Science Friday - Youth Mental Health Crisis, Repairing Sharks’ Bad Reputation. July 14, 2023, Part 1

Episode Date: July 14, 2023

We have a new podcast! It’s called Universe Of Art, and it’s all about artists who use science to bring their creations to the next level. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.   The Oceans Are Getting Hotter—And Greener It’s hot out there, and more so than normal July weather. It’s estimated that more than 100 million Americans are under heat watches, warnings, and advisories, spanning the west coast and southern states. Not only is the land hot, but the oceans are, too. The water temperature near the Florida Keys this week reached 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit, just shy of the record for global ocean temperature. A warmer climate is having some visual effects on our oceans, too. The color of the ocean surface near the equator has gotten greener. The culprit? Phytoplankton, which are full of the pigment chlorophyll. Joining Ira to talk about these stories and other science news of the week is Rachel Feltman, Editor at Large for Popular Science and host of the podcast “The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week,” based in Jersey City, New Jersey.   Understanding The Reasons For The Mental Health Crisis In Youth You’ve probably read the headlines about a spike in youth suicide rates, or about how social media and screen time are exacerbating teen anxiety and depression. Or maybe you read about the shortage of services for kids who need mental health treatment, waiting in emergency rooms for inpatient beds to open up. And of course the pandemic accelerated all of these issues, leaving kids who might have been already struggling without the support of friends and teachers in their school communities. Ira takes a closer look at what’s driving these trends with Dr. Patricia Ibeziako, associate chief for clinical services in the department of psychiatry and behavioral services at the Boston Children’s Hospital and associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Dr. Tami Benton, psychiatrist-in-chief in the department of child and adolescent psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.     Rewriting Sharks’ Big, Bad Reputation… For Kids It’s that time of year when sharks are on our minds. Summer is filled with Shark Week content, viral reports of attacks, and shrieks on the beach when someone spots a fin in the water… from a dolphin. But sharks don’t deserve this bad reputation. They are beautiful, fascinating, and—more than anything—the Earth needs them. A new children’s book called “Mother of Sharks,” by Melissa Cristina Márquez, aims to teach kids exactly that. Ira talks with Márquez, a shark scientist and wildlife educator, about the book, shark conservation, and why she loves sharks so much.   To stay updated on all-things-science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters. Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.   Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Listener supported, WNYC Studios. This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflato. A bit later in the hour, we'll talk about the high rates of youth depression and anxiety and what young people, parents, and clinicians can do to help struggling teens. Plus, one of our favorite summer topics, sharks. But first, it is hot out there, and more so than normal July weather, it's estimated that more than 100 million Americans are,

under heat watches, warnings and advisories spanning the west coast and south. And it's not just the land that's hot. It's the ocean, too. Here with me to talk about this hot story and other science news of the week. Is Rachel Feldman, editor at large at Popular Science and host of the podcast, the weirdest thing I learned this week. Rachel is based in Jersey City, New Jersey. Welcome back to Science Friday.

Thanks for having me, Ira. Nice to have you. Okay. I can tell it's hot by just walking outside my house. But that's just my little corner of the world, right? How hot has it? Just how hot has it been? Yeah, too hot is the answer.

Last week we broke several world temperature records in a row. The news is just out that June was officially the hottest June ever on record. So things are superlatively hot. And I would rather they were not, but it's, That is the case. Yeah, you know, I'm looking at the water temperatures off the coast of Florida, and they're insane. Yeah, so basically all around Florida, the water is abnormally hot, but especially around the Keys near Everglades National Park, the temperatures hit 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday, which is 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the average summer peak.

and it's just shy of the global ocean temperature record, which was set in Kuwait in 2020. And these are like sustained temperatures. Of course, El Nino involves warmer oceans, and we knew that that climate pattern was coming up. We knew to expect this. Scientists have been saying for years, climate change is happening. And the next time we have one of these sort of natural peaks in heat, it's going to be really bad. And sure enough, things are pretty dire. Yeah, it looks like Florida is conducting its own boiling frog experiment.

Oh, yeah, yikes. And, you know, I joke about that, but it's actually very bad for the sea life there, isn't it? Yeah, so one thing that scientists are really certain of is that this heat in the water is going to cause a lot of coral bleaching. And, of course, that's dangerous, not just for the coral themselves as living organisms, but the many, many organisms that live on or connected to that reef ecosystem. And reefs, of course, also help protect the land during storms like hurricanes. So it's bad news all around. Speaking of storms, we're barely into this summer.

