We were thrilled to get into contact with Dr. Catherine Macdonald - @drcatmac a marine scientist and professor at @field_school and @umiamirsmas of Florida. Anyone looking to get into sharks as a career - she is an excellent resource and clearly passionate about sharks as well as her students.
Were you raised near the sea, did you have support from your friends/family in your wildlife passions?
I’m a marine conservation biologist who teaches graduate courses at the University of Miami and co-founded Field School, a marine research training organization offering field courses which teach students how to perform marine science fieldwork. I was really interested in the ocean as a kid, which I think is true for a lot of people who grow up to be marine scientists. My great-grandparents lived right on the coast in South Carolina, so I spent time there when I was small running around the salt marsh chasing crabs and just generally getting dirty. I think those experiences struck a spark in me and made me want to learn more. I saw a beach fisherman catch a bonnethead shark there and it really drove me towards an interest in and sympathy for sharks.
Tell us about Field School! Which successes have you had with these programs? Are they open to the general public or just current students? Have you noticed a difference in how people may see sharks before and after they interact with them through these programs?
We founded Field School in part in response to the number of students we encountered who wanted to learn to properly, safely work with sharks and rays for research in a supportive and academically rigorous environment. Students in our open enrollment courses are mainly college students, recent graduates, graduate students, and (more occasionally) mid-career professionals looking to make a change.
Anyone over eighteen is eligible to apply to our courses, and one of the things we talk and teach about is the diversity of experience and skills needed for successful marine conservation—sure, we need scientists in the field and lab, but also fisheries managers, policy makers, activists, and communicators who help explain science to the public.
What advice do you have for someone wanting to study sharks for a career? Any tips/tricks on what to avoid, courses to take or skills to come into programs with?
My advice depends on the age of the person, but for college-aged students, I’d recommend a strong quantitative background (statistics, data analysis skills, experience with programs like GIS, R, and Python). Picking up those skills early will likely make everything else easier. It also helps to work on your “soft skills”—being a good teammate, managing your time well, organization, an ability to get things done without close supervision, and basic professional skills like networking and email etiquette. They make a difference!
I’d also encourage students thinking about careers in science to consider the kinds of scientific questions they would like to answer and the tools they want to use to answer them. Are they interested in what sharks eat and how they interact with the species they feed on? Or in their biology, or evolutionary history, or physiology? In the habitats they rely on? In how they are managed? The study of each of these questions requires a different skill set and different scientific techniques. “Studying sharks” can mean a lot of different things, and the more specific and thoughtful a student can be about what interests them, the more seriously I would take them as a young researcher. I think sharks are cool, too (obviously!) but thinking sharks are cool isn’t really a research question or career plan.
What shark actions or conservation milestones are you working toward? What’s an ultimate goal for you and your work?
My primary goal for my work is to be a net conservation positive for sharks. That can take a lot of forms, from conducting basic science like studying habitat use or how sharks physiologically respond to capture stress to pushing for better regulation of shark fisheries. I’m also concerned with best practices in shark field science, because well-trained future scientists will know how to handle and collect data from animals better (and less harmfully) throughout their careers. Finally, improving the culture of shark science has always been an important goal for me—making my field more diverse, inclusive, and welcoming to all students.
Have you found success in handling people that don’t understand or agree with conservation efforts? Have you found a way to get through to people/communities that may not care about animals/the environment?
There’s a belief among many conservationists in a “knowledge gap”. This is the idea that if we could just explain science well enough, people would share our beliefs about what the problem is and what we should do about it. Psychologists have pretty much shown that this isn’t true—giving people more facts doesn’t necessarily make them agree with you, in part because we all have multiple values at work in our decision-making. If a waitress or waiter brings you a plastic straw already in your glass after you asked for no straw, most people aren’t going to make a big deal of it—because their values around being polite and accommodating to waitstaff, who have tough jobs, are in conflict with their environmental values. Scientists understand the risks of climate change but still fly to conferences to talk to each other about climate change because they’re each doing a personal calculation balancing the costs and benefits of attending (to themselves, to science, to society).
People who don’t agree with you about conservation issues may be working from different values or solving for different problems—evidence of shark population declines isn’t going to convince a fisherman who relies on eating sharks for food security to stop catching them. The first step to understanding and changing things usually isn’t talking, it’s listening.
What are the most challenging aspects of your role/work?
My biggest challenge is time management. There are so many things I want to learn and do, I wish there were more hours in the day!
What’s your proudest moment or greatest accomplishment in regards to sharks/conservation?
Seeing my students go on to make the world a better place. Having contributed .0001 percent to the success or thinking of my students will make a much bigger difference to sharks and global conservation issues in the long run than I will ever make in any other way, no matter how hard I work.
What does your work entail? What are you (and your team if applicable) in charge of and what type of equipment do you use to do your work? (i.e., shark tagging and methods, how do you go about monitoring populations, etc.)
In keeping with what I said earlier about how working in marine conservation can mean a lot of different things, my work can be anything from sanding and painting a boat deck to handling sharks to lecturing a classroom of students to entering and analyzing data. One of the things I love most about my job is that no two days are exactly the same.
What actions do you feel that people could do that would be most impactful to saving shark populations? (i.e., some say becoming vegan, some say plastic and pollution focuses, or supporting ecotourism more etc.)
Firstly, I’d say that while big changes (going vegan, getting rid of your car) are amazing and admirable, even making small changes in your routine does make a difference. Not being able to do everything doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do anything. One thing that I recommend to people who care about the oceans is being very intentional around seafood, asking questions like: where and when was it caught? Under what regulations? There are apps out there to help us make responsible seafood choices. For consumer demand to drive better practices in the fishing industry, we have to ask these questions, care about the answers, and vote with our wallets not to consume seafood that isn’t from sustainable, well-managed fisheries.
Have you seen, or do you believe, that we can change the negative stigma surrounding sharks? Curious, if on any travels around the world if you’ve noticed a difference in how people from different countries treat wildlife/sharks? Do you think conservation needs to look different from place to place, country to country to save the ocean ecosystems?
I started working with sharks in 2007, and I have seen a huge change in what the public knows about sharks and how much they care about them in that time. It varies a lot from place to place, and from community to community—surfers think differently about sharks than conservationists who think differently than fishermen, even as all of those groups may want to support healthy oceans and shark populations. I think conservation has to take local context into account to work, and that it’s actually fine that conservation success won’t look the same everywhere. To a lot of questions, there is no one right answer. Our task is simply to do the best we can to find workable solutions as we go.
Learn more about the course programs at the Field School here