I've been interested in sharks ever since I can remember
My name is Andy Nosal and I'm a
marine biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
and my area of specialty is sharks.
There's so much we don't know about them
and part of that difficulty is because they're underwater.
A lot of my research happens in the field.
We spend a lot of our time on a small boat,
in the hot sun,
trying to fish for sharks.
We will then put some sort of tagging device on them
so we can understand their movement patterns.
The biggest and most challenging question in my field is
why do sharks do what they do?
Sharks have been around for hundreds of millions of years.
It's one thing to track sharks.
But it's another to relate those to other aspects of their environment.
Scripps is an amazing place to do shark research
because in our back yard we have access to all kinds of different sharks.
And in fact La Jolla is a shark and ray hot spot.
Every summer, hundreds and hundreds of sharks and rays call this area home
and we're trying to figure out why that is.
Sharks come in all different shapes, sizes, and colors
and the vast majority of them are completely harmless to people.
Right now I'm working on soupfin sharks.
Like the leopard sharks, every year, we see hundreds of soupfins schooling in the shallow waters off La Jolla.
I think one of the most important roles we have as scientists
is not just conducting the science, but communicating that science.
So a really important part of my job is outreach.
So I'm constantly giving tours to school groups.
I also volunteer my time at the Birch Aquarium
where I go diving in the tanks to communicate my science to the public.
