Meet the Black female scientists teaming up to promote diversity and inclusion in the in the field of shark science
. She was at a book fair with her mother when she spotted a volume with a shark on the cover and had to have it. By the age of 13, she had read all the shark books in her neighborhood library. This was in Detroit, hundreds of miles from the ocean; her parents figured she’d outgrow the obsession. It never happened.
For her graduate research, Jackson set out to fill in some gaps in scientific literature on how tourism that lures Atlantic nurse sharks with food affects their behavior. These slow-moving, bottom-dwelling sharks of coastal waters are considered a vulnerable species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature due to habitat loss and overfishing in some parts of the species’s range.
Carlee Jackson draws blood from a blacknose shark during a MISS workshop, where aspiring marine scientists build community and gain important field experience handling sharks and gathering data. One of those voices belonged to Jasmin Graham, a shark scientist who specializes in sawfish and other threatened shark and ray species. She posted photos of herself outdoors—including with a shark on a research boat. “I spend a lot of time on the water.
Beneath their stated mission lies a powerful sense of newfound solidarity. When she met the other founders, Jackson says, “It was like a big weight off my chest.” She remembers thinking, “I’m not the only one.”As of late 2021, the organization had more than 360 members representing 34 countries. All are women or gender minorities of color, but they vary in other ways. Some are early-career scientists; some are tenure-track professors; others practice environmental law or work in government.
A diverse pool of scientists can also make shark science better, MISS’s founders say. “It creates a wider net of possibilities for how to approach science and solve problems,” says Webber-Schultz.
Her research focuses on the ecology of sawfish—a kind of ray with an elongated snout—and the evolution of hammerheads. In both families of animals, all or a majority of their species are listed as threatened by the IUCN Red List, Graham says. “I’m very interested in animals with weird heads,” she adds.
The fishers aim to catch shrimp, crabs, and a variety of different fish, not sharks. But when they do haul in a shark, they keep it and let Fola-Matthews do her work before selling the shark meat to fishmongers, many of whom smoke it and sell it in the market. Fola-Matthews measures each dead shark—usually scalloped hammerheads, milk sharks, or common smoothhounds, she says—and then weighs it, snips a tiny bit of tissue from the first dorsal fin, and takes photos.
“MISS is one of the best things so far that has happened in my scientific life,” she says. “It’s a beautiful community where we are free to ask questions, to meet with people; when you have a problem, immediately there’s someone you can talk to.” With help from her stipend, Fola-Matthews was finally able to send off 100 shark samples to a lab for genetic sequencing.
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