[E1] Ocean Ramsey and Juan Oliphant — Sharks!

[Music] demonizing sharks cells right but what it's led to is basically this blinding fear where people don't care that they're being wiped out and yet people do rely on them they just don't realize it welcome to this week's episode we have ocean Ramsey and one and I'm so excited to see you here on the north coast of Hawaii I'm visiting but you live here you from here I very welcome yeah tell me about yourself ocean what's your avocation vocation passion shark and marine conservation I'm a marine biologist my master's in ethology just animal behavior in psychology and I studied specifics on shark behavior and body language and I specifically looked at how we could utilize this information to avoid adverse interactions so it has a practical application for society in general but a big part of what we do is trying to help people to overcome the misperceptions that the media generally kind of portrays about sharks and and actually working with one as a as a photographer videographer as an artist he's actually been able to capture people's attention through captivating imagery in order to educate them on the importance of sharks and that's something that a lot of people don't realize I did two years studying human psychology and a lot of people kind of don't think of themselves with animals but yeah actually yeah but by studying human psychology humans are animals too do you think sharks have any sense of the future mmm I think that they're kind of the most beautiful epitome of evolutionary perfection and I think that they're constantly adapting to their environment and that's one of the most incredible things I think about them is that they have an evolutionary history of over 450 million years humans have been evolving for only 200,000 so they're at this perfect balance in the marine ecosystem but the unfortunate thing is it's you know 450 million years and it's just now at this point in time which is you know during my lifetime is kind of shocking that so many of them are approaching the extinction level right right megalodons disappeared about three million years ago I'm always amazed at how many Megalodon shark teeth there are around yeah that's actually one of the only things that survives they naturally lose their teeth sharks naturally lose their teeth and and because of the calcium they they survive so you can find these fossils all around the world which is part of the reason that we know they have such a long evolutionary history do you know what did in megalodons um I think there's a couple of different theories yeah the absence of prey I think again yeah because they just kind of disappeared like three million and there was a lot of them you think about like the average shark loses about 10,000 teeth and a lifespan so I mean even though you're the you're finding thousands and thousands of teeth it might not have been that many as a population right now and they're slow to reproduce too which makes you say hesitantly say the population was super robust yeah yeah thank you mentioned like five major mass extinctions usually due to environmental conditions and we're studying environmental conditions and how they relate to animal behavior the shark population decline isn't due to environmental conditions Thursday what we can actually directly attribute it to is overfishing and targeted fishing so there's something called shark fin soup it's a status symbol below soup it's served in Asia and the demand for it because China has the largest population of people on the planet the demand for it is so high that at the rate that they're fishing them to supply the fins for shark fin soup the populations just can't keep up because they're apex predators which means that they're generally slow to reproduce they reach sexual maturity late in life and they have long gestation periods so with people wanting to I need a shark fin for the shark fin soup for the wedding the banquet the business meeting and you know you're talking about the largest population of people on the planet sharks just can't keep up with that and the other sad thing I mean for somebody that's grown up spending so much time with sharks is to see them killed for less than 5% of their body it's a waste and it's just a status tragic isn't it yeah it tastes very good I've heard yeah they actually toxic that's it's kind of madness it spicy yeah the methyl mercury in it is like stronger in the cartilage than it is in any part of the tissues another just toxins - neurotoxins it's just it's kind of like a madness thing they're consuming something and you're wasting a resource and yet it's poisonous to you as well yeah so you know why haven't they changed much I mean it's almost like we're swimming with a living fossil in a way right yeah actually when we dive with great whites when you see them as close as you and I are it literally is it's like that movie Jurassic Park and you're like wow this is a real-life dinosaur and they swim by and they lock eyes with you and like if you're in a cage they still see you through the cage they're quite intelligent and I think a lot of people don't realize that but there's over 400 different species of sharks and so you'll have you know different degrees and level of cognition since you're a psychologist for sharks they talked about the problems with I got an image problem I just feel like everybody's afraid of me thing is that they can't speak up for themselves right so the way that they're portrayed the media generally people have this idea that they're like that movie Jaws which is completely fictitious in Hollywood but to see them you know eye to eye face to face to spend so much time in the water with them almost every single day studying their behavior their communication their social hierarchy described to be some of the dimensions of their intelligence so they