Luke Tipple is joined by Forrest Galante to discuss the premier of his Shark Week special Alien Sharks: Strange New Worlds and how much remains unknown about sharks.
Luke Tipple is joined by Shark Week host and all-around adventurer Forrest Galante. They discuss his upcoming special Alien Sharks: South Africa, Forrest’s remarkable talent for finding creatures once believed to be extinct, and how many shark species may still be unknown. Then, our researcher Sierra stops by to tell us about the world’s most prehistoric shark.
Shark Week continues all week long on Discovery starting at 8p ET. For the latest, head to SharkWeek.com.
Find episode transcripts here: https://shark-weeks-daily-bite.simplecast.com/episodes/how-many-sharks-are-yet-to-be-discovered-forrest-galante
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:08:09
Speaker 1
Today, we'll find out how many shark species are yet to be discovered. And in our shark bite segment will reveal the oldest shark fossil ever to be found.
00:00:08:11 - 00:00:19:07
Unknown
You’re listening to the Shark Week Podcast
00:00:19:09 - 00:00:40:12
Speaker 1
G’day, everyone. Welcome to Shark Week, the podcast. I'm your host, Luke Tipple and today we're talking about how to find animals that are yet to be discovered and what it's like to look one directly in the eye. When we talk about searching for undiscovered animals. You might start to think about mad scientists looking for the abominable snowman or Bigfoot or other such nonsense like that.
00:00:40:14 - 00:00:58:12
Speaker 1
But outside of that pseudoscience, there are a few intrepid scientists, legitimate ones, who are pushing the boundaries of discovery. They're looking in places where animals should be or where they think they could be, but they've yet to be found or they've yet to be discovered. With me today is a champion of the unknown Forrest Galante. Now, you've seen him before.
00:00:58:12 - 00:01:18:18
Speaker 1
He's been on Shark Week many times. And in his career he's found eight different species that were thought to be extinct as eight of them. I mean, we thought they were gone, but he found them, which is so cool. He's the host of The Wild Times podcast and his new special premieres on this year's Shark Week. Now, Forest, we started out this podcast by asking you a question How many sharks are yet to be discovered?
00:01:18:20 - 00:01:21:01
Speaker 1
Can you answer that for us?
00:01:21:03 - 00:01:24:05
Speaker 3
Yeah, I mean, not with an exact number, but I would say there.
00:01:24:05 - 00:01:25:05
Speaker 1
Are is us.
00:01:25:06 - 00:01:47:13
Speaker 3
Up. There we go. I bet there are several dozen species and I'm not talking about new speciation as though taking, you know, a known existing species and delineating them from other known existing species. But I think especially in the deep sea, there are still at minimum several dozen large shark species to be found, benthic shark species that are down deep.
00:01:47:18 - 00:02:00:23
Speaker 3
And, you know, I think there are some up here as well, probably in the intertidal and really remote parts like along the the Wallace line and places like that. I think there's there's a lot to be found. Anybody who thinks we've discovered it all is losing it.
00:02:01:01 - 00:02:09:21
Speaker 1
Let's start with how you would form an opinion that there's so much more to be found. Give us that sort of basic framework of your scientific methodology.
00:02:09:23 - 00:02:35:23
Speaker 3
Yeah, well, first of all, you know, it's very arrogant to assume we know everything and we've seen everything as human beings. So as far as how do you think that there are new species out there and what would lead to that? Well, it's quite simple, really. You look at, you know, biological hotspots, you look at places that are understudied and you put the two together, you go, all right, here's an area that has incredible species diversity in the same area, let's say Borneo.
00:02:36:02 - 00:02:57:11
Speaker 3
There is very limited funding, very limited research going into finding species in places like this. You talk to a specialist like Dr. Dave Burt and go, Hey, Dave, you know, what do you think? Are there other species here? He checks through his records and his archives and goes, Yeah, you know, there's a couple of weird critters that washed up in collections and museums in the last 200 years that we don't really know what they are.
