Shark Facts You Didn't Know -Sophie Maycock
About Sophie Maycock
Sophie’s first face-to-face with sharks came when she was 18. She worked on a shark cage diving boat. Since then Sophie has been involved in shark research and communication. Her recently released book Shark: The illustrated biography features the life histories of a select group of sharks and among other things examines the roles sharks have in art, music, spirituality, and mythology. She is also founder of the website SharkSpeak.
Sophie’s Journey into Shark Science and Storytelling
Sophie discusses her first experience with sharks which started when she was just out of high school. Since then her passion has led her to conduct research, operates a website and write a biography on a select group of sharks. Sophie shares information on what sharks are, why we should all care about them, and amazing facts. She has unexpected stories including one about a little known species, the smooth hound, that is the first shark to be discovered to make sound.
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00:00:03 Pam Ferris-Olson Today on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast on womenmindthewater.com, I'm speaking with Sophie Maycock, a shark biologist and writer. Sophie’s first face-to-face with sharks came in 2008 when she worked on a shark cage diving boat. Since then Sophie has been involved in shark research and communication. Her recently released book Shark: The illustrated biography features the life histories of a select group of sharks and among other things examines the roles sharks have in art, music, spirituality, and mythology.
00:00:42 Pam Ferris-Olson Sophie Maycock is the latest guest on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast on womenmindthewater.com. The podcast engages artists in conversation about their work and explores their connection with the water. Through their stories, Wo(men) Mind the Water hopes to inspire and encourage action to protect the ocean and her creatures.
00:01:03 Pam Ferris-Olson I am pleased today to welcome Sophie Maycock. She's well acquainted with sharks. Her fascination with these apex predators began with a stint on a boat off the coast of South Africa. Sophie's passion has led her to study sharks in Australia, the Netherlands, the Bahamas and Africa. She is currently the United Kingdom representative of the Sharks Educational Institute, an international organization dedicated to the conservation of sharks. She is also founder of the website SharkSpeak. Her latest project is Shark: the illustrated biography, a collection of biographical stories of a select group of shark species.
00:01:57 Pam Ferris-Olson Welcome Sophie. I’m interested to know how you came to volunteer on a boat in S. African waters seeking sharks because the Atlantic and the Indian oceans mix at the tip of the African continent, the water is known to be treacherous. So how did you end up in such a place?
00:02:16 Sophie Maycock This is the most ridiculous story. I was 18. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I loved science but I loved literature and I didn't know what I wanted to study. And so I decided to take a year out and just volunteer randomly. And I just searched for volunteer opportunities and found this cage diving boat thing and I thought “Ah, that will make me look really cool to all my friends. I'll have these amazing experiences and seem really, really cool.” And that was the whole reason I went and I had no idea it would end up being this completely life changing moment. It's like a sliding doors moment where my whole life changed. I saw my first shark and it was just love at first sight.
00:03:04 Pam Ferris-Olson So this is your first experience with wild sharks? Is this what set you on a journey to study and write about sharks? Or did you for a while pull back and go: “Oh my gosh, what did I do?
00:03:16 Sophie Maycock No, it was this magical moment my first shark I saw in the water. It was this moment where I just thought: “Oh my goodness, everything I thought I knew about these animals was completely wrong.” And it was in that moment that I thought I want to devote myself to, I didn't know exactly what but to showing other people how what they think might not be accurate as well.
00:03:40 Pam Ferris-Olson So what is the correct term for someone who studies sharks?
00:03:45 Sophie Maycock You know that there kind of really isn’t one. I suppose you would say an ichthyologist is somebody that studies fish. I'm a part of the European Elasmobranch Association. So that is a person who studies sharks, skates and rays. But I personally like your offering Pam of sharkologist. I think that's perfect. I'm gonna to go with that. I'm a sharkologist from now on. That's great.
00:04:10 Pam Ferris-Olson Wonderful. Well together we can take responsibility for coining a new phrase, although I'm sure somebody has done that already.
00:04:15 Sophie Maycock Absolutely.
00:04:19 Pam Ferris-Olson So what exactly are the main characteristics of sharks? Would an accurate description be that they are simply big fish with equally big mouths and lots of teeth?
00:04:30 Sophie Maycock I mean that's a pretty great description as a starting point but there's definitely a lot more to them than that. I mean, sharks have been around for 400 plus million years. There's been hundreds of different species. And what is a shark is a very broad question because the vast majority of them don't fit the stereotype. I call it the James Bond shark. You know, the grey shark with the big teeth. They're like a scary looking predator. Most of them don't fit that. Actually, the vast majority are nothing like that. But there's a few things that we use as scientists to say, “OK, this is a true shark.
