"Protect what you love with fierce grace. Speak up for the silent, and keep moving forward—Passion with purpose and action make waves that change everything."

For me, saving sharks has meant physically helping individual animals survive, fighting lethal shark-control programs, helping change laws and policies, reducing demand for shark products, working with fishermen, supporting livelihoods based on living sharks, contributing data and research, and—probably most importantly—helping millions of people replace fear with enough understanding and respect that they actually want sharks to survive.

A few of the ways I’ve worked to help save and protect sharks:

• * Direct rescue and release: I’ve personally helped sharks survive dangerous situations, including freeing entangled sharks from ropes, nets, and fishing gear; helping release sharks caught by fishermen; and assisting animals suffering from potentially lethal entanglement or capture.
• * Stopping lethal shark-control measures: I’ve spoken publicly, worked with scientists and conservationists, and used media and public outreach to oppose lethal shark-control programs, including the Western Australian cull. In 2015, alongside Dr. Riley Elliott, I helped physically revive a juvenile tiger shark that had been hooked through its head during the cull and left for dead.
• * Helping strengthen shark protections in Hawaiʻi: I worked alongside community members, advocates, and conservation partners to activate public support that helped successfully achieve stronger legal protections for sharks in Hawaiʻi state waters.
• * Supporting stronger EU shark-fin protections: I used my platform to encourage support for the successful “Stop Finning – Stop the Trade” European Citizens’ Initiative, which ultimately received 1,119,996 verified signatures and triggered formal EU consideration of stronger restrictions on the trade in detached shark fins. The initiative led to a European Parliament hearing and debate and an ongoing European Commission assessment of possible further action.
• * Reducing demand for shark products: For nearly a decade, I’ve encouraged the public to contact restaurants, retailers, shipping companies, and other businesses connected to shark fins, meat, cartilage, oil, and other shark products. I created a free educational advocacy letter so people have a practical tool to encourage companies to stop participating in the shark trade.
• * Working directly with fishermen: I’ve spoken with fishermen who had sharks out of the water and helped persuade them to release the animals quickly rather than kill them.
• * Creating sustainable alternatives through ecotourism: I’ve helped develop and promote responsible shark ecotourism in places where communities can benefit economically from protecting sharks rather than killing them. I’ve also employed former shark fishermen in ecotourism, helping create alternative livelihoods centered around living sharks.
• * Changing minds and behavior: I regularly receive messages from people who tell me they once feared, hated, killed, or ate sharks but changed their perspectives and behavior after learning more through my work. That change in perception matters because people are much more likely to protect animals they understand and value.
• * Teaching coexistence and safety: I’ve spent years teaching people how to better understand shark behavior, reduce unnecessary conflict, respond more safely, and replace fear with informed respect. Helping people understand that peaceful coexistence is possible is a major part of shark conservation. The plight of sharks, the threats they face, and practical ways people can help protect them are included throughout my educational programs.
• * Providing free shark and conservation education around the world: I’ve given hundreds of free educational presentations around the world about shark biology, physiology, behavior, the threats facing shark populations, and the urgent need for their conservation. An important part of those presentations is giving people practical ways to get involved—helping them understand what they can personally do to reduce or counter some of the human impacts and threats facing sharks.
• * Using science and field data to support conservation: Through One Ocean Research, I’ve collected and shared long-term shark data, contributed major field datasets to research, maintained a long-term shark-identification program, supported graduate and university research, and co-authored peer-reviewed work on nonlethal shark-bite mitigation.
• * Training others to continue the work: I’ve worked with and trained marine biologists, naturalists, interns, dive professionals, and guides so that responsible shark research, education, tourism, and conservation can continue far beyond my own individual efforts.
• * Using public communication as a conservation tool: Much of my work is about taking information that might otherwise remain within specialist circles and making it understandable to millions of people. Conservation ultimately depends on people caring enough to change their behavior, support protections, vote, advocate, and choose not to kill sharks.