00:02:57:12 - 00:03:23:22
Speaker 3
Bang, bang, Boom! You go. All right, well, there's got to be some species over there that we just don't know that much about. Whether it's a new species, it's misidentified, it's mislabeled. We really don't know. And so you you go to Discovery with your with your hand out like like Oliver Twist and say, please, sir, can I have some more money that is and take that and head into the field and and try and try and find these species and turn it into, you know, some substantial research.
00:03:24:00 - 00:03:41:19
Speaker 1
So how often are you actually setting out, hoping to find something completely new or do you kind of expect to find. I think you said before, you know, speciation, you know, do you find a a different coloration or a different type of pajama shark, for example, or do you go on, you know, hope to find something that we've never seen before?
00:03:41:21 - 00:04:02:13
Speaker 3
Yeah, good question. I mean, I think the best way to lead into something like that is with an educated guess, meaning I think we're going to find something new or I think that if we take this existing pajama shark and look at the fact that, you know, two oceans meet here and there are these natural barriers, whatever they happen to be, geographical barriers, can we figure out that these are new species?
00:04:02:13 - 00:04:21:16
Speaker 3
But the key to it is really just open mindedness. You know, it's going there with an open mind and going, I'm going to look at everything and just soak it all in and try and understand it all and build this framework of what the system looks like and the species within it and what roles they play. So I think truth be told, there's no really knowing.
00:04:21:16 - 00:04:41:17
Speaker 3
You know, it's not like when and I haven't done this in several years now, when we were focusing on finding lost species, species that were lost to science, it's more like going in with an open mind going, What species are there? What can we find? And more importantly, what methodologies have not been applied before that could potentially turn up a shark that other methodologies wouldn't.
00:04:41:17 - 00:05:02:23
Speaker 3
You know, is that deep water camera trapping? Is that a certain type of baiting? Is that checking in, you know, a high turbidity zone where nobody's ever been able to dive and very little fishing has taken place and you can't net, you know, and the list goes on and on. It's sort of doing this creative puzzle solving to put together a picture that tells you what to try so that you can figure out what could be there.
00:05:03:01 - 00:05:20:09
Speaker 1
If that makes it. Yeah, totally makes sense. I mean, you're really just, you know, taking all the information that you have, your education and your desire as well. You know, let's not forget that obviously you're highly motivated to get out into the field and put yourself through a heck of a lot of pain and suffering to go and find something out there.
00:05:20:14 - 00:05:26:20
Speaker 1
Well, tell us about that. Why? Why why did you stop going after kind of the lost species?
00:05:26:22 - 00:05:46:15
Speaker 3
It's not so much that we stopped going after the lost species. I mean, it's still something we do even, you know, as recently as last year when we were in Peru, working on a human wildlife conflict with spectacle, bears, we found a species of blind snake that hadn't been seen in 70 years with that species, a blind snake, you know, that was a massive find.
00:05:46:17 - 00:06:03:02
Speaker 3
The thing is, most people would never have known. They would have looked at and gone, Oh, that's a weird little earthworm or that's a strange snake, you know, and moved on. But as far as why we've done that, I mean, my objective in life has always been to promote and bring a love of conservation to the masses, you know?
00:06:03:02 - 00:06:18:16
Speaker 3
And we did we did Extinct or Alive for a number of very successful seasons and a number of very successful shark weeks. And and then, you know, the idea was always to go bigger and broader. You know, it's not just as black and white as looking for an extinct species or not. It's what species are still out there?
00:06:18:16 - 00:06:37:14
Speaker 3
What do we not know about what discoveries can we make, what non-lethal human wildlife mitigation methods can we implore so that animals aren't winding up dead and headed towards the extinction list? And so just really doing a much larger umbrella of conservation programing. And, you know, it's been pretty successful. It's going really well. It's really fun.
00:06:37:16 - 00:06:44:15
Speaker 1
Yeah, I forgive the bluntness of this question, but who cares or why do people care about this?
00:06:44:17 - 00:07:13:02
Speaker 3
Oh, no, that's a good question. You know, I've always said this. You care In order to care about wildlife, you have to fall in love with it, Right? And order in order to fall in love with it. You have to experience it. And so whether that means sitting on your couch during Shark Week or going out for a hike in the woods or a scuba dive or a mountain climb, whatever it is, until you make the conscious decision to go and experience it one way or another, you don't have the ability to care for it.
