Dr. Chris Lowe is a professor in marine biology and director of the Shark Lab at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). Lowe and his students work with acoustic and satellite telemetry techniques to study sharks, rays, and gamefishes’ movement, behavior, and physiology.
Dr. Lowe earned his Bachelor of Arts in marine biology at Barrington College in Rhode Island and a Master of Science degree in biology at CSULB. In 1998, he achieved a doctorate in zoology, studying bioenergetics of juvenile hammerhead sharks, at the University of Hawaii.
As the climate and the environment continue to change, Dr. Lowe has become adept at speaking to the media about how climate change has affected ocean life. He appears in many articles and on TV and radio broadcasts, including the PBS/BBC special “Big Blue Live,” “TODAY,” “Al Jazeera America,” “CBC News,” Newsweek, KNX Radio, the Orange County Register, and the Long Beach Press-Telegram.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Chris over the phone, and I provide the transcript below.
What inspired you to save the shark?
“Let’s just say that I came into this field with a little different attitude. A lot of it has to do with generational differences. I grew up watching old-time documentaries about animals. These got me interested and excited about exploration. That’s what I did as a kid, and I went fishing and diving to explore what was around me. I didn’t go into the field to save the shark because, at the time, we didn’t know they needed saving. I’ve been doing this for over 30 years. I only noticed about ten years ago that people want to get into this field to save the ocean or sharks because they are in trouble. That’s a great reason to become marine biologists. One day, one of those kids asked me why I wanted to be a marine scientist, and I had to think about it. I realized I wanted to be a marine scientist because I wanted to explore and learn about animals I knew nothing about. 30-40 years ago, there was no concern about sharks disappearing, so it is exciting to inspire the next generation to fix a growing problem.”
“Flash forward to today. There are a lot of shark species in danger. About ten years ago, we started working with white sharks off the coast of California. In 1998 we rarely saw white sharks along the southern California coastline, but since 2005 we see more white sharks annually. I can’t say that all shark species are in trouble anymore. Some shark populations have come back in remarkable ways. It got me thinking, sharks are in trouble, but they aren’t in trouble everywhere. This has made me look at conservation differently. The more I began to learn about California’s conservation policies and how it manages commercial fishing, I think California has done a good job in improving fisheries management, but at the same time, commercial fisheries are leaving California. So, while marine life targeted in many fisheries is doing much better, we have simply outsourced our problem. Now we import most of our seafood from areas that don’t have the regulations we do.”
I look at the standpoint of saving sharks that we have done a pretty good job in the U.S., but nobody pays attention to these conservation success stories, only the doom and gloom stories. It has been disappointing for me to see how the media and many conservation groups often generalize about sharks and state that all populations are in trouble, but this poses a problem when the public sees more sharks in some places. Unfortunately, nobody is lauding the success stories and mainly focusing on what created those success stories. What did we do that worked, and how can we do that elsewhere? That right there is conservation for me.”
What is one of the most exciting things you’ve learned from juvenile white sharks?
“Given its a great white shark, you assume it’s kickass right from the womb, and they’re not. They get no parental care, and they have to learn everything on their own. Life is hard for a young white shark, even when you’re born 4-5 feet long, weighing 60 pounds. Why do they hang out at public beaches surrounded by thousands of people? They need safety, and at a shallow beach, there are no bigger sharks to eat them, no orca, and bobbing objects floating on doors that are not chasing them. Shallow beaches are the safest space to be.”
“Another thing, if you’re going to hang out there because it’s safe, you need to eat. Because we removed most marine predators from coastal oceans 40-50 years ago, we have hundreds of thousands of stingrays along the coast of southern California. Stingrays are abundant, accessible food sources for baby white sharks. We also think young white sharks use beaches as nurseries because the water is warm. White sharks are one of the sharks that have endothermy. They can keep their body warmer than the water they swim through. However, we believe that yearling white sharks are too small to retain heat. From our studies, we discover that yearling white sharks are temperature sensitive. They don’t like water colder than 60 degrees or water warmer than 84 degrees. It’s not until they get over 100 pounds at 2-3 years old that they can retain that heat and move to deeper, colder water. These are the things that we have learned in the last ten years that we just didn’t know!”
How exactly does acoustic telemetry work when researching sharks, and how do you use its findings?
