A cooler of eggs and a bold plan to save leopard sharks

Leopard sharks have nearly vanished from the waters in Raja Ampat, Indonesia. The country is one of the largest shark fishing nations in the world. Now, a first-of-its-kind conservation project is working to bring Indo-Pacific leopard sharks back from the brink of extinction. This international project hatches their eggs and raises shark pups to rewild them into the ocean where they once thrived. Will it be enough? For answers, we talk to freelance journalist Katerina Barton https://www.katerinabarton.com/. She takes us behind-the-scenes to a shark nursery and shares what this conservation project could mean for other shark species. Interested in more conservation news? Email us your question at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. It includes perks like bonus episodes, early access, archive access, curated playlists and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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  You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.

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  Ahoy, short waivers. Still me. Hailing to you with former NPR Above the Fray fellow and now independent journalist Katerina Barton. Hey.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  So it's Shark Week, and in honor of that, you're bringing us a story all the way from Indonesia about Indo-Pacific leopard sharks?

• 1:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. So at the end of last year, I was reporting in the West Papua province of Indonesia for NPR about a totally different story. This area is part of the leopard shark's native habitat, which extends to the Philippines and Australia. And while we were reporting, we kind of stumbled across a shark nursery.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, as one does. Is that like a daycare for sharks?

• 1:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, basically. In the nursery, there were a bunch of tanks with water pumping through them, and they were filled with sharks.

• 1:39Speaker 03

  This is the senior person here.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  And here we met Mardia Sultan. She's an aquarist and one of the shark nannies.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  That is like the coolest title I've ever heard. Shark nanny.

• 1:52Speaker 04

  So this is the eggs of the leopard sharks. And this one is the baby just hatched a week ago. And this one egg, we are expecting to hatch this week.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  And they're raising leopard sharks from eggs sent from aquariums to be released into the ocean off the coast of a group of islands called Raja Ampat. And nothing like this on this scale has ever been done with sharks before.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Oh, cool.

• 2:18Speaker 04

  Erica is a one-week-old leopard shark. And this is coming from Georgia for you.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Georgia.

• 2:26Speaker 02

  From Georgia?

• 2:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:26Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  A lot of emergency.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  So this is an effort to bring wild populations back from the brink of extinction?

• 2:37Speaker 02

  Exactly. Over the past few decades, leopard shark populations have declined to the point where they're considered endangered. I talked about this with Chelsea Black. She's a research scientist at the Georgia Aquarium focused on their shark and ray research.

• 2:51Speaker 05

  Just the massive decline in populations globally is over 80%, and that's huge. It's very similar, actually, to hammerheads globally.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  That's awful. Like, what's causing that?

• 3:04Speaker 02

  It's a few things. Climate change has led to habitat loss, and leopard sharks are a reef shark, so they're dependent on coral reefs.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, which aren't doing well anywhere.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  No, they're not. Chelsea says that's another big issue, too.

• 3:17Speaker 05

  And then also fishing. They are most common in the Indo-Pacific, which is one of the highest places for shark fishing, for the shark fin trade. So they face a lot of threats just in the region that they are native to.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  And actually, Chelsea said that Indonesia is the number one shark fishing nation in the world.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  So today on the show, can one of the world's leading shark fishing nations become one of the world's leading shark conservation nations? And what this project could mean for other endangered species. I'm Nate Rot. You're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

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• 5:21Speaker 01

  Okay, Katerina, I consider myself a bit of a sharkophile. I love sharks. But I know not everyone does. So tell us more about these leopard sharks.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Okay, first, some people in the US might know them as zebra sharks. And it's funny because these animals are known for completely different patterns. One has spots and the other has stripes.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, zebra, leopard.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  Right. Obviously different. Talking to Chelsea, it has to do with how these sharks mature.

