0:00:00.000,0:00:03.000
Basking sharks are awesome creatures. They are just magnificent.

0:00:03.000,0:00:05.000
They grow 10 meters long.

0:00:05.000,0:00:07.000
Some say bigger.

0:00:07.000,0:00:09.000
They might weigh up to two tons.

0:00:09.000,0:00:11.000
Some say up to five tons.

0:00:11.000,0:00:13.000
They're the second largest fish in the world.

0:00:13.000,0:00:16.000
They're also harmless plankton-feeding animals.

0:00:16.000,0:00:18.000
And they are thought to be able

0:00:18.000,0:00:21.000
to filter a cubic kilometer of water every hour

0:00:21.000,0:00:24.000
and can feed on 30 kilos of zoo plankton a day to survive.

0:00:24.000,0:00:26.000
They're fantastic creatures.

0:00:26.000,0:00:29.000
And we're very lucky in Ireland, we have plenty of basking sharks

0:00:29.000,0:00:31.000
and plenty of opportunities to study them.

0:00:31.000,0:00:33.000
They were also very important to coast communities

0:00:33.000,0:00:35.000
going back hundreds of years,

0:00:35.000,0:00:38.000
especially the around the Claddagh, Duff, Connemara region

0:00:38.000,0:00:40.000
where subsistence farmers used to sail out

0:00:40.000,0:00:42.000
on their hookers and open boats

0:00:42.000,0:00:44.000
sometimes way off shore, sometimes to a place called the Sunfish Bank,

0:00:44.000,0:00:46.000
which is about 30 miles west of Achill Island,

0:00:46.000,0:00:48.000
to kill the basking sharks.

0:00:48.000,0:00:50.000
This is an old woodcut from the 17, 1800s.

0:00:50.000,0:00:53.000
So they were very important, and they were important for the oil out of their liver.

0:00:53.000,0:00:55.000
A third of the size of the basking shark is their liver, and it's full of oil.

0:00:55.000,0:00:57.000
You get gallons of oil from their liver.

0:00:57.000,0:00:59.000
And that oil was used especially for lighting,

0:00:59.000,0:01:01.000
but also for dressing wounds and other things.

0:01:01.000,0:01:03.000
In fact, the streetlights in 1742

0:01:03.000,0:01:05.000
of Galway, Dublin and Waterford

0:01:05.000,0:01:07.000
were linked with sunfish oil.

0:01:07.000,0:01:09.000
And "sunfish" is one of the words for basking sharks.

0:01:09.000,0:01:11.000
So they were incredibly important animals.

0:01:11.000,0:01:14.000
They've been around a long time, have been very important to coast communities.

0:01:14.000,0:01:17.000
Probably the best documented basking shark fishery in the world

0:01:17.000,0:01:19.000
is that from Achill Island.

0:01:19.000,0:01:21.000
This is Keem Bay up in Achill Island.

0:01:21.000,0:01:24.000
And sharks used to come into the bay.

0:01:24.000,0:01:27.000
And the fishermen would tie a net off the headland,

0:01:27.000,0:01:29.000
string it out along the other net.

0:01:29.000,0:01:32.000
And as the shark came round, it would hit the net, the net would collapse on it.

0:01:32.000,0:01:34.000
It would often drown and suffocate.

0:01:34.000,0:01:37.000
Or at times, they would row out in their small currachs

0:01:37.000,0:01:39.000
and kill it with a lance through the back of the neck.

0:01:39.000,0:01:42.000
And then they'd tow the sharks back to Purteen Harbor,

0:01:42.000,0:01:44.000
boil them up, use the oil.

0:01:44.000,0:01:47.000
They used to use the flesh as well for fertilizer

0:01:47.000,0:01:51.000
and also would fin the sharks.

0:01:51.000,0:01:53.000
This is probably the biggest threat to sharks worldwide --

0:01:53.000,0:01:55.000
it is the finning of sharks.

0:01:55.000,0:01:57.000
We're often all frightened of sharks thanks to "Jaws."