“Dr. Don Nelson established the shark lab at Long Beach in 1966. He was a pioneer in shark behavior. He spent a lot of time in the water and loved watching sharks. He became very frustrated with the limited time we could spend with sharks underwater. In the early 70s, a couple of researchers and Don started playing around with a declassified military technology: acoustic telemetry. The first tag model they built was as big as a double-D flashlight and would just produce an ultrasonic pulse. You could use a hydrophone and pick up the ultrasonic pulse and follow the tag around from a boat. They wanted to know where sharks were going, so they attached these transmitters to sharks and followed them over time. That was a big deal back in the day, the first shark spy technology.”
“Now, of course, there are many companies that manufacture these transmitters. I can make a transmitter that can work, but it is laborious and takes hours to make, but that’s how we started. Over time, the technology has gotten better, smaller, and cheaper. These days we can’t just find out that sharks go from point A to point B. The thing we want to know is why? We need context to know how these animals are making decisions. That’s where this flood of new technology comes in. Data loggers, accelerometers, IMUs, and cameral tell us what’s going on around the sharks and why they move around to different locations.”
What are your primary responsibilities as director of the Shark Lab?
“I’m a professor, so my primary responsibility is teaching. I train the next generation of shark biologists. I have been fortunate enough to train 50 shark biologists so far in my career. Many of them have gone on to become renowned scientists in their rank. My other part of my job is research. I get to write grants, and I get to design projects, develop new ideas, and answer questions. After doing that for 25 years, we just landed a big new grant to expand our white shark research and education program. Science communication has become a new interest for me. While I’ve conducted decades of fisheries research thinking that fisheries managers would use the data to improve management, but in reality, I’ve had a greater impact working with anglers that were interested in grassroots conservation. They know that the research we do can help them be more ethical fishers or allow their kids to fish in the future. When I learned that anglers were appreciating my science, I realized that I was producing science for the wrong people. I needed to direct my research to the public.”
“It is easy for a scientist to get stuck in their little world. Only excited about sharing our ideas with other scientists. But, when we share science with the public and appreciate what we are doing, it takes on a whole new meaning. Firstly, we are changing their perception of animals. Secondly, we are changing their perceptions of scientists, and they stop seeing us as the clueless ‘Ivy Towers.’ If we can share our excitement with the public, they will be excited with us.”
“That’s what I’ve learned as director of the Shark Lab. 30% of my time in education, 30% of my time is research, and 30% of my time is science communication. The last 10% is for fun!”
Does the Shark Lab research other sharks besides great whites?
“Oh yes, we have! We have worked on a lot of shark species over the last 25 years. We’ve worked on blue sharks, mako sharks, angel sharks, white sharks, leopard sharks, tiger sharks, grey reef sharks, Galapagos sharks, scalloped hammerhead sharks, horn sharks, thresher sharks, and grey smoothhounds. Getting into the rays, we’ve done a lot of research on stingrays. Also, bat rays and shovelnose guitarfish. We have researched all of our local elasmobranchs.”
“Now, we’re working on pacific sleeper sharks in Alaska, hammerheads, and tiger sharks in Hawaii. Where there are sharks, we go.”
What’s next for the Shark Lab in 2021?
“We are right in the heart of our great white shark project. We are developing new technology and doing some cool projects combining it. We are using aerial drones, underwater autonomous robots, acoustic telemetry, satellite telemetry, using BRUVS, and eDNA. We want to know why baby white sharks pick certain beaches as nurseries and where they go next.”
Why do you think more juvenile white sharks are moving from SoCal up north to Monterey Bay?
“I believe it is due to changes in water temperature. Baby white sharks are temperature sensitive. Historically, they could not tolerate water temperatures north of Point Conception. In the winter, Monterey waters get down to the 50s, which is too cold. After the big El Nino event in 2015 and the resulting Blob, Monterey’s waters rose to the 60s. That opened up a new nursery for great white sharks. Interestingly, if you look at oceanographic conditions over the last 30 years, waters get progressively warmer. We believe that shift is causing great white sharks to establish nurseries in northern areas like Monterey Bay.”
When speaking to the media, what information about sharks is the most influential in changing people’s perceptions about them?