• 5:49Speaker 05

  When they're born and they're young pups, they actually look almost black with white spots. So a little more like a zebra.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  They honestly look like giant tadpoles at this point, Nate, like 20 to 30 centimeters long with big ol' heads and a long tail.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 6:03Speaker 05

  And as they grow, their patterns change, and they turn to a more tanned color overall with dark spots. And then that's more leopard-like.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Okay, so as host of this episode, I declare that we should just call them leopard sharks moving forward, just for clarity. That cool?

• 6:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, that works for me.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Okay, so how big are these adults?

• 6:23Speaker 02

  Well, definitely taller than you. They're like eight feet with these round stubby noses, and their fins are also rounded. They have a really long tail, like I said, and their mouths are kind of underneath their heads. Their teeth are different than other shark species, so they actually have more of a crushing plate because they do prefer things with a shell. And they can, you know, crush it up, suck out the inside and spit out the parts that they don't want. And we actually got to watch some of the pups sucking up snails out of their shells.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  No way.

• 6:58Speaker 05

  You can see him like sucking it.

• 7:00Speaker 04

  So they're using their whole body too.

• 7:03Speaker 05

  No, he's so funny.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Wow, so it's like sea escargot. That does sound really cute.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, they were cute. And they're not aggressive. Some people call them Labradors of the sea.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Katerina, I've been told I give off a little bit of Labrador energy.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can confirm that. But when I asked Chelsea about it, she didn't seem to agree with that nickname.

• 7:27Speaker 05

  I don't know if I would call them puppy-like, because I don't really like to give, you know, pet-like acronyms to sharks, because we should be respecting them as wild predators. But in terms of sharks, they definitely are friendlier and more docile than you would expect.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Okay, got it. So they're chill, but they're still sharks. Katerina, earlier you said that Indonesia is one of the biggest shark fishing nations in the world. So like, I gotta ask, isn't it dangerous to release sharks there for this conservation project?

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, it would seem a little risky, but actually, in Raja Ampat, the local government banned shark fishing in 2013, and it became a shark and ray sanctuary. And I actually saw patrols going out to try and catch, you know, people shark fishing. And not only that, but Raja Ampat is a marine-protected area and a designated UNESCO global geopark. It has some of the world's most diverse coral reefs, and some people call it a diverse paradise.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  I am so jealous you got to go there. Like, I want to be a reef shark.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is beautiful, and the protections are helpful. But one of the problems is that the sharks don't just stay in this protected area.

• 8:39Speaker 05

  So you can't tell them, hey, never leave this marine-protected area, because they just don't know. And that's a huge problem in conservation, is getting sharks and other migratory species to be protected across their entire range.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  And it makes sense. So now that there's at least some protections in place in Raja Ampat, couldn't the native sharks repopulate on their own?

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Well, when I visited the shark nursery, they told me that before the program started, experts had estimated there were only about 20 wild sharks left in this area.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  Whoa. Okay, so yeah, there would definitely be concerns about the gene pool and genetic diversity and all that.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Right. That's a big concern. Plus, Chelsea says that sharks are slow to mature. It could take up to 10 years before a leopard shark is ready to reproduce. So if you're a shark, the odds of you being caught in a fishery within that timeframe is much higher than you are able to reproduce. And so that's kind of one of the reasons that you have to be proactive about helping the population replenish, is getting enough individuals out into the population so that they can start reproducing at a rate that isn't going to continue declining with fishing pressure.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  So what I'm hearing her say is it's pretty much a necessary intervention?

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's how they see it.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  And Katerina, you said these sharks are coming from Georgia?

• 10:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  I thought they just exported peaches. So like, how did the state of Georgia get involved in a shark conservation project in Indonesia?

• 10:12Speaker 02

  Some of them are coming from Georgia, and they're also coming from Washington, California, and Australia. In 2019, a bunch of conservationists and shark experts gathered at the Georgia Aquarium for a workshop. And the outcome was a collective of research institutions, aquariums, and nonprofits, all with this really big mission in mind.

• 10:33Speaker 05

  This is the first global project to actually focus on the rewilding of a species.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Their first project started in 2020, called the STAR Project, focused on leopard sharks.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Okay, so aquariums are now sending all of their leopard shark eggs to Indonesia?

