Baby Shark

Speaker 1 Radio Lab is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash?

Speaker 1 Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it at progressive.com.
Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.

Speaker 1 Potential savings will vary, not available in all states.

Speaker 1 Radio Lab is supported by Apple TV. It's 1972.
A young British family is attempting to sail around the world when disaster strikes. Their boat is hit by killer whales and it sinks in seconds.

Speaker 1 All they have left is a life raft and each other. How will they survive? The true story of a family's fight for survival, hosted by Becky Milligan.

Speaker 1 This is Adrift, an Apple original podcast produced by Blanchard House. Apple TV subscribers get special early access to the entire season.
Follow and listen on Apple podcasts.

Speaker 4 WNYC Studios is supported by ATT, offering a guarantee covering both wireless and fiber internet service that is all about having your back. Staying connected matters.

Speaker 4 That's why ATT has connectivity you can depend on, or they'll proactively make it right. That's the ATT guarantee.
Visit ATT.com/slash guarantee to learn more. Terms and conditions apply.

Speaker 4 Visit ATT.com slash guarantee for details. ATT, connecting changes everything.

Speaker 5 Wait, you're listening.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 7 You're listening

Speaker 8 to Radio Lab. Lab.

Speaker 6 Radio Lab. From

Speaker 9 WN Weiss.

Speaker 11 Lulu. Latif.

Speaker 12 Radio Lab.

Speaker 1 Day five of our week of sharks.

Speaker 13 Back with our lead reporter/slash lifeguard, Rachel Kusick.

Speaker 14 Hello, hello.

Speaker 13 Wait, Rage, is this like our...

Speaker 15 This is our end of week of shark.

Speaker 18 This is the end of the week of shark, the final day the final business day final business day of shark

Speaker 16 you might have some sharks in your weekend but we won't be responsible for that right so today i want to end the week by circling back to the very beginning which is to say baby sharks you can't even say the word without it without a dude

Speaker 26 yeah i know i wanted to know like you two both have little humans do you uh hate that song do you like listen to it daily what's what's your relationship to that song when did the song come out 2015, the Korean one came out.

Speaker 20 Yes.

Speaker 1 So we had kids after that. And by that point, I knew that this was sort of weapons grade song.
So we kept it out of the house.

Speaker 20 Yeah, it's like a zombie apocalypse.

Speaker 26 You're like, don't open the doors.

Speaker 5 That's right.

Speaker 29 Baby sharks coming.

Speaker 1 We'd seen other people go through it and we're like, it's not going to happen here.

Speaker 31 I don't have children.

Speaker 16 But, you know, it's like seeps into you just being in the world.

Speaker 15 It does. It swept the world.

Speaker 17 It is everywhere.

Speaker 29 Yeah.

Speaker 17 So everyone has the same feeling about it.

Speaker 32 But then I was like, wait, what are baby sharks like?

Speaker 12 Like, how do baby sharks get born?

Speaker 1 How do baby sharks get born?

Speaker 27 Yeah.

Speaker 12 Like, what, do you have an idea of like what shark birth looks like?

Speaker 13 I mean, man, I don't know.

Speaker 26 Well, like, they are really fishy.

Speaker 35 Like, you think they do have eggs?

Speaker 13 But, like, I want them to have a neighbor.

Speaker 22 Yeah, so I found someone to answer this question for me.

Speaker 37 I've always been like an ocean nerd, but when...

Speaker 16 Science reporter Claudia Guib, who, like most of the people we've had on this week, is a bit of a shark fangirl.

Speaker 37 So, by the time I got to this story, I was definitely fully a crazy shark lady.

Speaker 25 Um, I actually ran into her work because of an amazing article she wrote about baby sharks, and she kind of just introduced me to the very wacky world of shark reproduction.

Speaker 38 And I want to share it with you because it's just so fun. Okay, so the first category of shark birth is

Speaker 33 let me just make sure I get the term correct.

Speaker 39 Gotta look back.

Speaker 27 Yes, okay.

Speaker 24 So, we have Vivi Paris.

Speaker 20 My name is

Speaker 16 Yeah, viviparous.

Speaker 13 Like in vivo.

Speaker 27 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 37 Viviparis sharks give birth to live young, just like humans or like other mammals.