0:01:57.000,0:01:59.000
Maybe five or six people get killed

0:01:59.000,0:02:01.000
by sharks every year.

0:02:01.000,0:02:04.000
There was someone recently, wasn't there? Just a couple weeks ago.

0:02:04.000,0:02:07.000
We kill about 100 million sharks a year.

0:02:07.000,0:02:09.000
So I don't know what the balance is,

0:02:09.000,0:02:12.000
but I think sharks have got more right to be fearful of us than we have of them.

0:02:12.000,0:02:14.000
It was a well-documented fishery,

0:02:14.000,0:02:16.000
and as you can see here, it peaked in the 50s

0:02:16.000,0:02:18.000
where they were killing 1,500 sharks a year.

0:02:18.000,0:02:21.000
And it declined very fast -- a classic boom and bust fishery,

0:02:21.000,0:02:24.000
which suggests that a stock has been depleted

0:02:24.000,0:02:26.000
or there's low reproductive rates.

0:02:26.000,0:02:28.000
And they killed about 12,000 sharks in this period,

0:02:28.000,0:02:31.000
literally just by stringing a manila rope

0:02:31.000,0:02:33.000
off the tip of Keem Bay

0:02:33.000,0:02:35.000
at Achill Island.

0:02:35.000,0:02:37.000
Sharks were still killed up into the mid-80s,

0:02:37.000,0:02:40.000
especially after places like Dunmore East in County Waterford.

0:02:40.000,0:02:43.000
And about two and a half, 3,000 sharks were killed up till '85,

0:02:43.000,0:02:45.000
many by Norwegian vessels.

0:02:45.000,0:02:48.000
The black, you can't really see this, but these are Norwegian basking shark hunting vessels,

0:02:48.000,0:02:50.000
and the black line in the crow's nest

0:02:50.000,0:02:52.000
signifies this is a shark vessel

0:02:52.000,0:02:54.000
rather than a whaling vessel.

0:02:54.000,0:02:57.000
The importance of basking sharks to the coast communities

0:02:57.000,0:02:59.000
is recognized through the language.

0:02:59.000,0:03:01.000
Now I don't pretend to have any Irish,

0:03:01.000,0:03:04.000
but in Kerry they were often known as "Ainmhide na seolta,"

0:03:04.000,0:03:06.000
the monster with the sails.

0:03:06.000,0:03:09.000
And another title would be "Liop an da lapa,"

0:03:09.000,0:03:12.000
the unwieldy beast with two fins.

0:03:12.000,0:03:15.000
"Liabhan mor," suggesting a big animal.

0:03:15.000,0:03:17.000
Or my favorite, "Liabhan chor greine,"

0:03:17.000,0:03:19.000
the great fish of the sun.

0:03:19.000,0:03:21.000
And that's a lovely, evocative name.

0:03:21.000,0:03:24.000
On Tory Island, which is a strange place anyway, they were known as muldoons,

0:03:24.000,0:03:26.000
and no one seems to know why.

0:03:26.000,0:03:28.000
Hope there's no one from Tory here; lovely place.

0:03:28.000,0:03:31.000
But more commonly all around the island,

0:03:31.000,0:03:33.000
they were known as the sunfish.

0:03:33.000,0:03:36.000
And this represents their habit of basking on the surface when the sun is out.

0:03:36.000,0:03:39.000
There's great concern that basking sharks are depleted

0:03:39.000,0:03:41.000
all throughout the world.

0:03:41.000,0:03:43.000
Some people say it's not population decline.

0:03:43.000,0:03:45.000
It might be a change in the distribution of plankton.

0:03:45.000,0:03:47.000
And it's been suggested that basking sharks would make

0:03:47.000,0:03:49.000
fantastic indicators of climate change,

0:03:49.000,0:03:51.000
because they're basically continuous plankton recorders

0:03:51.000,0:03:53.000
swimming around with their mouth open.

0:03:53.000,0:03:56.000
They're now listed as vulnerable under the IUCN.

0:03:56.000,0:03:59.000
There's also moves in Europe to try and stop catching them.

