Hi everyone,
 
I know I haven’t written a blog in a while so there will be a bunch of stuff to catch you up on! For starters, let’s go back to July for the American Elasmobranch Society (AES) conference in New Orleans. Going to the conference I was a bit nervous but mostly excited as I knew there would be a lot of really big names from the shark world there. I had a few friends also going that I had met in New Zealand at a previous conference (Brit Finucci, who studies deep-sea sharks and Elitza Germanov, who studies mantas in Indonesia).
 
Before the conference started, a few of us had organized to do an airboat tour of the swamp. We were hoping to be lucky enough to see an alligator in the wild. Little did we realize, luck would have no part of it! The gators love the airboats and we saw them coming towards us from dozens of meters away for the marshmallows that the driver threw to them. Who knew alligators loved marshmallows? We also had one lovely gator that was a friend of our guide climb on board to say hi. The bayou was gorgeous and so green and the airboat felt like a rollercoaster, we had a great time!
 
The evening before the conference began, we were in the hotel lobby playing one of my new favourite games, herpetologist or ichthyologist. As this was a joint conference, it was fairly amusing and surprisingly easy to tell the difference. Between Brit and I, we knew quite a few of the shark scientists so we introduced each other and started checking names off of our lists of people we wanted to meet.
 
The conference started and there were many talks in different field from physiology, biology, ecology, etc. In addition to the fascinating talks, the conference was great as I got to meet all the people involved in Global FinPrint from the states and other parts of Australia. The nights during the conference were by far the most fun parts. Mardi Gras World, eating southern food on Bourbon Street, listening to jazz and eating at famous restaurants. This was also when we got to socialise with all of the well established academics in fun atmospheres.  Overall, AES was the best conference I have been to yet, I even won a prize for best 5-minute talk in my session!
 
After AES, I spent some time in Toronto and at my cottage. I haven’t been to Canada in the summer in years so it was really nice to be up there. While home, I spent a lot of time relaxing with my dogs, boating, jet skiing, and of course, seeing family. Then it was back to Australia where I was no longer just a PhD student but also a new employee of the Global FinPrint project!!!
 
That’s all for now, I have recently returned from a BRUVS trip in Vanuatu so I will be posting a blog about that shortly. Until next time, feel free to ask any questions and share this blog!
 
Thanks,
Samm

​Hi everyone,
 
Happy shark week! Very happy that Discovery has listened to scientists and the public and are putting forward more educational programs and less mockumentaries.
 
In PhD news, I have finally confirmed my candidature and can move on to getting into more writing and PhD work. Confirmation went really well and a bunch of volunteers came out to see what my projects involved and for support. Also in the past month, we have gotten through many of the BRUVS videos. We have doubled the number of volunteers and now have over 550 videos have been watched from 4 countries!!! Some cool / funny things we have seen on BRUVS so far include a crab fighting with an octopus (video HERE), a hammerhead carrying the BRUVS (video and article HERE), and some interesting interactions between different sharks and rays.
 
I am currently working on getting all the habitat, visibility, and current data from the videos we have collected for later analysis. I am also currently writing the methods chapter for my thesis, as well as small other parts where I can. The most exciting upcoming thing is that I am going to New Orleans, Louisiana for the Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists conference as part of the American Elasmobranch Society! I know a few colleagues who are also attending and I look forward to seeing them again as well as meeting many new sharky people. I will be presenting some initial data from our South Semporna, Malaysia site as well as a new method of analysing BRUVS data. I look forward to hearing feedback and opinions about this method and will let you know how it goes.
 
After the conference, I am going home for 2 weeks. I haven’t been home in the summer in years so I am excited for cottage life and getting some work done overlooking the lake. Also looking forward to seeing friends, family, and of course my puppies! Once I’m back in Australia the next BRUVS trip I get to go on will be to Vanuatu, somewhere I have never been so I can’t wait!
 
Until next time, thanks for reading and as always feel free to share and comment.
 
Cheers,
Samm

Hello everyone!
 
