National Geographic story on sharks

***Note: For this story I wanted to tell about sharks through the people who interact with them each day as a career. I'm having trouble writing an intro paragraph. Also, the British spelling must stay for this story.

Fiona Ayerst, underwater photographer

Fiona Ayerst is an underwater photographer and loves "the feeling of freedom and floating" underwater. "I like to photograph things that people may otherwise not see." Self-taught, she has officially been a photographer for a year. Many of her pictures spotlight sharks. She's traveled the world and won international and local photographic competitions. I caught up with her to learn about some of the tricks of the trade.

"To be good underwater, you have to have good diving skills and be passionate," she said. Since water absorbs light, Fiona must get very close to her subjects. When photographing sharks, she makes sure to relax and be very quiet so the shark will approach her. This is the hardest part. "As soon as you approach a shark […] it sees this as an aggressive move and swims off."

One shark she loves finding and photographing is the puffadder, or shy shark. "It curls itself into a donut shape when approached [by placing] its fin over its eyes. It's kind of like an ostrich move: head in the sand, you can't see me!"

Fiona mostly scuba dives without a shark cage when taking pictures. "The only time I use a cage is when it is against the law to do otherwise. I have only ever used a cage with great white sharks."

Her favourite part about photographing sharks is the feeling of "adrenaline and excitement. They are charismatic predators."

Ryan Johnson, SAMPLA marine biologist

"A bad day at sea is better than the worst day in the office," Ryan Johnson.

Ryan has been fascinated with sharks ever since he was a little boy. He works with the South African Marine Predator Lab and has been a researcher for 10 years.

I went out on a research mission with Ryan, Fiona and four student interns to watch them in action. Ryan mainly works with great whites. He was collecting stable isotopes in great white sharks to learn more about the ecosystem and food chain. Sharks are good to study for this because they are top predators. The isotopes in the tissue show the energy from food a shark has eaten. The energy can be traced all the way back to the bottom of the food chain, kind of like connect-the-dots with food. Eventually Ryan hopes to show exactly what sharks need to eat and be healthy and also show what could happen if one of the links in the food chain were gone.

Ryan attracted the sharks to the little boat by using a chum line and a foam cut-out of a seal. The sharks didn't seem afraid of us at all, swimming calmly and majestically in the water. When the sharks came close enough, Ryan stuck a small, screw-like point into the shark to get samples of the shark's tissue. Once he got a sample, he carefully removed the tissue with tweezers and froze it to preserve the cells. The student interns were in charge of tracking basic information about each shark: size, sex, identification through the dorsal fin (like fingerprints for us!), and whether the shark had any transmitters/tracking devices, hooks or fishing line on it.

Alison Kock, SOSSC marine biologist

Alison Kock has been a full-time great white shark researcher since 2003 and works with the Save Our Seas Shark Centre in Kalk Bay.

"There are still a lot of things we don't know about sharks," Alison said. South Africa is one of the major hot spots for shark biodiversity in the world and has many native shark species. To try and find out more about great whites, Alison attached small video recorders, Crittercams, temporarily around the dorsal fin of 21 different sharks in Kalk Bay. She collected over 30 hours of video footage from a shark's point of view.

Alison used the Crittercams to find out how sharks behave, what they\ eat and how they hunt. She found out just how curious sharks can be from a shark named Eleanor. Her swimming patterns were similar to a yo-yo, going between shallow and deep waters. "Every time she went up to the surface, it was to investigate something like a bag or kelp," Alison said. "It provided insight to why sharks might attack people." There is even footage of her scratching herself against a reef—maybe sharks can have itchy spots, too!

Researchers are not sure what the great whites in the Western Cape eat other than seals from Seal Island. Knowing what and how much the sharks eat is important information to help protect habitats where the hunting is occurring, and conserve prey, which the sharks are eating. "South Africa has a relatively healthy ecosystem," Alison said. "We're in such a unique position to drive measures to conserve."

At the moment, not a lot is known about how sharks catch their prey. Do they hunt alone or with friends? How do they detect, stalk, approach and capture their prey? Alison plans to deploy more Crittercams this September to find out.

"Studying [shark] behaviour is difficult because continuous observation is nearly impossible," Alison said. "The Crittercam has
great potential to collect information […] and give us a window into their secret world."

Verona Smith, SOSSC educator

Verona is the educator at the Save Our Seas Shark Centre in Kalk Bay and knows a lot about sharks. Here are some of her favourite shark facts:

"There are over 400 different types of sharks."

Hammerhead Sharks are named so because of their hammer-shaped heads. The head is designed to detect electric fields from buried prey, just like a person would do with a metal-detector.

The Whale Shark is the largest fish in the world and can grow up to 16 meters. This giant fish feasts on tiny sea animals called zooplankton and small fish which they filter through their gill rakers.

The lantern shark is the smallest shark at 20 centimetres. They glow in the dark and live deep in the ocean where there is no light.

"Sharks are over 400 million years old and actually predate the dinosaurs."

The Megalodon is about 12 million years old. It was a giant shark, about 17 meters long and could open its mouth two meters wide.

"Not all sharks are grey and blue."

The juvenile bullhead shark is a mustard yellow with turquoise stripes. The Puffadder Shyshark, or Happy Eddie, is a sandy brown with reddish-brown stripes and lots of small, dark brown and white spots.

"100 million sharks are killed a year. Last year, one person died from a shark attack."

"This statistic brings home the fact that sharks are not there as man-eating monsters," Verona said. "The most important issue for people to understand is the importance of sharks in the whole ecosystem. If the shark is removed, it will lead to the extinction of other species."

Finning has become the most serious threat to shark populations worldwide. During the finning process, a shark's dorsal fin is cut off and the animal is thrown back to the sea to drown. "It's like if I took you and cut off your arms and legs and threw you in the water and you drown," Verona said.