00:07:13:02 - 00:07:36:04
Speaker 3
And only once you begin to care about it, you begin to love it and protect it. And all that is to say, why is this important? I mean, you know, look, it's the most important thing in the world. And I think people tend to forget that. And the reason being, I like to draw the analogy that the planet is like a giant game of Jenga, you know, the game Jenga with the tiles and you pull out one tile.
00:07:36:06 - 00:07:54:12
Speaker 3
Now you're like, Great, this thing's going to last all day. It's super sturdy. You know, you pull out two or three more tiles, four or five more tiles. All of a sudden that tower is getting pretty wobbly and it all comes down to that very last tile. Now, we don't know what that tile could be. That could be an extinction event, that could be an air pollutant, that could be a forest fire.
00:07:54:12 - 00:08:13:09
Speaker 3
We really don't know what that that last tile could be. But eventually you pull out that tile and the whole thing collapses. And that's a really good analogy for our planet. You know, And we're at a point now where the tower is kind of shaky, and if we don't care about those, those tile pieces, then we're going to see global collapse.
00:08:13:09 - 00:08:33:09
Speaker 3
So not to be all doom and gloom in the bearer of bad news, but there's a lot to be positive about. But, you know, we should all care because ultimately, if we see that tower collapse, everything goes. If the ecosystems collapse, human life ceases to exist as we know it. No amount of A.I. or Elon Musk can fix that, you know, like it will all disappear.
00:08:33:09 - 00:08:48:20
Speaker 3
So we really everybody should care. And further to that, why wouldn't you care? It's the coolest frickin thing in the world, right? As you grow up when you're a kid, you flip over a log, you see an earthworm, you freak out, you're like, Oh, my God, look at this worm. Why are we choosing to grow out of that?
00:08:48:20 - 00:09:05:06
Speaker 3
We shouldn't grow out of that. You know, we should grow into that. We should care more about it. Learn more about like, people love the stuff when they're kids. Every kid loves animals. And then for some reason, some societal lame reason, we tend to grow out of it. So I think, you know, just just embrace it.
00:09:05:08 - 00:09:23:22
Speaker 1
I think I've got the answer that we've talked about in another episode. I think the answer is, you know, financial reality. You know, people fall in love with things that might be chasing animals around. You know, for me, it was, you know, diving a whole bunch, finding different fish, whatever. And and then you hit that inflection point where you go, okay, I'm not going to get serious about this or am I going to get serious about life?
00:09:23:22 - 00:09:37:07
Speaker 1
And some people choose to say, you know, I can't find a way to monetize chasing animals around the world. But, you know, but then Escalante, who's managed to do that. But you're you're going to watch him on TV.
00:09:37:09 - 00:09:53:13
Speaker 3
You're looking at it from a career standpoint. I mean, choose choose to do this instead of play golf. Right? Choose to do this instead of go to the movie theaters. I'm not saying 100 times out of 100 because, God, everyone would burn out, right? I'd burn out if I didn't lounge on my couch and watch Game of Thrones here and there, you know.
00:09:53:13 - 00:10:13:14
Speaker 3
But the point being, like, just make the decision once in a while to embrace nature and immerse yourself in it and whatever form you want to do that in will lead to caring and passion. It's when you become entirely numb to it, when you don't make the conscious decision to embrace it, at least from time to time.
00:10:13:16 - 00:10:30:04
Speaker 1
What are the what are the pressures that you feel? Okay, so, you know, you're sitting on the couch watching Game of Thrones. You come back from some big expedition. Do you think, you know, I need to think of the next idea to go make a TV show or do you think there's actually something going on with a cyclone or environmental pressure or something that's going on?
00:10:30:04 - 00:10:35:10
Speaker 1
And if we don't figure out what's happening in that one spot in the globe like now, we're going to lose it forever.
00:10:35:12 - 00:10:55:16
Speaker 3
It's certainly a hybrid of both, you know, because of the model that that we do in order to fund our conservation work with my production company and everything else. We need places like Discovery Channel in order to fund our work. Right. And that's part of the model. So I'm always thinking, what is the next show? But when I think, what is the next TV show?