0:03:59.000,0:04:02.000
There's now a ban on catching them and even landing them

0:04:02.000,0:04:04.000
and even landing ones that are caught accidentally.

0:04:04.000,0:04:06.000
They're not protected in Ireland.

0:04:06.000,0:04:08.000
In fact, they have no legislative status in Ireland whatsoever,

0:04:08.000,0:04:10.000
despite our importance for the species

0:04:10.000,0:04:13.000
and also the historical context within which basking sharks reside.

0:04:14.000,0:04:16.000
We know very little about them.

0:04:16.000,0:04:18.000
And most of what we do know

0:04:18.000,0:04:20.000
is based on their habit of coming to the surface.

0:04:20.000,0:04:22.000
And we try to guess what they're doing

0:04:22.000,0:04:24.000
from their behavior on the surface.

0:04:24.000,0:04:27.000
I only found out last year, at a conference on the Isle of Man,

0:04:27.000,0:04:30.000
just how unusual it is to live somewhere

0:04:30.000,0:04:33.000
where basking sharks regularly, frequently and predictably

0:04:33.000,0:04:35.000
come to the surface to "bask."

0:04:35.000,0:04:37.000
And it's a fantastic opportunity in science

0:04:37.000,0:04:39.000
to see and experience basking sharks,

0:04:39.000,0:04:41.000
and they are awesome creatures.

0:04:41.000,0:04:44.000
And it gives us a fantastic opportunity to actually study them, to get access to them.

0:04:44.000,0:04:47.000
So what we've been doing a couple of years -- but last year was a big year --

0:04:47.000,0:04:50.000
is we started tagging sharks

0:04:50.000,0:04:52.000
so we could try to get some idea

0:04:52.000,0:04:54.000
of sight fidelity and movements and things like that.

0:04:54.000,0:04:56.000
So we concentrated mainly

0:04:56.000,0:04:58.000
in North Donegal and West Kerry

0:04:58.000,0:05:01.000
as the two areas where I was mainly active.

0:05:01.000,0:05:03.000
And we tagged them very simply, not very hi-tech,

0:05:03.000,0:05:05.000
with a big, long pole.

0:05:05.000,0:05:07.000
This is a beachcaster rod

0:05:07.000,0:05:09.000
with a tag on the end.

0:05:09.000,0:05:12.000
Go up in your boat and tag the shark.

0:05:12.000,0:05:14.000
And we were very effective.

0:05:14.000,0:05:16.000
We tagged 105 sharks last summer.

0:05:16.000,0:05:18.000
We got 50 in three days

0:05:18.000,0:05:20.000
off Inishowen Peninsula.

0:05:20.000,0:05:23.000
Half the challenge is to get access, is to be in the right place at the right time.

0:05:23.000,0:05:25.000
But it's a very simple and easy technique.

0:05:25.000,0:05:27.000
I'll show you what they look like.

0:05:27.000,0:05:29.000
We use a pole camera on the boat

0:05:29.000,0:05:31.000
to actually film shark.

0:05:31.000,0:05:33.000
One is to try and work out the gender of the shark.

0:05:33.000,0:05:36.000
We also deployed a couple of satellite tags, so we did use hi-tech stuff as well.

0:05:36.000,0:05:38.000
These are archival tags.

0:05:38.000,0:05:40.000
So what they do is they store the data.

0:05:40.000,0:05:42.000
A satellite tag only works when the air is clear of the water

0:05:42.000,0:05:44.000
and can send a signal to the satellite.

0:05:44.000,0:05:47.000
And of course, sharks, fish, are underwater most of the time.

0:05:47.000,0:05:50.000
So this tag actually works out the locations of shark

0:05:50.000,0:05:53.000
depending on the timing and the setting of the sun,

0:05:53.000,0:05:55.000
plus water temperature and depth.

0:05:55.000,0:05:58.000
And you have to kind of reconstruct the path.

