Luke Tipple is joined by Chirstine de Silva, marine scientist, shark expert and co-founder of Juice Robotics to discuss deep sea sharks and the technology helping us understand them.
Luke Tipple is joined by Christine de Silva, marine scientist, shark expert and co-founder of Juice Robotics. Christine discusses her cutting edge research and the technology her company has created to explore the deep sea. They’ll discuss the unique and largely unresearched sharks that live thousands of feet below sea level, how they survive, how we can protect them and what we can learn from them. Plus, the pair chat Great Whites in Christine’s hometown of Cape Cod, and how we can coexist.
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[00:00:00] Luke: On today's podcast, we'll be joined by Marine scientist, shark expert, and star of Discovery’s Shark Week, Special Mission Shark Dome, Christine DeSilva. She's here to talk about how technology is helping us learn more about sharks every day. Plus, she'll be telling us all about her cutting edge research in deep sea exploration, all that, and more is coming up on this episode of Shark Week the Podcast.
[00:00:25] Luke: I'm Luke Tipple, Marine biologist, and a frequent voice on my favorite things, oceans and sharks. And I'm stoked to bring the magic of shark week, right to your ears. You know, sharks have been a big part of my life for over 20 years. They're a critical part of the ocean and a conduit to a better understanding life on our planet.
[00:00:44] Luke: So whether you've never seen shark week, Or you've been a diehard fan over the 30 plus years it's been around. This podcast is for you.
[00:00:58] Luke: So on this episode, I'm stoked to welcome a very special guest. We have Marine scientist and star of discoveries, shark week, special mission shark dome. This is Christine DeSilva. How you doing Christ? Hey, Luke. I'm great. How are you? I'm good. Uh, you are coming to us from officially the coolest shark room I've seen so far on this podcast.
[00:01:16] Luke: Congratulations.
[00:01:17] Christine de Silva: Thank you. Thank you. Yes, this is the, the shark room at my house.
[00:01:21] Luke: That's awesome. Hey, so tell me what got you interested in sharks?
[00:01:25] Christine de Silva: You know, I, I was super, super lucky to spend my summers out here on Cape Cod, where I actually am right now. And I was, of course, always interested in the ocean, always sailing, windsurf, you know, spending my time out in the water as much as possible.
[00:01:40] Christine de Silva: And I just kind of fell in love with the ocean and fell in love with wanting to protect it. And that led me to sharks. And then I went to the University of Miami. Where I was in the shark lab down there with Hammershlag, and just absolutely fell in love with working with sharks, working with predators. And it's been the best decision I've made in my life.
[00:01:59] Luke: That's, uh, it's interesting. That's a fairly similar story to me, cuz I was mostly into the ocean and it was like, oh how can I know more about the ocean than it was right about, you know, the coolest animals, you know, And the sharks just stood out to me as something to understand. And then as you understand that you get to understand everything else underneath it, you know, to some degree, which I thought was a pretty cool entry point.
[00:02:20] Luke: Um, and you were at the University of Miami.
[00:02:22] Christine de Silva: I did, That's where I did my undergrad. Um, right now, though, I'm doing grad school at university of Rhode Island. So I'm getting a blue MBA. And what that means is I'm getting an oceanography masters and an MBA at the same time.
[00:02:34] Luke: So it's a lot. So you are like super smart echelon Marine scientist status, right?
[00:02:40] Christine de Silva: No, no. I think. A lot of people say that. I think when people go to grad school, but my response is typically, if you find something that you're passionate enough about and interested in enough, it doesn't matter your intelligence level, you're just gonna go for it. And if you're really interested in it, it doesn't really matter.
[00:02:57] Christine de Silva: You'll you'll do the work.
[00:02:59] Luke: I love that. Yeah. You'll figure it out along the way. So what got you interested in your specialty is, uh, somewhat in sort of deep sea sharks, right? Just sort of deep stuff. What got you into that?
[00:03:10] Christine de Silva: You know, it's really funny. I was not really focusing on deep sea sharks until in 2020.
[00:03:16] Christine de Silva: I started working with shark week. So it all for me kind of goes back to shark week. Um, in just before COVID in January of 2020, I got to be a part of, uh, Tiger Shark King. And we were looking at deep sea tiger sharks and we were using these really cool cameras. These Bubs. Faded remote underwater video systems, Bubs.
[00:03:35] Christine de Silva: And that got me really interested in the technology. How can we make these better? How can we go deeper? How can we see more sharks? How can we attract more animals so we can study them. And from there, you know, my passion, thanks to shark week. got to be something that I get to do now as a job and something I get to study.