And who knows what the hurricane season is going to be like considering all this hot water around there. Yeah, you know, it's interesting because El Nino tends to favor stronger hurricane activity in the central and eastern Pacific. but actually lower hurricane activity in the Atlantic. But warm water does fuel hurricanes. So now we're in this interesting position of being like, is the water so warm that we won't see that usual downturn in activity that we expect with El Nino? So that's something that we'll just have to wait and see as the season unfolds. Yeah, this might be what the new abnormal looks like with climate change.

Our next story is also about climate change and the oceans, but about oceans changing colors? Yeah, so based on satellite observations, over the last 20 years, more than 56% of the world's oceans have changed color to an extent that can't be explained by natural variability. So climate change is the likely culprit. Well, what kind of colors are we talking about here? Rainbow colors? Fortunately, no.

Rainbow ocean sounds nice in theory, but would probably be. be pretty, pretty freaky. The greening of the oceans is what we're mostly talking about. You know, the color of the ocean comes from what's hanging out in its upper layers. So when you see a really deeply see, there's actually very little life in there. And green means there's phytoplankton, the stuff eating the phytoplankton. And so yeah, that's normal. It's good for there to be food for the fish, but there's a balance. So it's not necessarily good that we're seeing these big changes in the ocean ecosystem. And we don't know whether. it could be permanent yet, do we?

No, this is all very preliminary. Basically, it's just like we can confirm the shift is happening and that we can't explain it with something other than climate change. All right. While we're on the subject of algae, let's talk about something that's all totally different, and this one

could seriously cut down greenhouse gas emissions from cow poop, algae and cow poop. You've got to make that connect, connect those dots for me. Yeah, so there have been a few studies over the years about adding this species of red algae to cattle feed, because basically, as many people know, cows produce a lot of methane in their burps.

And this is a huge contributor to greenhouse gases in the dairy and the beef industry. And it's all due to the like magical, wonderful stuff that happens in their four chambered stomachs. And when you add certain things to that mix, it can kind of change. change the chemical equation and make less methane come out. So there's been some research on feeding cows, some stuff like this algae, to make them burp less methane. But there are some concerns with that. It's like, is it really safe to feed them a bunch of algae?

All of that is still very much in progress. And these researchers decided, you know, what if we address this other slightly smaller source of methane emissions, which is just the stored manure? Like all that cow poop has to go somewhere and where it sits in storage, it releases methane. And they found that when they just like, basically just like pour the algae on the poop, and it did cut down on the methane emissions by, I want to say, about 44%. Wow. We've talked on this show before, as you say, about feeding cows the algae.

But this is, this addresses the issues on the rear end side of things. Yeah. Unfortunately. Yeah. Unfortunately, that poop problem only accounts for about 12% of the total methane emissions from the cattle industry. So it's a good problem to solve, but unfortunately it will not give us carbon neutral beef. Okay, let's move from the deep in the ground on Earth to Mars. There's more evidence for water on the red planet?

Yeah, basically perseverance has been poking around this area called the DeZero Crater. It was there a while back. And new research on some of the samples it analyzed while it was there in those rock formations shows a bunch of signs of organic molecules. And organic molecules are basically the building blocks of life. They don't necessarily, and almost certainly in this case, don't mean that life was present. But it's the kind of like chemical processes that happen in rock and water that create an environment where life can have. evolve like it did early on Earth.

So always exciting to see signs that Mars was once perhaps wet and full of the same sort of just like chemical shenanigans as happened a long time ago on Earth. Let's move on and talk about two important FDA approvals that are making the news this week. The first one we're talking about is the first over-the-counter birth control pill. Big deal this is. Yeah, really big deal. you know, a bunch of companies and advocacy groups have been working toward this for a long time. And this is the first oral contraceptive pill that is going to be available over the counter.

Hopefully sometime in 2024, but it's a big deal that the FDA has cleared this. And hopefully it's just the first of many. Is this different from the birth control pills that have been available with a prescription? So what's exciting is that it really isn't. It is, you know, of course, just one type of pill. It's a progestin-only pill, and there are many other types of oral hormonal contraceptive. But what's cool is that this is basically just that a company has demonstrated and the FDA has verified that, like, this pill is safe and effective enough for it to be sold over the counter. So hopefully some other types will be approved, too.

