How A Shark Scientist Forged Her Own Path

RACHEL FELTMAN: This is Science Friday. I’m Rachel Feltman. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that a good chunk of you listeners spent at least a little bit of your childhood dreaming about becoming a marine biologist. Personally, I had this whole schedule drawn up where I’d work at an aquarium a few days a week and then go to space for the rest of it. But even folks who commit fully to studying life in the sea face a lot of barriers to entry in this highly competitive field, especially if they don’t fit the long-standing mold of a white male marine biologist.

Jasmin Graham has an unparalleled passion for sharks, but a few years ago, she started to feel that the traditional path in academia just wasn’t designed for her to succeed. Instead of giving up, she braved uncharted waters to forge a path of her own, and now she’s bringing other young researchers of color along with her. Jasmin Graham is the co-founder of Minorities in Shark Sciences, or MISS, and author of Sharks Don’t Sink– Adventures of a Rogue Scientist. Jasmin, welcome to Science Friday.

JASMIN GRAHAM: Hello. Thanks for having me.

RACHEL FELTMAN: It is so exciting to chat with you. I loved the book. You write about how you grew up fishing with your dad in South Carolina, and I’m curious about how that led you to pursue marine biology.

JASMIN GRAHAM: Well, I spent so much time out on the water. It really became sort of my place of peace and calm and where I could connect with the world. And I fell in love with not only fishing but the ocean in general, and I had a lot of questions, probably more questions than my dad would have liked. But I had a lot of questions about, what was going on with the fish? Why were they here? Why are they more likely to be caught some times of year than others? all of these sorts of things.

And then when I was in the summer after 10th grade, I was able to attend this marine-science camp at UNC Wilmington. And that was the first time anyone ever said, hey, you can get paid to study fish. And I was like, what? I didn’t even know that was an option. Yes, that’s exactly what I want to do. That’s what I’ve wanted to do my whole life is just ask questions about fish. And so that’s what I did.

RACHEL FELTMAN: It’s so important that kids get those opportunities to just be told what’s possible. That’s incredible.

And I know it’s hard to pick favorites, but you say in your book that your favorite shark is the bonnethead. I would love to hear what it is about the shark that you love so much.

JASMIN GRAHAM: Well, first of all, bonnetheads are adorable. So if you have not seen a bonnethead, google it. Look them up. They’re very cute. They look like they’re wearing little tiny hats, and their faces look slightly confused and terrified all the time.

RACHEL FELTMAN: Yeah, and sharks do not get enough credit for being adorable.

JASMIN GRAHAM: Yeah, they’re super cute. They also are the first shark that I ever got to work with. So the first shark that I ever did get to handle and do a tagging and taking sampling as part of a scientific survey. So they also have a special place in my heart for that.

And then they’re also just really unique animals. So they’re actually the first shark that was discovered to be omnivorous. So they eat plants and animals. Seagrass makes up anywhere between 40% and 60% of their diet. So at some points in their life, they’re actually eating more seagrass than they are eating fish, which is wild to think about.

RACHEL FELTMAN: Yeah, that is so cool. And what’s it like to hold one in your hands? Which I understand you do as part of your work.

JASMIN GRAHAM: Yeah, sharks feel like rough sandpaper. So they have this– sort of their scales are called dermal denticles, dermal meaning skin, denticles meaning teeth. So they actually have little tiny teeth all over their skin, so it makes their skin really rough. There’s actually Indigenous communities that used to actually use their skin as sandpaper and for all sorts of things like that.

So yeah, it’s really neat because if you rub them from their snout to their tail, it’s very smooth because that’s the direction that they swim in. And so their dermal denticles all lay down in one direction to help water move over their bodies better. It makes them really fast. It decreases drag or friction as they’re swimming.

But if you rub it the other way, you feel all of the points of the teeth. So if you start at the tail and rub towards the head, it’s really prickly. You can actually feel all the little points.

And shark skin is actually so rough that there’s this phenomenon that, if you are someone that works in aquariums or handles sharks as part of research, you will be very familiar with, which is shark burn, which is like carpet burn but from shark skin. So if sharks rub you the wrong way, it’s actually sharp enough, on some species, to actually draw blood and actually make little tiny cuts, sort of like carpet burn, which is pretty wild.