Speaker 40 Just like you and me and dolphins.

Speaker 32 The embryo develops in the mother's womb.

Speaker 14 They have a womb. There's a placenta.

Speaker 42 Some of them even make this sort of milk.

Speaker 37 Essentially, like secrete a type of milk into the womb.

Speaker 19 Like a little milk bath for babies.

Speaker 25 Yeah, they're in a little milk bath.

Speaker 13 So they're just like fully pregnant, fully pregnant.

Speaker 16 And they come out like little baby versions of the larger shark.

Speaker 21 Like how big?

Speaker 20 It depends on the shark.

Speaker 16 So white sharks come out like three or four feet long.

Speaker 5 Whoa.

Speaker 19 That's huge.

Speaker 1 That is enormous.

Speaker 21 But I mean, there's other sharks that come out like the size of your pointer finger.

Speaker 43 Cute.

Speaker 32 And like, God bless the Hammerhead shark mothers.

Speaker 5 Oh, that's crazy.

Speaker 17 It would be so hard to make it work.

Speaker 24 Yeah,

Speaker 38 so that's the first category.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 26 And then moving on to category two, which is ovo viviparis. Ovo viviparidis.

Speaker 40 Okay. So it's like a live birth, but also eggs.

Speaker 1 A live birth, but also eggs.

Speaker 15 Yeah, what does that mean?

Speaker 37 So the embryo actually forms inside of an egg case, but that egg case hatches still inside mom.

Speaker 37 And then the baby comes out.

Speaker 27 So it kind of is combining the strengths of a live birth where you're protecting the young inside you, but it happens a lot quicker and the sharks can make a bunch more eggs.

Speaker 32 There's one whale shark that was found and it had 300 whale sharks inside it.

Speaker 23 Wow.

Speaker 21 And then there's sharks that can fertilize sperm from multiple fathers.

Speaker 42 So they kind of place bets on different sharks' baby daddies.

Speaker 32 Okay. So they're just kind of like taking it all in.
They're like, we'll consider your offer.

Speaker 19 And then they just like, just dole it out.

Speaker 36 That's a new take on take it all in.

Speaker 32 But I think one of the nutsest of all nuts shark reproduction stories is the sand tiger shark.

Speaker 5 Okay. Okay.

Speaker 37 They create a bunch of eggs and the process that this shark has developed to get big and strong in the womb is to eat its brothers and sisters.

Speaker 44 What?

Speaker 27 It's like the Coliseum for baby sharks.

Speaker 17 There's a gladiatorial match in mom's womb.

Speaker 35 Inside the shark.

Speaker 42 So you'll see scientific papers where there's like a uterus that's been sliced open and there's just like one shark and then a bunch of empty egg cases.

Speaker 27 And it's like,

Speaker 7 I ate those.

Speaker 30 So, okay, so that's the ovo viviparity.

Speaker 16 And then the final category, oviparis, are just the plain old egg-laying sharks.

Speaker 42 So the mom puts an embryo inside the sort of egg case thing and then she just releases all of those eggs into the ocean.

Speaker 37 It's feeding on a yolk sack just like a chicken and it has everything it needs inside this little egg case.

Speaker 43 So the mom will will only do like one or two of these at a time and and they look like these little envelopes you can sometimes see them wash up on the beach oh yeah dude oh my god the mermaid's the mermaid's first thing it almost looks like two boomerangs back to back yeah but there's also a shark that lays an egg case that's shaped like a spiral drill so it like screws itself into the rock kind of thing so that nobody comes along and eats it because you know they're out there hanging out in the ocean by themselves and those egg-laying sharks those are the sharks that we are going to talk about today.

Speaker 38 That's where the story that Claudia had written about begins.

Speaker 17 Oh, cool. This wasn't even the warm-up.

Speaker 19 That was just the sorry.

Speaker 5 I love it.

Speaker 13 And I was just, it was just too willy-wonka, like, come with me in the world of your imagination.

Speaker 8 And they're crazy little characters, you know, what they do.

Speaker 21 And so this story is one man's, possibly Sisyphian, but definitely sublime attempt to maybe just slightly rejigger the balance between humans and sharks.

Speaker 7 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 43 Can I just ask you to introduce yourself, say who you are, and

Speaker 35 what you do?