And the other FDA approval this week is for a colonoscopy prep that tastes like a sports drink. Boy, people will be happy to hear that. Yeah, so they say. I certainly hope it lives up to the hype. But, yeah, Suflav is a new oral prep solution that is supposedly both low volume and very effective and tastes like a leban lime sports drink. And that's a really big deal because there is very low compliance, something like 70 percent of people are up to date on their colonoscopy screenings, and especially with the rise of

colorectal cancer in especially young people, it's just really important to get people to those screenings. And studies show consistently that one of the biggest hurdles is that people hate the solution prep because it's so gross. So I'm really glad to see that, you know, the pharmaceutical industry is working on tackling that problem because it might sound kind of superficial, but it could really make a difference in getting people screened. Let's finish off with a story about the ingenuity of birds. We've been hearing about, right, how ingenious they make and use tools, and now some birds have managed to keep other birds away from their nests by stealing anti-bird, those little

pointy things from buildings? Yeah, I really love this story because the birds have just really showed us up. Yeah, researchers in Rotterdam in the Netherlands found that. some crows were making their nests using like those long spikes that get attached to buildings to keep birds away. And the crows were using them as kind of like structural material. But then once they started looking, they found that magpies, which built these really like large dome nests, they were actually using them for their intended purposes. They used the spikes on the outside of these giant domes to keep other birds from landing.

on their nests. They look awesome. I definitely recommend that people look up the photos, and it just goes to show you that, like, the birds have it all figured out, and, you know, we're just along for the ride. Well, yeah, we are, and it's actually how a good example, I think, of how birds are adapting to urban environments like we do when we move into town. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, recently there was another study that was, like, about how all of these bird species are building nests with potentially date. dangerous trash, like cigarette butts and plastic bags. And that obviously is a huge bummer and a reminder to people to, you know, try to produce less waste and definitely control your litter. But I love that there is this more optimistic, uplifting story of birds using human junk to make their lives better. Always another wonderful thing to talk over a beer tonight on Friday nights. Thank you, Rachel. Always great to have you.

Thank you, Ira. Rachel Feldman, editor at large, for Popular Science. and host of the podcast, the weirdest thing I learned this week. Rachel's based in Jersey City, New Jersey. We have to take a break, and when we come back, we'll go behind the headlines about what's driving rising rates of youth depression and anxiety. Stay with us. This is Science Friday from WNIC Studios.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flito. You've probably read the headlines about a spike in youth suicide rates, or maybe about how social media and screen time or exacerbation. teen anxiety and depression? Or maybe you read about the shortage of services for kids who need help, long wait times, in emergency rooms, waiting for inpatient beds to open up. And of course, there's the pandemic, which left kids already struggling without the support of friends and teachers in their school communities. I wanted to take a closer look at what's driving these trends.

Get past the headlines, talk with doctors who are working directly with young people and their families to get the care they need. To help make sense of the crisis and advise us what we can do to help are my guests. Dr. Patricia Ibizioco, Associate Chief of Clinical Services, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Boston Children's Hospital, and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Med School. Dr. Tammy Benton, psychiatrist-in-chief in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, that's at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Dr. Benton is also professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania's Pearlman School of Medicine. Welcome both of you to Science Friday. Thank you. Thanks so much for having us. Thank you. You're welcome. I want to alert the audience that we will be talking about some sensitive topics, and if you need to, make sure you take care while listening. Okay, let's just jump in here.

Let me ask both of you first. Let me start with the big question. What role has the pandemic played in the rising rates of mental health issues among teens? Dr. Benton, why don't you try it first? So I think the pandemic had exacerbated a preexisting challenge. So prior to the pandemic, we were seeing increasing rates of suicide among young people, increasing rates of depression and anxiety, longer wait times for mental health services, and significant barriers to access to care,

prior to the pandemic. And the pandemic actually just made everything worse. The pandemic, in the short term, immediately interrupted access to care because services were closed. And then we transitioned pretty rapidly to more telehealth services. Schools closed where many young people received their mental health treatment. And so those resources were no longer available to children and their families. And it actually took a while before we were able to reopen some of those services using telehealth. But in the meantime, there were some populations who did not even have access to those services through telehealth. And then there were other people just waiting until they could have access to services. So a lot of those young people really just started to do worse.