00:10:55:16 - 00:11:33:17
Speaker 3
Or we go into developing a project or a show, it's not just because Forest wants to go play with epaulets or whatever it happens to be, right? It's more like because, okay, what's critical? What needs exposure? What species are undervalued or on the brink of extinction, or just need more research. And then we bring that into a television show format, whether that's, you know, learning about the relationship between tiger sharks and sea snakes, because tiger sharks are randomly washing up dead or that's learning about the high levels of endemism in South Africa because some of those sharks are poorly studied and that we're seeing orca's predate on, you know, now the second, not even the
00:11:33:17 - 00:11:58:11
Speaker 3
top, but the second highest predator in the food chain. And the fact that that's underexposed, you know, and so it's like it's painting this picture of what what what thing in conservation is dire, critical and needs exposure. And what also would make a good compelling TV show. Because if I go out there and go, hey, Discovery Channel, I want to make a show about this, this really slow lifecycle grasshopper, they're going to laugh at me, Right.
00:11:58:11 - 00:12:16:22
Speaker 3
And and the viewers probably would, too. You know, they'd be like, why did I just watch 48 minutes on a grasshopper? But if you go, Oh, that's a super cool shark. And this amazing ecosystem and this plethora of wildlife and there's this critical conservation message and we're going to tell it in this really compelling way on a giant platform like Shark Week or whatever it happens to be.
00:12:17:03 - 00:12:34:16
Speaker 3
Let's bring that all together and paint this picture. Everybody wins. Like, you know, Discovery wins. They get good, good ratings. I win because I get to go do these super fun adventures and cool wildlife expeditions. The viewer wins because it's compelling. The species wins because exposure and attention are brought to them. And and often oftentimes funding like everybody wins, which is great.
00:12:34:16 - 00:12:35:08
Speaker 3
Yeah.
00:12:35:10 - 00:12:45:21
Speaker 1
Yeah. So you just went out on an expedition and I've just seen some tape on it where you're looking for seven girls. That's something I've wanted to do for forever, and it looked like quite a mission. Tell us about that.
00:12:45:23 - 00:13:01:13
Speaker 3
Yeah, well, my more recent expedition was I was out at the California Channel Islands, which is right out my window right here, And I shot a white sea bass three days ago. And as I was pulling it in a seven, Gill came and chomped it in half. I have a picture of it I'll send you. But before that I was.
00:13:01:13 - 00:13:02:14
Speaker 1
That's amazing.
00:13:02:16 - 00:13:29:11
Speaker 3
Yeah. This big all this big old shark came in aid half of my fish. But you know, recently, a couple months ago, I was in South Africa and we working on a new a new shark Week special Alien sharks. And what's cool about that is South Africa has one of the highest levels of endemism of sharks anywhere in the planet, meaning more different species of sharks occur in South Africa than anywhere else on the planet, which is very, very cool.
00:13:29:11 - 00:13:53:00
Speaker 3
So we went there to look into all these species while also incorporating an important conservation message. As we said, which is the fact that as many people know, as I'm sure you know, look to infamous Orca's port and Starboard moved into South Africa about five years ago now and just started decimating the great white shark population. Now, this is a natural system.
00:13:53:00 - 00:14:10:07
Speaker 3
These things happen in nature. What's caused it? Nobody really knows. But it's certainly, you know, the orcas. We always think of great white sharks as the top of the food chain. But orcas come in, they bully and beat up these great white sharks. They kill them and they eat their livers and move on. And it's sort of become a game for these two brothers, port and starboard.
00:14:10:09 - 00:14:27:05
Speaker 3
Well, guess what? About a year and a half ago, South Africa ran out of white sharks. Are all the white sharks moved on. And there was another big shark in the ecosystem, which was the seven gill shark, which is massive, You know, eat seals and sea lions, similar to white sharks, gets really big, has a big fatty liver.
00:14:27:09 - 00:14:48:05
Speaker 3
And all of a sudden the orcas went, huh, we're out of white sharks. We'll check these guys out. And they have taken a population of seven gills that was just booming down to near nothing. And so we went there to go, Well, wait a minute, are there still seven gills? And if so, where? Because, you know, there aren't still white sharks or if there are there few and far between.