00:05:10 Sophie Maycock So the first most important thing to say is they are fish. They are not related to dolphins or to whales. They are fish. But what makes them different to the vast majority of other fish is that they have a cartilaginous skeleton. They have no bones technically. If we compare that to bony fish like herring or mackerel or tuna. And it shows us straight away that they're very different.
Another thing that's really important about sharks that makes them very different is that they never stop growing new teeth, and this isn't something that we see in all animals. As you know we don't have this capability. So that's a really important identifier. And also they have these really extra special teeth that actually line their whole skin. Believe it or not sharks whole skin is made up of modified teeth called dermal denticles and under a microscope you can literally see the little pointed tooth-shaped scales that you don't find on other fish. So that's a really good identifier.
00:06:14 Sophie Maycock And the last one, that's like a really important one, is how they breed. Actually cause what most people don't realize is that sharks actually breed by internal fertilization. You know, they're like us. They mate and the babies grow inside the mother. Some lay eggs. But what's different to other fish is that the eggs are fertilized when they're laid. You know, you think about spawning fishes that lay the eggs and then the male comes along to fertilize them. It's a completely different strategy. So they're really, really different to most fish. And that's what makes them very successful.
00:06:50 Pam Ferris-Olson So I was doing some research recently about killer whales and I learned something that was fascinating to me. There are some migratory killer whales that survive on eating sharks and the skin [shark] is so rough that it wears down the whale’s teeth.
00:07:08 Sophie Maycock Absolutely true. Yeah, I mean it's kind of a joke amongst shark scientists. You can't really call yourself a shark scientist until you've got shark burn. And that is where, you know, if you touch them [sharks] from nose to tail, they're really smooth. But if you accidentally go the other way, it's like sandpaper. It was actually, in fact, what was used as sandpaper in ancient history and which was used on the hilt ,of swords to make them more grippy. So it's really rough. Yeah and a lot of people are surprised by that.
00:07:33 Pam Ferris-Olson Oh, interesting. So what are some of the more common misconceptions that people have about sharks?
00:07:44 Sophie Maycock Oh goodness me, there's a lot. The big one that comes to mind that frustrates me the most is people that are absolutely adamant that sharks eat people. It's just not true. Sharks have been around 400 plus million years and human beings have only been around a couple of 100,000 years. You know they [sharks] didn't evolve with us in their world, so we are not a part of their diet. It's obviously awful when a person has been attacked by a shark, especially if they are seriously injured or if they die. But we don't see sharks actually consume people. What actually happens is that the shark will bite down on something to investigate it in the water. They're actually. It's actually a curious behavior, not an aggressive behavior. But obviously one bite can be all it takes to seriously, seriously injure somebody.
00:08:40 Pam Ferris-Olson So what is it about sharks that you find fascinating?
00:08:45 Sophie Maycock I actually think it's that they're so misunderstood. I think that is the thing that I liked about them the most. I mean, I love animals. I love nature. I love the ocean. So I think I was always going to do something with the natural world. But I think I like that sharks are kind of the underdog, you know, like they have a bad reputation and people are wrong about them. And maybe I'm a little bit argumentative and I enjoy that back and forth of saying, “Oh actually no. Look what you think is not accurate. Let me fascinate you with some facts that might change your mind.” Maybe I'm just determined to be a little bit difficult and prove people are wrong about sharks.
00:09:26 Pam Ferris-Olson Do you ever get scared around them [sharks]? I mean, they may not be set to eat you, but they do have some large teeth.
00:09:34 Sophie Maycock I think if you're not, if you don't have a healthy respect, you are a fool because you know any animal, especially a wild animal, an undomesticated animal, is potentially dangerous, and sharks are potentially dangerous. And nobody really, in my opinion, should really be touching or interacting with sharks in the wild at all. You know, respect them. Leave them alone. They're an animal. Let them do their thing. But when we're doing science with them and we're sort of studying them in that safe environment, you certainly don't feel afraid because we're trained to understand their sort of language. You know, you understand that if a dog growls at you, it's telling you to back off. I can look at a shark and say, “Oh you need to back off there. You shouldn't be swimming so close because you're agitating it.” So to me it's as obvious as the shark screaming at me to go away.
00:10:28 Pam Ferris-Olson OK. So the ocean is an enormous place, making up about 2/3 of the Earth. So how do you go about finding sharks in such an enormous space?