In addition to that, a lot of young people experienced the adversities that were brought by the pandemic. So there was financial changes for children whose parents lost jobs. There were deaths in families. There were lots of environmental turmoil and anxiety that really exacerbated the preexisting concerns. So the pandemic made things a lot worse for young people. Yeah. Dr. Ibeziako, could you actually see numbers associated with the reporting of this additional stress? Yeah.

So when we looked at trends, of children presenting to our hospital over a two-year period, like the 12 months before and then the 12 months after the start of the pandemic, we saw striking increases of adolescents with anxiety, depression, suicide attempts, eating disorders, and substance abuse. And the sad part is when we looked at the trends of kids presenting with suicidal ideation and behaviors, there was actually no difference in the trends between both you. meaning that even without the pandemic, suicidal ideation and attempts were on track to continue to increase. Our hospital was one of only two U.S. hospitals that collaborated on a study of 62 emergency rooms in 25 countries,

and there was a significant increase in kids presenting with self-harm in 2021 compared to 2020 and 2019. As you say, these kids were already presenting their rates were rising before, the pandemic. We are now three years into the pandemic. How have the types of issues that kids are presenting with Dr. Ibeziaco changed over time? So there are three main domains where the most common complaints of kids we see fall into. And that's school stress, peer-related stress, family stress. Those have been the immediate concerns of kids for years, and they have remained the same. The quality and the nature of the complaints and the stress in those domains altered during the pandemic. For example, anxiety about school was about remote school. Well, now kids are now

back in school in person. There were concerns about falling behind academically in the context of doing remote school, which they already had when they were in school in person. During the pandemic, there was sadness about not being able to see friends, concerned, about family members being ill. But now that the immediate crisis of the pandemic is over, those domains haven't changed. They're just no longer tinged with COVID-related issues. Dr. Benton, were you surprised to see this rise continue through the pandemic?

And how do you see it progressing now? I actually was surprised on some level, although at the start of the pandemic, most studies predicted. We would see about a doubling of the rates of depression that we were saying and that we would see about a 30% increase in the number of cases worldwide with kids reporting anxiety symptoms that require clinical intervention. I did assume that some of that would get better as the crisis and as the threat of COVID subsided, but that's not what we're seeing. And what we're seeing is that young people are facing other stressors. So there was, in addition to COVID,

there were a lot of social stressors, including the death of Mr. Floyd and other things, a lot of televised school shootings, all those things contribute to the anxiety that kids are experiencing. But we're starting to see the suicide attempts increasing for a younger group of kids than we had been saying prior to the pandemic. So we're seeing more kids under 12. More minotized youth, particularly black youth. And those are trends we're following very closely. And what do you think is driving this? All of the factors that we've been referencing, in addition to, you know, I believe an increase in exposure to violence and the shootings that we see televised on a regular basis. So a lot of the younger kids are talking about hearing gunshots at night and how frightening and disturbing that is.

And for young people, you know, they're really not mature enough to necessarily respond. to reassurance or even to express their levels of trauma and fear around those experiences. Yeah, through that lens, it's very easy to understand that. Dr. Ibeziako, are there gender disparities, too, and who is being affected and who is seeking care? Oh, there definitely is, and there's always been even before the pandemic. I would say that the CDC in 2019 reported that one in three high school students endorsed feelings of sadness and hopelessness and females had a higher prevalence rate. In 2021, that percentage of high school students was 44% who reported feeling so sad and hopeless.

And almost 60% of female students experienced feelings of sadness and hopelessness. during the past year and 25% have made a suicide plan. So there's definitely a difference in terms of gender and also other disparities. Close to 70% of LGBTQ plus students experienced feelings of sadness and hopelessness during the past year and more than 50% had poor mental health during the previous 30 days.

And that's just depression. Anxiety disorders are even more common than depression and can also affect functioning. I want to go back to the gender disparities for a moment because I was reading a recent cover story in the respected magazine Science News. And let me read you the headline on the cover. It says,

The unseen suffering of boys. Mental health surveys may miss depression in young males. And it goes on to say that depression looks different in boys and girls. So teenagers age and gender both potentially influence how they express depression. Could we be missing how it's affecting you? You pointed out how much higher it is in females? We absolutely can. And I think it's important to say that there are vulnerabilities in all groups and just some groups are more vulnerable than others. But the danger of always emphasizing one group is that then you deemphasize the other. And as you mentioned,

boys are also struggling and their struggle may look different. they may express distress and disorder in different ways. And so it's really important to have a greater understanding of how that looks in different people and not just gender-based, but also across socioeconomic status and racial and ethnicity lines as well. Well, now that we have outlined a depressing, depressing situation, let's talk about anything hopeful. Are there resources available? Will kids respond to treatment?

