Table of Contents Letter From the Director...............................................................2 SRC’s Mission...................................................................................3 Science Spotlight............................................................................4 Graduates.........................................................................................5 By the Numbers..............................................................................7 Trip Highlights.................................................................................8 Scientific Publications...................................................................11 Shark Week......................................................................................13 A Decade at SRC.............................................................................15 Future Projects................................................................................17
Letter From the Director As I reflect back on 2020, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the challenges we all faced under a global pandemic. We were unable to conduct in-person research and outreach for most of the year, but this challenged us to successfully develop new and innovative ways of advancing our research and engaging the public. Our team still was able to bring out over 413 Citizen Scientists, mostly school kids, on our research vessels to participate in our hands-on shark science, during which we tagged 201 sharks. Off the boat, we created new online learning materials and visited schools virtually to educate students. Last summer, we proudly launched a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee composed of undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff to promote racial diversity, equity, and inclusion within our lab and in the scientific community through innovative outreach. We proudly continued collaborations with NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service to focus on conserving threatened species in Biscayne Bay and published nine research papers in scientific journals. We are extremely proud of what we accomplished thanks to your support and are delighted to share our highlights with you. Sincerely,
Sponsors and the Team.................................................................18
Neil Hammerschlag, Ph.D. Director, Shark Research and Conservation Program, University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science
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SRC’s Mission Based at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, the Shark Research and Conservation Program (SRC) conducts cutting-edge research, advancing marine conservation through peer-reviewed publications and public outreach.
Every year, SRC introduces thousands of students from various communities across South Florida to unique hands-on field research experiences to increase scientific literacy and foster pro-environmental attitudes. We believe STEM is for everyone, so our program puts a special emphasis on making these experiences accessible to students from historically marginalized communities and people more frequently excluded from careers in science because of their ethnicity or race.
Science Spotlight SRC uses a variety of methods, in addition to tagging sharks, including:
Baited Remote Underwater Video (BRUV) BRUVs are a passive tool to remotely survey sharks and fishes in the wild. BRUVs are composed of an camera connected to a bait crate to attract fish. Gaitlyn Malone studies hours of BRUV footage to see the kinds of fish (and sharks) around Miami for her thesis.
Photo courtesy of Gaitlyn Malone
Acoustic Telemetry SRC could not achieve any of this without the hardworking team that is dedicated to the research and conservation of sharks, their ecosystems, and the communities that depend on them.
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Acoustic tagging allows us to track sharks using sound energy emitted from transmitters. These tags emit a “ping” that sharks can’t hear but can be picked up by acoustic listening stations called “receivers” we have placed at our study sites. As part of a collaborative effort, we can also detect pings from animals that other scientists tag, and other scientists can pick up our pings on their acoustic receivers. Check out what an acoustic receiver (left) and an acoustic tag (right) look like!
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Graduates
Graduates Chelsea Black
Mitchell Rider Miami-Dade County is one of the most popular recreational boating destinations in the country. For his master’s thesis, Mitch’s Rider’s research focused on the influence that vessel activity has on shark presence in Biscayne Bay. His results suggest that the influence is species dependent. Bull and great hammerhead sharks demonstrated no change in behavior, whereas nurse shark presence was negatively affected by increasing vessel activity. These differences may be explained by the hearing ability of each species, as nurse sharks are theoretically able to register boat engine noise while the others are not.
For her master’s thesis, Chelsea Black focused on the microbiome of blacktip, bull, and tiger sharks off the coast of Miami, Florida. She found that a loss in dermal denticle composition in areas of wounds led to an increase in pathogenic bacteria from the surrounding waters. Sharks likely have a unique microbiome that protects them from outside infection, and learning more about this will be important in understanding shark health as it relates to their surrounding environment.
Patricia Albano For her master’s thesis, Patricia Albano’s research focused on evaluating the efficacy of a marine reserve for threatened and endemic sharks off of South Africa. She used baited remote underwater video surveys, or BRUVs, along with acoustic telemetry, to examine the spatiotemporal movement patterns and habitat use of five species of South African endemic sharks and the threatened smooth hammerhead shark.
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Elana Rusnak Elana Rusnak’s master’s thesis focused on shark physiology. The end goal of her project was to be able to assess health in wild shark populations. She isolated a protein from the nurse shark that is a direct indicator of stress and inflammation, and will hopefully be used to develop a tool that can measure the protein in blood samples from the sharks we sample while tagging them. This assay will be used as part of a larger “toolbox” to understand what the current shark health baseline is, and how it may be impacted by climate change and human influences. 6
Graduates By the Numbers
Trip Highlights: Miami
76 Blacktip
We examined and tagged sharks from around the globe: 28% in South Africa 50% in South Florida and the Bahamas 22% in the Galapagos
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Females in the Natural Sciences (F.I.N.S.)
