Week 1: Starting with a Splash

Hello! Name’s Brandon. What’s a couple of “bites” like you doing on this blog? Nothing? Great! You have time to keep reading then.

Finding Nemo references aside, I’m excited that you’d like to learn a little bit about my Senior Project on White Sharks and their relationship with the media we consume every day. My project will be primarily conducted virtually with the assistance of Mr. Connor Adams, my external advisor from the Aspiring Scholars Directed Research Program, and Mr. Bryan Meyerowitz, my faculty advisor.

Background

First, a brief introduction about myself. I’m currently a Senior at BASIS Independent Silicon Valley, who if you couldn’t tell already, loves sharks. I also love to solve the puzzles existing in the virtual and physical world, from debugging one error to the next to figuring out how we can design the green and blue future only yet seen in science fiction. Additionally, I have over 4 years of experience in Python, mixed with HTML, CSS, PyMongo, JavaScript, and Java; and I have had some explorations in robotics with Raspberry Pi and machine learning after some self-teaching.

In terms of curricular subjects relevant to my project, I have taken AP Biology, AP Calculus AB/BC, and AP Statistics, and I have taken the capstones Existentialism and the Absurd and Differential Equations. These classes will serve as a useful background from which I can build my analysis and understanding of White Sharks, their populations, and the risks they face in their ecosystems and with human society.

Hook, Line, and Thinker

Returning to my project, what title are you more familiar with for the shark: “Monster of the Deep” or “Ecological Savior”? Since the release of Jaws, sharks have been at the forefront of apprehensions of the ocean and its unknowns. Prior to the movie, shark attacks were reported infrequently. However, since the movie’s screening, shark reports, political rhetoric, and control programs have substantially increased in prevalence and severity, especially in Australia, despite no increase in actual attacks. Consequently, how has public media’s portrayal (movies, news stories, and general rhetoric) of sharks affected Australian White Shark populations and public perceptions of the animal?

I hypothesize that I will first see a negative trend in these White Shark populations, especially after the release of Jaws and similar media, and then, in more recent years with greater awareness through conservation efforts and government recognition, there will be a positive trend in these populations.

Utilizing existing databases and sightings, this project will attempt to determine the potential statistically significant link between public information and yearly changes in these populations, contextualized on a timeline of notable shark-related media releases and expert opinions. The publication of villainous depictions of sharks and their overexaggerated threat to humans has changed common perception, but determining its numerical impact may be helpful in driving any necessary change in communication to save a variety of species from extinction if there exists a connection. Discovering which methods minimize the damage done to shark populations can check other predators’ populations and keep food chains in equilibrium. Subsequently, transforming these aquatic apex predators’ narrative towards conservation may be essential for maintaining the longevity of our world’s largest natural ecosystem.

Diving into the (Sea)Weeds

For this first week, my project started off calmly by simply processing some of the data from two sources I’ll be frequently referring to throughout this trimester: the Australian Shark Incident Database and “A Review of the Biology and Status of White Sharks in Australian Waters” by H. Malcolm, B. D. Bruce and J. D. Stevens. Using Python’s libraries, namely numpy, matplotlib, and pandas, I imported the data from the Excel database file and transcribed the graphs from the report to create graphs that I’d be able to analyze and test for the rest of my project.

From the Australian Shark Incident Database, I graphed the number of shark incidents that occurred per year. I will definitely be filtering through this dataset more in the coming weeks, but I think this look is a good start for my shark media journey.

From the report, I recreated the graphs related to the number of White Sharks caught and Catch per Unit Effort (CPUE – the number of sharks caught per net sets, hours spent fishing, etc.) in Australia’s New South Wales and Queensland Shark Control Programs to the best of my ability and rewrote them into my own Excel file so that I can run statistical tests on them in the future. While it was a fairly tedious process, the preliminary trends noted from these graphs with declining CPUE across both programs in recent years are concerning for the current sustainability of White Sharks in Australian waters. Looking ahead, utilizing more recent records from these programs and looking into the background of Malcolm et al.’s sources should give me some more information into the broader “seabed” of this issue.

(If you’d like to take a look at these graphs, here is a Google Slides link to the images: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ztNBhfb4JKSAzPp9-aIvS8-wAzeIduecC3D3oQxeQo8/edit?usp=sharing)

Like any great migration, be it birds, whales, or even sharks, progress is slowly made. If you’re interested in learning more about how “Video Killed The [Underwater] Star,” be sure to tune in for the rest of my blog posts! You won’t want to miss next week’s where I’ll be reviewing all types of shark film, from classics to probably regrettable and forgettable “horror” flicks.

And remember, “fish are friends, not food!”

Citations

Francis, B. (2012). BEFORE AND AFTER “JAWS”: CHANGING REPRESENTATIONS OF SHARK ATTACKS. The Great Circle, 34(2), 44–64. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23622226.

Malcolm, H., Bruce, B. D., & Stevens, J. D. (2001, September). A Review of the Biology and Status of White Sharks in Australian Waters. CSIRO Marine Research, Hobart. https://publications.csiro.au/rpr/download?pid=procite:1d0d13e5-7a60-4e65-be78-636e6f2dd22e&dsid=DS1.

Meagher, P. (2024). Australian Shark Incident Database [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10476905.

Walters, G. (Producer), & Stanton, A. (Director). (2003) Finding Nemo [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.disneyplus.com/.