Dr. Ibeziak, give me an idea of what the future might look like in a better world. Wow. I know you want us to start by being positive, but this crisis was several decades in the making. And there's a lot that needs to be done to improve the mental health care of kids in America. And we need to, in a better world, we will. would invest in research and quality improvement initiatives to better understand mental health diagnosis, to better predict models for illness and resilience,

to have more cost-effective treatments, and to have a cure. We need a full spectrum of care with outpatient and community supports. We need school-based programs and early intervention for prevention. We need acute care and intensive programs, because kids are getting sicker.

The one positive that has come, if any, is that adolescents have become the greatest mental health advocates of any generation. The role of stigma has been significant in mental health, and many people, there's a lot of shame and guilt in talking about illness, and adolescents do that freely, and with each other and with adults

and publicly in a way that generations before them didn't. So it's important. Dr. Benton, let me get your opinion. What do we need to do better to help kids struggling with anxiety and depression? I'm a somewhat more optimistic. So I think this pandemic really allowed the organizations that care for children to come together. So with the Declaration of the National Mental Health Emergency Crisis for young people, we were able to garner a lot of federal and state level support and attention for the issues

that are impacted the mental health of young people. And to Dr. Isabiego's point, young people, adolescents, have been very active voices in addressing those things. So we've made some success in bringing government attention to children's mental health, and we've had some successes such as the Children's Coping Act with mental health, which has been approved. The other thing is that we have hundreds of interventions that work for young people. And the challenge is connecting young people to those interventions.

We have hundreds of evidence-based interventions to target depression and anxiety. And the opportunities that are developing and the funding that's actually been more focused on supporting mental health in schools and in primary care settings, partnering with other providers who are not primary mental health providers, but people who can participate in care, like pediatricians, school counselors, And I think the level of national attention has allowed us to start focusing on other ways that we can do more prevention. So I actually think that we're in a better place than we have ever been in the history of children's mental health from the perspective of, you know, attention to addressing some of the crisis that exist. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Let's talk about in the short time I have left, I'm sure that they are,

parents who are listening at home, they're worried about their kids. Any advice you can give them to get help for their kids if they suspect they are struggling? I mean, parents are on the front lines. Are they not, Dr. Benton? Yes, they are. For parents, one of the biggest questions is, when does my child's behavior and mental health become a problem? And we do make a distinction between times that kids are struggling and times when kids need to seek care. We typically identify impairment as children not being able to function in their normal setting. So a child can feel somewhat sad at times, and parents should inquire and ask questions. But when they notice that their child's not meeting their usual responsibilities and duties,

they're not engaging in their normal social activities, that they're seeing that they're not being successful in areas where they were previously successful, those are really times that families should start to talk with the professionals they're associated with, like they're pediatricians. They can talk with their school counselors. But I typically recommend to families if they're concerned at all, they should talk to their primary care providers first. Most people never see a mental health professional,

but almost everybody sees their primary care providers. And then there's the 988 line. And so if in fact you're concerned that your child may be experiencing some suicidality, you're not sure. You can call the 988 text line or text them. And you can talk with someone who can help. actually guide you through some of those questions you might have about whether you need more support. Dr. Ibeziako, any final thoughts you'd like to add to that?

Yes, I would say that parents are struggling too. A study was just released that shows one in three teenagers have a parent who's suffering from anxiety and depression and two-fifths of teen voiced concern about their own parents' mental health. So parents are struggling at the same rate as their kids and talking with their children about their own emotional struggles can help normalize the experience and open the door for more transparent discussions so that the child doesn't feel alone. And it's, you know, parents have a tendency to blame themselves when a child is not doing well and children have a tendency to blame themselves when they perceive that something is going on in the family. So speaking openly about this is really important. And I'll also

say that adolescents themselves can play a role in making things better. The see something, say something also applies when it happens when it comes to mental health. I can't tell you the number of lives that have been saved because a teenager received a text from one of their friends and saw something on social media and they alerted a parent or a school teacher. So there's lots of things that people who are not healthcare professionals can do to improve this situation. Very, very helpful, I think, to all of us, and thank you both for the work that you do and for taking time to be with us today. Thanks for having us. And thank you for paying attention to this really, really important subject.