[00:03:56] Luke: So are deep water sharks. Now, part of your study or part of your thesis, or how do you, how do you put.
[00:04:03] Christine de Silva: Yeah. So because I'm doing the blue MBA, I get to focus on both the business side and the science side. So I also started my own company. doing a lot of stuff called juice, robotics, and we're trying to make it easier.
[00:04:20] Christine de Silva: For organizations to access the deep sea. And so my thesis is to both work on juice robotics, and make this a fully fledged successful company, and also study deep sea sharks and really bring more awareness to the deep sea in general. And that's really been a huge barrier to ocean exploration in general is the cost of these things.
[00:04:41] Christine de Silva: You know, so what we're trying to do is really democratize deep sea exploration and democratize ocean exploration in general.
[00:04:48] Luke: So specifically, what are you building though?
[00:04:50] Christine de Silva: So we are making smaller, lighter components to these deep sea robots, these deep sea ROVs, um, these deep sea drop cameras or the bras, like I mentioned earlier, mm-hmm so somebody like me, I'm not an engineer.
[00:05:04] Christine de Silva: I have the biology background, but I want to be able to use these cool robots, these ROV. So I can, you know, buy some components from juice, robotics that are instead of, you know, a 10 foot tall camera. It's now a two foot tall camera and I can take them. I come, I compare like to Lego pieces so I can take a bunch of these Lego pieces, just click, click, click them all together, expect them to work toss 'em over the side of the boat.
[00:05:29] Christine de Silva: Come back, maybe 10 hours later, pick 'em back up. And the data is right there for
[00:05:33] Luke: me. So you're putting robots down, swimming with sharks, or how does that work? All of the
[00:05:38] Christine de Silva: above that's what's so awesome at what I get to do.
[00:05:41] Luke: cool. So basically it's, it's deep water camera, lighting systems, things that, you know, enable people to collect visual data from underwater.
[00:05:49] Luke: Like what, what would a potential client look like for you? What are they actually trying to find?
[00:05:55] Christine de Silva: So the deep sea. Actually a lot of people don't know this, but it's our largest ecosystem on the planet. And we know very, very little about it. And that's because of the cost prohibitive. It's been, you know, too expensive to get down there.
[00:06:07] Christine de Silva: But also it's just very difficult to design things to get down there. So working with scientists to make sure that they're able to do these surveys so we know what is down there. Cause we really Don. But also working with, um, maybe government agencies, um, NGOs, and potentially also the DOD department of defense, because they have some pretty, uh, big interests right now in making sure that our oceans are protected as well in a different way.
[00:06:33] Christine de Silva: Uh
[00:06:34] Luke: I suspect that maybe potentially DD that's probably primarily and possibly exclusively DOD. If they're, if you're building stuff, that's that cool. They're gonna. Use it and go deep, which is great. But speaking of, you know, technology and viewing sharks and everything like that, I wanted to talk about your show on discovery recently, it was a mission shark dome.
[00:06:52] Luke: Uh, give us a brief overview of that show.
[00:06:56] Christine de Silva: I mean, it was amazing. So, uh, so was Dr. Austin, Gallagher, Andre Musk, groves, and myself. And we got to go to Guadalupe island, which is off of Mexico. And the goal there was to find some large what we thought, or at least what we hoped to be large pregnant female white sharks, and then tag one of them and then follow her to an area where she might be puff.
[00:07:19] Christine de Silva: And so for me, it was really set, so, so cool. Cause I had never actually gotten to swim with a white shark before. Of course I see them offshore here all the time, but, um, you know, we had an awesome time and then Andre got to do the craziest, coolest thing ever. He got to use the actual shark dome and Andre is an amazing, uh, free diver.
[00:07:37] Christine de Silva: He can hold his breath for like three minutes. And so we created. Dome that we put underwater, like a diving bell, kind of like one of those old school kind of diving bell situations where you've got a pocket of air, you know, uh, under the water. And he would go out to the arms, like, hold his breath, go out to the arms of this thing, try and ultrasound, a shark to see whether or not she was pregnant.
[00:08:02] Christine de Silva: and then when he needed to catch his breath or felt a little shaky about the situation, go back up into the diving bill, the dome, take a breath and then go back out and try and ultrasound. The next shark. It was, it was incredible.
[00:08:14] Luke: That is cool. Uh, having had the experience of swimming with great whites, a lot in Guadalupe.