can learn and adapt in a relatively short period of time and when I say they really I would have to go into species specifics because if you compare a white shark with a blue shark well you wouldn't really I mean the way that they're pretty even isn't the same but I've observed white sharks regularly outsmarting humans and you have to figure they are smart enough that it's so rare that they make a mistake I mean how often do you make a mistake in your life right every day right with tagging information we can see that white sharks and tiger sharks swim paths surfers swimmers and divers all day every day and it's so rare that they mistake them as a potential prey item right and yet there are such efficient apex predators trust me if they wanted to eat you they could and they don't get the they deserve for that and the intelligence that it takes and also because of their extra sensory systems so they actually have continued to evolve over the last 450 million years even though they may physically exterior wise look more or less about the same but they actually have extra sensory systems like the ampullae of Lorenzini where they can feel the electrical impulse to every living organism Pacelle with a lateral line and they can actually navigate like transoceanic voyages and all this other stuff so it's pretty impressive that even in bad visibility even when a surfer resembles a feel like silhouette something that looks like prey and is thrashing around or splashing around like an injured animal that it's so rare that they will actually go up and bump and or bite right it's actually less than ten human fatalities worldwide annually that's the entire world an entire year less than ten human fatalities do you know how many sharks are killed by humans every year about a hundred billion yeah 70 to 100 million yeah that's crazy everything kills people more than sharks yeah sharks are and then once there's you know yeah 40 plus people drownings I mean people know in 2018 it's not even I think there's more people died falling off toilet seats yeah they do yeah though if those statistics have ever been corrected for people that are actually swimming in areas where there are sharks well if you think about just jellyfish and drownings I mean drownings in the US alone 350,000 right just jellyfish 40 so with sharks it's less than 10 right so if you think about just even those things or you could think about like coconuts come where people are tripping over sandcastles so it's just like beach and ocean-going activities so their their sensory ability is extraordinary is that the measure of intelligence that you're referring to when you say they're smart I'm saying like let's say that you put a human on a boat and you put a string and you put a piece of fish off the back right and then you tell the person that when the great white shark white shark swims by the make sure and pull the line so that the shark doesn't get the fish great right so you would think it'd be a really simple thing the person just watches the fish right and pulls it away but what will happen is that the white shark will adapt and find a blind spot and change its timing it'll even change its behavior it'll even act like it's not interested really it'll go away it'll use the shadows it'll try from different angles and different speeds until it successfully Predacon it and I'll do this in a short period of time and I mean that's kind of out fighting the human well I believe in let go at it the same exact like approach every like three or four times in a row and then the one they're going to put all their effort is the one after they've got the human used to pulling it pulling and they'll come from underneath the cage and go straight out and get it because they're adapting it they're watching how fast the person is retracting the line and what is what is their response time so then you see the human try and try and adapt to that yeah but invariably the white shark wins yeah and I've been out with them like without the use of a cage and they use almost like a distraction technique so you'll be looking at a shark in front of you and then I don't know if they can communicate to each other we don't have this proven yet right but it seems like they'll try and cut off your exit and they'll come from alternate directions and I see this all the time with tiger sharks where you'll watch them and they'll swim out of your peripheral in one direction and then they'll literally go up current or they'll go with the Sun because mammals have a tendency not to look into the Sun to have that advantage to come up and it's not necessarily too pretty and that's a big mistake for people to think that a shark is approaching someone just for predation sometimes it's genuinely curiosity and depending on your behavior they may approach you as another predator who's in their territory which could be a territorial confrontation sheerly out of curiosity because they don't normally recognize or see something that looks like us in their territory but if it is from behind there is the potential that they could be approaching you as a potential prey item and that's why it's important to adapt your behavior to their behavior so when you're in the ocean you're in there and you should adapt to their ecological role because we actually need them to function as apex predators in the marine ecosystem because you like to breathe right yeah 70% of the air that you breathe comes from the oceans and sharks are a vital component to that healthy marine ecosystem I'm with you there I feel like you're an ambassador for the Sharks growing up with the sharks I feel bad that they can't speak up for themselves and and to watch the way that they're portrayed in media which is so false and skewed and you know people well let's say demonizing sharks cells right and so it's very easy to demonize them and so you