Nurse
21 Smoothhound
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Puffadder Leopard Shyshark Catshark
Bronze Whaler
Spotted Gully
Smooth Hammerhead
243
Spiny Dogfish
total tagged sharks
Ragged Tooth
Satellite tagged tiger shark in urban Miami
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Great Hammerhead
9
Bull
5
Tagging sharks at night
Lemon
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Sandbar
7
Blacknose
7
Soupfin Atlantic Sharpnose
In South Africa, SRC caught several sharks species we had not encountered before, including: • Smoothhound • Bronze Whaler • Soupfin • Ragged Tooth • Spiny Dogfish
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14
7
Tiger
8
8
Tagging with Malone University students
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Trip Highlights: International Projects Parks for South Africa Sharks – De Hoop Master’s student Patricia Albano finished up her project in South Africa evaluating the efficacy of the De Hoop Marine Protected Area in protecting several endemic and threatened shark species.
Shannon Moorhead and Jay Dawsey expanded our South African acoustic tracking project to include several shark species that are targeted by commercial shark fishing. They also took biopsy samples from several sharks and fishes that will be analyzed for its chemical signature in the laboratory. Results of this analysis will allow our team to map out the trophic web.
Galápagos
Above: a smooth hammerhead receives an acoustic tag Left: deploying a baited remote underwater video station Below: sampling a pyjama catshark
Master’s student Alex Anstett visited the Galapágos Islands, where she contributed to a collaborative project studying blacktip and scalloped hammerhead nursery sites. Part of this research sought to understand if and how the quality of nursery habitat influenced shark health.
Galápagos Islands
South Africa
Photos courtesy of Trish Albano
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Left: A juvenile blacktip shark is seen on a baited remote underwater video. Right: Alex Anstett is looking at the island of San Cristobal during drone surveys.
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Scientific Publications McDonnell LH, Jackson TL, Burgess GH, Phenix L, Gallagher AJ, Albertson H, Hammerschlag N, Browder JA. (2020) Saws and the city: smalltooth sawfish Pristis pectinata encounters, recovery potential, and research priorities in urbanized coastal waters off Miami, Florida, USA. Endangered Species Research. 17;43:543-53. Moorhead SG, Gallagher AJ, Merly L, Hammerschlag N. (2020). Variation of body condition and plasma energy substrates with life stage, sex, and season in wildsampled nurse sharks Gingylmostomia cirratum; Journal of Fish Biology; https:// doi.org/10.1111/jfb.14612
A scalable, satellitetransmitted data product for monitoring highactivity events in mobile aquatic animals found that a time-series (ATS) is a practical metric for remotely monitoring and transmitting relative highactivity data in large bodied aquatic species with variable activity levels, under changing environmental conditions, and across broad spatiotemporal scales.
Morgan A, Calich C, Sulikowski J, Hammerschlag N. (2020) Evaluating spatial management options for tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier) conservation in US Atlantic Waters. ICES Journal of Marine Science, fsaa 193, https://doi.org/10.1093/ icesjms/fsaa193 Ajemian MJ, Drymon JM, Hammerschlag N, Wells RJD, Street G, Falterman B, et al. (2020). Movement patterns and habitat use of tiger sharks (Galeocerdo cuvier) across ontogeny in the Gulf of Mexico. PLoS ONE 15(7): e0234868. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0234868 Cartolano MC, Berenshtein I, Heuer RM, Pasparakis C, Rider M, Hammerschlag N, Paris CB, Grosell M, McDonald MD. (2020). Impacts of a local music festival on fish stress hormone levels and the adjacent unater soundscape. Environmental Pollution; 12:114925. Cooke SJ, J, Bergman JN, Nyboer EA, Reid AJ, Gallagher AJ, Hammerschlag N, Van de Riet K, Vermaire JC (2020). Overcoming the concrete conquest of aquatic ecosystems. Biological Conservation; 247: 108589 Gallagher AJ, Amon DJ, Bervoets T, Shipley ON, Hammerschlag N, Sims DW, (2020). The Caribbean needs big marine protected areas. Science; 367(6479): 749 AtallahBenson L, Merly L, Cray C, Hammerschlag N (2020). Serum protein analysis of nurse sharks. Journal of Aquatic Animal Health. https://doi. org/10.1002/aah.10100
The figure shows (a) tagging locations, tag release locations, and geolocations for five sandbar sharks tagged near Ocean City, Maryland, and (b) geolocations for shark “MD1”, with colors indicating locations by date.
