Introducing What It's Like To Be with Dan Heath

Sharing an episode of the podcast “What It’s Like to Be…” from New York Times bestselling business book author Dan Heath. In every episode, Dan interviews someone from a different profession: A cattle rancher, a FBI special agent, a professional Santa Claus. He asks what it’s like to do what they do. What does a couples therapist think when a friend asks for relationship advice? Is a Secret Service Agent supposed to pretend like they’re not there when they’re around the president? What does a hair stylist do when a client asks for a celebrity hairstyle that will never work for them? In the preview you’re about to hear, you’ll meet a marine biologist who studies manta rays. You’ll hear how drones have changed her work, what it’s like to get to know individual rays, and why people have such a romantic image of being a “Marine Biologist.” It’s the perfect show to listen to with your kids – it’s family safe but also gives them a preview of different careers – and the kinds of personalities that fit with the work. You can find more episodes of “What It’s Like to Be…” wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:26Speaker 01

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• 0:55Rachel Feltman?

  Hey weirdos, Rachel here. We're sharing something special this week. It's an episode of the podcast, What It's Like to Be, from New York Times bestselling business book author Dan Heath. In every episode, Dan interviews someone from a different profession, a cattle rancher, an FBI special agent, a professional Santa Claus. He asks them what it's like to do what they do. What does a couples therapist think when a friend asks for relationship advice? Is a Secret Service agent supposed to pretend like they're not there when they're around the president? What does a hairstylist do when a client asks for a celebrity hairstyle that will never work for them? It's the perfect show to listen to with your kids. It's family safe, but also gives them a preview of different careers and the kinds of personalities that fit with the work. In the preview you're about to hear,

• 1:40Rachel Feltman?

  you'll meet a marine biologist who studies manta rays. You'll hear how drones have changed her work, what it's like to get to know individual rays, and why people seem to have such a romantic image of what it means to be a marine biologist. Okay, here comes the preview. You can find more episodes of What It's Like to Be wherever you get podcasts.

• 1:59Speaker 03

  Years ago, Jessica Pate got a phone call from a shark scientist she knew. He'd found something interesting.

• 2:06Speaker 04

  It was like, hey, we just had a dead manta ray wash up, or someone towed it to shore, actually. He was like, I thought you should know, we're about to like, cut it up for samples.

• 2:15Speaker 03

  Jessica is a marine biologist. She studies manta rays off the coast of Florida, and she knew this was a very rare find.

• 2:23Speaker 04

  Because they're negatively buoyant. So if they stop swimming, they sink. So if they're to die offshore, they sink. And they're made of cartilage, so they decompose really rapidly.

• 2:35Speaker 03

  And Jessica had been looking for an intact, dead manta ray. She had a colleague who was trying to prove that the manta rays in the Western Atlantic were a new species. Without the body, it'd be a lot harder to prove.

• 2:48Speaker 04

  And I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Please, please, don't cut into it. I was like, just let me get there. So I was on the boat when I got the call. So it took me like, two hours to get down there of them like, sitting and watching this dead manta ray. So I get there and convince them to like, please, let's not cut into it. Let's just take measurements and photos. So we do all that. And then we finally find a place that we can keep the dead manta ray, which is basically in a freezer where they store dead whales. So my partner was out of the country at the time. So I had my intern go steal his truck. And we put this dead manta ray in the back of his pickup truck

• 3:31Speaker 04

  and drove two hours down I-95.

• 3:34Speaker 03

  To the whale freezer.

• 3:36Speaker 04

  To the whale freezer. We had to stop and get gas at one point. And we just left this like, gigantic pool of blood behind us. And I was like, people are gonna be wondering what happened at this gas station. And eventually, we got it to the whale freezer at like, 9:00 PM that night. Me and my intern both had like, manta blood in our hair. And we've been like, wet in our bathing suits all day long. But we were so glad to get it there. And I was like, oh, we'll just keep it there for, you know, like, a couple of weeks. So we figure out where it's gonna go. Six months later, they call me and they're like, Jessica, you gotta move this manta ray out of your freezer. So we did. And it now lives in the Smithsonian Museum

• 4:19Speaker 04

  to be used as type material to describe the new species.

