Interview with Chris Fischer of Ocearch

I was fortunate to be invited to a media day on board the MV Ocearch when they were here in Simonstown.

If you've arrived here after reading the abridged interview on Zigzag, I'd hoped to capture the essence of everything said there.  Some things which I felt didn't contribute to the discussion were edited out, so there's nothing too revelationary here that you haven't read already.

If you're here because you want to have a go at Chris, me or my stance on the matter: awesome, that's what the comments section below is for.  Go nuts.

Here is the full interview with the man some people call controversial:

On the foredeck of the MV Ocearch, moored at Simons Town on the 21.05.2012

Like right there, a few minutes after this photo was taken

Anton Louw: So, do you surf?

Chris Fischer: I’m not a good surfer.  I try to surf now and again. I do spend tons of time in the water.  I’m a free-diver. Definitely bodysurf and stuff like that. I love to play in the ocean with my kids.  But, there are lots of surfers on the ship.  Almost everybody onboard surfs.

Pictured: a not good surfer

AL: I’ve heard.  They tell me the boat is unkind to their boards. They put their quiver away and it comes back all dinged up.  Do you find having worked with sharks you’ve become less fearful of them?

CF: I’m a really data driven individual.  It’s more dangerous to drive to the beach than to go swimming in the ocean.  You’re more likely to get struck by lightning twice before getting bitten by a shark.  So, the data is the data.  So, no, you should be afraid to go swimming with sharks because the statistical likelihood of you having an interaction is minute.  

AL: So, you find the more you know about them the less scared of them you are?

CF: Yeah, it’s more dangerous to hang around in the parking lot than to go swimming in the ocean.

AL: Tell us how you got involved in this and what are Ocearch’s and Fischer Production’s goals?

CF: This whole journey started for me back in about 1999.  I was spending a lot of time on the water with my wife, and we would come back – we were living in Southern California, and we would tell people these stories about what we saw on the ocean; both good and bad. And people would be like: ‘So what, let’s go party and have dinner.’  And my wife and I were just shocked that even the people who lived on the beaches didn’t really care and weren’t very connected with what was going on in the ocean.  And if the people who lived on the beach didn’t care, what about the people who grew up in Kentucky, like me, or other places inland?  Well, it was completely out of sight, out of mind for those people. So why would they care?  So, in about 2000 I decided to start Fischer Productions, to pour the world’s oceans into people’s homes so they could form their own relationship with the ocean.  Otherwise, it would just be out of sight, out of mind.  And I was an ocean person already, I’d been on the ocean all my life.  So I was someone who’d been on the ocean, who tried to leverage the scale of TV to help the ocean.  I’m not a TV guy who decided to get on the ocean.  I’m an ocean guy who tried to use TV to try and do good for the ocean.  So, that’s how it really began for us.  I really began a mission to just pour the ocean into people’s homes through their TV sets. 

AL: What have been your greatest achievements to date?

CF: We’ve learned so much, we’ve completely rewritten the White Shark life-history puzzle of the Guadalupe White Shark.  So, in the past they had an idea of where they were feeding, breeding and giving birth, and they were all wrong.  And our researchers have completely rewritten that and now we know exactly where and when they’re giving birth, and where and when they’re breeding, and where are and where they go when they feed.  So, we have just rewritten White Shark life-history biology in the Pacific.  We’ve also been able to leverage that to affect policy to put pressure on the shark finning mafias, and we’re hurting them in Central America quite a bit.  With the Mote Marine laboratory, with Dr. Bob Hueter – I brought the ship round to the Gulf of Mexico, even though it wasn’t what our plan was.  When the Gulf oil spill happened, we just felt an obligation to do something.  So we took the ship round to Boca Grande, and we caught large Bull sharks and Great Hammerheads to give the scientists who were collecting all the toxicological information on all those sharks that roam the open gulf for the federal BP lawsuit, so we could learn if the oil and the dispersants had gotten into their body and was affecting them.  I think this was a great contribution to the body of knowledge for the Gulf of Mexico.  So, it’s been just countless scientific achievements.  But most importantly for me is we are leaving a wake of PhDs behind us.  When I support research in Costa Rica, and Mexico and California as I have in the past,  we bring local PhD candidates and students, and those projects become the projects that they use to become the next PhDs – people who then counsel the government on how to take care of the resource after we’re gone.  So we’re leaving a wake of PhDs around the world that are all marine biologists that become the leaders in looking after the ocean when we’re gone.  So when I support research in Guadalupe, I leave a Mexican PhD behind.  Costa Rica – Costa Rican PhDs.  Galapagos – Galapagos PhDs.  South Africa – there’s over 30 researchers involved in this project.  There will be over a dozen PhDs that people will get using the data set that we have funded and we have enabled them to get.  So that’s powerful when you’re looking for a global legacy.  As we move from community to community, all the work that we enable continues on for the rest of our lives.  It’s not one-and-out.  And that’s powerful when you’re trying to move the needle on a global scale.