[00:08:19] Luke: There's, there's certainly a nice feeling to know that there's something to retreat to, and just having that, that cage behind you or whatever it might be. Um, it's just nice to have something to eat back. how, how did that go? Were you successful?
[00:08:32] Christine de Silva: Yes. I mean, we. We were able to find what we thought was a pregnant white shark and tag her.
[00:08:38] Christine de Silva: So we used a popup archival tag, a satellite tag, and we actually had her swallow that. So we put in the bait, hit it in some bait. We got her to take a bite and then followed her to Bonitos, which is also in Mexico, in the sea of Cortez. And then unfortunately we weren't able to find any pregnant white sharks while we were there, but I'm hoping that that's a reason to go back pretty soon.
[00:09:00] Christine de Silva: So, um, I'm hoping to do some more work out
[00:09:03] Luke: there. What takes your interest into the deep sea and specifically with sharks? Like what cool sharks are down there? What are we finding? We've seen some in shark week, but mm-hmm, , what's left to discover
[00:09:15] Christine de Silva: there's so much out there. I mean, I'm so lucky that I get to say that I am being able to answer questions that we didn't even know to ask like five years ago.
[00:09:24] Christine de Silva: And I'm also able to make the technology to answer these questions. Um, and so I wanna go to places that have never been explored. We might be able to find new shark species, new species of other animals. Um, I love Golin sharks. Frilled sharks. If you haven't heard about them, they've got these crazy teeth.
[00:09:42] Christine de Silva: I mean, I. There's the potential that people used to think that those were sea serpents. When those, you know, washed up on the beach dead, they're these long, skinny, almost snake-like looking sharks and they live, you know, where there's no light, how do they, how do they see, how do they get around? How do they know what to eat?
[00:09:57] Christine de Silva: Um, how do they know where the food is? There's just so many cool species of shark. I mean the smallest shark in the world, Phil lantern, shark, he's we just a couple inches long and these guys can light up. There's so much down there that we don't. and I'm just super hyped to be able to get down there and be the first people, the first person to actually have eyes on a part on a part of our.
[00:10:20] Christine de Silva: Yeah.
[00:10:20] Luke: You know, you, you're probably the perfect person to ask about this. Did you see the article in the mirror recently? Uh, usually the mirrors, just, you know, when we comment into, on, on this show, it's usually just with tongue in cheek. Like these guys are complete morons, you know, they think of the, the biggest click bait title.
[00:10:34] Luke: They can and show a picture of a shark and hope people will get scared, but they actually found the, this Golan shark and they claim that it gets up to 20 feet long. I hadn't heard about them getting that long before. Is that true?
[00:10:44] Christine de Silva: I mean, yeah, I. Typically, you're not gonna find them that well, typically you're not gonna find them at all because they live in the deep sea.
[00:10:50] Christine de Silva: Right. Yeah. But, um, they don't typically get that long. That would be very large. I think maybe like 13, 14 feet would be a very large Golin shark. Um, but you guys have, might have seen videos before of the way that they feed. I mean, they're able to protrude their jaws, um, out. and they have this big kind of, rostrums like a big looking nose kind of on the top of their what you would consider their nose.
[00:11:12] Christine de Silva: And then from their mouth, which is underneath there, they just kind of shoot that mouth out really, really quickly and grab prey. If you haven't seen a video of that, you've gotta go Google it right now. Go bless shark feeding. It's worth a look.
[00:11:24] Luke: So your systems would be able to go down there and hopefully see them in sit you, maybe study a little more about what they're doing rather than just a few minutes of their life.
[00:11:32] Luke: Like we've seen. In some of the other videos. Cause I know some of the videos were taken from sharks that died. I think this recent article was from one that they managed to capture, you know, actually feeding and swimming around. It's kind of cool. Cause they're, they're all pink, you know, their, their skin's kind of see through, you can see the blood vessels and stuff.
[00:11:48] Luke: Yeah. It's a weird looking animal. What's your favorite deep, deep water shark.
[00:11:52] Christine de Silva: My favorite deep water shark. I mean, I love the fried shark to be completely honest. I already mentioned them before. I think they're just like flat kind. Star shaped teeth are just wild. Um, they're definitely like the thing of nightmares for sure.
[00:12:06] Luke: but I think they're cute. so where does your, where does your fascination lie? I mean, you're, you're touching sort of business and oceanography and, and sharks and everything else. Do you see yourself really specializing in that, that deep water environment? Or is it just sharks in general anywhere that you know, that business and education takes
[00:12:24] Christine de Silva: you?