see that just over and over again but what its led to is basically this blinding fear where people don't care that they're being wiped out and yet people do rely on them they just don't realize it yet because fear is very blinding and I don't think that we're separate from animals humans are animals as well that was part of studying psychology because I can't speak shark language but I can talk to another human so ethology animal behavior in psychology so you just study another animal another human how did you start off with this ocean what got you going so passionately and so I think I grew up in the water my parents obviously they love the ocean obviously they're swimmers and divers and I just grew up with sharks and I got to experience what they were really like in there one of the most incredible incredible animals on the planet I think they have such a unique presence and I've been swimming with pretty much every animal that swims in the ocean and it's just it's really sad to me to watch them over the course of my lifetime since I was a kid just every place that I go around the world I see fewer and fewer and fewer sharks more and more plastic more and more fishing line more and more humans and more and more humans that don't care and so I'm trying to help people to overcome fear to open their eyes to the importance of sharks and and really actually the beauty as well because it's such an incredible experience to go out and spend time with them and they really are such polite predators there's not too many apex predators that you can just kind of cruise up next to and of course do it respectfully and I hope you're going to join us out tomorrow and then luck - yeah tomorrow morning you'll get to experience this for yourself are there any behaviors that that we should be concerned about well they are apex so the rack illogical role is to pick up the dead dying weak sick injured animals ray that's their whole ecological that's why we actually need them we need predators but the ones that keep disease from spreading they keep lower trophic level populations healthy and imbalance so the difference comes is when you adopt your behavior to appear to be more like a healthy animal predator rather than a potential prey item now we both surf so of course as surfers eyes aren't in the water we're splashing on the surface we're kind of mimicking a potential prey item for a lot of what we're doing is mimicking a potential prey item but here's the thing is like we go in the water we choose to go surfing we're playing in their front yard like we except that were acting and behaving this way we accept the consequences of that fully unconsciously it's just like if you were to dress up as a zebra and go play soccer in front of a bunch of lions and the lion attacked you are you gonna go kill all the lions no let me hopefully wouldn't right because you need Lions to keep those wildebeest zebra population is healthy and in balance because if you kill all the Lions what happens to the zebra population they explode explode and then they over grazed and then disease spreads and they end up you know we learned that with wolves didn't we when the wolves were and we've got too many chickens here in Hawaii to know our listeners are gonna have to deal with that we're out the beautiful outdoors here and I don't even notice it like there are chickens we've we've sort of gone with the flow on this day on this day but that's an interesting perspective to really get we have too many chickens it's like get they they're too many humans are too much plastic it's like the the issues in the world and stuff like that it's not like okay a shark is eating a human that's such a rare rare thing it's like well what about what the humans are doing to their environment some are territorial right some species can be territory which ones the bull shark has the most testosterone of any animal on the planet it can be a little bit more territory the Galapagos - hopefully Olsen with me with tomorrow give their relative of the bull shark they can be a little territorial but so can your dog and so can humans humans can be territorial as well and what are some of the behaviors that the shark might display that you as if specialists would say oh okay that's that's something I'm going to respect and I'm going to be beautiful that's a great question so it's called agonistic or a territorial body language and so they'll do threat displays or exaggerate their natural swimming patterns and movements a really really basic one is called gill popping and so a lot of species will swim with their mouths slightly a gate in order to pass water over their gills and so if you get frustrated with someone hopefully you don't just walk up and like punch them right yeah sharks are like that they don't just walk up a they maybe take a deep breath first rate and they fluff their gills out and that is called RAM ventilation so they might be forcing water across their gills okay in order to oxygenate either out of frustration or potentially because they're getting ready to maybe fight right if you were going to get in a fight you'd probably start breathing a little bit more so we're very sensitive to watching that another one is parallel swimming so this is a swimming pattern that's when two sharks so I'm either nose to nose or nose to tail and what they're doing is they're sizing each other up because they like to keep a social hierarchy this helps them to avoid physical confrontation and so generally the larger shark will stay but there are exceptions to this and it depends on the species it depends on if a shark has very heavy scarring it even depends on the individual and that's the really cool thing about sharks is just like you and I yeah every single one is unique an individual and different and we can use the term unique disposition or temperament or some people use the