Dr. Austin Gallagher is a marine scientist working at the intersection of threatened species conservation and protected areas. A world authority on sharks, Austin is the Chief Executive and Lead Scientist of the NGO Beneath the Waves, a National Geographic Explorer. He holds academic positions at universities in North America and the United Kingdom.
Austin’s research focuses on studying the behavior, health, and survival of marine species such as sharks. He uses his findings to catalyze conservation efforts. His research approach is defined by creativity and outside the box thinking. He is incredibly passionate about using cutting edge tools and organizing large collaborative teams to create the conservation evidence to solve emerging conservation challenges.
He has published over 80 peer-reviewed scientific articles. His work on shark vulnerability to fisheries has been applied to ocean management and policy globally. He has also assisted with creating global protective measures (marine protected areas, CITES listings) for numerous species of sharks and regions worldwide.
Austin’s work demonstrates that sharks can be worth more alive than dead, which remains a highly referenced argument for contemporary marine conservation, particularly in island nations.
He has spoken at TED, the Royal Geographical Society (Hong Kong), MIT, Smithsonian, Summit, WeWork, and in front of audiences at universities and businesses around the world. His work has received global media coverage from The New York Times, Forbes, Virgin, Yahoo, Cheddar, and Vice. He has appeared on Discovery Channel’s Shark Week and National Geographic Wild and regularly consults for natural history film and TV productions.
Brands that currently sponsor Austin are Southern Tide, GoPro, and Discovery Channel, and he has won awards for his nature photography. As a human, Austin is kind, passionate, motivated, and composed. I had the pleasure of speaking with him over the phone, and I provide the transcript below.
What inspired you to save the shark?
“I’ve been very inspired by these animals my whole life. I was always interested in them. Reading about their situation in college and understanding how bad it was inspired me to want to do the science that would also fulfill conservation needs. It wasn’t until the mid-2000s that we truly knew how bad the situation was for sharks. Some scientists might disagree and claim that we knew about this a long time ago. But, if that were the case, then there would have been a conservation movement sooner. The global sale of shark finning did not become a hot button issue until about 2003,2004, or even a little later when the seminal shark decline papers came out. When I saw those, I realized it was an important thing to dedicate my mind towards.”
What is the mission of Beneath the Waves?
“Beneath the waves is a non-profit research institute that is doing cutting-edge research to advance scientific discovery and catalyze and inspire policy change. We have a big focus on marine protected areas, threatened species. Of course, we have a deep passion for sharks and shark conservation.”
What are your primary responsibilities as CEO and chief scientist of Beneath the Waves?
“As a founder, my responsibility is always on thinking about our vision. How can we put together teams to accomplish our goals? With the creation of marine protected areas, what are the scientific needs to do that, where do we want to do it, how do we want to do it, and who will get on board to help us get it done? So it’s a lot of innovative strategies. I am always thinking many steps ahead!”
“I also work as the chief scientist, it’s exciting to be able to put my scientific collaborators in a position to lead projects that will help us achieve our mission. That’s what I do in a nutshell. I can spend a good amount of time in the field with projects, which is great, but certainly not as much as I used to as my responsibilities have changed. I also do a lot of fundraising. We need to find partners to help us enable the work in the first place. It is rewarding for us as we see it as an opportunity for people to become a part of something great.”
What does success look like for the Beneath the Waves?
“There are a couple of different shades to it. One is, are we moving forward with accomplishing our mission? Secondly, are we producing science to move the needle to protect our oceans? Also, success is divided into outputs and outcomes. Outputs include delivering science, communicating it through papers, putting out students, using our platform for people’s education and careers, and educating people through digital channels. Then there are outcomes. What did all of this do? Did you create a marine protected area? Were you able to secure partnerships with stakeholders to make sure they are using your work? What about people that worked with you? Have they gone on to do great things and launch their careers? That is what success looks like for us.”
Can you take us through your process of creating global protective measures for shark species?
“Sure, how long can this response be is the question, but I’ll try and make it as concise as possible. Firstly, nobody can accomplish any of this on their own. If anybody thinks that they can get a species protected or create a marine protected area by themselves, they won’t. It’s impossible, and it’s not how the world works. It requires a team-based approach because there are different stakeholders engaged. You have governments, who are the ones who will enact the actual policies and enforce them. You have researchers and conservation groups who will be doing the work needed to support that legislation or potentially crafting the legislation themselves. And then you have the general public, who are very important because all of these policies will affect them somehow. You have to consider their opinions. This is a simple way to frame who you need to work with.”
“Next, try and identify where there is an opportunity or need to assist with some type of conservation measure that could be useful for sharks and oceans. For sharks, you may have a country interested in protecting sharks because they want to increase their tourism product. They see countries like the Bahamas who have reaped nearly a billion dollars from the last decade of economic inputs from the shark diving industry. You need to work with that government to see what they need to do. How can a scientific-based organization come in and assist with that? Is it filling knowledge gaps, conservation evidence? What are the outputs that you need to create? Is it a technical report, is it a presentation? Is it a conversation with the Prime Minister? What are the outcomes that can come from that, what will it take?”
“Creating global protective measures takes time. It takes a team-based approach. It is about finding exactly what your role is in that and communicating to everybody else involved and then just going out and doing your job.”
