Shark Guardian

Join us as we uncover the truths about sharks with Liz Ward-Sing, co-director of Shark Guardian! We dive into an inspiring rescue story and firsthand accounts of awe-inspiring shark encounters. We debunk common myths, share practical steps for shark conservation, and highlight the importance of reconnecting with nature. Tune in for an enlightening discussion that will change how you view sharks and inspire you to take action for their preservation.

Shark Guardian

Let’s hear your story! Click here to submit your tale.

Connect with me on social media!
Instagram
Facebook
YouTube
LinkedIn
TikTok
X
Pinterest

For more inspiration, check out www.WildDevelopmentsStudio.com.

Intro & Outro: Bernie Baggs

Stream2Sea
Code: WildDevelopments 10% Stream2Sea Products! Protecting you, preserving nature.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

Mommy mommy you have to come and see this you have to be like this massive urgency dragged me over mommy look and I just saw this really small juvenile leopard shark so I see this and just think oh no oh my gosh what are we going to do about it she's dragging my hand and saying mommy we have to do something about this and they are classified as endangered globally globally. 
Welcome to Wild Developments Studio. 
Join us as we venture into the breathtaking realm of wildlife arts and untamed adventures. 
With captivating stories from the field and ideas to dive into the visual arts, 
we'll ignite your passion for conservation. 
Get ready to develop something wild. 
Welcome to Wild Developments Podcast, where we reconnect with nature through stories of wildlife, 
art, and adventure. 
I am your guide, Lauren, and today we are diving into the deep blue to celebrate Shark Week. 
Sharks. 
Just the mention of the word can send shivers down the spine, conjuring up images of fearsome predators lurking beneath the waves. 
But are these magnificent creatures really the villains of the sea, or have they been unfairly cast in the role of the bad guy? 
Today, we are setting the record straight and dispelling the myth that sharks are bad. 
In fact, a world without sharks should be what we fear most. 
Today, I have Liz Ward -Singh on the show where we explore the truth about these incredible animals, 
uncover the vital role that they play in our oceans, and we'll debunk some common misconceptions. 
Liz is a co -director at Shark Guardian. 
She is from the UK and is a qualified physiotherapist and scuba diving instructor with over 2,000dives. 
Liz has a great passion for sharks and conservation. 
She enjoys getting involved with Shark Guardian events and presentations, and she is the main point of contact for arranging events at schools and public locations. 
Shark Guardian is a UK charity founded by professional divers, shark researchers, and educators Brandon Singh and Elizabeth Ward Singh. 
Although Shark Guardian is a UK charity, Shark Guardian campaigns and activities take place worldwide, 
including the United Kingdom, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. 
Their objective is to advocate the conservation of sharks in the natural environment through education, 
research projects, and expeditions. 
Liz, thank you so much for being on the show. 
Thanks for having me. 
Always a pleasure to chat to you, my love. 
That's right. It's been so long. 
And I know you started Shark Guardian with your husband. 
Before we get into all that, what was your journey like before Shark Guardian? 
So before shout guardian I had so I'm a physiotherapist by trade I um you know went to school went to college university did the whole thing became a physiotherapist I was massively into sports still am so became physiotherapist enjoyed my job but got to a point where I was just like working all these long hours um yeah just fed up being inside all the time so I decided to ditch the job and go traveling the world and that was in 2007and I fell in love with scuba diving on that trip led me to meet the guy who would become my husband on the island that I'm now living on again which is really funny how things can do full circle um but yeah when I first met Brendan he was talking all about sharks and all these exciting things and um Shark Guardian that's a very short story happened off the back of that really so I know we'll get into more details of that but yeah I was a physiotherapist health and wellness traveled the world and just just had my eyes open to what else was out there not just from an ocean environmental nature point of view you know I went to I was I traveled to Australia so I saw you know the outback I was in America I traveled across state on in a train and saw the terrain changing and then I in Thailand I was living with hill tribes up in the north of Thailand and learning about alternative um healing and medicines and things so that aligned with my health side but then yeah started doing lots of diving and thought how do I get paid to dive rather than paying all this money to dive all around the world so that's when I ended up becoming a dive professional in 2008or 9I became a dive master initially yeah it is a quite an expensive hobby if you're not and even then it's kind of it's a labor of love uh because it does not pay a lot when you started diving did you have a love for sharks already were you afraid of them were you kind of indifferent what was the story there well i first saw a shark when i first went snorkeling and that was in um that was earlier when i very first went to australia that was in 1999actually. 
Actually, at the end of my physiotherapy course, I was able to do an elective placement. 
And we were basically told you can do finish your course by doing another module from physiotherapy. 
Maybe there's an area or a speciality that you want to learn more about. 
Maybe there's something that you want to be better at. 
So or they said, you can go somewhere abroad and do something cool. 
So we had a connection me and my friend went off to australia worked in an abattoir and with aussie rules football and didn't really do that much work to be honest we were just living the life and after that we traveled and there was a place on the west coast of australia is it the east coast i can't remember where exactly um went snorkeling the first time i put my head under the oh no i've mixed up two stories here that was the first time i snorkeled and put my head under the water and was just blown away by the i remember almost hyperventilating the first time i put my head underwater and saw the coral and the fish like it was literally putting your head in an aquarium and just going oh my god i think that kind of sealed my connection to the ocean it was on the the other trip in 2007i went snorkeling um on the west coast of australia and a friend had come back and said i just saw a blacktip reef shark it's like what you saw a shot just snorkeling it's like yeah if you just go snorkeling in that kind of area you'll probably see a shot um and there's me my heart was pumping but like yeah I want to see this and I remember seeing just suddenly that's a shot and it was small maybe about a meter and I just remember thinking wow how beautiful it is just the sleek lines and there's just that that vivid. 
The face, the head, the mouth, and like, that's not scary, that's just beautiful, 
and I went back and told the others, and we kept going out and looking, 