00:14:48:07 - 00:15:11:10
Speaker 3
What's going on with the seven gill population, this weird prehistoric shark that's been around, you know, millions of years, it predates trees. Where have they gone, you know, and have these two orcas single handedly driven them to localized extinction? And the answer? Well, I don't know if people will have watched it by the time they hear this or not, but the answer is in our recent Shark Week special Alien sharks.
00:15:11:12 - 00:15:14:22
Speaker 3
And it's a it's very cool where we found them and very unexpected.
00:15:14:23 - 00:15:19:18
Speaker 1
Let's give people some visual of that. Sarah, could you pull up that footage of the seven girls that they got?
00:15:19:22 - 00:15:28:09
Speaker 4
Yeah, I sure can. All right, here we go.
00:15:28:11 - 00:15:41:19
Speaker 1
Know, obviously, there's you know, there's podcasts going over video and audio, but right now we're looking at footage of, I'm guessing Forrest and his crew, they're underwater. It looks very dogs this night.
00:15:41:21 - 00:15:42:11
Speaker 3
It's not.
00:15:42:11 - 00:15:44:22
Speaker 1
Is it not? Todd Dusko? And out in.
00:15:44:23 - 00:16:05:12
Speaker 3
Broad daylight, that's the really the key to where we found them. So, you know, we went to around the Cape Town area of South Africa where their population used to boom. And we dove all of the regular spots, right? We dove in the kelp forest near to the infamous SEAL Island where you see the white sharks breaching. We freed of it, which I wouldn't recommend anybody ever try.
00:16:05:12 - 00:16:31:06
Speaker 3
And do. You know, we dove there. We dove in. Sandy Shallow areas, we dove really deep and we were not finding the seven gills. And what we did in fact find were the two infamous orca is port and starboard. Talk about a needle in a haystack that came right by us. So when I called my friend Ryan Daley at U Shark, who was really looking for this data and helping me along in this research, I said to him, Listen, man, I I've got bad news.
00:16:31:06 - 00:16:52:03
Speaker 3
Like we've managed to find these other critically endangered sharks that you're looking for. We've collected a ton of data, but the main driver for being here, which was trying to locate whether or not there are still seven gills extant in the area, we have failed. And Brian basically said to me while I was walking around in a harbor, he goes, Well, look, the only place you're going to find it seven gills where the orcas don't go.
00:16:52:05 - 00:17:15:13
Speaker 3
And I was like, where the orcas don't go like the harbor that I'm standing in. And so sure enough, in a large commercial fishing harbor, we decided to splash right in. And the reason that looks so dark, the reason that looks like a night dive is that is underneath an overhanging pier and that's all stone. And they are they are not surviving in that harbor.
00:17:15:13 - 00:17:43:12
Speaker 3
They're absolutely thriving. I mean, I would say that we had well over a dozen, you know, anywhere from 7 to 10 and 11 foot long sharks in this harbor seeking refuge from the orcas. And it's one of the few times in my career that I've ever seen truly gigantic megafaunal wildlife thriving due to human intervention and development, which, you know, it's not intervention in the traditional sense of like humans came in to help.
00:17:43:12 - 00:17:51:17
Speaker 3
It's it's literal human development that has caused the species to be able to maintain while these two orcas are on their killing spree.
00:17:51:19 - 00:17:59:15
Speaker 1
Oh, that's absolutely nuts. So, yeah, they're hiding out in the harbor where you wouldn't think that would be. I mean, I imagine there's food for them there then.
00:17:59:17 - 00:18:22:12
Speaker 3
I mean, there must be. There's a lot of fish in the harbors there. The marine life is just substantial. But, you know, you look at that video, you can see there's old tractor tires and fishing line and cans and socks and all kinds of stuff that you would never associate with one shark week, two spectacular diving. And sure enough, here are these magnificent creatures completely hidden from the orcas.
00:18:22:14 - 00:18:42:16
Speaker 1
Hey, what does it look like when a seven year old comes and takes you catch? I mean, I've speared any number of fish, had them taken by bull sharks and other reef sharks, things like that. But never a prehistoric, great, big, blunt nosed thing that looks like, I don't know what it kind of looks like, a earthworm that has fins and lives underwater with great big teeth.
