so the ocean to me was always a really special place i think i think many folks expect
researchers or marine biologists who study the ocean to have grown up near there
but i actually think it's because i didn't that i'm so fascinated by it but it truly is a really
underexplored frontier ocean is particularly hard to study because we can't breathe underwater
right and there are so many limitations to our abilities to observe what's going on
hi my name is alex mcinturf i am a phd candidate at uc davis um and i study shark behavior
there's over 500 species of shark worldwide um and they come in all different shapes and sizes they
have different reproductive strategies they occupy different places of the world they have different
body shapes they eat different things there are so many things about sharks that are diverse
when i went to the beach we used to take these these trips to florida when i was young
and i just distinctly remember looking out at the water and frankly feeling a little bit intimidated
by everything that was out there that i couldn't see so i loved being in the water i was never
afraid of going in but there were just moments when i would look out at like this vast expanse of
ocean and be just a little bit in awe and i think that was the moment where i was like can i study
the ocean for a career and my dad said yeah i think that's called marine biology or something
i have had really wonderful moments and worked in like the most beautiful of conditions where
the water is clear the sharks are everywhere you go underwater for hours at a time and you're just
with them and that is those are the best days of course but for every best day you have like a week
of bad days where you either can't be out in the field because the conditions aren't good enough
or you have entire field seasons where your sharks don't show up
um you have days where you're terribly seasick out on the water because the conditions are bad
so those are all components that i think people think marine biology you know you're out in
a bikini on a boat in the sun and it's great and in reality a lot of it now is
you know you get out for a few days a year you put some transmitters on sharks that you can then
download the data off for later and then you leave and you are on your computer the rest of the year
sharks are a little bit difficult to study right especially some of the sharks that i
work with which which can be endangered or threatened um and so what i have started
to do is try to broaden the questions i'm asking with sharks to different systems and
different organisms and so we're sitting in a lab because i'm currently working on examining
how temperature affects the likelihood of fish being eaten the balance of being in the lab for a
project and then going to the field to do in-field research actually really complementary because
i can be in a lab and manipulate the environment that these animals are in and see how they respond
right but it's really hard i think sometimes if you only do lab work to then project and see how
this all might play out in a realistic natural setting i can manipulate things in the lab i
can control for these external factors that might actually be affecting their behavior in the wild
but then i get to go to the field and when i'm in the field i get to sort of understand
oh these other factors that i've controlled for in the lab might actually be really important
and so i will spend probably three to six months of the year in the lab working on an
experiment trying to understand how temperature is affecting the fish that i'm studying and then
i'll spend a month or two in the field studying how sharks might be moving around and measuring
in field temperature for example obviously when i'm in the lab it's a little bit difficult to
feel as connected to the ocean as i would like to be so i'm based in davis which is about two hours
from the nearest coastline maybe a little bit less and so on weekends that i have free
i'll try to get out there and either go scuba diving or free diving which is diving without any
of that scuba gear um or i'll snorkel or i'll just try to get to the beach and that's something that
i've really tried to prioritize because i find that you know if my passion is driven by the ocean
it's really important for me to continue to be motivated as a scientist to get that sort of spark
by going out there and certainly ups and downs to being a scientist and it can be really challenging
at times but at the end of the day every day i get to say i'm doing science is pretty incredible
hi guys thanks so much for watching um be sure to like and subscribe and definitely
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