AL: So, what’s the best part of the job if it’s not that?

CF: Well, that is probably the best part of the job.  You know, it’s been two generations since anyone rose up on a global scale and truly gave the ocean a voice and levelled a global scale to affect policy worldwide and command meetings with policymakers.  As the next generational ocean explorer, we have a truly global operation now. We can command those meetings.  We’re funding and enabling the collection of previously uncollectable data, so that we can affect policy correctly – that’s rewarding.  But, generally speaking, the job is hugely stressful and very draining.  It’s not fun.

AL: Really?

CF: I mean there’s a thousand ways to die each day.  This is not a ‘woo-hoo’ type thing.  It’s emotionally draining.  It’s mentally draining.  It’s physically draining.  This is not just for fun.

AL: So, you’re driven by your passion for the ocean?

CF: Basically, the ocean has no time left.  We’re killing up to seventy million sharks a year – mostly for a bowl of soup in China.  And the sharks are the great balance keepers.  They keep everything clean, and everything in balance.  If we remove the sharks from the ocean, we will lose the ocean.  If we lose the ocean, then we’ll lose the planet.  And so we have the capacity to tell a compelling story about sharks and to create awareness about shark-fin soup.  At first we shut down the finning mafias, and if we do that we can go long way to redressing that balance.

AL: So where else in the world have you studied sharks?

CF: We did work in Guadalupe, the Fallarones – a little bit, the Rivillagigedo Islands off Mexico, Costa Rica, Boca Grande, here, from here we go to Cape Cod, Cape Cod to the Galapagos.

AL: How does your research differ from other projects done in South Africa to date?

CF: Number one: when I’m funding research, I do things a little bit differently.  Typically, when you look around at research that’s going on on the ocean, you’ll have an individual researcher from this institution, and an individual researcher from this institution, and sometimes they’re competing for a finite amount of grants or funding.  And so it’s not often that you get the individual researchers working together.  More often, they’re competing for the same pool of money.  When I come in and support research on a project like this, I come in and support the whole country.  So we have 30 of your top researchers from 12 institutions, not just one institution, with one dude, with two projects.  So we’re forcing everyone to collaborate and share all the data.  So, we have the smartest people in the world with access to everything, so we can learn quicker so the ocean can recover sooner.  So that’s one of the things we’ve done and because we’re funding, and because I’ve seen the frustration when different researchers have different parts of the puzzle with collaborating – and in the end the ocean suffers.  Now, when I come in and fund, I say: ‘We all collaborate, because I’m writing the cheque.  Everyone gets access to all data around the world.  Because I want every smart guy and lady around the world to see this data so that we can solve the ocean puzzle soon, so the ocean can recover now.  And so we’ve completely shifted the model of research.  It’s not the individual institution or researcher trying to get ahead.  This is a national programme for the people of South Africa.

AL: Is there anyone else in the world that is doing similar tagging research?

CF: There have been some people who have been doing SPOT tagging on smaller sharks.  What we have is a unique capacity to deliver the real ocean giants to the researchers.  All the other researchers who are studying the real giants of the ocean are mostly stuck because they’ve never been able to get their hands on a mature specimen and let it go alive.  And they have a multi-year migratory pattern and until you can get your hands on a mature one and tag it and then track it, you can’t solve the puzzle of its two year migration.  So what’s happened is our ability of bringing world class fisherman together with world class scientists is just exploding the body of knowledge forward on the giants of the ocean.  And that’s where our knowledge gap is.  If it was small and little, they would have been caught and tagged already, so we understand those smaller creatures better.  It’s the giant things that they’ve never been able to handle before, that is our big gap in knowledge in management.  And if you can’t look after your mature breeding stock, you can’t look after the future of any species.  