Speaker 8 Hi, my name is Greg No.

Speaker 8 What I actually do, or what I do, and I do.

Speaker 32 Greg has taught English as a second language.

Speaker 22 He's done quality checks on electrical circuit boards, but his life's work, I think he would say, is the shark conservation and education organization that he founded.

Speaker 8 Called Shark Lab Malta, which is in Malta.

Speaker 1 And where is Malta again?

Speaker 22 Little island below Sicily. Warm, Mediterranean.

Speaker 8 And it's just a really beautiful place to be.

Speaker 43 And so you were just interested in sharks because you loved being in the ocean?

Speaker 32 Or like, what was it about sharks that interested you in the first place?

Speaker 8 They were just kind of fascinating. They were very kind of mysterious.
So I thought, okay, let's learn more about them.

Speaker 22 But when Greg moved down to Malta from Britain, this was in 2007, he...

Speaker 30 Pretty quickly realized.

Speaker 8 There was nobody really in Malta focusing on sharks, doing anything about sharks.

Speaker 22 There wasn't a national aquarium at the time, and there weren't even many sharks in the waters near Malta where you could scuba dive.

Speaker 8 So that was why I first started going to the fish market.

Speaker 31 He wanted to learn about sharks so badly.

Speaker 16 He was just willing to go look at them in buckets.

Speaker 8 Yeah, which I guess it's kind of strange, but it was kind of like,

Speaker 8 well, if I want to learn something about sharks, I need to go and find where I can see them.

Speaker 22 So Greg would get up early, early in the morning, head down to the coastline where this fish market was.

Speaker 16 It was in this old rickety building.

Speaker 20 And he'd start start talking to the fisherman, saying, I don't know, you got any sharks?

Speaker 22 You mind if I check them out?

Speaker 6 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 12 And so he'd go back, see these bins filled with ice and dead sharks.

Speaker 20 He started measuring the sharks.

Speaker 8 With my tape measure and my camera, taking pictures, photographing them, learning more and more about the different species of sharks around Malta, learning about the basics of their anatomy, checking whether it's male or female, just like gathering basic information for this organization that he was setting up.

Speaker 8 Sometimes recover certain parts of sharks from bins.

Speaker 41 Be like, oh, I'll grab a jaw and I'll clean it up and I'll use it as like a demonstration that I'll give at like a community fair when I'm teaching people about sharks.

Speaker 6 Wow.

Speaker 20 But a couple years into his fish market research, things started to get a little interesting for Greg.

Speaker 7 Yep, yep.

Speaker 32 One day in 2011, Greg's at the market doing his thing and he sees this small spotted cat shark.

Speaker 8 A small,

Speaker 8 spotty little shark.

Speaker 32 Just kind of inspects it like he always does.

Speaker 8 But then he just like notices something coming out of the small spotted cat shark oh what's that what's that thing protruding he sees tiny curly strings these fibrous tendrils popping out of the shark's cloaca which is like a shark vagina greg bends down kind of carefully took hold of him and at this point the fishermen nearby are just like giving him the side eye well

Speaker 8 there was a few kind of like craned necks looking across so what's like what's what's he doing But he just starts to pull on it.

Speaker 34 Slowly pulled and pulled and pulled.

Speaker 8 And out came this perfect little four, four and a half centimeter capsule with curly tendrils at the top, curly tendrils at the bottom.

Speaker 6 And he's like, oh,

Speaker 23 this is a shark egg.

Speaker 10 So is it almost like a ravioli?

Speaker 8 Let's imagine like a half a ravioli.

Speaker 43 Like a two inch by one inch rectangle.

Speaker 8 Pale greenish color, almost transparent.

Speaker 12 And he holds it up to the light and he sees this little bulge.

Speaker 8 Inside the ravioli-shaped capsule.

Speaker 20 So here he is holding this little ravioli ravioli in the middle of the fish market.

Speaker 34 What do we do now?

Speaker 16 Is it dead?

Speaker 32 He doesn't know. So it came out of a dead shark.

Speaker 22 Right.

Speaker 27 It could be dead, but it could maybe be alive.

Speaker 8 Just kind of thinking, or at least we could learn something from it.

Speaker 8 So I took it back home.

Speaker 22 Put it in a little plastic aquarium that he had.

