals.

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That's it -- 8,000 animals in the world.

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You're thinking,
"That's ridiculous. No way."

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So Les did a finer study,

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and he found out it came out about 9,000.

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Using different microsatellites
gave the different results,

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but the mean of all these
studies is about 5,000,

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which I personally don't believe.

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But then, I am a skeptic.

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But even if you toss a few numbers around,

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you're probably talking an effective
population of about 20,000 animals.

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Do you remember how many they killed
off Achill in the 70s and the 50s?

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So what it tells us, actually,

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is that there's actually a risk
of extinction of this species

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because its population is so small.

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In fact, of those 20,000,

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8,000 were thought to be females.

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There's only 8,000 basking shark
females in the world?

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I don't know. I don't believe it.

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The problem with this
is they were constrained with samples.

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They didn't get enough samples

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to really explore the genetics
in enough detail.

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So, where do you get samples from
for your genetic analysis?

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Well, one obvious source is -

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dead sharks, washed up.

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We might get two or three dead sharks
washed up in Ireland a year,

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if we're kind of lucky.

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Another source would be
fisheries' bycatch.

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We were getting quite a few caught
in surface drift nets.

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That's banned now, and that'll be
good news for the sharks.

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And some are caught in nets, in trawls.

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This is a shark that was actually
landed in Howth just before Christmas --

00:11:57.164 --> 00:12:00.191
illegally, because you're not allowed
to do that under EU law --

00:12:00.215 --> 00:12:04.952
and was actually sold
for eight euros a kilo as shark steak.

00:12:04.977 --> 00:12:06.801
They even put a recipe up on the wall,

00:12:06.825 --> 00:12:08.603
until they were told it was illegal.

00:12:08.627 --> 00:12:10.474
They actually did get a fine for that.

00:12:10.506 --> 00:12:13.299
Any of you tried it, no?
I don't think it's that nice.

00:12:13.730 --> 00:12:16.688
So if you look at
all those studies I showed you,

00:12:16.780 --> 00:12:19.436
the total number of samples worldwide

00:12:19.460 --> 00:12:20.984
is 86, at present.

00:12:21.758 --> 00:12:23.850
So it's very important work,

00:12:23.874 --> 00:12:25.969
and they can ask
some really good questions,

00:12:25.993 --> 00:12:30.276
and tell us about population size
and subpopulations and structure,

00:12:30.300 --> 00:12:32.953
but they're constrained
by lack of samples.

00:12:33.644 --> 00:12:35.493
When we were out tagging our sharks --

00:12:35.517 --> 00:12:38.827
this is how we tagged them on the front
of a RIB, get in there fast --

00:12:38.851 --> 00:12:42.202
occasionally, the sharks do react.

00:12:42.241 --> 00:12:44.992
On one occasion, when we were
up in Malin Head in Donegal,

00:12:45.016 --> 00:12:48.413
the shark smacked the side
of the boat with his tail,

00:12:48.438 --> 00:12:51.582
more, I think, in startle to the fact
that a boat came near it,

00:12:51.606 --> 00:12:53.493
rather than the tag going in.

00:12:53.576 --> 00:12:57.566
And then when myself and Emmett
got back to Malin Head, to the pier,

00:12:57.590 --> 00:13:00.032
I noticed some black slime
on the front of the boat.

00:13:00.956 --> 00:13:03.685
I used to spend a lot of time
on commercial fishing boats,

00:13:03.709 --> 00:13:05.188
and I remember fishermen saying

00:13:05.212 --> 00:13:08.035
they can tell when a basking shark
has been caught in a net,

00:13:08.059 --> 00:13:09.939
because it leaves a black slime behind.

00:13:09.963 --> 00:13:11.794
So that must have come from the shark.

00:13:11.818 --> 00:13:15.212
Now, we had an interest
in getting tissue samples for genetics

00:13:15.236 --> 00:13:17.222
because we knew they were very valuable.

00:13:17.246 --> 00:13:18.903
We would use conventional methods;

00:13:18.927 --> 00:13:21.244
I have a crossbow --
you see it in my hand there,

00:13:21.268 --> 00:13:25.653
which we use to sample whales
and dolphins for genetic studies as well.

00:13:25.678 --> 00:13:27.653
So I tried that, I tried many techniques.