The media are key partners in getting the message out. So thank you. Well, thank you. Dr. Patricia Ibizioco, Associate Chief for Clinical Services, Boston Children's Hospital, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Med School, Dr. Tammy Benton, psychiatrist-in-chief in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania's Pearlman School of Medicine.

After the break, sharks, an ode to these fascinating creatures and all they do. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. This is Science Friday. I'm Iraf Plato. It's that time of the year when sharks are on our minds. Summertime is filled with shark news. Viral reports of attacks, shrieks on the beach when someone supposedly spots a shark in the water, when it was really a dolphin or a seal or the Loch Ness monster. But sharks don't deserve this bad reputation that we've assigned them.

They are beautiful and fascinating, and more than anything, we need them. A new children's book called Mother of Sharks aims to teach kids exactly that. Joining me is the author of this book and Mother of Sharks herself. Melissa Christina Marquez, shark scientist and wildlife educator based in Perth, Australia. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks so much for having me. Absolute pleasure. A long-time listener.

So it's really cool to be on the other end of it now. Well, tell us, how did you get the nickname Mother of Sharks? So I, during my master's degree, lived in New Zealand, and I was volunteering at a local aquarium there and became good friends with another one of the volunteers there. and he saw me kind of like cooing over and getting really excited over the sharks that we had in the tank. And he just gave me the nickname Mother of Sharks, very similar to, I'm assuming, Mother of Dragons from Game of Thrones. But I've never seen the show, so I wouldn't know. It's a big compliment, so I'll let you know that.

Let's talk about your book instead. Your book tells the story of a little girl named Melly exploring the title pulls of San Juan Puerto Rico. are you Melly in this story? Yeah, yeah. So my nickname that my family, who speaks Spanish, calls me as Melly. So little Melly is myself. So how are you reflected in this book? Tell me the story behind that.

So essentially, the book is about not just representation and diversity of sharks that you get to see in it, but also representation of the people who study them. Growing up, I never saw a Latina marine biologist, let alone a Latina shark scientist, So even though I really wanted to be one, I never really saw myself being one because I never saw one like me. And so the story kind of shows this Little Melly perusing through the tide pools as she used to do in San Juan, Puerto Rico. And she comes across a hermit crab that says, hey, do you want to go on an adventure? And Little Melly is not one to say no to adventures. So off they went, and it was actually a time-traveling adventure to the future to see what her future could be like.

would end up being like. And her eventually, again, spoiler alert, becoming the mother of sharks. And so it really is a book about representation and showing kids that you can dream as big as you want and jump the shark per se. And you have every right to dream as big as you want. So it's really kind of an autobiography there. Yeah, it's sprinkled with a bit of fantasy in there. The book outside of the time-traveling hermit crab is very, very true to what my life is. So that is how I got interested in the ocean was just going around the tide pools, figuring out what was there. And hermit crabs were the very first thing I remember begging my mom to take home in a bucket. Little Mellie was not an aquarist though, and many of those hermit crabs did not make it, rest in peace. But they fostered a

bunch of just curiosity about the ocean. And so it was really them who started my journey into the ocean and wanting to become a scientist that studied it. Interesting. So why did you pick on sharks to be interested in that whales or dolphins or something else? Ah, well, those are too mainstream. No, the real reason is, so I moved from Mexico to the States later on and parents sat me in front of a TV. And because it was summer, when we moved, I happened to be having just turned the channel to the Discovery Channel and ended up watching Shark Week. And so Shark Week was the first thing that kind of hooked me onto sharks because suddenly I saw this giant great white shark breaching out of the water. So jumping out of the water and I was

hooked. Immediately I was like, that's it. That's what I want to study. And that phase never went away. Well, that brings me to this question about Shark Week, because I think in watching Shark Week over the years, it makes people more fearful of sharks. I mean, and then you had the film Jaws that really shaped the way a lot of us think about sharks, the jawsification of how we view them. But what's really scary is an ocean without sharks, is one of your main points. Yeah, definitely. It's one of those things that a lot of people don't realize that there's more to sharks. sharks, then this sensationalized, terroristic image that they have. They are so important, not just to our oceans, but also to our economies. They bring in millions of dollars into local economies when

people travel around the world to go see sharks and interact with them in some sort of way. Not to mention, they're also really culturally important to a lot of communities around the world. Australia is a great example of that. Here, we've got many Aboriginal. people's and communities who very strongly identify with sharks or have sharks as a creation story. And so the more you take away those predators, the more you start chipping away at all of these ways that sharks are important, not just to the ecosystem, but also to people's wallets and to the culture. Let's talk a bit about how sharks are important to the ecosystem.