00:18:42:18 - 00:18:46:08
Speaker 3
Yeah, they're they're heinous, really, as far as like, the beauty contests, really?
00:18:46:12 - 00:18:47:18
Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:18:47:20 - 00:19:06:06
Speaker 3
But no. What does it look like? Well, I saw I shot this sea bass. There's probably about a £50 sea bass, and it went down a wrapped up in the kelp and I came up for my breath of air and I went down to cut it out of the kelp. And as I started coming down, I just saw this big, you know, intergalactic spaceship of a shark dawdling towards it.
00:19:06:08 - 00:19:14:11
Speaker 3
And it goes from very serene and slow to, oh, my, oh, my half, my fish is gone in a very, very short amount of time. And so, yeah.
00:19:14:11 - 00:19:18:09
Speaker 1
So they still have that burst that they can put on and come towards zero.
00:19:18:12 - 00:19:33:08
Speaker 3
Yeah, absolutely. And he didn't come at me at all because the fish was tied up in the kelp, he just went for the fish. But yeah. Went towards them, slurped them right in and spat half of them out. I went down and pushed the shark off the fish and then cut the, cut the, the kelp and took the rest of the fish up.
00:19:33:08 - 00:19:38:01
Speaker 3
But I just got a head and about a foot and a half of meat behind it and the rest is fine.
00:19:38:03 - 00:19:52:15
Speaker 1
Well, you got a cool story out of it, you know? Yeah, that's worth it sometimes. Yeah. And you also saw something else that I thought was really cool, and we don't often see it. We saw sharks mating. Actually, Sierra pull up that video of. Well, forest tells us about it.
00:19:52:17 - 00:20:15:05
Speaker 3
Yeah, well I mean, I don't know how many times in history sharks have been documented. Mating video documented mating in the wild. So I was thrilled. And it certainly was not something that we anticipated. And so what's what's most interesting about this is what you're looking at here are pajama cat sharks. Okay? These beautiful striped sharks are an endemic species to South Africa.
00:20:15:05 - 00:20:34:16
Speaker 3
They're I mean, they're just adorable. Like, they come in. They they literally I mean, this take it as anthropomorphism. I don't care. They literally come in and cuddle you like they nose into your armpit, nose into your hands, and they just want to feel you out because their eyesight's not great and they're just they're just a terrible flip and sharks.
00:20:34:18 - 00:20:58:05
Speaker 3
And while we're on this dive and these sharks are all over us, I'm putting them into tonic, I'm rolling them around. Everything else they one of these sharks comes swimming along with a with a crayfish in its mouth that it's just just killed or is in the process of dying. And these things go ballistic like there's there's two or three dozen of them around us, and they just go into this frenzied mentality where they're all just ripping this crayfish to shreds.
00:20:58:05 - 00:21:21:11
Speaker 3
Right. And you see it in the footage in the show. And the reason I tell you all that is this frenzied mentality of all these sharks rubbing against each other in competition for this crayfish obviously invokes some kind of male female mating response because at some point the male came. You know, my my cameraman goes, hey, the sharks are fighting, which I think we cut out of the show.
00:21:21:16 - 00:21:41:07
Speaker 3
But, you know, what ends up happening is this male comes along and just nails this female right behind her head towards her gills and all of a sudden wraps her up and inserts into her cloaca and they drift to the bottom. And it's just it had to be from that overstimulation of the crayfish and one finding it in amongst this like chaos and them all just rubbing against each other.
00:21:41:07 - 00:21:59:07
Speaker 3
And I mean, you can see it. There's the visibility's like three foot because they're just stirring up so much sediment and it's just it's such chaos. And so the surge is massive. We're getting slammed against the rocks and everything. And it was fun. Man. I've never seen sharks, mate before. It was incredible to see it like in front of my own eyes in the wild, undisturbed.
00:21:59:09 - 00:22:19:22
Speaker 3
And we watched the entire copulation. So from from, you know, latch where the male but on to the female to intertwining her, to inserting his class birds to releasing and swimming away at the very end with that little like sperm tail wiggle. And it was it was really neat to see. Yeah, I've never never seen it before. And my cameraman came up and he was like, Oh my God, did you see that?