00:13:27.677 --> 00:13:29.606
All it was doing was breaking my arrows,

00:13:29.630 --> 00:13:32.149
because the shark's skin
is just so strong.

00:13:32.179 --> 00:13:34.955
There was no way we were going
to get a sample from that.

00:13:36.079 --> 00:13:37.656
That wasn't going to work.

00:13:37.680 --> 00:13:40.237
So when I saw the black slime
on the bow of the boat,

00:13:40.261 --> 00:13:43.238
I thought, "If you take
what you're given in this world ..."

00:13:43.262 --> 00:13:44.426
So I scraped it off.

00:13:44.450 --> 00:13:48.845
I had a little tube with alcohol in it
to send to the geneticists.

00:13:48.869 --> 00:13:51.924
So I scraped the slime off
and sent it to Aberdeen,

00:13:51.948 --> 00:13:53.464
and said, "You might try that."

00:13:53.488 --> 00:13:55.098
And they sat on it for months.

00:13:55.122 --> 00:13:57.934
It was only because we had
a conference on the Isle of Man.

00:13:57.958 --> 00:13:59.497
But I kept emailing Les, saying,

00:13:59.521 --> 00:14:01.616
"Have you had a chance
to look at my slime?"

00:14:01.640 --> 00:14:03.483
And he was like, "Yeah, yeah. Later."

00:14:03.507 --> 00:14:06.330
He thought he'd better do it
because I never met him before;

00:14:06.354 --> 00:14:09.109
he might lose face if he hadn't done
the thing I sent him.

00:14:09.133 --> 00:14:11.984
And he was amazed that they actually
got DNA from the slime.

00:14:12.008 --> 00:14:13.843
They amplified it and they tested it,

00:14:13.867 --> 00:14:16.665
and they found, yes,
this was actually basking shark DNA,

00:14:16.689 --> 00:14:18.626
which was got from the slime.

00:14:20.468 --> 00:14:21.633
So he was very excited.

00:14:21.657 --> 00:14:24.942
It became known as "Simon's shark slime."

00:14:24.966 --> 00:14:27.857
And I thought, "Hey, you know,
I can build on this."

00:14:27.881 --> 00:14:31.643
So we thought, OK, we're going to try
to get out and get some slime.

00:14:31.667 --> 00:14:35.301
So having spent three-and-a-half
thousand on satellite tags ...

00:14:38.387 --> 00:14:41.824
I then thought I'd invest 7.95 --
the price is still on it --

00:14:41.848 --> 00:14:44.038
in my local hardware store in Kilrush

00:14:44.062 --> 00:14:45.832
for a mop handle,

00:14:45.856 --> 00:14:48.776
and even less money on some oven cleaners.

00:14:48.800 --> 00:14:52.271
And I wrapped the oven cleaner
around the edge of the mop handle

00:14:52.295 --> 00:14:53.776
and ...

00:14:53.800 --> 00:14:55.358
(Laughter)

00:14:55.382 --> 00:14:58.913
I was desperate to have an opportunity
to get some sharks.

00:14:58.937 --> 00:15:03.729
And this was into August now,
and normally sharks peak in June, July,

00:15:03.754 --> 00:15:06.743
and you rarely see them,
or rarely can be in the right place

00:15:06.767 --> 00:15:08.318
to find sharks into August.

00:15:08.342 --> 00:15:10.772
We were desperate,
so we rushed out to the Blaskets

00:15:10.796 --> 00:15:12.866
as soon as we heard
there were sharks there,

00:15:12.890 --> 00:15:14.417
and managed to find some sharks.

00:15:14.441 --> 00:15:18.504
So by just rubbing
the mop handle down the shark

00:15:18.529 --> 00:15:20.097
as it swam under the boat --

00:15:20.121 --> 00:15:22.631
you see a shark
running under the boat here --

00:15:23.455 --> 00:15:24.797
we managed to collect slime.

00:15:24.821 --> 00:15:26.069
And here it is.

00:15:26.093 --> 00:15:29.822
Look at that lovely black shark slime.

00:15:29.846 --> 00:15:34.439
And in about half an hour,
we got five samples.

00:15:34.463 --> 00:15:36.216
Five individual sharks were sampled

00:15:36.240 --> 00:15:39.072
using Simon's Shark Slime Sampling System.

