[Music]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
sharks they’ve taken me from buggy
Florida to the beautiful shores of the
Bahamas and have landed me in the
freezing cold waters of South Africa
I’ve had to wait hours in the cold for
two nurse sharks to let go of one
another and had to drink
way more than the recommended about a
Red Bull person should ever have in one
night to stay up to possibly see this a
breach with over 500 species of sharks
alone never mind their relatives I have
been kept busy the past couple of years
and now sharks have brought me here two
years ago I moved to New Zealand from
Florida to get my master’s degree in
marine biology at Victoria University
here in Wellington I study sharks and
their relatives the skates the Rays and
the chimeras I specifically look at
their habitats use in migratory behavior
answering where they are and why they’re
there and how social media and the media
and general covers them now chances are
well I’ve been talking about these
animals you’ve been thinking of them as
neutral just sharks neither male nor
female that was done on purpose because
often when you turn on the TV see you
nature show and it has sharks you’ll
hear the narrator say wow he’s a big one
followed by some bleeped out curse words
and this is done even without seeing the
key external giveaway on whether a shark
is a male or a female the class purrs
now to put it bluntly claspers are the
Sharks version of a penis plural because
sharks have two of them commercials do
this to one of my favorites is a
Snickers one and there’s two sharks
three debating on what human they were
prefer to eat and while never identified
as male the husky voices by male actors
linked to the idea that these sharks
were in fact male now there are other
things that are wrong with this
commercial like it doesn’t not
to dispel the myth that sharks eat
people but the thing that teenage
Melissa was mad about sharks didn’t have
claspers they’re not that hard to draw
in my dad found it hilarious that that
was what bugged me the most not the fact
that the Sharks were talking at all this
is often the case when talking about the
scientists who study these animals you
see the males it’s like we female
researchers are like deep-sea sharks
lurking in the darkness there but
nobody’s paying attention that’s how it
was in the field for a while your peers
your mentors your professors were all
male and it sucked not having anybody to
turn to who has taken your path when
things were overwhelming or confusing I
had a male professionals rip the shark
tags out of my hands because I wasn’t
strong enough to get them through the
Sharks thick and protective skin when I
asked them what I could do to get
stronger I was met with laughter and I
snide leave it to the males we work out
so we can do this sort of thing now
there are more females in the science
fields and that’s great but we rarely
get the spotlight in fact female sharks
they have to a sexually reproduce in
order to get their 15 minutes of fame
that’s right
tinder for sharks has not been invented
yet so some females have actually
developed the ability to have babies on
their own now while some species can
store sperm for long periods of time and
reproduce that way these babies these
pups were special that they only had
their mother’s DNA it’s extraordinary
and maybe not unusual that they’ve
switched from sexual to asexual
reproduction but cool nonetheless that
they decided to take reproduction into
their own fins
the other extraordinary factor of this
the females that study these animals
I’ll introduce you to one of them this
is my friend Megan McCord she’s a
scientist the shark scientists in South
Africa and I want to tell you a story
about her and a bull shark Megan and her
team caught a four metre long almost
half a ton bull shark Megan was six
months pregnant when she did that
the bull shark was also pregnant yeah
spoiler alert the big boys you see
flying through the air are often big
girls yes I look for claspers on flying
sharks I don’t know what that says about
me but it stays nonetheless that the
females do tend to be larger than the
males
which can lead to some interesting
encounters like male-female eating a
smaller male oops now while we female
researchers don’t eat our male
counterparts who annoy us though
sometimes we wish we are pretty stubborn
we have to deal with things in the field
that men just don’t have to deal with
periods pregnancies pumping breast milk
in field conditions that are less than
ideal I’ll give you an example I’m a
menacing five-foot 148 kg that’s a
hundred pounds for the Americans
listening and I was asked to pick up the
anchor that’s half my size both in
height and also weight that’s fine oh by
the way you’re doing it in a storm alone
and everyone else is seasick okay it
didn’t end well
I apologize to my parents for all the
medical scares I’ve had the past couple
of years just like female researchers
have to deal with certain things in a
male-dominated field sharks female
sharks have some issues to deal with
like their own like sex gone are the
champagne and the rose petals instead
males actually have to bite onto females
to keep them still during the act
ouch I know now you would think that
would hurt the females and to an extent
it does are not to with those teeth but
females have actually adapted in that
their skin is up to three times as thick
in some areas like where the males bite
we female researchers have also had to
adapt to having thick skin as a Latina
marine biologist I am not alone in
dealing with racism sexism ageism and
more in a field that is still
predominated by males in fact on Twitter
92% of the most followed scientists
males think Bill Nye sort of thing and
when females are added into the
narrative it’s because of our appearance
not because of our achievements to be
honest I actually worried about what you