Since I last posted, we have finished watching all videos from our first site South Semporna, Malaysia!!! A huge thank you to all my AMAZING volunteers! There is no way these videos would have been completed without them. I am so excited to have this first site completed because it means I can start looking at some data and finding patterns. We saw lots more rays than I was expecting and I’m so relieved my project will have heaps of data. I can’t spoil exactly what we saw, but I can say as far as South Semporna, Malaysia goes more rays than sharks!

We also have seen rays in Nusa Penida, our first site in Indonesia. There are really strong currents in Indonesia, which caused some issues with the BRUVS. A couple went for some fun rides with one doing a somersault before capturing the first Thresher Shark, a bigeye thresher (Alopias superciliosus), on any Global FinPrint BRUVS! You can see the video on my twitter.

I’m just gonna go back and talk about my wonderful volunteers since the last post was all about selecting them. The questionnaires worked brilliantly! I did not receive responses from some people as expected and received some with one word answers. The ones that sent thoughtful responses were selected and have all been good, reliable, and excited to come in each week. I’ve had many of them let me know they are able to come in more often if needed! So of course, we would not be getting through videos as fast as we are without all 27 of these amazing students and I am so grateful to them.

As far as PhD stuff goes, I have still not confirmed my candidature, but now have a date for it of June 14th. Also on the horizon is the American Elasmobranch Society conference in New Orleans in early July. I’m very excited to go and present results from the first site (hopefully more by then). Additionally, there will be a lot of Global FinPrint researchers in attendance and to be able to put faces to names of some people in charge of huge parts of the project will be great. After New Orleans, I’ll be going home to Toronto for a bit to see friends and family!

Anyways, that’s all for now. Next update will be after confirmation and I may have some additional exciting project news to share with you then! Until then, you can stay updated on twitter (@SammSherman27) for a BRUV shot each week #BSOTW. As always, thanks for reading, feel free to share and comment!
 
Cheers,
Samm

Hey everyone,
​
Since I last posted, there has been a lot of progress in the PhD department. First of all, I’ve been through some drafts of both the proposal and the literature review. Most exciting, volunteers have been trained and video analyses have started. I currently have 7 volunteers that come in once a week. We have 2 computers available at all times so there is a lot of time wasted (no one at a computer) where videos could be watched. In order to get more volunteers, I asked friends and current volunteers to suggest people to join. Unsurprisingly, that didn’t lead to more volunteers. Because I am at JCU and there is such a huge Marine Biology department, there are many undergrad and postgrad students looking for volunteer opportunities. I sent out an e-mail to postgrads asking for people to join Global FinPrint as tape readers. My initial plan was that anyone interested would be able to come help out, after all, there are 24 slots in the week that I need people (Monday-Saturday with a morning shift and afternoon shift for 2 computers = 24). Now, of course because what I asked for had the word ‘SHARK’ in the description, I got hammered with e-mails. In the first 24 hours, I received over 50 e-mails with more still coming in now. In order to narrow down the field, I made a really quick questionnaire asking about availability. I also added 3 small questions to see why people were interested in working with Global FinPrint:

1. Why do you want to be involved in the Global FinPrint Project?
2. What are your future career aspirations?
3. What is something you've been a part of or personally accomplished that you are proud of?

I asked them to keep answers as short as possible because I would have to read up to 50 of them. The questionnaire was sent firstly to check availability, but also to see if they cared enough to send it back and to get to know a little bit more about them. I did not ask about prior experience because everyone needs to start somewhere and I didn’t want to hold that against people.

I gave everyone 5 days to fill it out and get back to me, which is the stage I’m in now. Students that were recommended to me by people I trust will be given precedence, however, I still have space for 17 students and would like to give an opportunity to as many people as possible. Once the volunteers are chosen, I’m going to have training sessions (starting next week) with up to 5 volunteers at a time. Their initial training shows them how to use the program and a little bit more about what to expect. Once the initial training is complete, they then come during their time slot. Every volunteer watches the same video for their first time. I have watched it myself three times now and have a print out of exactly what I’ve found to compare with their results. If they get similar results to me, they are free to watch other videos. If not, I go through the annotating process with them again and have a second ‘test’ video. The process is not too difficult so most people do well on the first video and go on to find lots of cool things!
​
I’m excited to get the new volunteers sorted so we can get through all our videos quickly! I will let you all know how it’s going in my next post. For now, check out some BRUVS screenshots in the gallery below! Follow me on twitter @SammSherman27 for a #BRUVShotOfTheWeek each Friday. As always, thanks for reading! Feel free to share and comment!