00:15:39.096 --> 00:15:40.911
(Laughter)

00:15:40.935 --> 00:15:46.266
(Applause)

00:15:46.290 --> 00:15:49.544
I've been working on whales and dolphins
in Ireland for 20 years now,

00:15:49.568 --> 00:15:51.107
and they're a bit more dramatic.

00:15:51.131 --> 00:15:53.167
You probably saw
the humpback whale footage

00:15:53.191 --> 00:15:55.301
we got a month or two ago
off County Wexford.

00:15:55.325 --> 00:15:57.575
And you always think
you might have some legacy

00:15:57.599 --> 00:15:59.093
you can leave the world behind,

00:15:59.117 --> 00:16:02.052
and I was thinking of humpback
whales breaching and dolphins.

00:16:02.076 --> 00:16:04.461
But hey -- sometimes
these things are sent to you

00:16:04.485 --> 00:16:06.677
and you just have to take them
when they come.

00:16:06.701 --> 00:16:08.798
So this is possibly
going to be my legacy --

00:16:08.822 --> 00:16:10.464
Simon's Shark Slime.

00:16:10.488 --> 00:16:12.122
We got more money this year

00:16:12.146 --> 00:16:15.351
to carry on collecting
more and more samples.

00:16:16.691 --> 00:16:19.631
One thing that is very useful
is that we use a pole camera --

00:16:19.655 --> 00:16:22.068
this is my colleague, Joanne,
with a pole camera --

00:16:22.092 --> 00:16:24.031
where you can look underneath the shark.

00:16:24.055 --> 00:16:27.457
What you're trying to look at is,
the males have claspers,

00:16:27.548 --> 00:16:30.168
which kind of dangle out
behind the back of the shark.

00:16:30.192 --> 00:16:32.789
So you can quite easily tell
the gender of the shark.

00:16:32.813 --> 00:16:37.107
If we can tell the gender of the shark
before we sample it,

00:16:37.384 --> 00:16:40.491
we can tell the geneticist
this was taken from a male or a female.

00:16:40.515 --> 00:16:43.018
Because in the moment,
they have no way, genetically,

00:16:43.042 --> 00:16:45.580
of telling the difference
between a male and a female,

00:16:45.604 --> 00:16:46.763
which I find staggering,

00:16:46.787 --> 00:16:49.372
because they don't know
what primers to look for.

00:16:49.396 --> 00:16:51.710
Being able to tell the gender of a shark

00:16:51.734 --> 00:16:55.976
is very important
for things like policing the trade

00:16:56.000 --> 00:17:00.396
in basking shark and other species
through the sightings,

00:17:00.420 --> 00:17:02.635
because it is illegal
to trade in these sharks.

00:17:02.659 --> 00:17:04.696
And they are caught and are on the market.

00:17:04.721 --> 00:17:06.790
So as a field biologist,

00:17:06.816 --> 00:17:09.262
you just want to get encounters
with these animals,

00:17:09.286 --> 00:17:10.675
and learn as much as you can.

00:17:10.700 --> 00:17:14.109
They're often quite brief,
they're often very seasonally constrained.

00:17:14.134 --> 00:17:17.039
You just want to learn as much
as you can as soon as you can.

00:17:17.063 --> 00:17:18.829
But isn't it fantastic

00:17:18.854 --> 00:17:22.353
that you can then offer
these samples and opportunities

00:17:22.377 --> 00:17:25.196
to other disciplines,
such as the geneticists,

00:17:25.221 --> 00:17:27.675
who can gain so much more from that.

00:17:27.700 --> 00:17:31.406
So as I said, these things
are sent to you in strange ways.

00:17:31.430 --> 00:17:32.676
Grab them while you can.

00:17:32.700 --> 00:17:34.642
I'll take that as my scientific legacy.

00:17:34.666 --> 00:17:37.753
Hopefully, I might get something
a bit more dramatic and romantic

00:17:37.777 --> 00:17:39.026
before I die.

00:17:39.050 --> 00:17:42.111
But for the time being,
thank you for that.

00:17:42.179 --> 00:17:44.016
And keep an eye out for sharks.

00:17:44.159 --> 00:17:46.129
So thank you and thank you for listening.

00:17:46.153 --> 00:17:48.100
(Applause)