Speaker 8 The kind of thing that kids would have sometimes. So that was never, never actually used.
Just happened to be kicking around the house.

Speaker 8 So then I'm kind of thinking, well, okay, obviously the shark would lay the egg in the sea, so I'll go and collect some sea water.

Speaker 27 With like a bucket?

Speaker 8 Yeah, just a literally a bucket. Take it back home.

Speaker 21 Dumps the ocean water into this little aquarium.

Speaker 8 With a little air pump just to keep the water oxygenated. Dangle a piece of string across the width of the aquarium.

Speaker 6 Why?

Speaker 31 Just to replicate like some seagrass or something that the egg would hook onto.

Speaker 22 So he hooks the little ravioli tendrils onto the string and suspends it in the floating water.

Speaker 7 And then wait.

Speaker 8 Because I mean, once you put it in there, what do you do?

Speaker 8 Apart from watch it every day or several times a day or many many times a day every time you walk past it you take a look to just see what's going on it just became a little bit like a magnet day one day two every time I was in and out moving past it take a look take a look take a look day four five six seven nothing happening and after around about three weeks you noticed the little bump on the top right hand side of it So now each time I'm walking past, I'm now focusing on the little bump.

Speaker 8 And the little bump slowly separates from the main yoke section itself with a tiny, tiny, almost thread-like connection.

Speaker 8 And it starts to move.

Speaker 39 Nope.

Speaker 34 Just kind of like wiggling a little bit.

Speaker 44 And it's like, oh my gosh.

Speaker 27 This shark, this baby shark that I brought home.

Speaker 8 From a dead shark, a dead shark is still alive.

Speaker 23 Now, I should say, Greg is standing, if somewhat amateurishly, on a sort of scientific frontier.

Speaker 8 I mean, sharks had been bred in captivity and eggs had hatched in aquariums, but the thing that had never been done before was taking an egg from a dead shark and getting it to develop.

Speaker 31 Nobody had ever done that.

Speaker 8 Nobody, so this was a first.

Speaker 18 And now he's thinking, maybe, maybe

Speaker 32 I could even get this thing to hatch.

Speaker 1 Which is what Greg is going to try to do right after this short break.

Speaker 1 Radio Lab is supported by Capital One. Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees.

Speaker 1 Just ask the Capital One bank guy. It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way.
He'd also tell you that Radio Lab is his favorite podcast, too. Aw, really? Thanks, Capital One Bank Guy.

Speaker 1 What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capital one.com/slash bank, capital One NA, member FDIC.

Speaker 1 Radiolab is supported by the National Forest Foundation, a nonprofit transforming America's love of nature into action for our forests.

Speaker 1 Did you know that national forests provide clean drinking water to one in three Americans?

Speaker 1 And that national forests and grasslands cover nearly 10% of the U.S., hosting 150,000 miles of trails and providing habitat for over 3,000 species of plants and animals.

Speaker 1 The National Forest Foundation supports the places where we come alive, keeping the trails, rivers, and forests we love healthy.

Speaker 1 Last year, they planted 5.3 million trees and advanced over 300 projects to protect nature and communities nationwide.

Speaker 1 Their work creates lasting impact by restoring forests and watersheds, strengthening wildfire resilience, and expanding recreation access for generations to come.

Speaker 1 And when forests struggle, so do we, the water in our taps, the air we breathe, and the trails that connect us all. Learn how you can help at nationalforests.org.

Speaker 1 Radiolab is supported by the National Forest Foundation, a nonprofit transforming America's love of nature into action for our forests.

Speaker 1 Did you know that national forests provide clean drinking water to one in three Americans? And when forests struggle, so do we.

Speaker 1 The National Forest Foundation creates lasting impact by restoring forests and watersheds, strengthening wildfire resilience, and expanding recreation access for all.

Speaker 1 Last year, they planted 5.3 million trees and led over 300 projects to protect nature and communities nationwide. Learn more at nationalforests.org slash radiolab.

Speaker 13 Radiolab is supported by AT ⁇ T.

Speaker 13 There's nothing better than that feeling like someone has your back and that things are going to get done without you even having to ask, like your friend offering to help you move without even having to offer drinks and pizza first.

Speaker 13 It's a beautiful thing when someone is two steps ahead of you, quietly making your life easier. Staying connected matters.