Cheers,
Samm

Hi everyone,
 
      I hope the start to your 2016 was as productive as mine! Since returning from Malaysia, I have been quite busy travelling and writing. I got to visit my parents in Arizona and other family and friends back home in Toronto. I have also finished the first draft of my literature review and 2nd draft of the proposal.

       I often get people telling me how lucky I am to be travelling and doing research. I promise you, I know that I am extremely lucky and I’m very grateful to be doing what I am doing, however, it’s not all fun times. Writing the proposal for my project went fairly smoothly and I got the first draft back with fewer edits than I expected. The literature review on the other hand, was the hardest thing I have ever written, a sentiment echoed by almost every PhD candidate I have spoken to. In writing the lit. review I went through a case of wine, very little sleep, and a panic attack or two. The day I was planning on handing in the first draft, I realized one section was written about the wrong topic so I delayed one more day and rewrote the entire section in 12 hours. I honestly believe it was the best section of the draft, but I haven't received comments from my advisors yet to confirm or deny.

       Writing that lit. review took a huge mental toll and, even though the first draft was ROUGH, now that it’s handed in for edits I feel relieved. I feel more confident to move forward in this PhD project and have now started prepping for the Confirmation of Candidature. My confirmation will be at the end of March and I hope to have all the videos from Malaysia analysed before then.
​
       Remember before how I said travelling for research isn’t always just fun times? This is the not as fun part. Watching over 300 hours of video footage is a daunting and often monotonous task. It is much harder than you would expect because it requires extreme focus to see animals that may be far in the distance, off to the side, or swimming through the frame quickly. Most of the time, it involves looking at this:




​

Hi everyone,
Happy new years! I hope everyone had a wonderful 2015 and will have an even better 2016. This post is the continuation of my first BRUVS sampling trip in Malaysia. If you didn’t read part 1, catch up here.

We left off on the east coast of Borneo, about to start our next sampling location. We were still working with Scuba Junkie. For the north islands we stayed in their dive lodge in Semporna and for the southern islands we stayed at their island resort on Mabul. There was a bit of shuffling back and forth because of boat and staff availability, but not a hassle at all thanks again to the staff at Scuba Junkie who organized. For our northern islands we sampled at Mantabuan (gorgeous), Boheydulong (stunning), and Sibuan (paradise)! Each way you looked was an amazing view. If you’ve been following my blog since the first one, you’ll know that I had been here before and how much I love Malaysia. Well, that love has only grown and I’m still pinching myself that I was actually back at these gorgeous islands and doing research there! In the southern islands, we sampled at Mabul, Kapalai, and Sipadan, 3 of my favourite places to go diving in the world, and often in top 10 lists of best dive sites in the world.

Our first couple days were in the northern islands. Our captain Sammy and helper Nas not only knew the area like the back of their hands but also provided a lot of entertainment during our waiting time. Upon reviewing the footage from the north, we found a lot of rays but no sharks so far. They don’t see sharks too often at these islands, so this was an expected result. There was also a definite pattern forming with our ray sightings. The bluespotted ribbontailed rays were mainly seen on videos at the reef or right next to the reef, whereas the bluespotted stingrays were mainly seen on sandy bottoms. This was what we expected to see, so that made me quite happy!

The place we knew we would see sharks was Sipadan! Our first day at Sipadan was spent with Scubazoo, a film company based in Kota Kinabalu. They sent Christian to film our research for an upcoming episode of ‘Borneo From Below.’ Unfortunately, they were unaware that we needed an entire boat to ourselves for all of our equipment to get our work done so we were on a boat with divers. We only brought one of our BRUVS and a small amount of kit in order for Christian to get the footage he needed. We finished up the filming the next day with some interviews and shots he was missing. This time, he joined our usual boat and saw why we needed all the space we could get.