term personality so it depends on the shark but social hierarchy is something that all animals have and so sharks maintain a social hierarchy through this agonistic territorial body language specific threat displays or specific swimming patterns if you got to know any sharks individually a lot and they're amazing and that's a part of the reason why I do what I do is because getting to know like a tiger shark like curly girl or Roxy okay so these are sharks you've seen more than once tell me about tell me about one of them like when you first met and what the circumstances and okay thank curly I knew curly before I met her and it was a what 2007 when I 2007 2007 that I got to meet her in a shark dive and you know became fascinated with her because her passions were so much too similar it you know wanting to help sharks and she was just kind of a budding marine biologist at that time and I wanted to help her document her research and you know I'm pissed suing her on a you know a non professional level I want to get a date were there and she said well we had a tiger shark on this dive she's like I'm not I'm too busy to be involved in a relationship you know and just stir it out there the table but they can turned out the nature and to look you know like it yeah it's not tiger shark and I had it she said if you get a tire I'll go on a date with you yeah and we went on this dive and it wasn't tiger shark season so I was like what happen there's no way and then below and behold curly girl was a girl that I'd been diving with for like probably two or three years prior where we see her every year annually but this was in May and she doesn't easily show up until August and and in May so it was like it was like destiny like yes yeah why she called curly girl so she has a curled dorsal little curls over like this is a very distinct marking for her and we went a period maybe like four years without seeing her so it was like oh we lost her like someone killed her and then she came back four years later and we see her annually almost every year around August through October at least once once or twice and tiger sharks here in Hawaii do they what's their migration patterns do they tiger sharks that stay around the main Hawaiian Islands year-round for a lot of the females a lot of them will go up to the Northwest Hawaiian Islands and then usually around October a couple months before a couple months after a lot of them will come down potentially for pupping so wait there's still so much that we don't know about them and again it's so sad that they're being wiped out faster than we can actually study them but curly girl is a really special individual for us like as a couple but even just doing normal dives out there and I'm kind of getting like this pack type behavior from sandbars and Galapagos sharks and she comes by and happens when a tiger shark comes by especially a more dominant individual is it'll come the other sharks down and they'll actually drop they kind of give way in that social hierarchy because there's a social hierarchy within a species and across species and so she's come by and helped me out a couple times and it's kind of funny like fighting with him every now and then a couple of t right and then she shows up the next day like you guys are good she's kind of like the old grandma shark now and she's really like changed a lot of people's minds and perceptions understanding and appreciation I think of sharks just coming by and showing what a tiger sharks really like because that sounds like a scary thing and a lot of people would think like no I don't want to see a tiger shark like maybe a sandbar maybe a glove with us but not like a check I'm like they'll end up being one of your favorite species they really are incredible but again it's like it's an apex predator it's a wild animal it's just like if you were gonna go interact with a human that you don't know right you want to give them that respect in their space and kind of build that up but that is the nice thing about studying them and spending so much time in the water with them is getting to know them as individuals and building up those stress levels so she can have these like incredible kind of intimate interactions where they'll actually swim by you and be like can you scratch me right there yeah some of the pregnant girls nikalna BGC are like kerley show every couple years he'll be pregnant coming by and you can see the skin super stretch and she'll be wanting to rub up on the side of the boat or come up for actual touch which is like incredible with like no food or anything that she's just coming straight up to you and like and you have to kind of gently push her off which he almost likes the scratching I mean it's it's pretty amazing I didn't ask a question you may not have an answer to but do they have do you think they have an emotional life I've definitely seen frustration and I think frustration stems from confusion and that can lead to physical aggression so that's something that like we're very very sensitive to because we have seen it when confusion or frustration does lead to physical aggression we've seen that between species and between individuals and that's something that we study specifically so that we know kind of when to back off and what kinds of threat displays or behaviors to look out for so that we know when to remove ourselves from the equation now sometimes being in the field of study that we are and wanting to better know and understand will stay in the water when we are seeing a lot of competitive behavior as researchers just to study that and invariably as they move up their social hierarchy and they knock out other dominant individuals eventually that attention might get turned towards you so occasionally yeah we do get rushed by a shark because we're in their space right and so we've learned to adapt to that and