• 4:35Speaker 03

  I'm Dan Heath and this is What It's Like to Be. In every episode of the show, we walk in the shoes of someone from a different profession, a nurse, a lifeguard, a piano teacher. We want to know about the highs and lows of their work, what makes it meaningful to them. Today, we'll ask Jessica Pate what it's like to be a marine biologist. We'll talk about what it's like to swim with manta rays, why people romanticize marine biology, and how using drones changed her work. Stay with us.

• 5:12Speaker 03

  I want to make sure I'm tuned in to what a manta ray is because I think what I'm picturing in my head is actually a stingray. Are stingrays and manta rays connected, related?

• 5:23Speaker 04

  So this is the very first slide of every PowerPoint presentation I give is the difference between a manta ray and a stingray because I'll get people being like, "A manta ray is what killed Steve Irwin." And I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no. They're very different animals." While, yes, they are related, they're both rays, they both have a skeleton that's made of cartilage, so that's the same material that's on the tip of your nose if you press it. But stingrays live in the sand, they're living on the bottom. They have a stinging barb that they can use when predators try to attack from above them. But manta rays, they're swimming all the time. So they're out swimming in the water, they have to keep swimming in order to breathe.

• 6:08Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 6:08Speaker 04

  And they also have no stinging barb. They don't have a way that they can hurt you.

• 6:13Speaker 03

  And check this out. Manta rays are born measuring six feet across.

• 6:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, even the ones that are eight to 10 feet are still juveniles. And the adults are getting over 20 feet across. They can get that big.

• 6:28Speaker 03

  20 feet across. Wow.

• 6:31Speaker 04

  Think about the room you're in and think about if a manta ray would fit in there.

• 6:37Speaker 03

  So paint us a picture of the manta ray. I mean, you told us how enormous they are. What are their other distinctive characteristics?

• 6:45Speaker 04

  They have kind of a diamond shaped body and they're all black on top. They'll have some little like white pattern on top, but mostly all black. And they have two fins coming out of the front of their face, which are called cephalic fins. And it's why like historically they were called devil rays or devil fish. Like if you go back to the newspapers from the 1920s, it would be like devil fish. So they're really terrified of them. But that's because they kind of look like horns.

• 7:16Speaker 03

  What sort of, I mean, this is probably the right, the wrong way to phrase this. But what sort of personalities do they have?

• 7:22Speaker 04

  No, I mean, that's a great question. And that's, that's one reason manta rays are very popular with scuba divers is because they can be quite curious. They're known to come and like inspect divers and see what's going on. The very first time I got in the water with a manta ray, I convinced a friend to take me on their boat and try to find one. And we did. And what this manta ray did to me was it flipped its body upside down so that it was swimming upside down. And just hovered below me for five minutes, just looking me in the eye.

• 7:58Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 7:59Speaker 04

  And I have since had this encounters like that, like many times, but I just had no idea that anything like that was possible. And it sounds cheesy to say this, but like I fell in love there and I was like, whoa. These are the animals I want to be working with.

• 8:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, that curiosity has got to be uncommon for sea creatures, no? I mean, to kind of hang around and inspect you for five minutes. That's surprising.

• 8:28Speaker 04

  Yeah. So one of my favorite facts about manta rays is they have the largest brain of any fish. And they don't just have a big brain because you know, they're a giant creature. If you look at their cousin, the whale shark, which is the biggest fish in the sea. They're 10 times the size of manta ray, but they have a third of the brain size. So we think manta rays are really intelligent.

• 8:55Speaker 03

  There was another day when Jessica felt that same sense of connection to a manta ray. It was one who had gotten tangled up in a fishing line.

• 9:03Speaker 04

  She had this fishing line wrapped all around her body. And she just let me dive down multiple times for like 30 minutes and cut off all this line around her. And it's one of these interactions where it's kind of hard to explain because she just swam in so slow circles below me. Like she could have easily swam away if she wanted. And so it did seem like she was choosing to be there. And then when I was done, she kind of swam away. So I don't know how to explain that interaction scientifically, but there do seem to be some of these like amazing interactions where they seem to facilitate the encounter.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  It's striking what you said about them having the biggest brains of any fish. How do we not know more about this species, given that?