guys thought about my outfit today more
than what you thought about my words and
I’m not alone in that actually I held a
poll recently and the 682 women that
voted 74 percent of them had their
appearances critiqued over their work
think about that for a second 74 percent
it’s a combat that we’ve come up with
hashtags like distractingly sexy and
dressed like a woman to reject the
sexist idea that our appearance or our
very existence is a distraction to our
male colleagues when I tell people I’m a
marine biologist a lot of them say oh
that’s what I want it to be I asked them
why they didn’t pursue that you want to
know what lack of role models they
didn’t see them
selves where I now am and that’s a
problem because we’ve now got
organizations worldwide who are
realizing this this lack of diverse role
models and are we’ve got programs
cropping up worldwide to try to combat
that to encourage young girls to pursue
the sciences and shedding a much-needed
spotlight on diverse women in those
fields role models I wish I had when I
was seven years old
now hopefully kids that age can look up
and see those people and maybe see
themselves among them I grew up with no
latina marine biologists and today I
know very few and I realize I’m now in a
position to be that role model I wish I
had when I was seven years old even
though I don’t know where I’m going to
end up I’m young I’m 23 but I know I’m
going to continue being an advocate not
only for the representation of diver
sharks but also for diver scientists and
I’m doing that already through my
organization the fins United initiative
because I’m hoping that someone out
there can see themselves in me and say
she did it I can do it if she’s doing it
I will do it it’s not that hard and I’m
hoping through stories like mine we can
smash the stereotypical portrait of what
a scientist is because think about it
when you ask a child to draw scientists
you get a guy in a lab coat you don’t
get me it’s as easy as the sort of a
hashtag to someone who has a platform
and is willing to pay attention like say
bill 9 yeah that hashtag I hope to start
that and he responded and I’m glad he
did because the continued lack of
diverse role models makes me wonder what
unrealized potential we continue losing
because people can’t see
themselves where I am where we are just
like visibility is important for kids
it’s also important for the women
already in these fields our voices are
absent from the leadership table and
that’s sending a really strong message
as a latina marine biologist I was
uplifted and championed by other women
and I hope to pass that along I hope
that women can understand that they are
just as competent as their men
counterparts and that no matter their
size their color or whether they have
claspers or not a shark is still shark
don’t let the women researchers in your
life be like the deep-sea sharks
pay attention shine a light we’re here
thank you
[Applause]
you
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
sharks they’ve taken me from buggy
Florida to the beautiful shores of the
Bahamas and have landed me in the
freezing cold waters of South Africa
I’ve had to wait hours in the cold for
two nurse sharks to let go of one
another and had to drink
way more than the recommended about a
Red Bull person should ever have in one
night to stay up to possibly see this a
breach with over 500 species of sharks
alone never mind their relatives I have
been kept busy the past couple of years
and now sharks have brought me here two
years ago I moved to New Zealand from
Florida to get my master’s degree in
marine biology at Victoria University
here in Wellington I study sharks and
their relatives the skates the Rays and
the chimeras I specifically look at
their habitats use in migratory behavior
answering where they are and why they’re
there and how social media and the media
and general covers them now chances are
well I’ve been talking about these
animals you’ve been thinking of them as
neutral just sharks neither male nor
female that was done on purpose because
often when you turn on the TV see you
nature show and it has sharks you’ll
hear the narrator say wow he’s a big one
followed by some bleeped out curse words
and this is done even without seeing the
key external giveaway on whether a shark
is a male or a female the class purrs
now to put it bluntly claspers are the
Sharks version of a penis plural because
sharks have two of them commercials do
this to one of my favorites is a
Snickers one and there’s two sharks
three debating on what human they were
prefer to eat and while never identified
as male the husky voices by male actors
linked to the idea that these sharks
were in fact male now there are other
things that are wrong with this
commercial like it doesn’t not
to dispel the myth that sharks eat
people but the thing that teenage
Melissa was mad about sharks didn’t have
claspers they’re not that hard to draw
in my dad found it hilarious that that
was what bugged me the most not the fact
that the Sharks were talking at all this
is often the case when talking about the
scientists who study these animals you
see the males it’s like we female
researchers are like deep-sea sharks
lurking in the darkness there but
nobody’s paying attention that’s how it
was in the field for a while your peers
your mentors your professors were all
male and it sucked not having anybody to
turn to who has taken your path when
things were overwhelming or confusing I
had a male professionals rip the shark
tags out of my hands because I wasn’t
strong enough to get them through the
Sharks thick and protective skin when I
asked them what I could do to get
stronger I was met with laughter and I
snide leave it to the males we work out
so we can do this sort of thing now
there are more females in the science
fields and that’s great but we rarely
get the spotlight in fact female sharks
they have to a sexually reproduce in