0:05:58.000,0:06:01.000
What happens is that you set the tag to detach from the shark after a fixed period,

0:06:01.000,0:06:03.000
in this case it was eight months,

0:06:03.000,0:06:07.000
and literally to the day the tag popped off, drifted up, said hello to the satellite

0:06:07.000,0:06:10.000
and sent, not all the data, but enough data for us to use.

0:06:10.000,0:06:12.000
And this is the only way to really work out

0:06:12.000,0:06:15.000
the behavior and the movements when they're under water.

0:06:15.000,0:06:18.000
And here's a couple of maps that we've done.

0:06:18.000,0:06:21.000
That one, you can see that we tagged both off Kerry.

0:06:21.000,0:06:24.000
And basically it spent all its time, the last eight months, in Irish waters.

0:06:24.000,0:06:26.000
Christmas day it was out on the shelf edge.

0:06:26.000,0:06:28.000
And here's one that we haven't ground-truthed it yet

0:06:28.000,0:06:30.000
with sea surface temperature and water depth,

0:06:30.000,0:06:32.000
but again, the second shark kind of spent most of its time

0:06:32.000,0:06:34.000
in and around the Irish Sea.

0:06:34.000,0:06:36.000
Colleagues from the Isle of Man last year

0:06:36.000,0:06:38.000
actually tagged one shark

0:06:38.000,0:06:41.000
that went from the Isle of Man all the way out to Nova Scotia in about 90 days.

0:06:41.000,0:06:44.000
That's nine and a half thousand kilometers. We never thought that happened.

0:06:44.000,0:06:46.000
Another colleague in the States

0:06:46.000,0:06:49.000
tagged about 20 sharks off Massachusetts, and his tags didn't really work.

0:06:49.000,0:06:51.000
All he knows is where he tagged them

0:06:51.000,0:06:53.000
and he knows where they popped off.

0:06:53.000,0:06:55.000
And his tags popped off in the Caribbean

0:06:55.000,0:06:57.000
and even in Brazil.

0:06:57.000,0:06:59.000
And we thought that basking sharks were temperate animals

0:06:59.000,0:07:01.000
and only lived in our latitude.

0:07:01.000,0:07:04.000
But in actual fact, they're obviously crossing the Equator as well.

0:07:04.000,0:07:06.000
So very simple things like that,

0:07:06.000,0:07:08.000
we're trying to learn about basking sharks.

0:07:08.000,0:07:11.000
One thing that I think

0:07:11.000,0:07:13.000
is a very surprising and strange thing

0:07:13.000,0:07:16.000
is just how low the genetic diversity of sharks are.

0:07:16.000,0:07:19.000
Now I'm not a geneticist, so I'm not going to pretend to understand the genetics.

0:07:19.000,0:07:22.000
And that's why it's great to have collaboration.

0:07:22.000,0:07:24.000
Whereas I'm a field person,

0:07:24.000,0:07:26.000
I get panic attacks if I have to spend too many hours

0:07:26.000,0:07:29.000
in a lab with a white coat on -- take me away.

0:07:29.000,0:07:32.000
So we can work with geneticists who understand that.

0:07:32.000,0:07:34.000
So when they looked at the genetics of basking sharks,

0:07:34.000,0:07:37.000
they found that the diversity was incredibly low.

0:07:37.000,0:07:39.000
If you look at the first line really,

0:07:39.000,0:07:42.000
you can see that all these different shark species are all quite similar.

0:07:42.000,0:07:44.000
I think this means basically that they're all sharks

0:07:44.000,0:07:46.000
and they've come from a common ancestry.

0:07:46.000,0:07:49.000
If you look at nucleotide diversity,

0:07:49.000,0:07:52.000
which is more genetics that are passed on through parents,

0:07:52.000,0:07:55.000
you can see that basking sharks, if you look at the first study,

0:07:55.000,0:07:57.000
was an order of magnitude less diversity

0:07:57.000,0:07:59.000
than other shark species.

0:07:59.000,0:08:01.000
And you see that this work was done in 2006.

0:08:01.000,0:08:04.000
Before 2006, we had no idea of the genetic variability of basking sharks.