• 9:53Speaker 04

  I mean, people ask me this question all the time. I think it's just because they're expensive to study. You know, it requires a lot of boat hours. And like, at least here in Florida, you know, I have to put a lot of time into finding them. I've gotten a lot better at it over time, but when I first started out, I mean, the first survey we ever did, I found two manta rays. And then we went a month without seeing one. So, you know, it was hard to learn about them and figure out how to study them.

• 10:26Speaker 03

  Have you gotten to know individual manta rays, like given them names and so forth?

• 10:33Speaker 04

  Yes, for sure. And what's kind of sad for me is since we work in this nursery habitat with juveniles, we're starting to see a pattern where we see the same individuals for about two to three years, maybe four years if we're lucky. And then they, they leave, which is really sad for me because I get really attached to some of these manta rays. Two of our favorites from the past two years are named lizard and cricket. Both of these mantas have been hit by boats. Both have been entangled in fishing line. Cricket is missing, she's missing so much of her body. She's missing like half of her wingtip on one side.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 11:14Speaker 04

  But I almost cried when I saw them this year. We've only seen them once this year and they were together. But they didn't have any new injuries. I was so happy to see them looking healthy. And I don't know if I'll see them again this year. That could be the last time I see them. Until I figure out where their adult habitats are and then maybe I'll find them again.

• 11:33Speaker 03

  So, give us a slice of life. Like, what did you do at work today?

• 11:38Speaker 04

  So, I started my day today in a small, single-engine plane. We do aerial surveys, looking for manta rays twice a month. So, we did our aerial survey and I saw some manta rays, but it was too rough to go out on the boat. So, me and my partner took the drone to the beach and he droned for the manta rays while I swam 100 yards offshore in like four-foot seas to go find the manta ray.

• 12:07Speaker 03

  Oh, wait. So, you saw them from the air? And then, and then later, you landed, got on the beach and like went back to where you'd seen them?

• 12:15Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 12:16Speaker 03

  Wow. And what were you trying to accomplish once you found them?

• 12:20Speaker 04

  So, each manta ray has a unique spot pattern on its belly. So, it's just like a fingerprint for humans. So, if we get a photo of that spot pattern on their belly, we know which individual manta ray it is. And so, that's a big part of our research is seeing which individuals are in this area.

• 12:41Speaker 03

  So, you're trying to kind of compile a portrait of the manta ray community?

• 12:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 12:47Speaker 03

  How many are there in the community that you're studying? Or do you have a sense of that?

• 12:52Speaker 04

  So we've been doing this project for about eight years. And in on the southeast coast of Florida, we have about 200 individuals in our database.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 13:03Speaker 04

  And what's cool about South Florida is that we're seeing only baby manta rays or juvenile manta rays. So we think this is a nursery habitat where they can spend some time as babies. And then before they grow up and go off to their adult habitats.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  Okay, so that's part of what you're going to learn is do they migrate to these other locations as they age?

• 13:24Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly. And where are the manta rays giving birth? No one has ever seen a manta ray give birth in the wild. So we have no idea where it happens. Yes.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  Wow. And, and so would that be sort of like a holy grail for your research is if you've managed to find that and, and study it?

• 13:43Speaker 04

  I mean, absolutely. I mean, I kind of think if I ever figured it out, I might just retire and not tell anyone about it.

• 13:52Speaker 04

  And just keep it my secret.

• 13:57Speaker 03

  Hey folks, Dan here. I was looking at the download numbers for the show and I came across something that shocked me a little. The episode with the lowest number of downloads is actually our first episode, The Stadium Beer Vendor. Now, I guess in one way that makes sense because with each episode, we've picked up more and more listeners. So maybe of course the first one would be lower. But here's why that's a problem. Because that episode is my all time favorite. And same for Matt Purdy, the show's producer. It's his too. So if you like this show, let me beg you to go back and listen to that one. I promise you're going to like it. It will surprise you. And in the meantime, let's get back to marine biology.