[00:12:25] Christine de Silva: That I'm really now trying to specialize more in general in the deep sea. and really deep sea technology and being able to push that, um, you know, make it smaller, making it more accessible. And so that we can then, like you said, education, take videos, take data and make the deep sea a more tangible thing for the average person.
[00:12:44] Christine de Silva: So that as we all know, if you are more educated about something, you're gonna be more likely to wanna
[00:12:49] Luke: conserve it. Yeah. Uh, you said something really interesting where you're seeing these animals in the deep sea, in the natural environment, but you're also attracting them in. So can you clear that up for people because you know, some people might look at that and say you are immediately creating an artificial scenario where you might be attracting different animals to a location that.
[00:13:09] Luke: There shouldn't be mixing together, or that would be in heightened competition cuz you've got lights on and something that's completely artificial to that environment. So how do you pass that with collecting actual valid data?
[00:13:21] Christine de Silva: Yeah. So what we use are the Bubs and those are baed. So depending on where we are, we'll typically put on maybe the needle or sub pilchards or something that's really smelly to bring those sharks in.
[00:13:31] Christine de Silva: Um, but we are not the only dead thing on the sea. Right. So, uh, if a whale or a fish dies on a surface, it will also fall down to the bottom. And that's what I think a lot of these fish are eating anyway. A lot of them are scavengers. And so it's typical for them to be, you know, using their senses, to be looking for dead things on the sea floor when it comes to the light.
[00:13:53] Christine de Silva: Yeah, that's not as natural, but that's one thing I'm really working on. I'm working on saying, all right, can we get, you know, infrared lights here so that we're not affecting them as much? I do believe that some of the white light is maybe keeping some of the more wary animals further away from the bait, or maybe it'll take them longer to say, okay, it's worth me actually coming up and taking a bite of this bait.
[00:14:13] Christine de Silva: Yeah. Um, so that's why we're working on things like that, for sure. So always open to ideas.
[00:14:19] Luke: uh, remind me, uh, how far does, you know, natural light penetrate? Like when do we get into that deep dark zone?
[00:14:26] Christine de Silva: Yeah. So after about 200 meters, you're in the Twilight zone. And so from about 200 to a thousand meters, you don't have enough light for photosynthesis.
[00:14:36] Christine de Silva: Some of these animals, they're able to, you know, have adaptations in their eyes and things that they can kind of see. But below a thousand meters, you're in the Aho zone. There is no light at all. And I typically work between like 400 meters to 2000 meters when it comes to my work. But a lot of the technologies that we're creating, they're able to go even.
[00:14:57] Luke: now, what role does, you know, the deep ocean play in some of the more, you know, hero species that you work with and we've seen on shark week and stuff like, you know, great whites Mateos hammerheads is, is that deep ocean having any effect on them at all?
[00:15:13] Christine de Silva: Yeah, it definitely does. Um, I think that in general, one thing that I come across when I'm talking to people about the deep sea is I think it's dead or they think it doesn't really mix with the surface waters.
[00:15:24] Christine de Silva: And in a lot of places, it does not mix right. There are certainly stratified layers in the ocean. but in areas, especially, I'm sure a lot of people have heard of the term upwelling. So in areas where you have the deep water currents coming up to the surface, that's oftentimes an area of very high productivity.
[00:15:42] Christine de Silva: So a lot of animal life, a lot of fish life, um, plankton that's bringing the fish. And so these areas are, what's gonna be attracting things like our favorite MAs. Right. I love macOS. I just caught one the other day and tagged it. Super awesome. Um, and so. Being able to say, you know, we need to conserve these areas because we need this life.
[00:16:03] Christine de Silva: That's also, um, processing all of the, you know, material, organic material, like these sharks poop. where, you know, the dead whale we were just talking about that goes down to the sea floor. That also needs to be processed so that it can then be turned back into materials that are bio available then for our makos and our sharks and the surface when they are able to bring, when the ocean is able to bring that, um, nutrient back up to the surface.
[00:16:42] Luke: Now if my memory serves, uh, you live off Cape Cod. I know that. Um, but the, the waters off there get pretty deep, pretty quickly. Right. So is that also one of these outwelling areas? And that's why we see a lot of sharks around there.
[00:16:54] Christine de Silva: Yeah. Relatively quickly. It's not, uh, you know, super close to here. At least it's not a super quick drop off.