Speaker 13 That's why, in the rare event of a network outage, ATT will proactively credit you for a full day of service. That's the ATT guarantee.

Speaker 13 Credit for fiber downtime lasting 20 minutes or more, or for wireless downtime lasting 60 minutes or more, caused by a single incident impacting 10 or more towers.

Speaker 13 Must be connected to impacted tower at onset of outage. Restrictions and exclusions apply.
See ATT.com/slash guarantee for full details. ATT, connecting changes everything.

Speaker 4 WNYC Studios is supported by Apple TV.

Speaker 46 It's 1972. A young British family is attempting to sail around the world when disaster strikes.
Their boat is hit by killer whales and it sinks in seconds.

Speaker 46 All they have left is a life raft and each other.

Speaker 46 This is the true story of the Robertson family and their fight to survive, hosted by me, Becky Milligan. Listen to Adrift, an Apple original podcast produced by Blanchard House.

Speaker 46 Follow and listen on Apple podcasts.

Speaker 13 Radiolab Sharks.

Speaker 25 We're back.

Speaker 13 All right, we pick up with the story of Greg with his little egg case in his little kid plastic aquarium. And the egg case has a bump which has just begun moving.

Speaker 32 An egg case that Greg at this point has decided to name.

Speaker 34 Squiggle.

Speaker 8 Was squiggling in the egg case, and I didn't know what else to call it.

Speaker 8 It's squiggling around. That's how I described it to people.

Speaker 42 And now that he knew that it was alive and he'd given it a name.

Speaker 8 Now I'm thinking, maybe I need to actually get a slightly bigger aquarium and something a little bit, I would say, more professional, you know, made of glass instead of plastic.

Speaker 38 So he moves Squiggle into his happier, newer home.

Speaker 8 And so now we're like six weeks, seven weeks, eight weeks.

Speaker 22 Squiggle is growing and moving more and more.

Speaker 43 It's still this sort of lump that's attached to a yoke in a thin thread.

Speaker 27 And then...

Speaker 8 The yoke itself starts to appear to have blood vessels form on it. So you almost see like vein-like structures on the yolk sac.
What?

Speaker 8 And they kind of snake their way up the yolk sac to this little placental connection, which then in turn is going into the shark.

Speaker 27 Like blood? Yes.

Speaker 42 So it's blood going to the head of the shark.

Speaker 31 That is wild.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 8 It is alien-like because it has no distinctive shape. It doesn't have the distinctive snout.
There are no fins. It's, I don't know, how would you describe it? It's just like a

Speaker 3 little something.

Speaker 42 So you'd walk by Squiggle like a couple times a day, like, hey, Squiggle, what's up?

Speaker 8 I wasn't necessarily talking to Squiggle, but when people said, How's it doing? How's it doing? Oh, Squiggle. Squiggle's doing fine.

Speaker 31 And then one day...

Speaker 8 It just simply stopped moving.

Speaker 14 Squiggle stopped squiggling.

Speaker 41 And it just never started again.

Speaker 32 That was the end of Squiggle.

Speaker 26 But Squiggle left behind this little bit of hope for Greg.

Speaker 2 This beautiful little piece of ravioli kind of proved it was possible.

Speaker 8 So there was this kind of

Speaker 34 drive.

Speaker 22 So Greg heads back to the fish market, tries to get as many eggs as he can. Not even like pulling out the strings when he sees them.
He now just starts cutting into the dead sharks.

Speaker 13 Whoa, the fishermen are just letting him do this.

Speaker 31 Well, Greg got very good at spotting which sharks had egg cases in them.

Speaker 20 But also these fishermen...

Speaker 8 They were curious too, to the point where we arrive. They now tell us, oh, I've got some of this and I've got some of this.

Speaker 22 And at this point, he has egg cases upon egg cases at home.

Speaker 34 Multiple aquariums, et cetera.

Speaker 41 And they're all starting to move.

Speaker 30 And they do a little bit of wiggling, just like Squiggle did.

Speaker 8 Going good, going good.

Speaker 7 Everything's going good.

Speaker 44 But then, just like Squiggle, they would all die.

Speaker 27 And Greg is like,

Speaker 8 what's happening? Why do they suddenly stop developing?