How do you evaluate shark sanctuaries?
“Shark sanctuaries are an amazing marketing term. We all know that this sounds exactly like what we should be doing for sharks. But we really don’t know if it will be an effective conservation and management tool. The only way we can know is by evaluating them. We can evaluate them in different ways.”
“Shark sanctuaries essentially prohibit retention and capture for sharks. To evaluate that, you need to let that sanctuary sit over time to allow some degree of measurable change. Next, perhaps you can evaluate what has changed from a fisheries perspective. Is this a nation that catches a lot of sharks? Is it a country with tuna fisheries or swordfish fisheries with long-line fishing? Because, those are going to catch a lot of sharks. Since enabling the policy, has shark mortality and catches gone up or down? Maybe they’ve stayed the same, or maybe they went down a little bit. That’s one way of looking at it, with fisheries data.”
“Yet, some countries don’t have robust industrial or commercial fisheries. The Bahamas has never had a shark fishery. For evaluating these shark sanctuaries, try and understand if the behavior and the space use of those animals protected overlap with the sanctuary. If an animal spends 100% of its time in the country and is completely protected in that country, that will be a successful measure. Managing sharks is complex. We have to make sure that we work with the government and stakeholders so that they can see the data and continue to keep sanctuary laws in place.”
What kind of research did you conduct for your Ph.D.?
“I did a project that combined physiology, behavior, and fisheries for sharks to observe the effects of capture and release fisheries interactions on shark health and survival with the University of Miami. Fisheries interactions is the process of a shark interacting with a fishery, mainly the line and the hook when caught. We caught many sharks and looked at their blood physiology and how it changed under different capture routines. We looked at shark behavior to see how their reflexes and movement speeds were affected. We conducted a survival study to see if any sharks suffered post-release mortality.”
“We also did a fisheries analysis about 12 years of NOAA fisheries longline data to observe the commercial side of it. What factors drive survival in pelagic sharks when caught by accident? The final component was a social science aspect, looking at the issue from a social lens. I interviewed anglers in Florida to understand what they thought shark vulnerability meant. Anglers are very knowledgeable, and they can learn things quickly through social media. That being said, most of them did not think that the process of catch-and-release could affect an animal. That is an important cognitive bias that we need to educate people about. It comes down to age. Younger anglers believed more that their actions were not going to affect the resource. We saw a reversal with the older anglers.”
“In general, most species are pretty robust, but there will always be a small handful of animals in an area that is sensitive. We have to be very careful with those animals, to make sure that we don’t kill them. Especially for catch-and-release fisheries, but the same can be said about commercial fisheries.”
What is your favorite shark species?
“My favorite species is the Tiger shark, by far. It is the species I’ve studied the most and spent the most time with. They are fascinating to me with how adaptive, flexible, and plastic they are to survive. They are a really tough species. They are probably one of the most potentially dangerous if you just think about their machinery – their teeth evolved to eat turtles. Think about that for a second. Think about how many turtles must have been around millions of years ago for that trait to evolve. They are also one of the most patient shark species in the water. They are slow, very calculative, and in ways a relatively smart shark, which they don’t get a lot of credit for. They are the white shark of the tropics. They don’t get the level of Hollywood popularity that a white shark might get, but I think they are the cool cat of the mix because they are so unique. They are the only big shark with stripes. How cool is that?”
What facts about sharks matter the most when legislation is involved?
“Depends on what the legislation is trying to do. If the legislation is about trying to prohibit a shark species from being caught at the beach, the data that could feed that is some of the data from my Ph.D. If you’re on the fisheries management side, fishery data will be the most important there. If you’re trying to do something on the spatial conservation side, it comes down to behavioral data. Many shark tagging groups exist now, which is great, but so many people see these animals being caught and tagged that they wonder what we do with that data. It’s essential to communicate and make sure that you are talking about what you do correctly. Tagging data can be key for helping legislation understand whether sharks spend a lot of time in our country or not. It’s all about defining those questions ahead of time so that you can be the most effective.”
What is your biggest advice to undergraduate students pursuing careers in conservation?
“I would say learn how to write and always be writing. It’s imperative. If you can’t write, then you can’t communicate what you’re doing. How will you convince people that they should listen and support you? Verbal communication is also huge, but you’re trying to get policies done and contribute globally, and those are all about written work. Being able to write is super important.”
“If you want to do research, more from an academic or scholarly standpoint, math is super critical. You have to grind. Honestly, this is a hard field to get into, but it’s an even harder field to do something meaningful in. That might not be the most popular answer, but it is how I see it. If you want to build something meaningful for yourself and become part of a good team, you’re going to have to work hard and find ways to promote yourself through your work. Do good work, and do more than everyone else.”
What advice would you give a graduate student that wants to study sharks?
“For a graduate student, a lot of the advice would be the same as I previously mentioned. If you are in a graduate program studying sharks doing research and publishing is very important. Try and learn as much about the people you want to work with and the things you want to do. Being able to talk about what you are doing intelligently is important. Everybody wants to study sharks. Everybody gets emails about if there is space in their group. The fact is, though, if you get ten emails a week, how do those people distinguish themselves? It’s all about persistence, making things personal, and trying to stick out.”