Just like that little table next to the dentist's chair.  Only thing different is a glass of that sif pink mouthwash

AL: From a South African context, what do we stand to learn?

CF: So there’s twelve individual projects going on today in this – the world’s largest White Shark research project in history.  Right now, we don’t know where the local sharks are breeding or birthing – the two most vulnerable times in their life.  In two years you will know where your White Sharks are breeding or birthing.  You will then have the data you need to affect policy to look after those vulnerable areas.  So from a fundamental standpoint, the basic knowledge of their lives is not had here, and we’ve just enabled the beginning of that.  

AL: A lot of surfers are concerned about their safety.  Could your research help make them safer?

CF: Absolutely.  If you go onto the Ocearch’s Facebook page right now you can see the latest on where the sharks are.  There’s an app being developed for all of them.  Right now, your Sharkspotter programme gets an email directly into their office every time a shark tag pings.  So if a shark moves in here, even if the spotters don’t see it, they know and they can inform the people on the beach.  So real time tracking radically enhances public safety, especially in an environment like False Bay.

AL: I know its early days still for the data, but have you had unexpected revelations?

CF: Yes, quite a few already.  We’ve had two sharks move down into the roaring forties – way south, which we didn’t expect.  One of them has gone to Namibia and back already, which they didn’t expect.  We’re seeing wholesale movements of all the sharks. Like all the sharks are East of Gans Bay at the moment.  Why are they all East of Gans Bay?  We’ve never even had the data to see these mass migrations of animals – loosely collected from maybe over a hundred kilometres but all moving in similar directions.  What causes that?  Every day we are learning stuff.  One of the projects we have we are scraping bacteria off the teeth and their tongues and we’re developing the first antibiotic for shark attack victims for secondary infection.  A lot of people survive the bite, and then lose the limb because they have secondary infection.  So for the first time, we’re getting all the bacteria off their teeth, gums and tongue and they’re culturing all that bacteria right now here in a lab in South Africa so you won’t lose their leg from infection two weeks after you’ve been bitten.  And that’s really affecting public safety.  There are 12 projects going on here, and everyone gets focussed on the tracking – because it’s kind of sexy – but it’s the other projects that are kind of moving the ball forward.  

AL: You mentioned earlier that in California you found people had an ‘oceanic disconnect.’ Have you experience something similar here?

CF: No, that was just what inspired us in the beginning.  Here most people seem very connected to the ocean.  In South Africa you’re surrounded by your ocean – to the south, the east and the west. What has surprised me a little bit and caught me off guard was the lack of understanding of how the system works.  People here have been making huge leaps of logic that are totally disconnected from one another in the ocean.  And I’ve never seen that anywhere else.

AL: And can you speculate on why that might be?

CF: Education level? I mean in America, if someone was doing research in, say Los Angeles and chumming and someone got taken in San Diego, no-one would connect those two dots, because they are so obviously not connected if you know how the ocean works.  It’s a different galaxy 70 miles away out on the ocean.  And here they seem to have a problem making that connection.

AL: Admittedly, I’ve hardly seen Sharkmen, so I’m not familiar with it, but a lot of people accuse the ‘gung-ho’ aspect of the programme.  I’m sure it makes for better TV, but you don’t think it maybe distracts from your message?

CF: For the most part, to those people, I say: grow up.  I’m funding 2.7 million dollars’ worth of research.  If you want to write me cheque worth that and I don’t need to make a show, I’ll handle it and not make a show.  I finished the TV here some time ago, and yet I’m still here trying to finish the science.  You’ve got be real, it costs a lot of money to do this.  So, I get people all the time who throw ideas out. ‘Well, you know, you should do this, and this, and this, and that.’ And I’m like, ‘OK, what’s the actual functional plan to that?’ Because ideas are interesting, but execution is everything.  And so I can tell you this right now: I can go out now and sell 5 million dollars’ worth of TV.  I can take half of that and fund two-and-half million dollars’ worth of research and I can solve your White Shark puzzle so that we can protect their future.  I know I can do that.  You get all these people who say, ‘Aw, you should do this that and the other.’  And they’re not actually doing anything.  What are they actually doing?  And so you have to make compelling content, so that people want to watch, so that you can generate two-and-a-half million dollars so you can fund the next research project, that’s a trade I’m willing to make for the ocean.  Grow up!