[00:17:01] Christine de Silva: Um, but I don't think that's why, at least if we're talking about the white sharks, , uh, that I don't think that's why they're here. I think they're here because of our really large seal popul.
[00:17:10] Luke: Yeah. Well, let's talk about the great whites cuz uh, we have Scoma on, uh, a little while ago and we were chatting about the great whites that were coming close.
[00:17:17] Luke: And this is, this seems to be a repeated topic for, you know, the local newspapers in the area. Uh, one just came out in August 28th where they're talking about, you know, as white shark surveillance increases, then the actual behavior of beach goers is now being looked at. And we're trying to understand how are people thinking and feeling about this and the, you know, the summary of this story is people are not venturing out.
[00:17:40] Luke: Very deep into the water anymore, at least in anecdotal cases. Cuz they're concerned about the presence of great whites around. What's your take on that?
[00:17:48] Christine de Silva: Uh, I'm one of those people yeah. Yeah. Um, but I, I, I'm not bitter about it by any means. I'm pretty happy about it. Um, so like you said, I am out here on Cape Cod.
[00:17:59] Christine de Silva: So I grew up spending my summers out here. I was a summer kid who really wanted to be a local and so, you know, I had the privilege, like I said earlier of. You know, seeing a place that as a child, I didn't fully understand wasn't, you know, the most healthy ecosystem, but growing up, I got to see these white sharks come back.
[00:18:21] Christine de Silva: And so, you know, I get to talk to a lot of my friends and a lot of people around here who are. On both ends of the spectrum. You've got the people that are like, we need to get rid of the sharks. This is a problem. Like get rid of the seals, get rid of the sharks. You know, I'm worried about tourism. I'm worried about my business.
[00:18:39] Christine de Silva: And then you have people on the complete opposite side of the spectrum that are kind of saying the same thing, but they're like, I'm worried about my business, but you know, it's helping my business. I've built a business around the sharks. Um, I love them so much. They can't ever go anywhere because, you know, Based my livelihood around them.
[00:18:53] Christine de Silva: And then you've got most people, I think, in the middle who are saying, yeah, I still go to the beach, but I don't go as deep or I try to stay to the sand bar, you know, instead, or if there's a seal in the water, I'm definitely getting out. And I think, um, Cape cloud's a really unique place where people have relatively, mostly accepted that they're here.
[00:19:11] Christine de Silva: And there are a lot of really great local groups that are trying to figure out what's the healthiest and safest way for us all to COEX.
[00:19:19] Luke: So, what is the, in your own personal experience? Like what makes you comfortable going down to the beach? Is it, you know, crystal clear waters, you know, presence or absence of life?
[00:19:28] Luke: Like if, for somebody who's visiting your area, cuz I mean, Cape Cod is absolutely spectacular and I'm, I'm very pleased to see that sharks making a comeback there. A big thing we talked about with Dr. RI Greg SCO was. That great whites are just actually returning to the numbers that they really need to be, uh, in order to, you know, coexist with the seals and keep the seals in check and everything else.
[00:19:47] Luke: Yep. So this is all good news, but it's kind of relatively new history for people, especially new tourists to the area. So how do you make them feel a little more comfortable with getting into the water in whatever circumstance they choose? Yeah, I
[00:19:59] Christine de Silva: mean, For anything it's, you know, thinking about the risk that you're willing to take.
[00:20:05] Christine de Silva: Of course, we all know that the chance of being bit by a shark, especially a white shark is less than being bit by another person on the New York subway. Like , that's one of my favorite facts, but, you know, It's thinking about, you know, maybe I won't go out early, early in the morning or around dusk. We don't have the most clear of water around here.
[00:20:24] Christine de Silva: We do have very high. We have a very highly productive waters out here. So that means that our waters has more life in it. So it's a little bit more murky in general. So if it's even more murky than normal, maybe thinking about staying about a bit closer to the, um, to the, uh, shore. But I typically say to people, you know, I still go swimming out there.
[00:20:43] Christine de Silva: I think about when I'm going, if I see a seal or a bunch of seals, especially I'm gonna get outta the water, but I've also been on my boat and I've seen a white shark in eight feet of water going off after a seal 10 feet from shore. Wow. Um, but I think it's in general, just realizing what you're, you're willing to accept and understanding that the risks are so, so low, but still being responsible in what you're willing to.