We continued our sampling in the southern islands with captain Yulo. We saw similar patterns to the northern islands with the 2 species of bluespotted rays. Videos from Mabul and Kapalai were similar to the north with the lack of sharks present, but we did see a 3rd ray species: a Cowtail stingray. There were also huge schools of red toothed triggerfish that would swoop down on our bait bags and finish every last bite, even the fish bones, without damaging the actual bait bag at all. The first time we pulled up an empty bag that was completely intact we were very confused, but it soon became a normal site.

We finished up our sampling by going to Sipadan with Cat. Cat and her partner Dave are both marine biologists employed by Scuba Junkie. They were very enthusiastic to see what we were up to and helped us out with the best locations to set the BRUVS and other insider info. Dave had already joined us on a sampling day at Mabul and Kapalai so Cat got to come to Sipadan! We left very early in the morning to try and beat most of the dive boats. The island was a tricky one to sample at because it is mainly steep walls that go to depths of 600m and there are many dive boats that visit each day. We got our first set of 6 BRUVS in the water and out before the first divers were in the water, score! Our next 3 sets were placed as far from divers as we could and we were able to find enough ledges on the walls to place our BRUVS above 40m. After checking the footage, we got sharks at Sipadan!!! Grey reef and whitetip reef sharks, yay!

Once all our sampling was done, we had a couple days to relax and organize for heading back to Australia! For me, relaxing meant diving and I had some amazing dives with even better people! Mabul never fails to impress with it’s diversity and unique species. We were also lucky enough to be on Mabul when a green sea turtle nest hatched from the Scuba Junkie hatchery (videos here, here, and here)! Both Steve and I adopted and released baby turtles: Kelso and Fillycakes. In addition to diving and baby turtles, there was more time to chat with Dave and Cat about what they usually see in the area. Dave had over 5 years of data from Sipadan and, having only briefly looked at it, there are already some interesting patterns that can be seen. I feel privileged to have met people that have such passion for conservation and research in Malaysia and look forward to working with them further to explore the data! It’s not just Dave and Cat that have such an interest though, all the staff were keen to hear what we had been doing and what we had seen.  It all stems from the owners, Ric and Tino. Both Ric and Tino are enthusiastic conservationists and ensure their staff have similar values. It's why they are ranked #2 in the world by Green Fins, an organisation that assesses dive shops on their eco-friendliness. The people were all so much fun and only add to my list of reasons to get back to Mabul soon!

So that was a recap of our first BRUVS trip for the Global FinPrint project. I hope you enjoyed reading about it. Right now I am in Canada visiting friends and family in the snow! I will be back in Australia soon and will update with other PhD related news in about a month. Thank you for reading, as always feel free to share, comment, and ask questions!