00:22:20:00 - 00:22:23:06
Speaker 3
Yeah, we saw. Yeah, it was really fun.
00:22:23:08 - 00:22:35:17
Speaker 1
So what you're saying is, if we want to catch a shark's mating, we need to do is create, like, a massive orgy style feeding frenzies where they can all just rub up against each other and see if the mood strikes. And at the same time.
00:22:35:18 - 00:22:40:20
Speaker 3
I think that is the ticket logo, which we did not intend to do. But it's sure one.
00:22:40:22 - 00:22:55:10
Speaker 1
Even causing feeding frenzy three years. I've never seen that. Like maybe you just need to we need to find the right stuff. Maybe it's crayfish. What if we could get, you know, a great big, you know, truck, a crayfish, and put it in the middle of Guadalupe Island? See a whole bunch of great whites? Just get it on.
00:22:55:12 - 00:23:01:13
Speaker 3
You know, you need to pick up a Red Lobster sponsorship. That's going to be a pretty penny on chum there.
00:23:01:15 - 00:23:18:19
Speaker 1
Right? I be crazy. I'm stoked you got that experience. Hey, what would be the, you know, the tool kit that you'd give somebody who wanted to follow kind of a path that you have? You know, you say, hey, instead of golfing, go out and spend time in nature. What if somebody actually wanted to be doing what you were doing.
00:23:18:21 - 00:23:42:03
Speaker 3
That really, that's a really simple question. And the answer is passion. You know, nobody needs to do exactly what I'm doing. What people need to do that care about wildlife in the outdoors is forge their own path. And I mean that literally and metaphorically. Like you need to get out there and do your own thing. In the wild world, it doesn't matter if you fall in love with beetles or turtles or eagles or lions.
00:23:42:03 - 00:24:13:10
Speaker 3
It doesn't matter what the creature is, what the field of study is. The point is passion is the thing that is going to see you through it, because it's not all rainbows and butterflies. You know, we I spend tons of time pulling my hair out, whether whether I'm stressed over the next show or what when we're going to be able to fund something or whether I'm literally curled in the fetal position from dysentery, sunstroke, heatstroke, whatever, food poisoning, whatever it happens to be, it's the passion for the craft that makes me pull through that and continue on to the next thing.
00:24:13:10 - 00:24:33:04
Speaker 3
And I think that the same thing can be said for anybody. It's having tenacity and it's having a passion for doing something and the rest comes naturally, right? A good pair of boots, a great GPS, a nice pair of binoculars, whatever. We can talk gear until the cows come home. But what you need in order to really hone in on all of that is the passion for it.
00:24:33:06 - 00:24:50:12
Speaker 1
Yeah, well, that passion certainly comes through. And I've said that to you before. You know, your shows are always my favorite to watch because it's real. You know, I really. I mean, I mean it when I watch something that you guys put together, I know that you've done the work. I know you've gone out and slogged just through hell sometimes to get the footage that you get.
00:24:50:14 - 00:25:05:22
Speaker 1
And what you end up with is a piece that is truly worthy of watching and also, you know, demonstrative of the work that you put in and the results that you get, which is something new. You know, we figured out something here. Who knew that, you know, seven girls live under Pierce. Right.
00:25:06:00 - 00:25:06:15
Speaker 3
Exactly.
00:25:06:19 - 00:25:11:09
Speaker 1
So this episode, Alien Shocks, Why should people watch it? What are they going to learn?
00:25:11:11 - 00:25:33:03
Speaker 3
Yeah, I mean, I think the whole point of this was Discovery wanted to reboot that franchise of Alien Sharks, which is such a great thing to do because it's a look into the weird, wacky and unusual sharks. You know, we get a gazillion shows every year on on white sharks and tiger sharks. And while they certainly have their place, I think there is another place for the for the underrepresented animals.
00:25:33:03 - 00:25:56:22
Speaker 3
And you see that in our shows. You know, you see these sharks like striped pajama sharks having an orgy, which you had no idea you were going to see. So, you know, there's a lot of fun in our shows. And I think Alien Sharks is just a perfect opportunity to do show and tell of these animals that are underrepresented, that allow people to again, going back to my original point, fall in love with something different.