• 14:42Speaker 03

  So let me back up a step because I know manta rays are your specialty, of course. But how did you get there? What, what was the first time you saw a manta ray?

• 14:51Speaker 04

  So I got started in marine biology. I graduated from the University of North Carolina with my undergraduate degree. And then I moved down to Florida to work on sea turtle nesting beaches. And so what working on the nesting beach involves is getting up at sunrise and riding up and down the ATV on the beach. And you're counting tracks from the turtles because the moms crawl up on the beach and lay the eggs in the sand. So you're collecting all the data from the nesting turtles that laid their eggs the previous night.

• 15:25Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 15:26Speaker 04

  So I would be out on the beach all day, every day. And I started to notice that every now and then I would look over and I would see a manta ray swimming by in like three feet of water. And I was just amazed, like these are animals that people fly halfway across the world to go scuba diving with. And it seemed they were in Florida waters, but no one knew anything about them.

• 15:52Speaker 03

  And am I right that manta rays are an endangered species?

• 15:56Speaker 04

  Yes, they are listed endangered globally. So manta rays have what we consider a very conservative life history. So I like to say that they have a reproductive strategy more like us than they do like a tuna, like a fish that's going to spawn a billion eggs. Manta rays are more like us in that they have a long gestation. They're pregnant for an entire year.

• 16:20Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 16:21Speaker 04

  And they produce one large offspring. And then they'll take a couple of years off between producing each offspring because it's very energetically expensive for them to do so. So they're putting all their eggs into these like really big baby manta rays. And so what that means, if there's any pressures to their population, they do not recover very quickly. So they can be fished out quite quickly from places.

• 16:50Speaker 03

  Is there a conservation angle to your work? I mean, part of what you do, it's clear, is just the pure science of learning for learning's sake. But it also seems like, at a certain point, you would feel some degree of protection or advocacy for the manta rays.

• 17:07Speaker 04

  Absolutely, and I think this is something that has changed in science over time. But as the situation in the world gets worse environmentally, I think scientists have to become conservation advocates just because we're kind of documenting all these things going wrong and you can't just sit by and do nothing about it.

• 17:31Speaker 03

  I asked her if it was hard to keep her spirits up, given the threats mantas are facing.

• 17:36Speaker 04

  I mean, it's tough sometimes. I have a tough time maintaining a positive attitude with what we see in the ocean and with climate change. And sometimes it doesn't feel very hopeful at all. But what helps me is to look to older mentors and scientists, like especially like Jane Goodall. I feel like every time I'm having a bad day, I just think about what Jane Goodall is doing. And she is out there, 80 years old. She travels like 200 days out of the year, speaking, you know, to get people interested in conservation and spread the word. Like she's put her whole life into it. And I'm like, if Jane Goodall can do this, then so can you. And just take it one day at a time and do what you can do.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  Jessica said that the biggest threats to manta rays are getting entangled by gnats, being hit by boats, and more than anything, fishing. Sometimes they're killed intentionally. Their gills are prized in traditional Chinese medicine. And other times, they're caught accidentally by fishermen catching other things like shrimp. I asked her if there were potential solutions to that last threat.

• 18:44Speaker 04

  We only really recently identified this problem in the last year or two. So we're still working on solutions. And one of the thing is, we have to collect enough data to figure out where the mantas are to like make informed management practices. So one of the things the federal government has hired us to do is to go to the mouth of the Mississippi and tag manta rays, which if you ever asked me like where I thought I'd be doing manta research, the mouth of the Mississippi River was not a place I had on my bingo card. It's very murky. We have to like stop working for, because the manta rays will be in the big shipping lanes. It's a crazy place to work.

• 19:29Speaker 03

  And how do you tag a manta ray?

• 19:32Speaker 04

  We use a pole spear and put a little plastic dart into their dorsal musculature.

• 19:40Speaker 03

  And the tag, what does it communicate with?

• 19:42Speaker 04

  There's a couple of different kinds of tags. One satellite tag will give you data in real time, but to give you data in real time, the tag has to break the surface. We haven't had a lot of luck with those tags on manta rays. So the other kinds of tags stay on the manta rays for six months. Then they pop off after six months and then send all their data to the satellites. And those are the tags we typically use.

