[Dr. Greg Stunz] Most people say, "well I'm afraid to go in the ocean because of sharks",
and we like to say well you should be really scared of an ocean with no sharks because then we would all really be in trouble.
[Chancellor Sharp] I'm here with Greg Stunz who is the
director of the Center for Sports Fish
Science and Conservation of the Harte
Research Institute which is on the
campus of Texas A&M University - Corpus
Christi,  tell us what you do with sharks.
[Greg Stunz] Sharks are key to the planet our health
our livelihood of humans. Most people
don't understand how important the
oceans are, and so we can use sharks to
communicate that information.
We call them "the great balance keepers of the ocean", they keep everything in this
delicate balance, and by having sharks in
the ocean we have healthy oceans.
Unfortunately they're heavily fished,
their populations are dropping
dramatically and that's got us concerned
and so we initiated a large tagging
program to find out where where do they
go,
where do they breed, what information
needed to manage their populations.
So we can attach electronic tag to their
dorsal fin whenever it breaks the
surface it sends us a immediate position
of where it is anywhere on the planet
directly to our smartphones and so we
can track their movements.
[Chancellor Sharp] Can the public come down here and see your work
[Dr. Greg Stunz] Absolutely! We give tours all the time
we're really proud of the work we do and
we love to see people and like to have
them come by and we're really happy to
engage with the public.
[Chancellor Sharp]The Harte Institute is probably the best place in them in the state of Texas,
at least the state of Texas, to do
research on sports fishing and the
health of our bays and estuaries and
congratulations on everything you do.
[Dr. Greg Stunz]  All right thank you.