00:10:40 Sophie Maycock That's a really good question. It's not easy. Actually a lot of it involves a lot of local knowledge. So for example if you go to a place, if you're ever interested in finding sharks, if you ever fancy sort of doing a little bit of an explore, the first place to ask is always the local fishers. They are legitimate experts on the oceans and the creatures that live there. So it's a really great place to ask, you know, where might I find them? And this is actually what my partner does when he travels. He goes and speaks to fishermen and asks, “Will you take me out so I can see them?” But the vast majority of sharks that a lot of people see actually live near the coasts. There are an awful lot of sharks that live in the deep seas, but we can't really see them. But coastal sharks, there's quite a few different things that you need to think about if you're trying to find them:
Time of year. It's really important, you know, they migrate so you can't just presume to turn up in a place and that they're gonna be there; you know, always check the time of year that they're going to be around. Time of day is really important as well; so every different species of shark is unique. Some of them are nocturnal and you could find hundreds of reef sharks around a coral atoll at night looking for food. But great whites, for example, they hunt at dawn and dusk; so you'd need to know that in order to go out at the right time to see. But there's lots of other things that you can think about as well. So what habitat do they favor? This can be really important. So for example, I was in the Canary Islands last summer and I was desperately trying to find Angel sharks and I didn't manage to see them. But when you're snorkeling and scuba diving around the Canary Islands, you know when you see some sandy, gravelly bottom like, “Oh this is Angel shark territory, ‘cause they love that kind of substrate. They love to dig themselves into that substrate. So you wouldn't expect to find them on rocks or corals, whereas other sharks that's exactly the kind of thing that they like. They like to be around corals or to hide in little crevices in rocks. So you've gotta know what habitat to look for as well.
00:12:48 Pam Ferris-Olson OK. So most of us never encounter shark except maybe in an aquarium. So why should people care about sharks?
00:12:57 Sophie Maycock That's a really good question and I actually love that question because in this world, you know, there's so many concerns that we have. And what is it about sharks that should make them extra special? You know, why should people be worried about sharks when there's climate change and there's flooding and there's all these things. But sharks are absolutely pivotal to ocean health. That is the biggest thing that I say to people when they ask me why sharks matter.
They are apex predators. They are top down controllers of their ecosystems and what that means is that they keep everything in balance. Without them, the ecosystems just sort of loses balance and so everything sort of goes haywire and that can have effects on us. You know, that could affect our fish stocks. It could affect our food. It can affect people's livelihoods. It could affect tourism. So even if you don't care about sharks as such but if you don't like them or you're frightened of them, you definitely need to be thinking about how it's still important to protect them. Because yes sharks are scary, but there is nothing scarier than the thought of a world without sharks in it. That would be a serious problem.
00:14:10 Pam Ferris-Olson OK. Tell us about SharkSpeak. You run a website on the Internet and who is your intended audience and what can they expect to find on SharkSpeak?
00:14:23 Sophie Maycock SharkSpeak is my absolute life passion. You know, my background is as a hard core research scientist. But I'm also a creative person. I love writing and I love reading and SharkSpeak is kind of where those two things collide. And I've made this site Open Access. It's free for anyone and everyone to go on and see. And I'm also on social medias. And the idea of it is to translate science into something that everybody can enjoy and be interested in. The audience is probably adults or young adults. It's probably not something that's geared towards children because there's some projects out there that are already doing that and they're doing it brilliantly. So I didn't wanna even try to compete with them. It's really about writing articles to help people to have access to all of this wealth of information that they don't even necessarily know is out there because, you know, a lot of science is locked up in institutions or online in places that people just don't see it. So I want to bring it to the forefront and let them see it.
00:15:32 Pam Ferris-Olson Right. So speaking about being a writer, you recently published a book Shark: The illustrated biography, which I see behind you. And you looked at a select group of sharks. So how did you choose the sharks in the book?
00:15:49 Sophie Maycock Dan Abel and I, my co-author on the book, really had some back and forth about this because this was really important to us. We wanted, we called them our heroes. We wanted hero species that represented a lot of different kinds of sharks but that would have been easy. We could have said “Oh ok, well we need one from this group. We need one from that group. But then the problem lies in that we actually don't know anything about that group. So we can pick a shark and say, “Oh, let's make it a hero.” But there's no science on it yet. We don't know anything about it. It's a mystery. So we tried to balance getting a lot of diversity in the hero species but making sure that they were very well studied by science and well understood so that we could really tell their stories in detail. But my goodness, we went back and forth. I think the first list was about 20 species long and we had to narrow it down.
00:16:42 Pam Ferris-Olson In addition to their life histories, you write about the role of sharks in art, literature, spirituality, mythology and music. Do sharks make sound? Is that what you mean by shark music?
00:16:56 Sophie Maycock Do you know this is a really, really present thing that we've just learned, which is really, really cool. We have this year just discovered a first shark actively making a sound that we know of. It's really cool. It's this little smooth hound shark and they clack their jaws together and make this little clicking sound. And we suspect it's some kind of threat display or sort of expression of distaste, you know, sort of like, “Let me go. Don't touch me.” But we're not 100% sure yet. But sharks don't have vocal cords, so they can't speak. They can't sing. They don't make sounds that way. So the only way that they can make sounds with is their body parts. So we do suspect they are communicating with their body parts and making some kinds of sounds. But it's really the forefront of research right now.
