{"id":616509,"date":"2026-09-06T18:46:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T18:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/616509\/"},"modified":"2026-09-06T18:46:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T18:46:11","slug":"biopsies-aerial-drills-and-a-personal-pizza-a-day-in-the-life-of-a-shark-scientist-well-actually","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/616509\/","title":{"rendered":"Biopsies, aerial drills and a personal pizza: a day in the life of a shark scientist | Well actually"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cSharks are not monsters, they just need better PR,\u201d writes Jasmin Graham<\/a>. And she should know: Graham is a shark scientist and science communicator.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what a day in Graham\u2019s life in Sarasota, Florida<\/a> looks like.<\/p>\n

Do you have a morning routine?<\/p>\n

I usually wake up around 8am, but I woke up at 7am because I had to go to the dentist. I got a head start on some emails and took a fundraising phone call in the car.<\/p>\n

After the dentist, I got home and did my drills. I\u2019m an aerialist, which is basically all the things you see in Cirque du Soleil: lyra [aerial hoop], pole and silks. Breakfast was Honey Nut Cheerios.<\/p>\n

I went to the office to meet with an artist in residence [with Graham\u2019s nonprofit Minorities in Shark Sciences<\/a>]. They\u2019re helping build props and sets for our theater shows. One is an immersive experience about the mass extinction of sharks. It\u2019s a combination of a whodunit and an escape room.<\/p>\n

What did you do for lunch?<\/p>\n

I get delivered meals because I don\u2019t have time to cook \u2013 it was some sort of pasta thing. After that, I was working on a grant for grassroots organizations working on the environment in the south-east. I\u2019m co-chair of the Priorities, Projects, and Campaigns committee of the America the Beautiful for All Coalition<\/a>, a coalition of organizations that want to protect nature and also center justice and access. Then I worked on prepping for our shark survey next week.<\/p>\n

What does a shark survey entail?<\/p>\n

Surveys have different goals, with the overall mission of understanding our local shark populations and assessing their health and stability.<\/p>\n

We are targeting bonnethead sharks, but we also get stingrays. We bring them on board and measure them. Then we take a little fin clip, which is like taking a fingernail, so we can see who\u2019s related to who. We also take a little muscle biopsy to look at the toxin load in their body. We\u2019re particularly interested in brevetoxin, which comes from red tide, a harmful algal bloom that we unfortunately have here in Florida a lot.<\/p>\n

For the bonnetheads, we make a quick incision and we put a transmitter inside them and suture them up. That transmitter can track their movements for up to three years. Then we release them, and they swim off.<\/p>\n

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What did you do to unwind?<\/p>\n

I came home and had a little personal pizza. Then I drove to Beerbusters, a Blockbusters-themed bar, for music bingo. One of my friends hosts, and it\u2019s always fun \u2013 our prizes are just things that people want to get rid of. I ended up winning a printer and a 3D puzzle. Someone brought a fire pit. On the way home, I listened to the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack.<\/p>\n

What time did you get to bed?<\/p>\n

I usually go to bed between 11pm and midnight. It\u2019s very important for me to get eight hours of sleep. Otherwise, I become a monster of a person. I usually pet my dog and watch silly things like Kevin Langue<\/a> videos in bed. I check my Google Calendar for tomorrow so that I can mentally prepare, and make sure I don\u2019t need to wake up any earlier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cSharks are not monsters, they just need better PR,\u201d writes Jasmin Graham. And she should know: Graham is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-616509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}