[00:21:09] Christine de Silva: you know, learning to coexist really is the, the key here where these sharks are not gonna go away. The seals are not gonna go away and learning to be able to say, all right, you know, this is your time. You can be here, you can use it. That's great. You know, we've. We'll use it when you're done. ,
[00:21:26] Luke: you know, the, the relative safety let's say in quotes of, you know, knowing when a shark's in the area is only, you know, it is directly proportional to how many sharks might actually be tagged around there.
[00:21:37] Luke: And despite, you know, Greg being out there tagged as much as he can than everybody else. I, I doubt we're gonna tag all the sharks. So that's, that's something I was actually, I was looking at your, uh, company and what you're doing, I'm wondering, is there a possibility to set up, um, you know, cameras that you.
[00:21:53] Luke: In all of our backyards, we've got, you know, motion, sensor, things that can detect whether a human's walking in your backyard and trying to swim in your pool or steal your bike or whatever might be going on. Couldn't we do something like that underwater where it detects a shark.
[00:22:07] Christine de Silva: Absolutely. I mean, I said I was open to ideas, but I didn't really mean it.
[00:22:11] Christine de Silva: Thank you. sounds like I'm gonna have to give these guys a call.
[00:22:15] Luke: Um, no, it's just my idea. I just thought that, you know, if we're limited in our ability to give people relative comfort in swimming in the water, um, And that limitation is how many sharks can we tag? And therefore we get a little ping when they're around.
[00:22:32] Luke: Um, we can do a lot with drones in the air, but why couldn't we do that sort of underwater as well? I know that we are very limited by, you know, how clear the water is and everything else, but it seems like one more tool that might be interesting to, to pursue.
[00:22:45] Christine de Silva: Yeah, absolutely. I don't think this is a situation of just one solution.
[00:22:49] Christine de Silva: This is gonna be a situation of a suite of solutions working together to, um, you know, monitor the beaches.
[00:22:56] Luke: Why should people care about the deep ocean? What, what effect will it have in their life now or in the future?
[00:23:05] Christine de Silva: Yeah, that's a great question. It's like I said earlier, it's really hard to wanna protect something if you have no understanding about it.
[00:23:12] Christine de Silva: Yeah. And, um, The deep sea really affects all life here on the planet. And that might sound like a really big right thing to say. But it, it truly does, like we said earlier, you know, that a lot of the nutrients, um, and even carbon is captured in this. These deep sea ecosystems. And, um, it's a big carbon sink and we have these nutrients that are down there that, like I said earlier are eventually gonna make it up to the surface and that's, what's gonna create the life on the surface.
[00:23:40] Christine de Silva: And then that's, what's gonna create, you know, phyto, plankton blooms, which then creates, you know, The which ability to bring in more carbon to the ocean, which then sinks back down to the deep sea. And it's really a beautiful cycle that it's really important that we're able to protect it for that reason.
[00:23:55] Christine de Silva: But also, you know, we've done a pretty solid, good job of damaging a lot of our commercial fishing on the surface. And one thing that we really need to consider is protecting. These deep sea areas before, you know, we are able to over exploit the deep sea fisheries as well. Right? So a lot of the food, I think that we'll be getting in the future will potentially be coming from deep sea fish.
[00:24:20] Christine de Silva: And we might be looking at new species on our plate. So protecting it for, you know, our food for ourselves, protecting it for the nutrients on the planet for you. making sure that we have life and our, you know, climate doesn't, uh, change drastically too much more, too much quickly. It's so important that we're able to get to places like this and, you know, work together, um, to just explore.
[00:24:47] Christine de Silva: like, I get to just, you know, go down there. And like I said earlier, be like one of the first people to see an area or to study an area, which just.
[00:24:54] Luke: That's so cool. Now you said something interesting there where we might have new species on our plates. I most footage I've seen of, you know, deep water sites.
[00:25:05] Luke: have relatively unappetizing looking fish down there. and they're all lit up and translucent. They've got weird eyes and they don't look like they'd be that good to eat. They're all kind of like jaws, no body. Is there anything down there that you've seen that looks particularly commercially viable as a food source?
[00:25:24] Luke: Um, .
[00:25:27] Christine de Silva: Yeah, I mean, I think that frankly, a lot of the fish that you're eating today would be still considered deep sea fish. So remember, deep sea typically is considered below 200 meters. Um, and so that doesn't necessarily mean that it's, something's gonna be living on the sea floor. Sure. So, um, you know, I think it's orange, Ruffy, that's actually a deep sea fish that a lot of people love today.