00:17:51 Pam Ferris-Olson Interesting, you said smooth hound?
00:17:54 Sophie Maycock Smooth hounds. Yeah, they're called smooth hounds. A type of a group of sharks. They're quite small. Very, very cute looking. One of these species that no one's ever heard of. Smooth hounds.
00:18:04 Pam Ferris-Olson So what are some examples of how sharks figure in mythology?
00:18:09 Sophie Maycock Ah, this was my favorite chapter to write in the book because I knew nothing about this until we decided to include it in the book. So I really got to, like, dig deep and really, really research it. I think when I wrote the first draft, it was like three times too long and we had to cut those out. But there are sharks in mythology all over the world. Mythology, art, music, religion. It would probably be easier to list where they're not, but they're most prevalent in sort of the Pacific Island nations. Which makes sense because these are seafaring people with lots of sharks especially Hawaii. Hawaii is a massive hotspot and lots of important shark myths there. But what's really interesting about it is that coming from a Western culture, we might expect a certain story to be told about sharks. But when we delve into these ancient myths that's not what we find. Actually, what we find is a massive wealth of cultures celebrating and venerating sharks, and actually they’re gods and their guiding spirits and their helpers. And you contrast that with Western mythology, where we sort of, we've almost villainize them and demonize them. And it's very, very different. For example, one of my favorite stories that I discovered comes from the Mortlock Islands about a group of people on a boat who were capsized in the ocean and going to drown. They pray to their God and he delivers a shark to them to protect them in the water and guide them home safely. You know. So really those sharks are these helpful guidances.
00:19:53 Pam Ferris-Olson That's really amazing because usually that species that protects them and brings them home are dolphins. I've never heard that about a shark.
00:20:05 Sophie Maycock Yeah. So it's beautiful story. Maybe they were witnessing this, or maybe they just honored sharks in that way as these beautiful, majestic animals in their world.
00:20:15 Pam Ferris-Olson So, Sophie before we end, I'd like to ask you, as I do with all my guests, what our audience can do to make a difference for the ocean. Maybe there's something specifically that people can do for sharks. How can people make a difference?
00:20:30 Sophie Maycock The biggest one for me that I think a lot of people don't know they can do is to choose as a consumer to avoid shark products. So a lot of people will immediately respond to that and say, “Oh that's easy. I don't eat shark find. Then great if you don't eat shark fin. Brilliant, you're on the right track. But I can guarantee you that there's many other shark products that you didn't even realize you were exposed to. So for example, in Britain it's very, very common for something to be sold as fish and chips to us and it's actually shark. Yeah, it's very common. And I say this to people a lot and they're very surprised. But yes, it's a cheap meat. They can sort of sell it for a more expensive meat. Really. They call it by different names. It might be called rock salmon or husks or flake. But those names vary depending where you are. So it's always worth checking wherever you are. “Is there something, some shark meat, that is sold under a different name? It won't be labeled shark but is it labeled something else. And that's a really good one to avoid.
00:21:36 Pam Ferris-Olson How can you tell if you're eating shark?
00:21:39 Sophie Maycock I mean, you can't. It tastes very, very similar to a lot of white fish.
But actually it is incredibly bad for you. Really, really unhealthy. It's loaded with heavy metals and toxins, so it's definitely not something that people should be eating. So even if you don't care about sharks, maybe avoid it for the health concerns as well. But another thing that a lot of people don't realize is that shark parts are in an awful lot of toiletries and beauty products and people don't realize this. They have this oil in their livers called squalene. This is actually in a lot of vaccinations and it's in a lot of moisturizers and a lot of sunscreens. So if you are somebody who is concerned about not wanting to contribute to shark fishing, check the ingredient lists on your moisturizers, on your makeup, and make sure it doesn't contain any squalene. Or if it does then is it vegan squalene? Then you know you're not contributing to the problem. So at least you can then make the choice to reduce the demand for those products.
00:22:40 Pam Ferris-Olson Goodness, I'm glad I asked that question. I had no idea.
00:22:44 Sophie Maycock Nobody ever knows this. I know. And it's like, why are we not screaming this from the rooftops?
00:22:49 Pam Ferris-Olson Well you just did and I will put it on the website and people will hear. I am really grateful you came on the show. And I'd like listeners to know that I've been speaking with Sophie Maycock, a shark researcher and communicator. She shares factual information on her website SharkSpeak and her recently published book, Shark: The illustrated biography.
Sophie is the latest guest on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast. This series can be viewed on womenmindthewater.com, Museum on Main Street and YouTube. An audio-only version and a transcript of this podcast is available on womenmindthewater.com, on iTunes and Spotify. Wo(men) Mind the Water is grateful to Jaine Rice for the use of her song Women of Water. All rights for the Wo(men) Mind the Water name and logo belong to Pam Ferris-Olson. This is Pam Ferris-Olson.
