{"id":182970,"date":"2024-01-03T09:29:34","date_gmt":"2024-01-03T14:29:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/?p=182970"},"modified":"2024-01-03T09:35:42","modified_gmt":"2024-01-03T14:35:42","slug":"what-lies-beneath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/publications\/aboard-gso\/what-lies-beneath\/","title":{"rendered":"What Lies Beneath"},"content":{"rendered":"

What Lies Beneath<\/h1>

GSO alumna goes in search of sharks off South Africa with Shark Week.<\/em><\/p><\/div><\/div>

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By Tony LaRoche<\/h4>\n
\n

Growing up on Ryder\u2019s Cove in Chatham, Massachusetts, Christine de Silva,<\/strong> M.S. \u201923, was a big fan of the Discovery Channel\u2019s Shark Week.<\/em> For one, her birthday fell during the annual all-shark festival, plus there were the sharks.\n<\/div>\n<\/hr>\n

\"De \u201cShark Week<\/em> is such a great chance for people to get a view into something the vast majority of people have little to no experience around,\u201d said de Silva, who graduated last spring from the University of Rhode Island\u2019s Blue MBA program with master degrees in business administration and oceanography. \u201cThey get to see people interacting with animals that we\u2019ve been taught are terrifying, and yet we see the same people coming back every year. So obviously that isn\u2019t the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

This past July, Shark Week<\/em> celebrated its 35th season, and de Silva appeared in her third episode since 2020. A research assistant on previous shows about tiger sharks and great whites, de Silva, chief executive officer for the ocean technology company Juice Robotics, served as co-host and photographer for the 2023 season\u2019s \u201cAlien Sharks: Strange New Worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n

In February, she joined host and wildlife conservationist Forrest Galante and the crew for a month to film the show, tooling around the waters off South Africa in search of the strangest sharks they could find. High on their list was the sevengill.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost sharks have five gills. The more prehistoric types will have six or seven gills,\u201d said de Silva, who lives in Jamestown and is now pursuing a Ph.D. in oceanography at GSO. \u201cIn False Bay, South Africa, the sevengills are typically found in kelp forests and get very large, about 10 feet. They can take down seals\u2014they are sharks\u2014but they\u2019re thought to be pretty docile.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"pen But the sevengill sharks were nowhere to be found. Two orcas\u2014killer whale brothers named Port and Starboard by locals\u2014were wreaking havoc, de Silva said. They had killed scores of great whites\u2014actually flipping the whites over on their backs to dine on their livers\u2014off South Africa, especially around Cape Town, known for its cage diving with great whites. Eventually, the more-
\ntransient animals smartly moved on, leaving the orcas to feast on sevengills, which can\u2019t migrate to safety like great whites.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we were there, there were a couple of days when about two dozen sevengills washed up dead with their livers missing, proving they were killed by Port and Starboard,\u201d she said. \u201cThose are just the ones that washed up.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the sevengills aren\u2019t transient, they seem to have disappeared. But many people in the area thought they must be somewhere in False Bay, south of Cape Town. So, the Shark Week<\/em> crew went looking. They found about 15 of the sharks in a harbor, under a shipwreck. \u201cThe sharks were hiding from the orcas in the dark, in about 15 feet of water with the worst visibility,\u201d she said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t see my fins when we were diving. It was crazy. We were swimming through them, bumping them.\u201d<\/p>\n

De Silva Not Alone in Filming Sharks<\/h1>

Ph.D. student Lauren Romeiro,<\/strong> M.O. \u201917 researches endothermic sharks and pelagic sharks throughout the Northwest Atlantic, using film and non-invasive scientific techniques to understand their socialization, mating and hunting behavior.<\/p>\n

Lauren started working for 333 Productions LLC in 2017 as a cinematographer and has been featured on Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Lionsgate pictures, Facebook and ESPN. Along with highly acclaimed underwater cinematographer Joe Romeiro, they operate a wildlife filming and conservation vessel, the R\/V Warfish,<\/em> from Rhode Island.<\/p>\n

\"\" Lauren was also on Shark Week,<\/em> searching for a 14-foot giant mako shark spotted in the waters off Portugal\u2019s Azores region in \u201cDawn of the Monster Mako.\u201d<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n

But filming the sharks mostly meant deploying her cameras\u2014Baited Remote Underwater Video (BRUV), which were developed and supplied by Juice Robotics\u2014at depths up to 1,000 meters, then coming back in six hours, hoping for a bite. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe cameras were not attached to the boat so we were unable to see what we were filming in real time,\u201d she said. \u201cSt. Lucia is a popular sport fishing area. So, we\u2019d go out early in the morning, drop the cameras and go fishing. We\u2019d catch dinner, take a nap, pick the cameras up and then, over beers and dinner, watch the footage and see what we got.\u201d What they found were numerous shark species in the deep seas around Cape Town and St. Lucia that have seldom been seen before, or not seen at those depths, in those areas. <\/p>\n

\u201cDeep-sea animals in general are often very dark colored so they can hide better,\u201d she said. \u201cThey often have really big eyes that seem to glow green when you flash light at them. You also get a lot of really slow-moving sharks. While there is food down there, there\u2019s less food. So, they act very chill to conserve energy until all of a sudden they have to use that energy to go after prey or, if they\u2019re lucky, scavenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along with the fun of filming sharks, de Silva, who does research for the nonprofit Beneath the Waves, collected data on such things as abundance, diversity and behavior, and plans to publish her findings. Also, through her work with Juice Robotics, her role in Shark Week helps her promote her view of ocean research, which includes innovative, democratic, rugged equipment like the BRUVs that are easy to transport and deploy.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, Shark Week<\/em> is such a great chance to represent the future of what I hope ocean science looks like,\u201d she said. \u201cI really was excited to do my first episode because I not only got to do the science, but I got to educate a large audience.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Tony LaRoche Growing up on Ryder\u2019s Cove in Chatham, Massachusetts, Christine de Silva, M.S. \u201923, was a big fan of the Discovery Channel\u2019s Shark Week. For one, her birthday fell during the annual all-shark festival, plus there were the sharks. \u201cShark Week is such a great chance for people to get a view into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7,1987],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aboard-gso","category-publications"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182970"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182995,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182970\/revisions\/182995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}