even respond to that and so we can teach people if they're on their own and they're out in the Maltese or taiatea or Hawaii and a tiger shark swims up to them what to do what not to do to avoid an adverse interaction and then if the shark is maybe in a compromised position meaning that it's on the brink of starvation how you could respond to the approach from a tiger shark and you have to keep in mind to it it doesn't matter if you're a dog a tiger shark a cat or a human if you're on the brink of starvation you might be willing to break your natural diet right if I set you on a boat a couple people and sent you out to sea for a few months and variably you'd probably eat some of those other people so you have to think these animals and their ecosystems with fish stock populations declining and all their natural resources being taken by humans at the rate that they are right they have to find other food sources potentially have you studied or do you know of any work that actually shows that sharks are are undernourished because we've taken too much of their prey out of the water or I agree with you I'm not disagreeing but I'm I'm trying to find out what there's if there's evidence out there for this yet or if it's something that we need to document definitely studied a lot of very thin emaciated sharks where you can actually see the upper thoracic body cavity started to sunk and cave in we've even studied blind sharks and this is really interesting studying the importance of eyesight for sharks because you'll have a Galapagos shark that will be the darkest shade of grey tell us where the Galapagos shark looks like so clappa a shark is between six to twelve feet in length it has a large thoracic body cavity more rounded snout kind of that classical shape that a lot of people think of a bull shark looking like and they're more of a bronzey type color with little black trailing edges and so what happens is if they're spending a lot of time in the very very surface layers or a lot of time down at depth they'll start to actually change colors their skin pigmentation they can actually tan and so we've seen a number of line sharks who are emaciated and they change colors and they start to bump into things I really blind you can see their eyes so you can see their pupils it fogged over yeah completely fogged over and they'll actually yeah it's just like a blind person kind of feeling around why did they go blind well we have one individual we call hook because you've got a hook through his dorsal fin and so perhaps when he was caught and he was struggling to get off the line could have damaged his eyes yeah so we don't know exactly why but he does have a hook and you guys are amazing I love you guys yeah you know my I've devoted my life to the ocean and and you're representing the ocean passionately in formatively and and I read bushing that you're a very accomplished free diver said you can hold your breath for six and a half minutes diving as a tool for studying sharks and marine animals because when you can hold your breath and go down you're more like a natural marine animal right it's also called the mammalian diving reflex so it's something that we share in common with other marine well marine animals but yeah that's a long time static static breath old six and a half minutes that means that you're under water but not moving for six and half minutes so the more that I move the shorter my breath hold is and that's because when your muscles are moving they're they're burning oxygen they're using Royston so if you can drop your heart rate and oxygen eight your tissues and build up your tolerance to low levels of oxygen which are that's actually what tells your body you need to breathe and high levels of co2 sorry that's what's actually tells your body that you need to breathe really low lows of the oxygen is what causes you to black out but you basically do all this hypoxic training and then you just kind of slow your movements down and you can stand or water for a long period and anybody can do this with training and I would actually advise it because it helps you to calm yourself in maybe stressful situations or if you have an injury you can drop your heart rate how deep if you dived on a breath hold 200 feet Wow and that's her not maxing out either a little bit of weight on my weight belt fins and a mask the records are the records are a lot I know I know the records but they used sleds and stuff like that for the record even without fins it's actually cheaper it's amazing City movie the big blue yeah it's based on Jacques my own yeah although I heard a new I heard an interview that he gave some time after the movie came out and somebody said so what did you think of the movie he said yeah I'd probably try to kill myself too if I had a girlfriend like that but I like that they freed the dolphin in that yeah yeah yeah yeah I love that movie I loved I loved any movies it has to do with with the ocean especially you know diving diving what are some of your favorite like ocean movies I'm thinking of the Bollywood stuff that stuff it's funny because it's like honestly we haven't had a TV in like over 10 years well I like this yeah this is a good one here the big blue is probably one of my favorites actually like I'm quite a fan of jaws I think there's some people who inspired them to take an interest in full disclosure Peter Benchley was my best friend the author of the book and the movie and but then he came in person yeah yeah with me he and I were we shared a mentor a man that I was like to mention Teddy Tucker from Bermuda who took us both under his wing we were quite young and I went off and became a marine biologist and he went off and did the jaws stuff and we became famous and rich and all that and we we remained friends and close friends and dive buddies and then kind of hit the peak of it all he came back