{"id":132216,"date":"2026-03-07T13:45:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T13:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/132216\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T13:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T13:45:09","slug":"marine-conservationist-with-berks-ties-takes-love-of-sharks-on-tour-berks-regional-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/132216\/","title":{"rendered":"Marine conservationist with Berks ties takes love of sharks on tour | Berks Regional News"},"content":{"rendered":"

READING, Pa. \u2014 For Jessica Cramp<\/a>, her love of sharks did not come naturally. It started as a fascination with the ocean that led to years of lab work. Then, on a chance to get out and work in the field, she decided to make a change.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn one of the islands that a sailboat I was on went to, there was a man who wanted to create a sanctuary for sharks, and I had just at that time had this interesting experience and learned about their plight,\u201d Jess recalled earlier this week. \u201cSo, I agreed to join that organization, and I co-championed the shark sanctuary campaign, and that really started me off on the journey.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jess grew up in the Poconos, but her father is a graduate of Daniel Boone High School in Berks County, and her grandfather ran what is now the Cramp-Hummel Funeral Home in Reading. She does have memories spending time with her aunt and cousin, visiting the Pagoda and getting her first tick.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s lived at the Shark Sanctuary on Cook Island<\/a> in the Pacific Ocean now for the last 15 years, studying sharks. And \u2014 like her engagement with sharks \u2014 Jess did not expect to be touring the country with National Geographic Live<\/a>. About 10 years ago, she woke up to an email about getting added to the National Geographic Explorer program.<\/p>\n

\u201cThrough that, I\u2019ve just had a really unique opportunity to be a part of the National Geographic family, and then that has grown into talking about my work on stage as part of the NatGeo Live tour,\u201d Jess said.<\/p>\n

\"Untold<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

National Geographic<\/p>\n

This week, Jess had another busy schedule \u2014 as she was driving in Pennsylvania to a plane ride for a show in Wisconsin before heading back to Reading \u2014 but now, she gets sort of a homecoming. Jess did her show at the Miller Center for the Arts at Reading Area Community College and got to spend time visiting with family and spreading her message of conservation and a love of science to young minds.<\/p>\n

Sadly, her grandfather is no longer with us, but while she was in town, she said she planned to spend time with her dad.<\/p>\n

“Just kind of drive around and check it out. I want to drive past the funeral home, it’s a little moribund, but I want to see it because my dad has memories from there,” she said.<\/p>\n

Jess\u2019s home the last 15 years has been the Cook Islands, where she\u2019s working on keeping sharks away from industrial fishing boats and on handling measures to keep sharks alive if they\u2019re caught. She\u2019s also advocating for sharks, lobbying for changes like hooks that don\u2019t catch sharks as readily, and fishing lines that sharks can bite through rather than metal lines. She said that about 36% of all sharks are endangered, with the main issue coming from overfishing and being taken out for parts. Part of her work comes from working with fishers.<\/p>\n

\u201cSharks and fishers are often at odds, because sharks are taking the fish from fisherman,\u201d Jess said. \u201cAnd we\u2019re working to promote coexistence by helping trial different deterrents to keep sharks away from the fishing line.\u201d<\/p>\n

That experience is the center of her show, which is unique in that she\u2019s presenting her findings and research on a stage in about a 70-minute presentation. She emphasized that the screen is the star of the show and that the fun is discussing her research with National Geographic quality footage.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou get some fun iPhone videos of my team in the field, catching and tagging sharks and some very, very high-quality videos of the work that we do,\u201d Jess said.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s been doing the show now for several years. Jess said that she\u2019s gotten more comfortable over the years, adding \u201c70 minutes is a long time to talk about yourself.\u201d She also has a question-and-answer section that\u2019s especially helpful for the students who go to every show.<\/p>\n

\"Shark<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Pixabay <\/p>\n

Jess said she hopes students and guests go away knowing there\u2019s more to learn, as there are more than 500 species of sharks in the world, and that number rises above 1,000 if one includes cartilaginous fish \u2014 or fish with bones made of cartilage. In other words, a shark\u2019s cousin.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this day and age, everyone thinks \u2018all the discoveries have been made, there\u2019s nothing left for us to discover\u2019\u00a0and it\u2019s just, it couldn\u2019t be further from the truth for sharks. And even the species I work on day-in and day out with a team, we still don\u2019t know where they\u2019re breeding or where they\u2019re having their babies,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

And Jess said there\u2019s a variety of ways to get involved: \u201cWe need students to, if they\u2019re interested in creative writing, or if they\u2019re interested in animation, or they\u2019re interested in law, or they\u2019re interested in fishing, all of this contributes to shark science, where you don\u2019t have to be the one on the water. But if you do want to be the one on the water, there\u2019s still an enormous number of things to be discovered. We\u2019re still discovering new species every year.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can still help sharks from home, too. Jess said when buying seafood, make sure it\u2019s sourced as locally as possible. She also said to check lotions, lipstick, and sunscreen products and look for an ingredient called squalene \u2014 a compound that can be sourced from shark liver oil. Jess said if the bottle doesn\u2019t say \u201csourced from vegetables\u201d on it, avoid it. You can also call the company to ask to use a different source of squalene.<\/p>\n

Jess said she\u2019s happy with her work, so far, and her show. She wants people to know this is an entertainment-focused show that leads people into the waters of shark conservation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2014 For Jessica Cramp, her love of sharks did not come naturally. It started as a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[61251,61252,61250,61253,61254,8183,61256,128,130,129,61255,61257],"class_list":["post-132216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-cook-island","tag-cramp-hummel-funeral-home","tag-jessica-cramp","tag-marine-conservationist","tag-miller-center-for-the-arts","tag-national-geographic","tag-pacific-ocean","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-shark-sanctuary","tag-sharks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}