00:25:56:22 - 00:26:17:22
Speaker 3
You know, fall in love with a different style of shark. Maybe people if one kid watches this show and goes, Oh my God, all I want to do is learn about how Puff adder shy sharks glow in the dark, which is a component of this episode. You know, then we now have a future researcher on the bioluminescent properties of sharkskin, you know, which is an incredible thing like we've achieved, even if just one kid likes that.
00:26:17:22 - 00:26:31:19
Speaker 3
So yeah, I think there's a lot to see in this show. There's certainly a ton of shark species. I don't remember. We did a count jokingly in the edit room. I think there's like 19 species in this episode, so there's a lot going on. Yeah. And so I'm excited for people to check it out.
00:26:31:21 - 00:26:50:13
Speaker 1
Okay, so we got glow in the dark sharks, we got mating sharks, we got sharks getting hunted by orcas that are now living, you know, squirreled away in weird harbors somewhere that you guys have to fling yourselves into. I think you've done yourself pretty good here. Might you enjoying it, buddy? All right, well, go out on your next adventure.
00:26:50:13 - 00:26:52:11
Speaker 1
Come back and have a chat again. Can't wait to speak to you again.
00:26:52:14 - 00:26:58:06
Speaker 3
Thanks for having me.
00:26:58:08 - 00:27:03:16
Speaker 1
And now it's time for our shark bite, where we leave you with one cool ocean fact for the day. Sara, what do you got for us?
00:27:03:18 - 00:27:10:12
Speaker 4
Yeah, This week I've got a new discovery about sharks that makes us reconsider the evolutionary timeline for every animal on earth.
00:27:10:14 - 00:27:14:10
Speaker 1
Oh, I like that shark's cornerstone species. Let's go.
00:27:14:12 - 00:27:30:08
Speaker 4
Yeah. All right. So paleontologists found a new species of an extinct fish that was discovered in the zoo province of China. And this species was from a class called Zakynthos Idioms, which are the earliest ancestors of modern sharks.
00:27:30:10 - 00:27:34:06
Speaker 1
How old are we talking to start with in sharks of, what, 400 million years old or something like that?
00:27:34:09 - 00:27:43:01
Speaker 4
They say that the age of fishes came along like 420 million years ago and this new species predates that by 15 million years.
00:27:43:03 - 00:27:47:01
Speaker 1
So how does this change our evolutionary history of sharks?
00:27:47:03 - 00:28:01:23
Speaker 4
The age of fishes, when fish started to develop is estimated about 420 million years ago. And the discovery of this new species pushes that back. So now there's estimates that this jawed species was around 440 million years ago.
00:28:02:01 - 00:28:07:12
Speaker 1
And that could be the common ancestor of sharks, which would make the evolutionary history of sharks a little bit older.
00:28:07:14 - 00:28:10:13
Speaker 4
Yep, absolutely. Pushing it back by 40 million years.
00:28:10:15 - 00:28:18:18
Speaker 1
Wow. That's amazing. Okay, I'm going to have to retool my usual 400 million years of evolution comments and change it for funny. Thanks so much, Sarah. That was awesome.
00:28:18:20 - 00:28:23:14
Speaker 4
Yeah, no problem.
00:28:23:16 - 00:28:32:12
Speaker 1
That's it for today. Thanks to Forrest Galante for joining us. It's always such a treat to chat to him and I hope you learn something. Until next time. I'm Luke Temple chatting soon.
00:28:32:13 - 00:28:43:11
Unknown
During the ongoing podcast.
00:28:43:13 - 00:29:12:21
Speaker 4
Shark Week, the podcast is produced by Delve Media for Warner Brothers. Luke Tipple is the executive producer, and our writer and producer is Yale Rice, our researcher and associate producer, a Sierra Kehoe for Warner Brothers Discovery. The executive producer is Christina Bavetta, and the coordinating producer is Corin Wilson. You can follow our show wherever you get your podcasts, and we'd love it if you could take a second to leave us a five star review and subscribe to help our mission to give sharks a voice.