"You have to be this big to play with sharks". (credit: Ocearch)

AL: There have been quite a few accusations bandied around.  Can we talk about National Geographic and your relationship there?

CF: Sure.

AL: The word I’ve heard was that National Geographic has ‘dissociated’ them from your work.  How true is this?

CF: I don’t think that’s true.  National Geographic had an option to pick up the show last August for its fourth season and it didn’t pick up that option.  And so I went out and sold the show to another network.

AL: Which network is that?

CF: It will be announced in about a month.  But it’s 10 times bigger.  And that means I have 10 times the scale to affect 10 times the people to make them love the ocean.  So for me, when I’m on a mission to impact the future of the ocean, the scale of awareness is part of that mission.  So, if I have an opportunity to move to a network that’s 10 times bigger, I have an obligation to do that for the ocean.

AL: There’s a perception that you were ‘kicked out’ of the Fallarones and Guadalupe and that’s why you brought your operation here – where they authorities are more pliant to your activities.

CF: That’s just not true.

AL: So why did you leave those areas then?

CF: No, what happened was our weather window closed, and I had another expedition two or three weeks later and so we moved.  Much like here, I’ve committed a window of time and when that time is up, I’ve got to move, because I’ve committed to helping the next set of people.  We even took the supervisor of the Fallarones National Park came out and watched us catch a shark and tag it, and then said: ‘Proceed with your work as you like. That was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.’  And then we worked for the next few days, and then the weather came up and so we moved to Guadalupe because we had an expedition scheduled there.  

AL: Have you noticed any difference in the Great Whites behaviour here to other parts of the world?

CF: The biggest difference here appears to be that the juvenile, sub-adult, and adult sharks all appear to be mixed together.  Everywhere else I’ve been, the adults are all separate from the sub-adults and juvenile sharks.  Because big sharks eat smaller sharks.  You don’t normally see them all living together and here it seems you have two metre sharks living with 4.5 metre sharks.  And I’ve never seen that before.

AL: There’s a lot of tension here between the surfing community and the cage diving industry.  Has the cage diving industry been supportive of your work?

CF: It seems that here, everybody that everybody wants a piece of the White Shark pie.  You’ve got all these different user groups and I’ve never seen people like this who are so opposed to one another before.  Some of the cage-divers have been amazing, some have not been. 

AL: I heard an anecdote; it came via a friend from one of the Dyer Island deckhands that the sharks were less interested in chum once you had arrived in the area.  Can you comment on that?

CF: I don’t know where he gets that from, what sort of data he has. That’s just speculation.

AL: Well, it’s anecdotal…

CF: I know that we just tagged six sharks there and they’ve had record sightings since we left.  People are seeing 20 a day. And we’re using so little chum.  In the end we’re using the same amount of chum that they are.

AL: Your funding, does it all come from selling the footage?

CF: That and my own personal wealth.  I’ve leveraged everything I have.

AL: Moving on to the most recent attack, it must be awful to be blamed for a fatal attack?

CF: It was just so disconnected from where we were, what we were doing.  It was surreal. 

AL: How did you respond to the public anger?

CF: It was impossible to understand.  It’s a lack of understanding as to how the ocean works.

AL: And what was the feeling on the boat immediately after the attack?

CF: Everybody felt terrible for the family and the tragedy that they were going through.  I think a lot of the guys felt really down.  Here you’ve got a bunch of guys who staying away from their families for months at a time, putting their body parts on the line to helping your scientists to learn so that they can look after the future of your resource after we leave.  And people are making up lies, and death threats and accusing them and it was emotionally draining and stressful for them.  Because, they’re here and are actually giving an amazing gift to your country and to be accused of something that they are totally disconnected with was something that we’ve never gone through before.  