• 20:09Speaker 03

  Oh, wow. I had no idea such a thing existed. What makes it pop off after six months?

• 20:14Speaker 04

  There's a corrodestible pin on there. So you, the pin is programmed to corrode in six months.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  And so after six months, it floats to the surface, sends its information. And the information is all of the places the manta ray has been in the intervening half year?

• 20:30Speaker 04

  Yep, it's the location, the temperature and depths that they dive.

• 20:34Speaker 03

  That is totally fascinating.

• 20:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's great when it works well. It's not without technological issues.

• 20:41Speaker 03

  Speaking of technology, two of the key tools that Jessica uses are a boat and a drone. And both of them are subject to the whims of the weather.

• 20:52Speaker 04

  My whole life is weather dependent. So I don't make plans a week in advance, more more than a week in advance, because I don't know what the weather is going to be.

• 21:03Speaker 03

  What are the right conditions for study? Is it just obvious stuff like no storms? Or are there more subtle things you have to watch for?

• 21:10Speaker 04

  I mean, storms are a problem, but it's more about the wind and the sea state. And it being too rough out there to fly the drone and operate the boat. You know, storms usually they'll fly past or we can avoid them. So it's more about the sea state and being able to get out there. And this time of year, we can have a hurricane come through and that can keep us off the water for a month or so.

• 21:35Speaker 03

  I'm interested in the drone aspect of the work. I imagine that's relatively new to the field. How do you use drones in the work?

• 21:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, so we did not use drones in the beginning of our project. And now we use them almost exclusively to locate manta rays. So we fly them from the boat. We catch them in our hands on the boat. We use them for everything. I wrote a whole scientific paper just about behavior observed from a drone of manta rays.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  I bet that helps so much just to turn it less into a needle in a haystack kind of thing.

• 22:12Speaker 04

  Oh, absolutely. And then it's also like less invasive. So to get footage in the water, you're having to get close enough to where that manta can see you to get footage of it. But from the drone, you're able to film natural behavior, like what happens when no one is in the water. So, I mean, the things I've been able to see from it are absolutely amazing. I'm obsessed with it.

• 22:35Speaker 03

  Do most marine biologists pick a particular organism to specialize with? Like the way you've delved into manta rays? Is that how it works?

• 22:45Speaker 04

  You absolutely don't have to. Some people definitely do because people will ask me what I study. And I'm like, I'm studying everything about the manta rays just because we're trying to learn as much as we can. But say someone could be like a reproductive biologist or and study the reproductive biology of sharks. So it doesn't matter which species of shark, but they'll just look at how different sharks reproduce and compare those. So you definitely don't have to study just one taxa. And I've already spread out to studying another race species called guitarfish, which I've become a little obsessed with as well.

• 23:24Speaker 03

  What's a guitarfish?

• 23:25Speaker 04

  Oh, they're these adorable little race species. They kind of look like sharks because they have two fins on their back, but they have these little triangle spade heads. And the ones that we see are about a foot and a half long. But I got interested in them because I was snorkeling on the little reef by my house just for kind of exercise. And I started seeing guitarfish and I just started collecting data. And now we have 400 guitarfish encounters in our database. And we have started, I have three grad students working on projects. So these little things are, I'm like, oh, I'm just going to see what's going on. And then they kind of explode into something else.

• 24:06Speaker 03

  And so something like that where you have this kind of lucky encounter and then you start formulating research questions. What happens after that? Like, what's the process of forming those questions into a study that's staffed and funded and so forth?

• 24:23Speaker 04

  So yeah, to like start a project on something new is you're going to formulate scientific questions. But before you do that, you also need to see what research is already out there. And so, for example, with these guitarfish, I saw that there was literally only like two papers published on this species. And they were from 15 years ago. So then- I find that we have a species that we know very little about, but we know that it's in danger of extinction. So you go and apply for grants to study that and you know, you show like, hey, there's this species that we don't really know anything about. I know how to find them and study them and can answer some of these questions that'll keep these species from being data deficient.