RACHEL FELTMAN: What’s the biggest misconception that people have about sharks other than not realizing that they shouldn’t rub them the wrong way?

JASMIN GRAHAM: Yeah, I think the biggest thing is when people hear the word shark, they’re really thinking like the stereotypical image of a white shark, this big, massive animal, apex predator, huge teeth. But there’s about 500 different species of sharks. They come in all shapes and sizes. They live in all parts of the ocean. And so actually things like white sharks and tiger sharks and bull sharks, the big three that we normally think of, are more of the exception than the rule. They’re actually like way bigger than most sharks. The average, they’re about 4 feet long.

RACHEL FELTMAN: Just little guys.

JASMIN GRAHAM: Yeah, just hanging out.

And, I mean, when I say sharks come in all shapes and sizes, I mean all shapes and sizes. There are sharks like pocket sharks, so small you can fit them in your pocket. Then there’s massive whale sharks, which are the size like bigger than a school bus. And you’ve got sharks that filter feed, sharks that eat seagrass. You’ve got sharks that glow in the dark. You’ve got sharks that know how to walk on land, which there’s such a wide diversity of sharks.

And it’s a shame that people have this one image of shark in their minds, and usually that image is something that’s conjured up as something to fear. But they’re cute. They’re fun. There’s just so much out there to see.

RACHEL FELTMAN: Speaking of misconceptions, you compared how sharks are treated and perceived to how Black people are treated in this country, which is one of the things that struck me the most in reading your book. Can you unpack that a little bit for us?

JASMIN GRAHAM: Sharks have this sort of malalignment where they just got the short end of the stick here. Orcas and dolphins got Free Willy and Flipper, and sharks got Jaws, which is not fair. But in actuality, sharks are animals just like any other animals. Yes, they are predators, but so are a lot of these cute things that we associate nice things with, like dolphins and orcas. They also are predators. They’re actually at the same level on the food chain as a lot of sharks.

But it’s all about how people are perceiving them. It doesn’t matter what they are. I mean, a shark can literally just be like minding its own business swimming in the ocean where it lives, and someone will take a picture and say, man-eating shark patrolling the waters of Miami Beach. And you’re like, I mean, it lives there. It was just swimming. It was minding its own business.

And the same thing happens with Black folks in America too where things like walking down the street with a can of tea can lead to you getting killed because you’re Black and you’re in an area that people think you shouldn’t be in. I really align with sharks in that because they’re not doing anything that any other animals are doing, but this stereotype exists of them, and it leads to them being killed. It leads to people being afraid of them. It leads to people not wanting to protect them. And the same thing happens with Black people in the US, unfortunately.

RACHEL FELTMAN: Yeah. No, that’s such a powerful comparison. Going back to your career for a bit, you described yourself in the title of your book as a rogue scientist. What prompted you to pursue research outside of academia?

JASMIN GRAHAM: I decided to leave academia after graduate school. Graduate school was really challenging for me, not necessarily in terms of the academic rigor, more of the culture, the culture of publish or perish, the competitive nature, the sort of way that academia was designed with this hierarchy that very much felt like it was not designed for me to succeed.

And so I decided, I’m getting out of here. And initially I thought I might leave science entirely, and then I started toying with this idea of, maybe there’s just another way to do science. Let me try that. And so then I just started trying to make my own way, and what does it look like to do science when you don’t have a big institution backing you?

And there are challenges. I’m not going to lie to you, but the rewards for me are huge because it means that I get to bring people in who normally don’t get these opportunities. And so I can really spend my time following my own scientific curiosity and then building other people up who also have not been welcome in academic spaces and giving them an alternative to that.

RACHEL FELTMAN: And that’s a great segue into talking about the origin of MISS, Minorities in Shark Science, which you cofounded. How did that come to be?