Speaker 22 So he starts tinkering with like a couple of things, like the aeration, the salinity.

Speaker 35 And then eventually he starts to drop the temperature of the tank.

Speaker 8 Lowering the temperature, lowering the temperature, lowering the temperature. And lo and behold, this mortality suddenly stopped massively.

Speaker 42 These eggs start surviving.

Speaker 8 Everything seemed to continue to develop.

Speaker 42 Past the day that Squiggle died.

Speaker 34 Slowly get bigger, bigger, bigger, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.

Speaker 16 And then some weeks in, he notices that one of the embryos in the egg cases is starting to look like a shark.

Speaker 8 The fins developed. It seems to have a tail and a head.
It's now

Speaker 8 starting to go into a position where it has its head at the bottom part of the egg case and the body is looped over to the top, and the tail is now next to the head.

Speaker 7 And then one day he's cleaning the tank, and he accidentally bumps into the string that's holding the tendrils.

Speaker 38 And then, all of the sudden.

Speaker 8 All movement stops.

Speaker 6 I've just killed it.

Speaker 8 And then, after a minute or so,

Speaker 8 oh no, it's all right, it's all right, it's all good, it's all good.

Speaker 33 And then it started wiggling again.

Speaker 14 It's this defense mechanism these little egg cases have to protect themselves from predators who want to eat them.

Speaker 20 Now at this point, the little shark bodies, they're curled around the yolk sack.

Speaker 8 And Greg can see that that yolk sack is getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller.

Speaker 8 And after around about five and a half, coming up towards six months, that yolk sack has almost disappeared.

Speaker 22 And so he starts thinking, I bet when that yolk sack goes away, that's when this thing's going to hatch.

Speaker 8 Now, every time you go past the aquarium, you're looking, looking, looking. Can you see any yolk? Can you see any yolk? And then one day, oh, it's gone.

Speaker 14 And in the place where the shark used to attach to the yolk zack, there's just a little belly button.

Speaker 8 Literally, because it's like a placental connection. So you could actually quite happily say that sharks have belly buttons.

Speaker 8 And at that point, the shark is ready to be born.

Speaker 32 Wow, the belly button is the final touch, the master stroke.

Speaker 44 It is. It is.
It is.

Speaker 21 So he's just sitting there waiting for this shark to finally break out of this egg case.

Speaker 8 You can only spend so many hours with your eyes open watching a shark waiting for it to hatch. It's like the kettle, yeah? You go to bed, you think, okay, well, everything seems fine.

Speaker 8 But then one morning, he wakes up and there's a little baby shark sitting at the bottom of the tank.

Speaker 8 Just sitting at the bottom.

Speaker 33 Like a picture-perfect miniature version of a small spotted cat shark.

Speaker 14 Just sitting on the bottom of the tank.

Speaker 45 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 44 He did it.

Speaker 45 Yeah, he has a baby shark in his aquarium that came from a dead mother shark.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 44 Wow.

Speaker 32 And so this baby shark is just sitting at the bottom of the tank.

Speaker 21 And he's like, I guess it's time to let it go.

Speaker 8 Release it into the sea.

Speaker 41 Back to the ocean.

Speaker 22 So one afternoon.

Speaker 8 A group of us, I think it was seven or eight

Speaker 8 members of the organization.

Speaker 22 They pack it up into a cooler and they drive to the north side of the island.

Speaker 8 We get our wetsuits on, put our scuba gear on, transfer the shark into the box.

Speaker 22 Just like a little Tupperware you'd put your lunch in.

Speaker 8 Everyone got cameras. Yeah, yeah, got cameras.
Are the batteries charged? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The battery's charged.
Okay, are we ready? We're ready. Let's get in the water.

Speaker 23 So they walk out into the water, dip down under, and start to dive.

Speaker 8 To a depth of, I don't know, maybe about 10, 12 meters.

Speaker 33 And they're swimming around the bottom, looking for a good place to leave this baby shark.

Speaker 34 Underwater with a little box, the little baby shark.

Speaker 8 You can see the beaming smiles behind the regulators.