0:08:04.000,0:08:07.000
We had no idea, did they distinguish into different populations?

0:08:07.000,0:08:09.000
Were there subpopulations?

0:08:09.000,0:08:11.000
And of course, that's very important if you want to know

0:08:11.000,0:08:13.000
what the population size is and the status of the animals.

0:08:14.000,0:08:16.000
So Les Noble in Aberdeen

0:08:16.000,0:08:18.000
kind of found this a bit unbelievable really.

0:08:18.000,0:08:21.000
So he did another study

0:08:21.000,0:08:24.000
using microsatellites,

0:08:24.000,0:08:27.000
which are much more expensive, much more time consuming,

0:08:27.000,0:08:30.000
and, to his surprise, came up with almost identical results.

0:08:30.000,0:08:32.000
So it does seem to be

0:08:32.000,0:08:35.000
that basking sharks, for some reason, have incredibly low diversity.

0:08:35.000,0:08:37.000
And it's thought maybe it was a bottleneck, a genetic bottleneck

0:08:37.000,0:08:39.000
thought to be 12,000 years ago,

0:08:39.000,0:08:42.000
and this has caused a very low diversity.

0:08:42.000,0:08:44.000
And yet, if you look at whale sharks,

0:08:44.000,0:08:47.000
which is the other plankton eating large shark,

0:08:47.000,0:08:49.000
its diversity is much greater.

0:08:49.000,0:08:51.000
So it doesn't really make sense at all.

0:08:51.000,0:08:53.000
They found that there was no genetic differentiation

0:08:53.000,0:08:56.000
between any of the world's oceans of basking sharks.

0:08:56.000,0:08:58.000
So even though basking sharks are found throughout the world,

0:08:58.000,0:09:00.000
you couldn't tell the difference genetically

0:09:00.000,0:09:03.000
from one from the Pacific, the Atlantic, New Zealand, or from Ireland, South Africa.

0:09:03.000,0:09:05.000
They all basically seem the same.

0:09:05.000,0:09:08.000
But again, it's kind of surprising. You wouldn't really expect that.

0:09:08.000,0:09:10.000
I don't understand this. I don't pretend to understand this.

0:09:10.000,0:09:12.000
And I suspect most geneticists don't understand it either,

0:09:12.000,0:09:14.000
but they produce the numbers.

0:09:14.000,0:09:16.000
So you can actually estimate the population size

0:09:16.000,0:09:18.000
based on the diversity of the genetics.

0:09:18.000,0:09:21.000
And Rus Hoelzel came up with an effective population size:

0:09:21.000,0:09:23.000
8,200 animals.

0:09:23.000,0:09:25.000
That's it.

0:09:25.000,0:09:27.000
8,000 animals in the world.

0:09:27.000,0:09:29.000
You're thinking, "That's just ridiculous. No way."

0:09:29.000,0:09:31.000
So Les did a finer study

0:09:31.000,0:09:33.000
and he found out it came out about 9,000.

0:09:33.000,0:09:36.000
And using different microsatellites gave the different results.

0:09:36.000,0:09:39.000
But the average of all these studies came out --

0:09:39.000,0:09:41.000
the mean is about 5,000,

0:09:41.000,0:09:43.000
which I personally don't believe,

0:09:43.000,0:09:45.000
but then I am a skeptic.

0:09:45.000,0:09:47.000
But even if you toss a few numbers around,

0:09:47.000,0:09:50.000
you're probably talking of an effective population of about 20,000 animals.

0:09:50.000,0:09:52.000
Do you remember how many they killed off Achill there

0:09:52.000,0:09:55.000
in the 70s and the 50s?

0:09:55.000,0:09:57.000
So what it tells us actually

0:09:57.000,0:10:00.000
is that there's actually a risk of extinction of this species

0:10:00.000,0:10:02.000
because its population is so small.

0:10:02.000,0:10:05.000
In fact, of those 20,000, 8,000 were thought to be females.

0:10:05.000,0:10:08.000
There's only 8,000 basking shark females in the world?