[00:25:47] Christine de Silva: Yeah. Um, and then, you know, It's not just maybe fish, that's gonna be on our plates, but maybe fish that's gonna end up in your dog's plate in your dog's food, your cat's food or, um, chicken meal. Right? So stuff like that or not chicken meal, food for chickens. Um, So, you know, you've got a lot of these, um, fish that are just not living on the sea floor, but living up in the water column, that would probably be a fish that you'd typically more think about eating
[00:26:14] Luke: yeah.
[00:26:15] Luke: uh, you say we need to protect the deep sea. What are the threats right now? Is it deep trawlers or oil expectation or, you know, runoff or, you know, things that we directly are doing to it? Um, that perhaps we don't normally.
[00:26:29] Christine de Silva: yeah, all of the above. I mean, first thing to start with is just simply pollution.
[00:26:34] Christine de Silva: Um, you know, I've had videos from 2000 meters, um, in Bermuda that I can think of specifically right now where I was looking at beer cans. Right. like, you don't typically think of, you know, if you're throwing it overboard, you know, it's gonna end up on the sea floor. Um, so that's obviously affecting.
[00:26:53] Christine de Silva: Animals all over the planet, but a lot of it is gonna end up in the deep sea because of the currents, even if you're not, you know, over the deep sea, when you drop it in, or it comes off the rivers into the ocean, it's gonna end up down there probably one day. Um, you know, we are also really concerned right now about deep sea mining.
[00:27:10] Christine de Silva: Um, this is a massive concern in the deep sea conservation community. We. Don't have enough information about the biology and the abundance of things down there to know what the effects of mining down there would have yet. So we're trying to push for like moratorium. So to wait until we have that information before we really allow for a lot of this deep sea mining to occur.
[00:27:38] Christine de Silva: Yeah.
[00:27:39] Luke: What do you see? Um, if anything, in terms of like, you know, global warming impact on deep sea environments, is there any change or is it just too deep to be affected? I don't think
[00:27:49] Christine de Silva: that anything won't be affected. Right. Mm. So. Everything is connected. I mean, the deep sea though is generally thought of as being relatively static.
[00:27:59] Christine de Silva: So you're, if you think about temperature, once you're below a certain depth, pretty much the entire ocean in general is gonna be about four degrees Celsius down there. Um, so how will that, I doubt that that will be greatly affected, but we need more data. We need more information about this. We don't really a lot of these.
[00:28:19] Christine de Silva: A lot of what I'm saying is from data that we've been extrapolated out to assume that it might be the same in another area, but we haven't gotten there yet. Um, and so the technology needs to catch up the, the money needs to be there. The interest needs to be there, um, to be able to say definitively that these are what the effects are going to.
[00:28:40] Luke: Um, wouldn't that money come from probably, you know, companies sponsoring it in order to exploit those resources in one way or another.
[00:28:47] Christine de Silva: It in one way it could. Sure. Yeah. Um, but I think a lot of the governments as well, they're starting to look into this as well, because you know, it's affecting humans now.
[00:28:56] Christine de Silva: Yeah. Um, you know, climate change global warming is directly affecting humans and, um, you know, Like I said earlier, if things die that are on the surface or if we're not getting, um, you know, the certain a different, if we're getting a different type of phytoplankton, that's blooming, that's not as nutritious up to the animals in the deep sea, then we're gonna have some serious problems.
[00:29:18] Christine de Silva: And everything's connected, you know, if the climate warms up and the ocean warms up, there's been some thoughts that the, um, The conveyor belt of currents in the ocean might slow down. So you're gonna have less of this upwelling. You're gonna have, you know, less of the colder water moving around, and maybe it's just gonna sit in the deep sea and not make it to the surface.
[00:29:39] Christine de Silva: So, you know, there's a lot of these models going around that are super, super important, but there's always more data we
[00:29:44] Luke: can get. Yeah. Is there any model so far that says, you know, we've talked a lot about sharks and, you know, expanding their ranges and even in Cape Cod, you know, we've seen species that are going up there that don't traditionally go to that area, but it's all fairly surface based stuff in the scope of things.
[00:30:00] Luke: Um, do you predict anything in the future where we're seeing some of these deep sea animals like coming up or perhaps. You know, species disappearing from the, the surface levels and, and retreating down to the cooler waters.
[00:30:12] Christine de Silva: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's hard to give you an exact, uh, you know, this species will do this.