Speaker 45 And the reality of what they're doing, what they've done, it starts to sink in

Speaker 8 the amount of time energy effort dedication concern worry built up over the the year or so of development and then hatching and releasing

Speaker 8 they're all just tearing up like their masks just fill up with with their tears seriously it was just so super super super emotional so when it when it when it came to this final kind of like now we're going to open the box and take the lid off and see what happens greg's holding this little box and he starts to open it just very slowly slowly take off the lid of the box, and the little shark wiggles around a bit.

Speaker 8 And then it kind of lifts off the box and starts to swim.

Speaker 8 I don't know. There was just kind of.

Speaker 8 I don't know. There was just a very, very kind of like emotional but peaceful moment.

Speaker 8 It felt like many minutes, but it probably wasn't. The shark had disappeared.
We weren't going to chase it. We had no idea where it was going to go next.

Speaker 24 That shark was the first, but it wasn't the last.

Speaker 8 The total number of sharks we've released to date is 371.

Speaker 5 Whoa.

Speaker 37 And one thing that science reporter Claudia Guib from the beginning pointed out is that Greg had started this project in 2011, and I was reporting this in, I think, 2020, 2021.

Speaker 37 So he'd by then been doing it for almost a decade. He had published a paper on it in 2018 that essentially was like a how-to guide for taking egg cases and raising them to be re-released in the wild.

Speaker 21 And now there are other scientists in other parts of the world rescuing egg cases from these dead sharks.

Speaker 8 So it wasn't a question of, wow, we're stopping a species from becoming extinct. It was a question of putting them back where they belong.

Speaker 8 Let's let nature take its course. And if nature determines that this creature will have a long and happy, fruitful life, fantastic.

Speaker 8 If nature says something different, it's nature doing what nature does.

Speaker 3 I hate to say it.

Speaker 39 They're going to die. That's nature, red raw and tooth and claw.

Speaker 37 When I was reporting this story and I spoke to this one prestigious researcher, Nick Delvey, professor in conservation biology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

Speaker 37 And in his his view, it's almost kind of pointless to put baby sharks back into the ocean.

Speaker 27 He says like these babies are just like a snack for another fish.

Speaker 2 This is probably

Speaker 2 the most important, least well understood fact in marine conservation that you should conserve the adults and not the babies.

Speaker 25 Nick says, just like, put this all in a different context, just imagine you're a farmer.

Speaker 2 You want to start an apple farm. I'm going to give you a choice.
Would you like 10 mature apple trees trees or would you like 10 apple pips from my apple?

Speaker 2 And everybody, when they see it, they're like, oh yeah, of course, yeah, of course. Give me the adults because they can breed multiple times right from the get-go.

Speaker 21 Focusing on the babies instead of the adults, it's not only a waste of time, but also kind of a distraction away from conservation efforts.

Speaker 2 Fisheries management or bycatch mitigation.

Speaker 21 That do make a big difference.

Speaker 2 These kind of activities are described as what are called feel-good conservation. These are an action that make people feel like they're helping to save the planet, but they don't have a real impact.

Speaker 1 I had a similar question.

Speaker 22 I don't know.

Speaker 20 The more I talked to Claudia,

Speaker 27 the more I think they do do something,

Speaker 43 just a different kind of something.

Speaker 37 You know, one piece we didn't talk about is everybody spoke about how the people around them in their community responded to this project really, really

Speaker 22 positively and even beyond Greg's community.

Speaker 21 You know, there's even a classroom in Spain now.

Speaker 9 My name is Jaime Penares. I'm a biologist from Spain.

Speaker 22 Using Greg's methods.

Speaker 47 My name is Inmaríl.

Speaker 16 I'm 15 years old.

Speaker 38 To raise baby sharks.

Speaker 37 So instead of having like butterflies, you would have a baby shark in your classroom.

Speaker 9 My name is Ignacio and I'm 16.

Speaker 47 Paola, I'm 17 years old. I'm 14 years old.

Speaker 31 And in a way, it's not what's happening inside those shark tanks that matters.

Speaker 32 It's what's happening inside those kids.

Speaker 8 Honestly, I was like

Speaker 9 concerned about how we are

Speaker 34 going to take care of them.

Speaker 47 I used to think of sharks as mainly dangerous. At first,

Speaker 47 I thought of sharks as big and scary creatures. And now that I've been taking care of five of them, I'm pretty much relaxed.

Speaker 28 People have been taught to fear sharks.