0:10:08.000,0:10:10.000
I don't know. I don't believe it.

0:10:10.000,0:10:12.000
The problem with this

0:10:12.000,0:10:14.000
is they were constrained with samples.

0:10:14.000,0:10:16.000
They didn't get enough samples

0:10:16.000,0:10:18.000
to really explore the genetics

0:10:18.000,0:10:20.000
in enough detail.

0:10:20.000,0:10:23.000
So where do you get samples from

0:10:23.000,0:10:25.000
for your genetic analysis?

0:10:25.000,0:10:27.000
Well one obvious source is dead sharks,

0:10:27.000,0:10:29.000
Dead sharks washed up.

0:10:29.000,0:10:32.000
We might get two or three dead sharks washed up in Ireland a year,

0:10:32.000,0:10:34.000
if we're kind of lucky.

0:10:34.000,0:10:36.000
Another source would be fisheries bycatch.

0:10:36.000,0:10:39.000
We were getting quite a few caught in surface drift nets.

0:10:39.000,0:10:42.000
That's banned now, and that'll be good news for the sharks.

0:10:42.000,0:10:44.000
And some are caught in nets, in trawls.

0:10:44.000,0:10:47.000
This is a shark that was actually landed in Howth just before Christmas,

0:10:47.000,0:10:50.000
illegally, because you're not allowed to do that under E.U. law,

0:10:50.000,0:10:53.000
and was actually sold for eight euros a kilo as shark steak.

0:10:53.000,0:10:56.000
They even put a recipe up on the wall, until they were told this was illegal.

0:10:56.000,0:10:59.000
And they actually did get a fine for that.

0:10:59.000,0:11:01.000
So if you look at all those studies I showed you,

0:11:01.000,0:11:04.000
the total number of samples worldwide

0:11:04.000,0:11:06.000
is 86 at present.

0:11:06.000,0:11:08.000
So it's very important work,

0:11:08.000,0:11:10.000
and they can ask some really good questions,

0:11:10.000,0:11:12.000
and they can tell us about population size

0:11:12.000,0:11:15.000
and subpopulations and structure,

0:11:15.000,0:11:18.000
but they're constrained by lack of samples.

0:11:18.000,0:11:20.000
Now when we were out tagging our sharks,

0:11:20.000,0:11:23.000
this is how we tagged them on the front of a RIB -- get in there fast --

0:11:23.000,0:11:25.000
occasionally the sharks do react.

0:11:25.000,0:11:28.000
And on one occasion when we were up in Malin Head up in Donegal,

0:11:28.000,0:11:31.000
a shark smacked the side of the boat with his tail,

0:11:31.000,0:11:34.000
more, I think, in startle to the fact that a boat came near it,

0:11:34.000,0:11:36.000
rather than the tag going in.

0:11:36.000,0:11:39.000
And that was fine. We got wet. No problem.

0:11:39.000,0:11:41.000
And then when myself and Emmett

0:11:41.000,0:11:43.000
got back to Malin Head, to the pier,

0:11:43.000,0:11:46.000
I noticed some black slime on the front of the boat.

0:11:46.000,0:11:48.000
And I remembered -- I used to spend a lot of time out on commercial fishing boats --

0:11:48.000,0:11:50.000
I remember fishermen telling me they can always tell

0:11:50.000,0:11:52.000
when a basking shark's been caught in the net

0:11:52.000,0:11:54.000
because it leaves this black slime behind.

0:11:54.000,0:11:56.000
So I was thinking that must have come from the shark.

0:11:56.000,0:11:58.000
Now we had an interest

0:11:58.000,0:12:00.000
in getting tissue samples for genetics

0:12:00.000,0:12:02.000
because we knew they were very valuable.

0:12:02.000,0:12:04.000
And we would use conventional methods --

0:12:04.000,0:12:06.000
I have a crossbow, you see the crossbow in my hand there,

0:12:06.000,0:12:09.000
which we use to sample whales and dolphins for genetic studies as well.