• 25:06Speaker 03

  And so part of your job is to raise the money needed to address these questions, huh?

• 25:12Speaker 04

  Absolutely. It's my least favorite part of the job. I don't like it.

• 25:18Speaker 03

  I mean, what is involved with that? Is it, is it writing grants laboriously? Are you making presentations or how does it work?

• 25:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, grants is the way we fund most of our research activities. But like our larger nonprofit, you know, it's like a lot of the grants, you know, you have to use those monies for very specific purposes, you know, I use these money to buy these tags and this boat fuel. So it's helpful if you can get money from private donors or from the corporate arena that give you more money to be like, hey, you can use this money how you see fit to run your organization.

• 25:59Speaker 03

  So you identify a question of interest, you, you raise some money and then what's the next step after that? Do you sort of form a project team and staff it?

• 26:09Speaker 04

  Um, staff it. That's kind of funny. My team here in Florida is so small.

• 26:14Speaker 03

  You, you turn to the two people next to you and say, hey, will you help me with this guitar fish thing?

• 26:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, one of my major problems is that I have more ideas than I can physically accomplish myself. So with the guitar fish, I turned to a collaborator at the University of Miami and she had some very qualified grad students who are now working on some of these projects, um, which is a great way to get some like shorter term research projects done because grad students have to do something for their thesis in order to graduate and these make, uh, great projects for them to get done.

• 26:50Speaker 03

  And they work cheap.

• 26:51Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 26:53Speaker 03

  Their best qualification.

• 26:57Speaker 04

  I was once a grad student myself.

• 26:59Speaker 03

  You put your time in. Yeah, it's fair. The cycle of life. So I wanted to run this one thing by you. I feel like marine biology as a profession just has this kind of halo of romanticism around it that I don't totally understand. Like, my theory is that if you went to high school students and had them reel off all the professions they could name, I think they would probably name about 20. And, and one of them would be marine biology, even though it's probably like 0.002% of the world's jobs or something. Do you agree with that? And if so, how did marine biology come to have this kind of reverence attached to it?

• 27:40Speaker 04

  That's an interesting question. I do agree that that's what most people would say because every time I tell someone I'm a marine biologist, I would say 50% of people say, that's what I wanted to do when I was a kid, or that's what I wanted to do in college.

• 27:54Speaker 03

  No kidding.

• 27:55Speaker 04

  Yes, you always hear that. I don't know if it's maybe like pop culture or movies, kind of like romanticizing the marine biologist, which is kind of funny because I wasn't one of those people. I had no idea what I wanted to do.

• 28:10Speaker 03

  I mean, you would think it would be zoologist or something, you know, with people just liking cheetahs and giraffes and lions. It's just interesting to me that it's marine biologists that seems to have this special hold on us.

• 28:22Speaker 04

  Well, and for me, what got me interested in it was seeing Free Willy was the movie that captivated me as a child. I wanted to be an orca trainer when I was younger because I saw Free Willy and really, you know, just wanted to like interact with a whale every day would be amazing.

• 28:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, I wonder if that's what's underneath. Like, I wonder if when people think marine biology, they think I'm going to be swimming with dolphins and whales.

• 28:48Speaker 04

  I, I think that's probably a big part of it, which, um, like it's illegal to swim with dolphins and whales in the United States. So.

• 28:57Speaker 03

  Is it?

• 28:57Speaker 04

  You're not going to be able to do that. Yes.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  Oh, I thought there were like theme parks where they would charge you to do that.

• 29:03Speaker 04

  There are some that were grandfathered in. Um, the Marine Mammal Protection Act is from the seventies. And so some of those parks got kind of grandfathered in. But like in the wild, you're not allowed to have tours where you can go swim with them.

• 29:20Speaker 03

  So Jessica, we end our episodes with a quick lightning round of questions. Here we go. What is the most insulting thing you could say about a marine biologist's work?

• 29:30Speaker 04

  I don't know. One of the things in conservation scientists that you can say that's pretty insulting is to accuse someone of being a parachute scientist.