JASMIN GRAHAM: So that actually came about as a tweet, funnily enough. So the Black Birders Week movement was sort of sparked by the incident of Christian Cooper in Central Park. And as part of that Black Birders Week, they had this #BlackInNature. And so I was scrolling, and I saw Carlee, and I had never seen someone that looked like me doing shark research, and it was really amazing. And I just had this moment of like, ah, you’re not the only one.

And I immediately responded to her tweet, and I said, oh my gosh, another Black girl in shark science. This is amazing. And it got even more amazing because then Amani and Jaida, the other two cofounders, they got involved in the conversation and said, oh, I’m a Black girl that does shark science too. I was like, wait, there are four of us? Like in my brain, this just quadrupled the amount of Black women in shark science.

And I kind of jokingly said, we should start a club. And we realized there are other people out there probably feeling just as alone and isolated, and they shouldn’t feel like that, and we should start a club. And then that club sort of turned into a nonprofit, and here we are four years later, and we have about 500 members representing over 30 countries. We made the call and said, hey, if you’re a person who feels like they haven’t had a place in shark science, come hang out with us. And people responded, and the response has been huge.

RACHEL FELTMAN: So I know that you do research trips and workshops through MISS. How is it different from other scientific fieldwork you’ve done? What does MISS do differently?

JASMIN GRAHAM: We really strive to create positive learning environments where people can bring their whole selves. And what I mean by bringing their whole selves. I mean, you don’t have to change the way you talk. You don’t have to change the way you dress. You don’t have to change the way you think. We actually want you to bring all of that with you.

And so we’ll have people on the boat, and I mean, Carlee, her nails are always on point. She’s always got a full set on.

RACHEL FELTMAN: Very impressive during fieldwork.

JASMIN GRAHAM: Yeah. And the thing about that is, why should she have to take those off? If it’s not stopping her from doing what she does, bring them on. It’s also just amazing to have a situation where everyone feels like they can make a mistake and they’re not going to be judged for it because stereotype threat is real. When you feel like, oh, if I ask a dumb question, if I make a mistake, then everyone’s going to attribute that to my identity and you’re just a weak woman or that sort of thing.

And on this boat, it’s all about, how do we all be successful together? How do we cooperate? We don’t need to yell to cooperate. We don’t need to blame people. There’s nothing that you can do that is going to make us not treat you with respect on the boat.

And so I think that’s really important and valuable, especially in shark science because the tendency on boats is literally screaming at each other and cursing people out and being like, you messed up the data and you’re the worst. And that’s not helpful. No one learns in that situation. People don’t thrive in that situation. This is not a test. We do not expect you to know everything. You’re here to learn. We’re here to learn from each other. We’re here to work with each other. We’re here to grow, and we’re here to collaborate, and we’re all on even footing here. No one on this boat or in this program is any better than anyone else.

And I think that that’s key because the hierarchy in science leads people to power trip and people to treat people really poorly because they feel like they can do that without any recourse. And, unfortunately, in a lot of cases, they can do it without any recourse, which is a problem. And so that’s what we’re trying to solve and counteract with MISS.

RACHEL FELTMAN: I wish it didn’t sound so radical, but it really is. And my last question is just, of course, marine biology has long been a boys’ club, predominantly white. What gives you hope about the future of shark science?

JASMIN GRAHAM: The biggest thing that gives me hope is I used to google shark scientists and take a screenshot of the Google Image results to show like, hey, there’s a lack of diversity in science. This is a problem we need to address. This is why MISS exists.

And at some point a couple of years ago, that stopped working because I would google shark scientists, and what would show up in Google Images was a beautiful kaleidoscope of people. And it’s changing, and that gives me hope.

RACHEL FELTMAN: That’s all the time we have for today, but what a fantastic conversation and a wonderful book. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

JASMIN GRAHAM: Thanks for having me.

RACHEL FELTMAN: Jasmin Graham is a marine biologist and co-founder of Minorities in Shark Sciences, or MISS. She’s also the author of the new book Sharks Don’t Sink– Adventures of a Rogue Scientist. If you’d like to read an excerpt from the book, go to sciencefriday.com/sharkbook. That’s sciencefriday.com/sharkbook.

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