Skubel RA, Wilson K, Papastamatiou YP, Verkamp HJ, Sulikowski JA, Benetti D, Hammerschlag N. (2020) A scalable, satellite-transmitted data product for monitoring high-activity events in mobile aquatic animals. Anim Biotelemetry 8, 34. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40317-020-00220-0
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SRC in the Media Shark Week: Monster Under the Bridge Legend has it that a huge great hammerhead shark nicknamed Big Moe circles the waters near the Seven Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys. SRC director Neil Hammerschlag and PhD student Laura McDonnell joined a team of researchers to investigate the legend. While Big Moe remains a mystery, the team was able to find and tag “Little Moe,” a juvenile great hammerhead in the same place. Could it be a coincidence?
You can follow Little Moe on social media! Learn more about his adventures and more cool facts about the endangered great hammerhead shark.
@LittleMoeShark @LittleMoe_Shark @LittleMoe_Shark
Among Fins Ever want to learn about elasmobranch research around the world? Among Fins, a documentary produced by SRC intern Victor Bach Muñoz, explores how citizen science from various orgranizations around the world contributes to the research and conservation of vulnerable shark and ray populations.
Scan the QR code with your phone’s camera and watch the documentary for free.
Visit amongfins.com to learn all about the 70+ organizations that contributed to the documentary and learn about their research and citizen science programs.
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What a Decade at SRC Looks Like To celebrate the 2010s with SRC, we’re taking a look back at some of the most amazing moments from a decade of research.
15 ft
1.6 ft
Great Hammerhead
Atlantic Sharpnose
2010
Number of total citizen scientists participating by year
Largest shark ever caught
Smallest shark ever caught
Growth by the Numbers 2010 2,000 12,000
2012
2012
2014
2014
2016
2016
2018
2018
2020
2020
Where are our Participants From?
9,600 1,600 7,200 1,200
800 4,800
2,400 400 0
0
Number of research papers published
10,000+ miles
Total sharks tagged from 2010 to 2020
120 4,078 sharks
of 29 species
We have welcomed over 10,000 participants from almost 100 different countries across the world.
150 1,000
Total number of research trips
Longest shark track
800 120
While our numbers didn’t increase much in 2020 due to the pandemic, there is something incredible to note: We achieved nearly the same numbers in 2.5 months in 2020 as we did the entire year in 2010!
600 90
60 400
200 30 00
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30,000 3,500
With all of the research over the years, SRC has contributed to many scientific discoveries and policy work in the conservation field. Here are some of the most notable: • Our satellite tracking data for bulls, tigers, and great hammerheads were used to help identify their essential fish habitat designations by NOAA • We found the critically endangered sawfish habitat in and around Miami • We helped introduce protections for great hammerhead sharks and tiger sharks in Florida waters • Our research and outreach efforts played a role in the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission introduction of new rules for land-based shark fishing • in Florida
25,000 3,000
Number of fishing lines set per year
Broader Contributions
20,000 2,500 15,000 2,000 10,000 1,500 5,000 1,000 0 2010
500
2010
2012 2012
2014 2014
2016 2016
2018 2018
2020 2020
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Future Projects SRC has several projects to look forward to in the coming year.
Thank you to our generous sponsors and donors who continue to help SRC and sharks around the world.
SRC PhD student Mitch Rider is working with NOAA on a collaborative satellite tagging program that includes endangered sea turtles.
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PhD students Laura McDonnell and Chelsea Black are increasing satellite tagging efforts on sandbar and blue sharks along the East Coast of the U.S.
MS students Alex Anstett and Yakira Gerszberg are heading to the Florida Keys to find lemon shark nurseries and hopefully identify essential habitat.
MS student Abby Tinari is going to continue her research evaluating at the effects of artificial light at night on sharks.
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Sponsors and SRC Team
The Batchelor Foundation, Inc. University of Miami Citizens Board Ruta Maya Coffee Isermann Family Foundation H. W. Wilson Foundation, Inc. Canon Solutions America Alma Jennings Foundation, Inc. Eric T. Levin Trust Theresa & Robin Lineberger
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Heffner Fund Interphase Materials Hook & Tackle Waterlust Cape Clasp William J. Gallwey, III Give Back Brands Foundation NOAA All generous individuals and groups who have Adopted a Shark
In addition, SRC would be nowhere without its incredibly hard-working team. Even with such a difficult year, the team never stopped pushing forward and accomplishing their goals. Annual report made through a collaborative effort by:
Photos by: Josh Liberman Matthew Bernanke Alex Anstett Peter Aronson Sam Aronwald Neil Hammerschlag
Paola Roldan Victor Bach Muñoz Chelsea Black Maria Geoly Angie Del Llano
Nina Colagiovanni Maria Geoly Valerie Zundel Alex Anstett Abby Tinari Diana Udel
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