• 29:38Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 29:39Speaker 04

  Which is a term that's come around fairly recently, which refers to someone, you know, typically someone from the developed world who, you know, pops into a developing country, say, you know, I'm just gonna study this shark species for a week, but not include any local scientist, or talk to the community, or do anything like that, which has become more and more frowned upon in science, which is a good thing, so that people aren't just, you know, going into other communities and being like, this is what you should be doing, without, you know, consulting the people who live there.

• 30:14Speaker 03

  What's a tool specific to your profession that you really like using?

• 30:19Speaker 04

  I mean, the drone is the first thing I would say, because I use it every day, and I feel like it's probably my most useful tool. But the other thing could possibly be my freediving fins, which are these really long fins that help me swim fast, and they are always in my car, because you never know when I might need to go straight to the ocean.

• 30:41Speaker 03

  I love that. I just love the image. You've already got your fins in the car.

• 30:46Speaker 04

  I've definitely gone swimming for mantas in jean shorts and a normal shirt with my fins mask on before.

• 30:55Speaker 03

  You had to, you had to have an emergency swim.

• 30:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:59Speaker 03

  What's a sound specific to your profession that you're likely to hear?

• 31:04Speaker 04

  I think one of my favorites is just the sound of the reefs. Jacques Cousteau wrote, one of his first books was called The Silent World, about like, the ocean being silent, but it's actually quite like a noisy environment of all the like, fish eating algae off the coral, or shrimps popping their little claws. So you hear all these just like little background noises, and like, when we're doing our guitarfish storkles, it's just a very relaxing sound to me.

• 31:33Speaker 03

  What is an aspect of your job that you consistently savor?

• 31:38Speaker 04

  Oh, man, just being in the water. I was thinking about it today while I was waiting for the manta ray to swim by. You know, I was out in really rough seas, but just being in the water, like scientifically shown to like lower your blood pressure, calm you, and you feel so much better being out in the ocean.

• 31:57Speaker 03

  Who is the best-known marine biologist, would you say?

• 32:01Speaker 04

  Best-known marine biologist is probably, at least in our community, is Sylvia Earle. She was the first woman that headed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She's known as "Her Deepness" because she has gone in submarines down to the depths of the oceans, and she's just an overall badass.

• 32:23Speaker 03

  That is the best nickname I've ever heard, "Her Deepness."

• 32:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, and she's still 80 years old and out there pounding the pavement all the time to make conservation efforts keep going. So, you know, I look at women like them and, you know, they really just like show me the path forward, like you've just got to keep trying.

• 32:50Speaker 03

  Jessica Pate is a marine biologist who studies manta rays in Florida. I was struck by her story about how early in her career, she's combing the beaches for turtle tracks, and she happens to notice manta rays in the ocean. So she gets interested, has that experience where one of them seems to swim with her, and boom, she's in it. For other people, that day swimming with the manta ray might have been a fun story to tell at a cocktail party. But for Jessica, it's different. She organizes research, she raises the funds, she makes stuff happen. There can be a big gap between inspiration and action. We've probably all got friends who are dreamers,

• 33:33Speaker 03

  full of new inspirations, but never able to translate them into action. Jessica is great at closing that gap. Somebody calls and says, "We got a dead manta ray." Boom, she's on it, drops everything, gets it to the whale freezer. She's diving one day and spots a guitarfish, hokes around in the research, discovers it's understudied, and boom, activates some studies. Inspiration to action.

• 33:59Speaker 03

  A few episodes back, I was commenting on the life insurance salesman's secret weapon: his discipline. How would we talk about what Jessica is doing here? Some kind of scrappiness? Activation energy? Some jobs are so structured that you don't need much of that quality. But for Jessica, it's foundational. Turning curiosity into scientific research. Learning to drive a boat and fly a drone. Applying for grants. And forming a bond with an endangered species. Folks, that's what it's like to be a marine biologist. This show was produced by Matt Purdy. I'm Dan Heath. Take care.

• 34:51Rachel Feltman?

  Hey, weirdos. It's Rachel again. That was a preview of What It's Like to Be with Dan Heath. You can find more episodes wherever you get podcasts.

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