Thanks,
Samm

 Hi everyone!
I fully intended on posting this from Malaysia but internet there is not exactly reliable. If you were following my twitter, you would have seen some regular updates about what we were seeing on our videos and some photos of the gorgeous islands we were working at. This is the longer account of my first trip as part of the Global FinPrint project. I’m going to split up this post because it’s a bit long. Part 2 will be posted in 2 weeks.
Ok, so to start off with our first tasks in Malaysia: getting work permits and access licenses to do research in Sabah. Thankfully, permits didn’t take too long because of the help from Scuba Junkie. By the time we needed it, we had our access licenses from Sabah Biodiversity Council, research permits from Sabah Parks, security approval from ESSCOM, and Professional Visas from the immigration department. Once we had everything in place, our actual work could get started!
            The first location we sampled was the Tunku Abdul Rahman Park (TARP) off of Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. We were on the water for 6 days and collected 114 videos! Most days we did 4 sets of 6 BRUVS (baited remote underwater video systems), although some days we couldn’t do all 4 due to timing. Steve and I worked out a really good system within the first day and were able to set out the 6 BRUVS in 20-30 minutes. Once they were set, we then waited for each to have been underwater for a full hour before we went to retrieve them. Our waiting time consisted of listening to music and swimming, not a bad way to be “doing work.” We usually had a staff member from Scuba Junkie on the boat with us, in addition to a captain. All the staff were heaps of fun and helped us with their local knowledge. All the sampling we did in the TARP went very smoothly, more so than expected.
            Once we had completed a day of sampling, we went back to our rooms and downloaded all the videos. Each video had to be put onto 3 hard drives for extra data security, after all this data is important and expensive to get. After doing our downloading, we would have a bit of a quick peek through the videos to see if we got any sharks or rays. No surprises, we didn’t get sharks in the TARP, except for one video with 2 curious blacktip reef sharks. It also happened to be the last video we set - lucky, lucky, lucky! We did see a bunch of rays though, mainly bluespotted stingrays and bluespotted ribbontailed rays. There was one eagle ray that soared by in the background of one video as well. In addition to our work, we did have quite a bit of fun. The people who work at Scuba Junkie, as well as their friends in KK, were so welcoming and we had some really great nights with them!
            Semporna was the next stop for us in Malaysia. There were 2 locations we would sample, the northern and the southern islands. Our original plan included over 10 different islands, however, due to the threat of pirates, we weren’t allowed to visit some of the planned islands. ESSCOM, the organisation in charge of safety on the East coast, went through our sampling plan and told us where we could and couldn’t go. At some islands we even had armed guards join us on the boat! This was only done as an extra precaution. Recreational dive boats were still going to the islands we were at, and they were diving without guards. Either way, it was kind of cool to be doing research with our own personal Malaysian army guards.
            I’m going to cut it off there for this post, otherwise it’ll just get way too long. I promise another post in 2 weeks about how sampling in the east coast islands went. Before the end though, I really must say that Scuba Junkie is an amazing organisation that really cares about the ecosystem and the people near where they operate. The staff are always happy and ensure that customers have the best time when diving with them. If you are looking to dive in Malaysia or Komodo National Park in Indonesia, please consider Scuba Junkie! I have been diving with them as a customer before and loved it and now that I've had the opportunity to work with them, I am only more impressed with the operation. Anyways, that's my huge plug for them (which they didn't ask for), thanks for tuning in! As always, feel free to share, comment, and ask questions :).
Thank you for reading,
Samm

​Hi everyone!

 
I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted and this one is going to be short and sweet! Last time, I ended saying next time hopefully I’ll be writing from Malaysia. That hasn’t quite happened yet but my tickets are now officially booked and I leave in 3 days! THREE DAYS! I’m so excited! It was a rougher road than expected, but we managed to get our permits through some persistence, help from people in Malaysia, and Steve Moore, who sent countless e-mails and made many phone calls!

To update where I’m at with PhD work, I’ve actually got a fair bit of writing done in the past 2 weeks. I snapped out of my writers block and am progressing through the literature review and my proposal. My new plan is to do my Confirmation at the end of February 2016. This leaves me time to finish the proposal in Malaysia and finish a first draft of the lit. review over Christmas.

Expect lots of photo updates on Twitter: @SammSherman27 and an update here in a couple weeks to let you know how our field work is going and what we’re seeing on the videos! Other people in my lab that have been working in the Northern Great Barrier Reef have already got lots of sharks and rays on their videos so hopefully we can match that!

Finally, to end on a sentimental, mushy note… I want to thank 2 amazing friends from Canada, Sean and Derek, who were travelling in SE Asia for a couple months but are now in Townsville! They have been here a week now and have just made my life much happier. It’s so nice to have friends from home around! They’re also going to be house-sitting while I’m away for 5 weeks, very much appreciated! I did say I was going to keep this one short, so that’s all for now. I will post again soon from Malaysia!
 
Thanks for reading. As always, feel free to share, question, and comment!
 
Cheers,
Samm

Hi everyone,
 
Now that you know how I got to be where I am, I can start to tell you how I’m going so far. I am over 4 months in and have very little to show for it. The first major milestone in a PhD at JCU is the Confirmation of Candidature. For the confirmation, an in-depth research proposal needs to be evaluated by external experts to make sure what you’re planning on doing is feasible in the time allowed for a PhD. Once the proposal is evaluated, I need to give a seminar about what my project will look at, the methods I’ll use, and what I expect to find. In addition to the presentation, I have to hand in a substantial piece of work. I had always been planning on using my Masters thesis for the substantial piece of work as many people in my lab had done that before but recently, JCU changed the policy and this now has to be a literature review. Had I known that, I might have had more than just an outline by now. Anyways, the confirmation is supposed to be done within 6-12 months of starting. I’m aiming to do mine in February, meaning I really need to get it together to finish the proposal and start my lit. review!
 