Speaker 32 Chris Lowe, again, our shark scientist from the very beginning of this week.

Speaker 28 So the cool thing for me is if we've taught people to fear sharks, we can also unteach them to fear sharks, to appreciate the animal.

Speaker 2 The wonder of the complexity of their lives, the complexity of their biology.

Speaker 8 You know, we need to

Speaker 8 change our concept. Get away from the monster image.
They're not monsters at all.

Speaker 47 Butterflies or sharks?

Speaker 38 Sharks.

Speaker 47 Definitely sharks. They are more interesting.

Speaker 9 Yeah, same here. I think I would prefer sharks over butterflies.

Speaker 13 Well, that is a wrap for our week of sharks.

Speaker 1 Big giant whale shark size. Thank you to Rachel Kusick for bringing this wild idea to us and doing dozens of interviews to bring it to life.

Speaker 13 Thanks also to our editorial ground control, Pat Walters, for wrangling so many sharks.

Speaker 1 This episode was reported and produced by Rachel Kusick, edited by Pat Walters, fact-checked by Diane Kelly, with mixing help from Jeremy Bloom, and original music by Alan Gofinsky.

Speaker 44 And

Speaker 1 if somehow you are still yearning for even more shark stories going into the weekend, Terrestrials, our kids' show hosted by Lulu, has such a beautiful episode on the Greenland shark, which is the oldest of sharks, like the individuals live impossibly long.

Speaker 19 It's pretty neat.

Speaker 13 You can go find that on the Radiolab for Kids feed. The episode is called The Sea Troll.

Speaker 13 And one more thing. We want to give a huge thanks to everyone who supports Radiolab, especially right now, everyone who's a part of the lab, our membership program.

Speaker 13 Your support makes big projects like this possible, and we are so grateful.

Speaker 1 And if you aren't a member yet or are thinking about giving more,

Speaker 1 this is the perfect time to take the plunge. Because if you join or re-up now, you will receive a really cool gift.

Speaker 13 A limited edition Week of Sharks hat designed by the awesome main-based artist and surfer Ty Williams. It's so beautiful and fun and it gives you a chance to show the world you support.

Speaker 13 public radio in the form of Radiolab.

Speaker 1 It's available to everyone who joins the lab this month, even for as little as seven bucks a month.

Speaker 13 You can join at radiolab.org radiolab.org/slash join. Existing members, check your email for details, and thank you so much.
All right, that is that is really it. We're stalling.

Speaker 13 I don't want to end this thing, it's been so fun. Uh, but have a great weekend, stay equal parts open and curious as you are wary of the shadows in the water and beyond.

Speaker 48 Hi, I'm Michelle and I'm from Richardson, Texas. And here are our staff credits.
Radio Lab was created by Jad Appamrod and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Lasif Nasser are our co-hosts.

Speaker 48 Dylan Keith is our director of sound design. Our staff include Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W.

Speaker 48 Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Rebecca Lack, Maria Paz-Putieris, Sundunyana Sambanjan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sarah Kari, Sarah Sandbach, Anissa Vispe, Arian Wack, Pat Walters, Molly Webster, Jessica Young, with help from Rebecca Rand.

Speaker 48 Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Anna Pujal-Mazzini, and Natalie Middleton.

Speaker 49 Hi, my name is Anna, and I'm calling from Starnville, Massachusetts.

Speaker 49 Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P.

Speaker 49 Sloan Foundation.

Speaker 1 Radiolab is supported by the National Forest Foundation, a nonprofit transforming America's love of nature into action for our forests.

Speaker 1 Did you know that national forests provide clean drinking water to one in three Americans? And when forests struggle, so do we.

Speaker 1 The National Forest Foundation creates lasting impact by restoring forests and watersheds, strengthening wildfire resilience, and expanding recreation access for all.

Speaker 1 Last year, they planted 5.3 million trees and led over 300 projects to protect nature and communities nationwide. Learn more at nationalforests.org/slash radiolab.

Speaker 4 Are you ready to get spicy?

Speaker 1 These Doritos Golden Sriracha aren't that spicy.

Speaker 4 Maybe it's time to turn up the heat.

Speaker 1 Or turn it down. It's time for something that's not too spicy.
Try Doritos Golden Sriracha.

Speaker 10 Spicy, but not too spicy.