0:12:09.000,0:12:11.000
So I tried that, I tried many techniques.

0:12:11.000,0:12:13.000
All it was doing was breaking my arrows

0:12:13.000,0:12:15.000
because the shark skin is just so strong.

0:12:15.000,0:12:17.000
There was no way we were going to get a sample from that.

0:12:17.000,0:12:20.000
So that wasn't going to work.

0:12:20.000,0:12:23.000
So when I saw the black slime on the bow of the boat,

0:12:23.000,0:12:26.000
I thought, "If you take what you're given in this world ..."

0:12:26.000,0:12:28.000
So I scraped it off.

0:12:28.000,0:12:31.000
And I had a little tube with alcohol in it to send to the geneticists.

0:12:31.000,0:12:33.000
So I scraped the slime off and I sent it off to Aberdeen.

0:12:33.000,0:12:35.000
And I said, "You might try that."

0:12:35.000,0:12:37.000
And they sat on it for months actually.

0:12:37.000,0:12:39.000
It was only because we had a conference on the Isle of Man.

0:12:39.000,0:12:41.000
But I kept emailing, saying,

0:12:41.000,0:12:43.000
"Have you had a chance to look at my slime yet?"

0:12:43.000,0:12:45.000
And he was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Later, later, later."

0:12:45.000,0:12:47.000
Anyway he thought he'd better do it,

0:12:47.000,0:12:49.000
because I never met him before

0:12:49.000,0:12:51.000
and he might lose face if he hadn't done the thing I sent him.

0:12:51.000,0:12:54.000
And he was amazed that they actually got DNA from the slime.

0:12:54.000,0:12:56.000
And they amplified it and they tested it

0:12:56.000,0:12:58.000
and they found, yes, this was actually basking shark DNA,

0:12:58.000,0:13:01.000
which was got from the slime.

0:13:01.000,0:13:03.000
And so he was all very excited.

0:13:03.000,0:13:06.000
It became known as Simon's shark slime.

0:13:06.000,0:13:09.000
And I thought, "Hey, you know, I can build on this."

0:13:09.000,0:13:11.000
So we thought, okay, we're going to try to get out

0:13:11.000,0:13:13.000
and get some slime.

0:13:13.000,0:13:17.000
So having spent three and a half thousand on satellite tags,

0:13:19.000,0:13:22.000
I then thought I'd invest 7.95 -- the price is still on it --

0:13:22.000,0:13:25.000
in my local hardware store in Kilrush

0:13:25.000,0:13:27.000
for a mop handle

0:13:27.000,0:13:30.000
and even less money on some oven cleaners.

0:13:30.000,0:13:33.000
And I wrapped the oven cleaner around the end of the mop handle

0:13:33.000,0:13:35.000
and was desperate, desperate

0:13:35.000,0:13:38.000
to have an opportunity

0:13:38.000,0:13:40.000
to get some sharks.

0:13:40.000,0:13:42.000
Now this was into August now,

0:13:42.000,0:13:44.000
and normally sharks peak at June, July.

0:13:44.000,0:13:46.000
And you rarely see them.

0:13:46.000,0:13:49.000
You can only rarely be in the right place to find sharks into August.

0:13:49.000,0:13:51.000
So we were desperate.

0:13:51.000,0:13:54.000
So we rushed out to Blasket as soon as we heard there were sharks there

0:13:54.000,0:13:56.000
and managed to find some sharks.

0:13:56.000,0:13:58.000
So by just rubbing the mop handle down the shark

0:13:58.000,0:14:00.000
as it swam under the boat --

0:14:00.000,0:14:02.000
you see, here's a shark that's running under the boat here --

0:14:02.000,0:14:04.000
we managed to collect slime.

0:14:04.000,0:14:06.000
And here it is.

0:14:06.000,0:14:09.000
Look at that lovely, black shark slime.

0:14:09.000,0:14:12.000
And in about half an hour,

0:14:12.000,0:14:15.000
we got five samples, five individual sharks,

0:14:15.000,0:14:18.000
were sampled using Simon's shark slime sampling system.