That’s the bad news, the good news is that I’ve got a lot of small things checked off. We have to go to 48 hours of elective seminars in the first 18 months of our candidature and I have completed 28 hours so far. I got to do a bit of field work, not for my project, but it was fun spending time on the Great Barrier Reef tagging sharks and downloading receivers. I represented JCU international students at a forum in Perth, my first time outside of Queensland in the 2 ½ years I have lived in Australia. I have also presented at an international conference in Auckland, New Zealand and AIMS@JCU student day here in Townsville. Coming up will be the Australian Society of Fish Biology (ASFB) conference in Sydney in a week. But before I can get to that conference, it’s JCU Shark Camp at Orpheus Island! Catch up on our adventures on Twitter with the hashtag #SharkCamp2015.
 
As I type this, I am staring at the beautiful ocean from research paradise, Orpheus Island Research Station, off the coast of Queensland. There are 11 of us here for 8 days of what we’re calling Shark Camp! We are downloading receiver data from animals that already have transmitters in them, fishing and tagging sharks, and testing out the BRUV systems for my project. If you don’t remember from last post, BRUVs are baited remote underwater videos. The bait attracts sharks and rays (as well as many other fish) so that we can see what’s around.
 
As it comes to an end of Shark Camp, we have set out 45 BRUVs testing different settings and camera angles, tagged about a dozen sharks, and downloaded all 36 receivers. I was there when one itty bitty baby blacktip reef shark was caught on the beach but the rest of the fishing crew have caught and tagged half a dozen or so sharks. The visibility in Pioneer Bay here at Orpheus is not great, especially since it’s been quite windy but after watching about half of the videos, we did get some stuff! We have seen 5 sharks, two Brownbanded Bamboo sharks, the same species I worked on in my undergrad, one Whitetip reef shark, one Weasel Shark and one very cute Tiger Shark (some photos below). We have also seen a couple Moray eels and even one turtle! Now that we’ve trialled variations of the BRUVs, we are closer to being ready for our first overseas trip for the Global FinPrint Project.

Overseas, the very exciting part! The plan is to spend 42 days in Borneo, Sabah, Malaysia starting November first. We are still waiting on permits from the Malaysian government, however, we are very fortunate to have help from Scuba Junkie, who are not only helping with permits, but have offered accommodation and boats to help with this project. Scuba Junkie is an AMAZING dive shop, one I have been diving with 3 times recreationally. I am very excited to work with them professionally. They are true conservationists and appreciate the ocean, which is reflected in the daily operations and staff attitudes. If you are looking to dive in Malaysia, I would recommend going to Mabul with Scuba Junkie!

​Thanks for tuning in again, and welcome to anyone new! Feel free to share this blog, comment, or ask any questions in the box below. Next time I post a blog, hopefully I will be in Malaysia!
Cheers,
Samm

P.S. There's another awesome stingray person in New Zealand that also has a blog. Check out her stuff here: Helen Cadwallader!

     Hi again everyone!

First, I want to thank everyone who sent me wonderful comments and shared the blog. I never expected that response and I really appreciate it!

So we pick up from Malaysia. I became a dive instructor, was wonderfully happy spending all my time underwater but something was missing. I missed school! My best friend thought I was crazy because he was dying to get out of school and all I wanted was to be back in it. I didn’t have reliable internet so trying to find a masters or PhD project just seemed too hard and too long a process. I applied to JCU to do an undergraduate degree again. If nothing else, I would at least have a visa to be in Australia and be at the school I wanted to be at while I was looking for a supervisor for a research degree. I was accepted, got my visa, and came to Townsville a couple months before I was set to start. Part of me was excited to be at JCU, while part of me was really not looking forward to basic maths and biology again, but I had a couple months to settle in and then worry about classes.