[00:30:18] Christine de Silva: Yeah. But you know, there are definitely species where their range might, their depth range might be like, if you think of a dog fish, so off here we have spiny Dogfish, let's talk about them. They can, I've seen them on videos, you know? 20 feet, but I've also seen them on videos off here, a couple hundred meters down.
[00:30:37] Christine de Silva: And so we might be seeing them, they're gonna have different types of ranges of, you know, um, where they're comfortable. So maybe they like a certain temperature range. Maybe they like a certain depth range. And if that temperature range, you know, is affected and it's too warm on the surface, you're right.
[00:30:53] Christine de Silva: We might see them going down deeper, um, or we might see, you know, deeper species, um, That might live in the Arctic, you know, going down to the Caribbean. And that's something that we think we might have seen a group caught, uh, what we consider typically a more deep sea Arctic shark, and they caught it down in Belize.
[00:31:12] Christine de Silva: So yeah, you know, you never know what we're gonna see.
[00:31:15] Luke: Do you think there's anything we can learn from these deep sea sharks other than just that they're wild and crazy looking
[00:31:22] Christine de Silva: yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, anytime that you're going into looking at something new, you don't know what you're gonna find, but there are certainly applications for things like medicine, you know, you might find a shark that's really slow growing or.
[00:31:36] Christine de Silva: Um, lives longer. So how can we study what it cells are doing? Why are they, um, you know, aging, slower, things like that. Um, or, you know, how are you living under such intense pressure and how can then we design, you know, our own technology to kind of copy what the shark is doing so that. You know, we're more successful in being down there for longer deeper.
[00:31:58] Christine de Silva: Um, so there's always great things we can learn and, um, I'm always asking new questions. Yeah.
[00:32:04] Luke: so, uh, until we see you next on shark week, what's keeping you busy
[00:32:08] Christine de Silva: well school school and working on my business, use robotics. And then I also work with Dr. Austin Gallagher at beneath the waves as a researcher.
[00:32:17] Christine de Silva: So I think I've been out of the country like seven times this year, so far, uh, doing all this DC. Mostly in the Caribbean and I just recently moved back up, no used to be in Miami. So I'm really happy to be spending a lot of my winners back in the Caribbean. Uh, so yeah, lots of travel, lots of school and you know, just creating cool.
[00:32:36] Christine de Silva: No
[00:32:36] Luke: stuff. Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us on shark week podcast, Christine silver, look forward to seeing you again.
[00:32:43] Christine de Silva: Thank you, Luke.
[00:32:49] Luke: You know, one of the things that I absolutely love about Marine biology and the ocean is that there's still so much more to explore. There's so much more to discover. And a lot of what we do in shark week and other sort of peripheral programming is talk about some of these hero species and how it affects, you know, people and our planets and discovering where they're going.
[00:33:08] Luke: And if they're interacting with people and, and a lot of that cool stuff, but they're, we're just scratching the surface guys. There is so much to learn about the ocean. There's so much. Be discovered and there's actually a lot that's happening right now that is putting a lot of that deep sea environment in peril.
[00:33:24] Luke: And I think Christine and silver really, you know, outlined that for us, that it's not an environment that we should ignore. You know, her research is showing us beer cans on the bottom of the ocean, which is not unusual. I can see fishermen throwing stuff overboard in a, you know, completely irresponsible way, but I can see it happening.
[00:33:42] Luke: But also we're looking at corporations going in and wanting to exploit the resources of the deep ocean. They, they already are in many cases and we don't really know what that's doing, and that is the biggest problem. So I think as we grow with our research knowledge, Supporting projects that look into areas that are understudied things like the deep sea things like environments that aren't tourists friendly, for example, but are just part of this massive, beautiful ecosystem that we call the ocean really need to be supported.
[00:34:13] Luke: And as part of our support for that, we'll continue to give great ideas, like all these, you know, technology ideas that I gave Christine, or, you know, we'll talk about who gets licenses on those later mate, but, uh, shark week, the podcast solving all your underwater. Problems, and we all continue to try to do so, but until then, I hope you enjoyed this, uh, deep sea conversation, cuz it is truly a fascinating environment.
[00:34:38] Luke: All right. That's it for today's episode, I want you to stay tuned to this feed. As we continue to cover the Sharkies current topics, talk to top scientists and experts and learn about the latest conservation efforts to keep this amazing animal from extinction. I want to thank you for listening to shark week the podcast.
[00:34:53] Luke: Please be sure to. Five stars and subscribe for more shark, fun facts until next time I'm Luke tipple. I'll chat to you soon.