0:14:18.000,0:14:20.000
(Laughter)

0:14:20.000,0:14:25.000
(Applause)

0:14:25.000,0:14:28.000
I've been working on whales and dolphins in Ireland for 20 years now,

0:14:28.000,0:14:30.000
and they're kind of a bit more dramatic.

0:14:30.000,0:14:32.000
You probably saw the humpback whale footage

0:14:32.000,0:14:34.000
that we got there a month or two ago off County Wexford.

0:14:34.000,0:14:37.000
And you always think you might have some legacy you can leave the world behind.

0:14:37.000,0:14:39.000
And I was thinking of humpback whales breaching

0:14:39.000,0:14:41.000
and dolphins.

0:14:41.000,0:14:43.000
But hey, sometimes these things are sent to you

0:14:43.000,0:14:45.000
and you just have to take them when they come.

0:14:45.000,0:14:47.000
So this is possibly going to be my legacy --

0:14:47.000,0:14:49.000
Simon's shark slime.

0:14:49.000,0:14:51.000
So we got more money this year

0:14:51.000,0:14:54.000
to carry on collecting more and more samples.

0:14:54.000,0:14:56.000
And one thing that is kind of very useful

0:14:56.000,0:14:59.000
is that we use a pole cameras -- this is my colleague Joanne with a pole camera --

0:14:59.000,0:15:01.000
where you can actually look underneath the shark.

0:15:01.000,0:15:04.000
And what you're trying to look at is the males have claspers,

0:15:04.000,0:15:07.000
which kind of dangle out behind the back of the shark.

0:15:07.000,0:15:09.000
So you can quite easily tell the gender of the shark.

0:15:09.000,0:15:11.000
So if we can tell the gender of the shark

0:15:11.000,0:15:13.000
before we sample it,

0:15:13.000,0:15:16.000
we can tell the geneticist this was taken from a male or a female.

0:15:16.000,0:15:18.000
Because at the moment, they actually have no way genetically

0:15:18.000,0:15:20.000
of telling the difference between a male and a female,

0:15:20.000,0:15:22.000
which I found absolutely staggering,

0:15:22.000,0:15:25.000
because they don't know what primers to look for.

0:15:25.000,0:15:27.000
And being able to tell the gender of a shark

0:15:27.000,0:15:29.000
has got very important

0:15:29.000,0:15:32.000
for things like policing the trade

0:15:32.000,0:15:36.000
in basking shark and other species through societies,

0:15:36.000,0:15:38.000
because it is illegal to trade any sharks.

0:15:38.000,0:15:40.000
And they are caught and they are on the market.

0:15:40.000,0:15:42.000
So as a field biologist,

0:15:42.000,0:15:44.000
you just want to get encounters with these animals.

0:15:44.000,0:15:46.000
You want to learn as much as you can.

0:15:46.000,0:15:49.000
They're often quite brief. They're often very seasonally constrained.

0:15:49.000,0:15:52.000
And you just want to learn as much as you can as soon as you can.

0:15:52.000,0:15:54.000
But isn't it fantastic

0:15:54.000,0:15:57.000
that you can then offer these samples

0:15:57.000,0:16:00.000
and opportunities to other disciplines, such as geneticists,

0:16:00.000,0:16:03.000
who can gain so much more from that.

0:16:03.000,0:16:05.000
So as I said,

0:16:05.000,0:16:08.000
these things are sent to you in strange ways. Grab them while you can.

0:16:08.000,0:16:10.000
I'll take that as my scientific legacy.

0:16:10.000,0:16:13.000
Hopefully I might get something a bit more dramatic and romantic before I die.

0:16:13.000,0:16:16.000
But for the time being, thank you for that.

0:16:16.000,0:16:18.000
And keep an eye out for sharks.

0:16:18.000,0:16:21.000
If you're more interested, we have a basking shark website now just set up.

0:16:21.000,0:16:24.000
So thank you and thank you for listening.

0:16:24.000,0:16:26.000
(Applause)