to me and he said Greg I'm so sick of this said look what can I do to be more like educational about about the ocean and sharks so I said well Peter I think that with your name and reputation you'd probably do some advocacy work and some movie so you know I made a series of marine conservation films back in the 1990's and Peter got very active in China trying to reverse the the shark finning huge that he did that yeah because I mean I wish I could get Spielberg to the Peter always pointed out that when you go to the bookstore to buy jaws you go to the fiction section of the bookstore criticisms you got about it you know it kind of kind of weighed on him a little bit because he never he never wanted it to be a demonization of sharks and he also pointed out that he never created the fear of sharks he stimulated it he admitted that it was a book but the fear you know had been there and that comes from the fear and phobia that people naturally have instinctually to survive of the unknown and so at the time when jaws came out and there's not a whole bunch of shark science out there there's not a bunch of people like I mean this is before our time there's not a lot of people out there like going swimming with white sharks or tiger sharks you know and just being like come here I'll review nurses my generation which is one a one-off of yours a whole group of us were inspired to be Matt Hooper because I see Ohio's yeah that was the first time an oceanographer had been portrayed on the screen you got to go back to 1975 their oceanography was only about ten years olds as a discipline and suddenly there was this guy who studied the ocean and he had a beard he wore blue jeans he he was kind of funny he liked to drink you know and it was this character that was like kind of appealing and a lot of a lot of oceanographers my age was sort of inspired by matter as are several underwater photographers I know Brian's scary being one a good friend of mine what do we do you know I think that's a great question the two of you existing is is a huge thing and I could see it in your eyes and hearing your stories and I welcome you and I personally put out my offer to help you in any way that I can because we need to we need to get this message the tide before it's too late we need to change that but we need to communicate you can run all the science papers in the world but nobody reads them unless you're another scientist you know you know better and that's where I find that like teaming up with people and showing imagery right because imagery that people are gonna watch captivate yes well I sort of I'm returning back to Hollywood now because even though Hollywood is Hollywood people actually watch those movies yeah and they like how do you build your own now and that's what it is it's literally social media and you know it's like posting on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter Flickr tumblr or whatever it is and and just getting more and more and more people to help spread that awareness to overcome this this gross misperception and the way that they've been portrayed for generations and all of a sudden these upcoming generations will go in and will talk to kids and and they're fascinated about science but the difference is they're growing up with iPads and instant internet access where they can read these research papers and articles and they could see these images of a person swimming next to a great white and then all of a sudden it's like wait how is that possible wait I thought that they eat people right maybe they don't and actually I thought it was great you like what can we do besides just media it's our conscious consumer choices and so as you travel around the world helping spread awareness but also realizing that you kind of vote with your dollar and so if you're buying a fish at a restaurant you know to eat that one fish if it was caught in the longline fishery it might have cost the lives of nine other so being a conscious consumer and actually even knowing what you're eating because if you read a menu and it says whitefish well what kind of whitefish is it is it mochi or is it flake those are all names that sharks are known by and as you said they're really high in toxins in mercury it's bad for your health it's bad for the experiment health human health is a great angle if you don't care about the environment you should care about yourself yep yeah and even your pets and so they'll mislabel shark and they'll put it into pet food and again high in toxins and mercury and not to put you like on the spot kind of thing but it's we actually sometimes will wear this shirt and it says plastic is the real killer and it's not sharks that are killing humans but it's actually those toxins that come down from these breakdown of plastics and these are a lot of the commonplace plastics that you see in the ocean and they don't just kill sharks they kill dolphins turtles whales and ultimately humans as well so you got sunglasses sports bags and plastic water bottles yep and so these bottle caps I have to say because I've traveled everywhere in the world except for Antarctica but every place that I've gone as a kid growing up and traveling I didn't see plastic right I saw a lot of fish I saw a lot of sharks and now I go these places and I see more plastic than I do fish and sharks and every single beautiful beach out here we run me from beach cleanups the second Saturday of every month and every time we go to the beach we pick it up we see plastic water bottle caps and plastic bags and straws like a single use plastic item I think that's a huge thing so when you ask how can we help and how can we get involved it's not just about saving sharks it's about wildlife in general and it's being a conscious consumer what's the name of your organization and what are your plans tell me what you're what's what's ahead for