• 10:49Speaker 02

  They actually do a ton of genetic testing first to find the healthiest eggs, and then they ship them in coolers to Indonesia.

• 10:57Speaker 05

  They'll just go through regular shipment, like UPS, or FedEx, or other transport.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Okay, that's not as high-tech as I was expecting.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  No, definitely not. And then, once they get to Indonesia, the coolers have to go through customs, and they get checked and everything, and then they go to the shark nursery.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  And so what is the survival rate of these eggs, like, once they get there?

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I asked that same question at the nursery to the shark nanny, Martia.

• 11:24Speaker 04

  Is it hard to hatch the eggs? Like, will all of these survive? Well, that's a really good question. So some of them will survive, some of them is not survive because egg is like a very fragile stages, but it's also normal. And so far, the survival rate of the eggs is about 77%.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  77% of their eggs hatch into little pups.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  That's pretty good, considering they've been sent from all over the world.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the Georgia Aquarium has shipped 30 eggs since the start of the program. And so far, they've released 16 sharks into the ocean.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Where do they go once they've hatched? Like, do they go straight into the ocean?

• 12:03Speaker 02

  No, the pups, the baby sharks, they live in the nursery in these large tanks with ocean water pumping through them. I stood in front of one of them with Martia.

• 12:12Speaker 04

  So this is like the second stage before we release them. So we keep it here until 70 centimeter and then after that, we move it to the ship. And so ship and is the last adaptation before we release them. So it's not from here to the big blue ocean because they need to adapt to the ocean. So, yeah.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  So the larger sharks go into a pen below the nursery. And this is where they'll grow and get used to swimming in waves. And they're finally released once they reach one meter long, which is about three feet.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Okay, so they're getting acclimated to the ocean before they're released. But when they are released, do they know if these sharks are surviving out there?

• 12:49Speaker 02

  The sharks are all tagged with transmitters to study their movements. But you know, the sharks are now wild, so they can swim further away where the program doesn't have receivers to track them. But Martia and Max Ammer, the owner of this resort where the nursery is, did tell me that one of their sharks named Danaea actually came back for a visit five weeks after she was released.

• 13:10Speaker 04

  We measured her. So she is actually growing seven centimeters in five weeks and gained like ectocromic. So, so yeah, it's actually giving us, giving us hope. Like, oh, this actually is thriving in the wild.

• 13:26Speaker 07

  It's very important because you don't know if you do everything right, maybe all of them die and you're just wasting your time.

• 13:31Speaker 04

  That's such true.

• 13:32Speaker 07

  But now we know for sure they're doing well, at least one. But then the chances the rest does well too.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  Since the program started, they've released 75 sharks total, including those 16 from Georgia. And Chelsea says there's already some signs that the sharks are doing all right.

• 13:49Speaker 05

  Divers are seeing them more often in the region. They are still pretty rare to see, but the chances, you know, went from zero to, you know, maybe 30% on a dive, you could see one in this region. So that's pretty awesome.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Oh, that is awesome. So this re-sharking effort is working. Like, what does this mean for the future of conservation programs like these?

• 14:10Speaker 02

  Well, Chelsea says that they hope this initiative will help downgrade leopard sharks from endangered, and not just here in Indonesia, but all over their larger range. And then they can start thinking about other endangered species of sharks.

• 14:25Speaker 05

  The thought of, you know, expanding to more than just the leopard sharks and more than just Raja is incredible. And I think it's creating kind of a framework for a different type of conservation than people have ever seen.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  This is all so cool. Katerina, thank you for bringing us this reporting.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was my pleasure.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  All right. If you liked this episode, you'll probably like our episodes on the superpowers of mangrove trees and the magic of fireflies. Give them a listen. This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson, edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez, and fact-checked by Tyler Jones. Jimmy Keely was the audio engineer. I'm Nate Rot. Thanks for listening to Short Wave from NPR.

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