After one week, my SciFund project is more than 70% funded! Thanks to the 50 people who have donated so far! I’m making lots of progress, but I still need your help to make sure the project gets completely funded. Any donation helps, but larger donations have rewards, including getting to join me for a day of shark research in the field as a citizen scientist!
Our lab, the RJ Dunlap Marine Conservation Program at the University of Miami, has taken thousands of people out into the field with us to participate in our shark research, and with a $400 donation to my SciFund project, you can join us too! Our participants don’t just sit back and watch; you’ll get to help with every aspect of the research, including fishing, measuring, tagging, and taking samples!
A participants helps us to tag a small blacktip shark as the team secures it.
We also have professional photographers on every trip, so you will get amazing photos of your experience. In addition to making a nice souvenir, this is an important tool in helping us to educate the public about sharks. What can be more effective at convincing people that sharks aren’t a threat to humans than seeing you, their friend or family member, safely interacting with one?
A high school student gets to interact with a large blacktip shark
We’ve caught more than a dozen species of sharks, including nurse sharks, blacktips, bulls, tigers, great and scalloped hammerheads, lemons, and one great white. You never know what you’ll, but I’ve never had anyone say that they didn’t love their trip.
A participant helps us pull in a drumline, the fishing gear we use to catch sharks
Two donors so far have contributed at this level so far, but there’s room for more! The trip can also be given as a gift if there’s a shark lover in your life. You can learn about the projects we’re collecting data for here, and you can learn about the steps we take to make our non-lethal research methods as stress free as possible to the sharks here. Please let me know if you have any questions. We’d love to have you join us as a reward for a $400 donation to my project, but any support you can offer to the project is appreciated!