When I was looking for places to live, I knew what I wanted, one other roommate who had dogs. I missed my dogs back home but I travel too much to have one of my own so a roommate with dogs was the next best thing. I found a place fairly quickly and had two cuddly Boston Terriers to play with, Dexter and Mosely. I also needed something to occupy my time before the semester started so I began volunteering at Billabong Sanctuary so I could spend some time up, close, and personal with Australian wildlife. I loved it at Billabong and picked up everything pretty quickly, including doing the shows, so I was offered a job within a couple months of being there. Throughout my time at Billabong, where I still work today, I have made some amazing friends (including furry ones) that are now my Australian family!

Once the semester started, I went to my first class, basic first year biology. I walked out of it and realized there was no way I could do another undergraduate degree so I went to student services to see if there were any other options. The Masters by coursework offered some new courses I could take that were far more specialized and catered to my interests than my undergrad courses had been. I could also spend a semester doing a research project and hopefully stay on after that for a PhD. A week later all the paperwork was done and I had switched to my new courses as a masters student. For the most part, the courses were what I had hoped my undergraduate degree had been. They were taught by global leaders in the field and mainly covered marine topics with an emphasis on conservation. For the research portion, I knew which professor I wanted to work with and took his course so he would know who I was.

I had no interest in ‘Managing Tropical Fisheries,’ because I wanted nothing to do fisheries at all. I was never interested in them and certainly never wanted to study them, but that was the only course that Prof. Colin Simpfendorfer taught so I took it. I ended up liking the course, not loving it because there was a lot of focus on the social side and I wanted more of the biological side, but it gave me a chance to talk to Colin about a masters project. He warned me that he got requests from many students to do projects so I sent him my CV and we set up a meeting to discuss. When we met, there was good and bad news. The good news was he was willing to take me as a student, yay! The bad news was the project. I was going to be doing a management effectiveness evaluation of Australian fisheries in regards to their catch of elasmobranchs. Essentially, this meant reading every fisheries document on every fishery in Australia and grading them.

While I didn’t love the idea of the project at the start, I was determined to work my ass off to prove I would be a good PhD student and made my intentions of continuing with Colin as a PhD candidate clear from the start. Lucky for me, I ended up really loving the project. Even though it was a lot of reading and no field time, I was really happy to be working on it and working with such supportive supervisors. In addition to having Colin as a supervisor, I got to have Dr. Andrew Chin as one as well. He was working on the greater project that mine was a small subset of. Not only did I love what I was doing, it was the first time I felt like the research I was doing was entirely applicable and helpful in policy and management decisions. Hopefully the paper from that project will be out soon, (still working on the manuscript) and when it is, I will post it here.

So I worked really hard on my masters project. I showed up to my office (right next to Colin’s and Andrew’s) everyday between 7-8 and was usually the last person in the office, leaving at about 5. When it came time to ask Colin about staying for a PhD, it wasn’t even really a conversation. He told me about a project that would fit well with my interests, and it had a lot of field work, perfect! I applied and got in to the PhD program with my 3 amazing supervisors, Colin, Andrew and Dr. Michelle Huepel.

My project is part of the Global Fin Print project and I get to travel to SE Asia, setting out baited remote underwater videos (BRUVs) to look at elasmobranch abundance and diversity. Click here for some BRUV highlights from the project in North America so far. For my PhD, I will be focusing on rays, the often forgotten members of the “sharks and rays” category. Our first trip overseas is tentatively planned for November, a month in Borneo, Malaysia. I got to be a part of this project because of my connections and knowledge of Malaysia. The only reason I have those connections is because I had my heart broken over 3 years ago when my original PhD fell through. Everything came full circle. I am exactly where I wanted to be when I was in high school, working with the group I wanted to be working with, and doing a lot of field work in Malaysia, a country that feels like home, as well as other countries in SE Asia.

So that sums up my journey to becoming a PhD student, thank you for reading again. I hope you all stay on this journey with me as I’m sure it won’t all be smooth sailing just because I’m doing what I want to be doing. Again, leave me some comments or questions so I know what you want to hear more about and feel free to share this. You can follow more regular updates on my Twitter: @SammSherman27.

Thanks,

Samm