“I think the one thing that is easy for the media to keep shark popularity is through the “fear factor.” Sharks are part of our summertime culture, like the fourth of July, apple pie, and baseball. The tinge of fear that people get watching things like Jaws is what appealed to the media. Historically, we didn’t know a lot about sharks. It was easy to build them into this character that was big, mean, and scary. However, back when we were doing that, shark populations were low in the US. Your chances of seeing a shark in the wild were pretty low. Now, just like whales, there are sharks all around our coasts, so people have a chance to see them, and that also means they’re still a lot of science being done.”
“As we learn more about sharks and we tell the public more about these animals, it makes it harder for people to build them out to be scary animals. Because people think, ‘hey, that doesn’t match, I was at the beach, and a white shark swam right by me, I saw its fin, and it swam right by me.’ In reality, that happens quite a bit, just most people don’t see them, but when they do see sharks and nothing happens, that contrasts with their stories. It contrasts with the material they see on shark week. So, eventually, that formula of scaring the public is going to go away.”
Can you explain a little about the process of underwater robots tracking sharks?
These are AUVs, autonomous underwater robots equipped with hydrophones and receivers that could track a tagged shark and record its geo-position. We can program the robot to follow a tagged shark but stay at a distance to not disturb it. If the tagged shark was to start mulling around, the robot is programmed to do the same. If the shark moves towards the robot, the robot moves away. It’s another ingenious form of spy technology.”
“The cool thing about the robots is that they can chew gum and track at the same time. We can program the robot to dive up and down through the water column. It’s got a whole suite of environmental sensors on it. It measures water temperature, depth, chlorophyll, turbidity, salinity, and video cameras so we can recreate this 3D environment around the shark that it is tracking.”
What kind of research did you conduct for your Ph.D. in Hawaii?
“For my Masters in California, I was studying the behavior of Pacific electric rays. I found it interesting that it was cool to see why animals exit the behavioral p[aterns. But I became frustrated by how squishy behavior can be – it’s very plastic. It’s designed that way. It’s a survival characteristic. It is tough to quantify behavior. Everything was graded, ‘score of 1-5 what was the behavior’ I hated that. At the time, I wasn’t interested in physiology. But, I began to realize how important physiology is to behavior. Physiology is quantifiable. You can measure the amount of oxygen an animal is consuming and calculate its energetic cost.”
“For my Ph.D., I decided I wanted to learn more about physiology. I wanted to figure out what it costs an animal to survive. I studied hammerhead shark nurseries in Kanaui bay on Oahu. Anywhere between 5-10 thousand scalloped hammerhead pups are born every year. They eventually disappear into the open ocean. I wanted to figure out what is the cost of surviving for a baby scalloped hammerhead. I built my respirometer. I had a big chamber I could fit a baby hammerhead in, and I could seal it up and pump water into it at different speeds. I could make the shark swim in a place like a treadmill. I could measure how much oxygen the shark was taken out of the water and correlate it to its tailbeat frequency. The tail is the propeller of the shark. The faster it goes, the more calories it burns.”
“Next, I wanted to take my study to the field. I wanted to build a transmitter that will measure their tail beat frequencies, and then I can correlate that to how much oxygen they consume. So, I designed and built a tail transmitter, put it on sharks, and followed them around for two days. It was the first-ever shark fit bit. I could count how many calories hammerhead sharks could burn. We learned that hammerhead sharks have pretty high metabolisms. The learning curve for catching prey is very steep. If they can’t learn to catch high-quality fish within the first month of life, they will starve to death. Fellow grad students and I concluded that less than 30% of the hammerhead shark population survives through their first year. It took me six years to finish the project, as I built everything myself. It was a great learning experience.”
What is your favorite shark species?
“My favorite is the cookie-cutter shark. We did some research on cookie cutters in Hawaii. They are one of those sharks where you could ask any 10-year-old kid, and they can tell you what a cookie-cutter shark is. But, from a scientific standpoint, we know virtually nothing about this shark. This shark takes bites out of everything. It takes bites out of whales, dolphins, tuna, swordfish, seals, and it takes bites out of great white shark faces! It only gets to be about 18 inches long, and it’s the ultimate shark, in my opinion.”