Tell us what role they play. Sharks are a bit like, I like to think of them as kind of the puppet master. in that they just kind of rule everything. Now, there is this misconception that sharks are the top dog per se, and not all of them are. There's actually over 500 different species of sharks. I don't think many people know that. And so, yeah, it's pretty nuts, isn't it? A lot of people, when you say shark, they're like, oh, tiger shark, gray white shark,

hammerhead, bull shark, is that about it? And I'm like, no, no, there is so, so many different species that not all of them have the same exact roles. But for the most part, they play a crucial role in maintaining the health of our oceans. And their significance really extends beyond their intimidating reputation, you know, ecologically, economically and culturally. They really contribute to the health of our marine. And in some cases, actually here in Australia, too, freshwater ecosystems as well.

because there are some shark species that are only found in freshwater. And so, you know, in regards to how they impact the ecosystem, you know, they have a profound impact on food webs, regulating prey numbers, promoting biodiversity within ecosystems, and their feeding habits really shape the behavior, morphology, life history of prey species that results in significant changes in vegetation, abundance, and diversity. So removing predators like them can really disrupt the delicate balance of food webs, which then leads to alterations and abundance, diversity, diet, and even body condition of some of these marine species. Very interesting. So then how worried should we be now? Are sharks threatened to be put out of existence?

Yeah, that's a really good question. So a 2021 report showed that over the last 50 years, global shark and ray populations because stingrays are actually relatives of sharks. Think of them kind of like as cousins. So global shark and ray populations over the last 50 years have fallen more than 70%. And a new study that just came out earlier this year found that almost two-thirds of sharks and rays that live around the world's core reefs are threatened with extinction. And that potentially has dire knock-off effects for the ecosystems and coastal communities that depend on sharks essentially. So science says, you know, we are starting to reach that point of no return, but there are some encouraging signs that we're seeing that conservation efforts are starting to

work for some local shark populations, such as Great Whites and Hammerheads. And that's thanks to, you know, strong government bans, policies, and quotas. So it's not too late to reverse what's happened, but the window to do so is really shrinking. We're lucky that Marine wildlife is quite remarkably resilient. There is the possibility for recovery. We just need to have urgent and widespread conservation interventions at this point. When you say conservation interventions, you know, I know people who go out shark hunting, is hunting the greatest threat or are other things, bigger threats? So overfishing is definitely the biggest threat that sharks and rays face in our oceans, overfishing and the bycatch. So when you're capturing sharks instead of

capturing what you actually want to capture, like other species of fish or anything like that. And so those are the biggest threats that sharks face. It's not so much just the, say, the recreational fishermen that you see down the street who is capturing sharks. He has an issue. I mean, it doesn't help whatsoever. But it's more of the big commercial fisheries. So that's why one of the biggest things that shark scientists say when it comes to helping sharks is not just educating yourself about them, but also making sure that you have sustainable seafood choices if you do eat seafood, because that's the biggest way that you can help sharks. You know, this season I've seen lots of headlines like tourists viciously attacked by a shark or shark attacks on the rise. Are they actually on the rise or are we just hearing more about them? I mean, it doesn't surprise me that we're hearing more about shark attacks because we're

constantly glued to our phones. We're constantly glued to our computers. And so these sorts of things will allow you to know about events across the world that otherwise you wouldn't have heard of before. And so one shark bite interaction could be shared hundreds of thousands of times constantly on your feed on any of the social media platforms. And it makes you seem like it's constantly happening. But it is statistically a really, really rare event. And so I think part of it is the hype that comes from the media. You know, at the end of the day, shark attacks, those are always going to be something that are sensationalized and that sells because it is such a attention-grabbing issue. You know, they'll always try to find reasons.

for it and one that you hear a lot is that is that with climate change, the waters are warming, bringing closer to shore a school of fish that sharks may feed on. That climate change may have nothing to do with it? Yeah, I mean, the problem is, is a lot of people want one simple answer as to why shark bites happen. There's not going to be one single answer. Our oceans are so dynamic. There are so many things that are happening at once

that would lead to this very rare event happening. And unfortunately, we don't have all the answers. And I understand that it's very frustrating from a public standpoint of being like, why can't you tell us what this happens? But we are really just scraping the top of the barrel when it comes to understanding shark behavior. And especially now that it is changing because our oceans are changing. Our ecosystems within those oceans are changing, which means the way animals such as predators and prey move is changing, it's like we're almost starting back at zero in some ways.