order to get their 15 minutes of fame
that’s right
tinder for sharks has not been invented
yet so some females have actually
developed the ability to have babies on
their own now while some species can
store sperm for long periods of time and
reproduce that way these babies these
pups were special that they only had
their mother’s DNA it’s extraordinary
and maybe not unusual that they’ve
switched from sexual to asexual
reproduction but cool nonetheless that
they decided to take reproduction into
their own fins
the other extraordinary factor of this
the females that study these animals
I’ll introduce you to one of them this
is my friend Megan McCord she’s a
scientist the shark scientists in South
Africa and I want to tell you a story
about her and a bull shark Megan and her
team caught a four metre long almost
half a ton bull shark Megan was six
months pregnant when she did that
the bull shark was also pregnant yeah
spoiler alert the big boys you see
flying through the air are often big
girls yes I look for claspers on flying
sharks I don’t know what that says about
me but it stays nonetheless that the
females do tend to be larger than the
males
which can lead to some interesting
encounters like male-female eating a
smaller male oops now while we female
researchers don’t eat our male
counterparts who annoy us though
sometimes we wish we are pretty stubborn
we have to deal with things in the field
that men just don’t have to deal with
periods pregnancies pumping breast milk
in field conditions that are less than
ideal I’ll give you an example I’m a
menacing five-foot 148 kg that’s a
hundred pounds for the Americans
listening and I was asked to pick up the
anchor that’s half my size both in
height and also weight that’s fine oh by
the way you’re doing it in a storm alone
and everyone else is seasick okay it
didn’t end well
I apologize to my parents for all the
medical scares I’ve had the past couple
of years just like female researchers
have to deal with certain things in a
male-dominated field sharks female
sharks have some issues to deal with
like their own like sex gone are the
champagne and the rose petals instead
males actually have to bite onto females
to keep them still during the act
ouch I know now you would think that
would hurt the females and to an extent
it does are not to with those teeth but
females have actually adapted in that
their skin is up to three times as thick
in some areas like where the males bite
we female researchers have also had to
adapt to having thick skin as a Latina
marine biologist I am not alone in
dealing with racism sexism ageism and
more in a field that is still
predominated by males in fact on Twitter
92% of the most followed scientists
males think Bill Nye sort of thing and
when females are added into the
narrative it’s because of our appearance
not because of our achievements to be
honest I actually worried about what you
guys thought about my outfit today more
than what you thought about my words and
I’m not alone in that actually I held a
poll recently and the 682 women that
voted 74 percent of them had their
appearances critiqued over their work
think about that for a second 74 percent
it’s a combat that we’ve come up with
hashtags like distractingly sexy and
dressed like a woman to reject the
sexist idea that our appearance or our
very existence is a distraction to our
male colleagues when I tell people I’m a
marine biologist a lot of them say oh
that’s what I want it to be I asked them
why they didn’t pursue that you want to
know what lack of role models they
didn’t see them
selves where I now am and that’s a
problem because we’ve now got
organizations worldwide who are
realizing this this lack of diverse role
models and are we’ve got programs
cropping up worldwide to try to combat
that to encourage young girls to pursue
the sciences and shedding a much-needed
spotlight on diverse women in those
fields role models I wish I had when I
was seven years old
now hopefully kids that age can look up
and see those people and maybe see
themselves among them I grew up with no
latina marine biologists and today I
know very few and I realize I’m now in a
position to be that role model I wish I
had when I was seven years old even
though I don’t know where I’m going to
end up I’m young I’m 23 but I know I’m
going to continue being an advocate not
only for the representation of diver
sharks but also for diver scientists and
I’m doing that already through my
organization the fins United initiative
because I’m hoping that someone out
there can see themselves in me and say
she did it I can do it if she’s doing it
I will do it it’s not that hard and I’m
hoping through stories like mine we can
smash the stereotypical portrait of what
a scientist is because think about it
when you ask a child to draw scientists
you get a guy in a lab coat you don’t
get me it’s as easy as the sort of a
hashtag to someone who has a platform
and is willing to pay attention like say
bill 9 yeah that hashtag I hope to start
that and he responded and I’m glad he
did because the continued lack of
diverse role models makes me wonder what
unrealized potential we continue losing
because people can’t see
themselves where I am where we are just
like visibility is important for kids
it’s also important for the women
already in these fields our voices are
absent from the leadership table and
that’s sending a really strong message
as a latina marine biologist I was
uplifted and championed by other women
and I hope to pass that along I hope
that women can understand that they are
just as competent as their men
counterparts and that no matter their
size their color or whether they have
claspers or not a shark is still shark
don’t let the women researchers in your
life be like the deep-sea sharks
pay attention shine a light we’re here
thank you
[Applause]
you
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