“So, we figure cookie-cutter sharks are kind of deepwater sharks. They live within the deep scattering layer at night, and in certain places, they’ll come closer to the surface. Their populations are probably increasing as a result of commercial pelagic longlining. Commercial fishing created an oceanic supermarket for cookie-cutter sharks. Imagine you’ve got a long line out there with a bunch of fish on it, and you’re cookie-cutter swimming in this desert of the ocean. Imagine a Whole Foods suddenly pops up, and you swim down the line and take bites.”
“The other thing that intrigues me about cookie-cutters is most sharks are terminal predators. When they catch prey, they kill and consume the whole prey. Cookie-cutters are among the few that I know of that don’t make a living out of killing the prey. They just take a bite! That, to me, breaks the mold of what we think of when we think of sharks. It has all these cool characteristics. They are bioluminescent. Their bellies glow. They have a dark band around their neck that doesn’t glow. There is a lot of interesting information about them, but by and large, we know nothing about them.”
If you were to receive a research grant right this second, how would you use it?
“Well, I’m living that dream right now. Getting 4 million dollars to do shark research is kind of unheard of. So, we have been investing in a lot of new technology. I’ve got computer scientists and engineers helping us develop new tools. I have a phenomenal field and education team. Historically, we either didn’t have the right technology to answer our questions or have the technology. Still, we didn’t have the money, or there weren’t enough animals around to answer the questions. Now the animals are around, we have the technology, and we have the money. I’m living a dream right now!”
What facts about sharks matter the most when protective legislation is involved?
“The challenge is protecting something you don’t understand. It starts with the basics like life history information. How fast do they grow, how long do they live, how long until they reach maturity, how many offspring can they produce, what do they eat? These are all the basics, and what’s amazing is that we don’t know these things for a vast majority of shark and ray species. It becomes tough to protect and manage these species when you don’t know this information.”
“When it comes to fishery management or even conservation, you are not actually managing animals. You are managing people. The animals will do fine without people. Conservation these days is less about managing animals and more about how you will control human activity. There are different ways to do that, you can regulate, but that is tough. You need to enforce the regulation, get people to follow it, and you have to modify it, and populations change. Getting people educated is a far better tool. If you can get people who influence the species and change their behavior, that is a way of taking pressure off of the animals without regulating anything. I am a big fan of education. Through education, you can get a lot of people to change their behavior. The question is, can it be fast enough to save species? I think it can. It takes will, regulation, education. It takes resources. After that, it takes people who care. The key is going to be kids. Their understanding and appreciation for those animals will change their behavior to protecting sharks and other animals.”
What is your biggest advice to undergraduate students pursuing careers in conservation?
“In science these days, the field is changing very fast. In my field, I’m always looking for new grad students that are hybrids. I’m looking for somebody with a biology background, but there is a lot of opportunity for you if you can code. You can be the best biologist in the world, but if you can’t code, you can’t do anything with your data. Understanding how technology works in the field is crucial.”
“We get huge amounts of data, and some of those data aren’t correct. Learning how to filter data becomes important, and there is a huge amount of math behind that. Finding computer scientists and engineers that can help is what we will need to progress in the field. We need people to build us better mousetraps.”
“Lastly, we need better communicators. Historically, scientists tend to get stuck with the term ‘nerd’ because it was a field where you could avoid dealing with people. You could do your own thing and think up brilliant things while not having to interact with people. You can’t do that anymore. I was a shy kid growing up, now I speak to thousands. If I can overcome that shyness, anyone can. It is just a desire to learn.”
What advice would you give a graduate student that wants to study sharks?
“Much of the same, technology and computing is essential. There are many avenues to study sharks. When I talk to grad students, I remind them that they can have a career working with sharks where you don’t have to do any research. You can be a science communicator and be instrumental in how people perceive sharks. You can be an artist and be instrumental in how people perceive sharks.
“For those who want to be research scientists, the key skills I see today are mathematical skills, logistical skills, and writing. These days, to be a professional research scientist, if you don’t like to write and can’t write quickly and efficiently, you won’t make it. Writing grant proposals and external designs are important. You have to be able to write those up faster than anyone else. Anyone can write a great grant proposal if you have two years. However, you have maybe a month, including thinking up the ideas, planning them out, structuring them, organizing them, and articulating them. Some people are true masters of that, and there are others you struggle with. And if you struggle, you won’t eat. In some positions, you don’t get paid. Grant proposals are a foundation in this field.”