AL: This sort of animosity, have you seen it anywhere else in the world?

CF: In Nor Cal (Northern California) there’s one or two ‘eco-derelicts’, as I call them.  It’s the only other place we’ve seen anything like this.

AL: But it’s more isolated there?

CF: Yeah, it’s isolated here.  I think if you look into it, its half a dozen vocal Facebookers.

AL: There is a new movement on Facebook – Ocean Lovers against Chumming, who currently have almost 7000 members…

CF: I would say those people don’t know how the ocean works.  You understand how chumming works, right?  There’s an island out here in the middle of this bay, with a chum slick that’s been coming off it from millions of years.  It’s like a massive highway out into the middle of the ocean and it stinks like dead sea-lion, and sea-lion poop, and bird poop.  And so these guys who are coming in and putting in 25kgs of sardines are having zero impact on that system.  What it really is that the surfers don’t like the cage-divers, maybe because, when I talk to surfers, they don’t like the fact that they’re making a business or making a living off the sharks.  But, their whole pursuit of chumming and chum is baseless.  It’s emotional, and it has no data.  What they need to do is come out and go on one one day.  They’ll see, if you’re putting 25kgs of chum in the ocean right here, it’s like dropping an eye-dropper of water right in the middle of your giant coffee cup.  And almost immediately it goes to parts per billion and is dissolved to nothing.  This whole chumming thing here is so weird.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  What you really need to do, is get down to the real issue.  What is the real issue?  You’re a surfer, and you don’t like the cage divers, because they’re making money off the ocean – just say it.  Don’t try and find some reason in chumming that doesn’t exist, because then you sound like you don’t understand how the ocean works.  If you want say that people shouldn’t make money off White Sharks, and the tourism money is not welcome here, have the guts to say it.  And approach policy or public management that way.  But, don’t make up lies and make up issues that don’t exist.   

AL: Have you identified any aspects of South African policy that needs to be addressed?

CF: Well, I think we’re still in the data collection phase.  I think the other problem people have, is for the first time in history we’ve developed a system where we generate the revenue, provide funding for the research, we enable in helping your smartest people gain access to collect the uncollectable data, and then we engage my non-profit (www.ocearch.org) and then we come back and close the door – with policy.  Nobody else has done that.  Cousteau didn’t do that. We go all the way from generating the money, to helping the smart people get the data they need, to taking that data to the governments or policy makers to put a long-term plan in place.  And I’m proud of that.

Research: the first step to changing policy (credit: Ocearch)

AL: Another shark debate we are having at the moment surrounds using Shark nets to protect surfing and bathing areas in Natal.  Do you have an opinion on this?

CF: I had to see it with my own eyes.  I flew up there.  For me, it’s just unimaginable.  I can see that it’s here because it’s kind of a historical thing that happened so long ago that they’re having a difficult time undoing it.  Before I started researching it, I thought that they were exclusion nets.  No; they’re culling nets.  What surprises me is when I go up there, and talk to the surfers; they love their culling nets.  They’ll only go surfing on beaches that have culling nets.  I’ve never seen a surfing community that wants their sharks killed.  They love their culling nets!  In other places where I’ve been, surfers are like, ah, we’re one with the ocean, it’s cool, we should all be here, they’re part of the system.  So that’s the one thing that really shocked me – was how the surfers love their culling nets.  Because, normally when go around the world, the surfers are surfing with sharks all the time.  In California there are White Sharks, and Baja and everywhere else, they’re not afraid them.  They’re not calling for culling nets.  I’m really surprised about the South African surfing community.

AL: So how would you suggest the South African surfing community get involved and help save the ocean?

CF:  I think a great way to start is just banning the possession of shark fins in your community.  If you came together and just banned shark fin possession in South Africa and all the Asian restaurants – who are the people who are trading in it – you would immediately save thousands of sharks.  So, the fundamental first step is just get the possession of sharks fins banned where you live.  And that’s not the case here.  And anybody can do that, right?  A surfer, a swimmer, a businessman can get behind the banning of the possession of shark fins.

AL: Cool, Chris.  That’s all from me.  Thanks for your time

CF: Cool.  Take it easy.

Check out Chris' talk at a local TEDx here.