So, yeah, there's no one single thing to point out like, yeah, yes, this is why shark bites happen. It's so individualistic for every single event that happens. But again, they're so statistically rare, which also makes it hard to study because they are so rare. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. So what do you tell beachgoers who are not? nervous about sharks in the water this summer? To be honest, probably sharks are the least of your worries that you should have when you're going to the beach. You have more of a risk of getting into a car accident on the way to the beach than you are of getting bit by a shark. But here in Australia,

we have drones. We have shark spotters. We actually even have helicopters that do specific, almost like flybys to go over certain beaches during certain times to have a lookout for sharks. And that's one of the best ways to kind of coexist with these animals is having that proactive monitoring that happens. But of course, that takes time and that takes money and resources. But if you're really, really nervous, I mean, the number one way to guarantee you're not going to get bit by a shark is stay out of the water. Yeah. Speaking of going to the beach or being around sharks, I know that you dive with sharks. What's that like? Set this scene for me. It's incredible. I've been really lucky to have gone diving with many different species of sharks, both in and out of cages.

And every single time is as magical as the last. For me, it almost feels like the first time every single time I do see one, even for the species that I've seen hundreds of times now. It's just magical to share a space with an animal that is over 450 million years old. I mean, sharks have been around since even before the trees. And so getting to share the ocean with them, getting to see how curious they are in their own environment. And just every time I've gone diving with sharks, less and less do I see this hyped up version of what the media and movies and horror stories say that sharks are. And instead I see a really intelligent, curious, graceful animal.

And it makes me wish that everybody had the opportunity to go diving with these animals because I think they'd see them a little. little bit different if they got the chance to actually be in the same space as them. Do you have a favorite shark you like to dive with? I do. Tiger sharks. Why? It's going to sound completely counterintuitive. They don't know personal space. If you are starting diving with sharks, maybe don't go with the tiger shark just right off the bat because they do not know personal space whatsoever. But I love them because they're just very charismatic. They're very curious.

And just they're gorgeous. I mean, they're known as tiger sharks because they've got these bright stripes on the side of their body that acts as incredible camouflage against the ocean, which you wouldn't think it would, but it does. And again, just having them come up close to your face really is just something else. That's cool. I can't let you go without asking. What's your weirdest, wildest, coolest shark fun fact? I already gave my fun fact away of the over 500 different species of sharks, but I'll give you an even cooler one. There are some species of sharks that can live over 300 years.

Some scientists even guesstimate over 500 years. No. Yeah, Greenland sharks. Greenland sharks. Do they live near Greenland? They do. They do live in the cold parts. In that cold water up there?

They do live in the colder parts. However, there was one, I think, last year that for some reason was spotted off of, like, Belize. So, you know, maybe they got a bit sick and tired of the cold and decided to come down to the Caribbean. On vacation. Yeah, on vacation. Well, Melissa, I want to thank you. Fascinating stuff. Thank you for taking time to be with us today.

A terrific book. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Melissa Christina Marquez, Shark Scientist and Wildlife Educator based in Perth, Australia. before we go. If you're looking for more books about epic creatures, join the SciFri Book Club for our August pick. We're reading John Scalzi's The Kaisu Preservation Society. It's a sci-fi story about a mysterious organization set on an alternative universe Earth. It features Godzilla-like giants. Yes, it's a great summer read, and you can find out everything you need to know, including how to enter to win a free book, all on our website, ScienceFriiday.com. slash book club. That's science friday.com

slash book club. And that's about it for this hour. We had help from lots of people this week, including office manager Valissa Mayors, executive director Daniel Johnson, stewardship manager, Stanley Delva, and community manager Santiago Flores. BJ Leiderman composed our theme music. If you missed any part of the program, you'd like to hear it again. Subscribe to our podcast or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. Have a great weekend. I'm Ira Flato. Thank you.