you in the near future the name of our organization is one ocean diving yeah and we also have a nonprofit that's called the water inspired but the one ocean diving kind of focuses more about taking six individuals out getting with direct experience with sharks and and they're led through this whole experience by marine biologists like ocean it gives them an information of like what she was talking about body language and how we can dive with him safely and on the way back in the favorite part of the whole thing is just going through the conservation aspect with the people and letting him know that hey 100 million these animals are killed every year and it's unsustainable rate in the last 30 years we wiped out 95 to 90 percent of the populations that way down to like 5% it's like crunch time yeah and and and then they're shocked you knew that information and they just had this amazing experience and so they they're like what can we do and manager came about being a conscious consumer but also being the voice for these animals because I mean at the end of the day the fear that's out there with them is really what's stopping people from caring about them to be able to do anything to protect them yeah so you know sharing their experience it's not something they read in a book or saw on TV that actually did it these people become like homeland a hundred percent they want to help these animals out because they know how amazing they are and that they don't see people as a food source and we do kind of feel like if you can get people to care about sharks and and it's pretty easy honestly when you meet them they're so amazing it can be actually one of the most relaxing things like you'll maybe do in your life which sounds weird but then suddenly they can care more about the marine ecosystem in whole and that's where you know it comes down to the conscious consumer choices and like when you go to the beach to you pick it up and leave it a little bit more beautiful or you know when you go out shopping or you're going traveling or if you're voting or you know what are you doing like in your life and that's kind of the fun thing it's like you know just putting reusable bags in your your car when you go to the grocery store it's a simple little thing but you'd be surprised how much it can actually impact and for those of us that grew up with a dive mask you know it's like we get to see that impact right when we go diving the ocean is not the same as when you were younger right and going exploring these remote places now you go back and the coral is dead and there's plastic this fishing line and it sounds dismal but I don't think it is and that's actually why we we named the nonprofit water inspired because we think that you know inspiration and hope is a far greater way of reaching people yeah you gotta have a positive message you got to give people somewhere to go well it can be fun and exciting too and that's the thing about going out with the sharks or going anywhere would dive with sperm whales or Rhoda's it's just like it's fun it's exciting there's something worth saving there and it can be a really easy way to get involved in conservation but yeah we need everybody in it it's not just scientists you know it's not just photographers and videographers it's it's people who are artists who are donating their art or students who are helping out on projects or divers who are cleaning up the beach it's like literally anyone can get involved and make the effort so it's not leaving it to somebody else but it's actually it's a collaborative effort it's a community effort because you can change laws but if you don't have community buy-in if people don't see the value of an animal of a shark or whatever regulation they're not ultimately going to follow it and so I think it's actually more important to reach people and especially these upcoming generations and they're in with it because of social media and things like that and they have the access they want to get out there and when they experience it they're not traumatized by jaws so that helps outside of sharks because I know you love sharks and you're absolutely crazy passionate about that and and I know from your passion that you were going to succeed because that's what it takes is the kind of passion you've got what's your favorite marine animal outside of a shark I think Orca I mean I have so many honestly think it's good work or sperm whale or curse sperm what about you 100 sperm well I just had one brief encounter with one and I definitely I need more before I pass yeah yeah okay yeah all right well can I can I ask you to come back again yeah I'll miss you because we're gonna come back and do a whole series about Hawaii okay but only if you come diving the best tomorrow oh definitely can we dive in with you tomorrow yeah I really can't wait and I again thank you you've inspired me and I and I feel like you're just the kind of people the world needs right now so please please keep going and I will definitely you know promote what you're doing and in the communication networks that we have and there was anything I can do you know please let me know so thank you very much in conservation after need a platform yes yeah what does it happen every every effort can make a difference yeah yeah thank you for putting this together you bet thanks Luce we'll see you next week [Music] you

Channel: The Sea Has Many Voices

Views: 43,655

Rating: 4.9506173 out of 5

Keywords: ocean ramsey, ocean ramsey interview, ocean ramsey great white shark, ocean ramsey diving, ocean ramsey conservation, juan oliphant, juan oliphant sharks, swimming with sharks, shark conservation, environmental sustainability, deep sea diving, one ocean diving, shark diving, free diving, ocean conservation video, Greg Stone ocean

Id: kiYqSiMViyw

Length: 39min 48sec (2388 seconds)

Published: Sun May 12 2019