and that sparked my curiosity, I think, of sharks, it's, you know, again, 
cemented, and even now, it's beautiful now, actually, reflecting on that. 
Because I forgot those things, and when you think back of how far I've come now, 
and what we're actually doing, and literally on Friday, we were taking kids to see their first shark experiences here in Thailand and that same wow they are cool they are cute they're amazing versus what the media portrays them such an important thing to share that really is it's like you're coming full circle and sharing that experience with other kids so they have a lifelong love of sharks and what absolutely what sparked that desire in you guys to start shark guardian yeah so i mean brendan my husband is the the kind of drive behind it all he's was on kolanta way before i ever got here he had been working here for more than 10years before i got to kolanta and again we've not been here the whole time so he studied sharks in south africa he's from south africa he studied sharks but um left didn't want to work in research wanted wanted to just see the world and become a dive professional. 
Become a dive bomb. 
He even admits that back in 2001,2002,he was already working in Turkey and then ended up in Thailand. 
So because of his background, when he taught people to dive, he was always sharing, 
going beyond the normal level, going above and beyond, you know, sharing his extra knowledge. 
And other people used to tell me that if they're on the dive boat and um you know it's a big the boats here generally are big double dive boats people would be downstairs and go where where is everybody where's everybody gone and someone would go oh is brendan on the boat today oh yeah uh he's probably upstairs chatting to the guests about sharks and people go upstairs and he'd be there and just just chatting just sharing his knowledge and his love about south africa about the misunderstanding of sharks and just sharing some cool facts so off the back of that I think it was a resort owner who said why didn't you come in why don't you do a little presentation why don't you make this into an actual thing so he started to do that a few times and when we got together he just started to do that and so that was back in 2009I think it was when we when we came to I came to join him on the island um and I saw again we advertised and made this quite big event and. 
And it was quite unique. 
So lots of people came in. 
This room was packed. 
And it was the first time I had seen him in action and actually seen all the facts together and the pictures and things. 
And it was just, you know, even somebody who was a diver and was quite experienced at that point and others who were very experienced. 
They were like, wow, there's so much we don't know. 
Like you think you've got to talk to the average person to tell them what was happening. 
You know, at this point, people were already talking about shark fin soup and the decline of sharks in the oceans. 
Um you know rod stewart's sharp water came out in 2007so this is a couple of years off the back of that and he was showing a bit of the footage and suddenly everyone was like you know what the heck is going on and nobody knows about this because it's under the ocean and at the same time so see that kind of started the ball rolling and he'd been meeting guests on the boat who were school teachers in Bangkok and we're saying please can you bring this education into our schools so we made it into the official thing and we went to I think 2010we first went to schools in Bangkok about four or five schools all after our own back you know we paid for the for our bus you know we were swimming it bus ticket staying on the rooms of friends you know doing whatever we could to get and share this information I mean and from there it snowballed because people saw the potential and this was just brendan talking doing the presentations at that point at the same time we were witnessing on a daily basis the decline in shark numbers in the oceans here off kolanto so i'm called pp um near phuket and everyone there was this vibe of you know wow each season or even within a season we're not seeing as many sharks like the leopard shark or we call them zebra sharks it's different to the small leopard sharks you get in the states you know the beautiful with the long tail actually called zebra sharks back in 200456brendan says you would see leopard sharks on every single dive like you're guaranteed you know you briefed it because you knew you were going to see them and it got to the point 200910you were lucky if you saw one shark a whole season you know that's a big change so off the back of that and then we went to work in Indonesia in 2010same thing we were just not seeing sharks we're speaking to guests we're not seeing sharks and we were like um you know we need to do something about this and we were doing at that point so we're in North Sulawesi every week we. 
We started to do presentations together at this point in the bar, end of the week, 
just with our guests in the resort. 
And we would share the presentation. 
And that's how it became Shark Guardian, because it was us together with our different unique styles, 
sharing our experiences and actually sharing what we had witnessed and were witnessing. 
And we were like, we're going to have to do something about this. 
We got more contacts like from Hong Kong and Brunei, like people were starting to approach us. 
So 2013,I think we'd left our job in 2012and then started to go into schools. 
2013,we said, let's make it an official charity so that when we are approaching schools, 
we have this element of credibility behind us. 
So we're not just another NGO. 
At that point, there was a lot of conservation NGOs turning up. 
They didn't all have the right intentions, I don't believe. 
Not all charities have the right intentions, depending on who is financing them. 
And this is the thing why we've continued or always done this off our own back, 
because we've said we are shark conservation for divers, by divers. 
We don't want to be influenced by any big global corporate, even though that might have mean we could have done more and achieve more. 
But we always wanted the same ethos because of what we'd come from. 
And I think that just made us more relatable from the start because we knew what we were talking about and we'd seen it and we're sharing it firsthand. 
So, yeah, 2013,we became a charity and here we still are. 
That's fantastic. And you even have some junior shark guardians in your family, 
right? 
Yeah. Yeah. The first shark guardian came along in 2015.
2015so she you know we have photographs um of going into schools like there was remember there was one school that I just left her with like the librarian in the in her little place while we went and did the presentation so at that point Brendan started to do a few more by himself or he would go off traveling by himself but we certainly traveled a lot still in the first few years we went off to. 
Bali and Dubai and you know Olivia came with us um and then yeah Mariella came a few years later so as soon as they were beginning well from birth they were being dunked in the ocean they were water babies from birth i mean i was i was snorkeling whilst pregnant with both of them and seeing sharks and also i'm going to komodo being pregnant with olivia and seeing more from the surface than some of the divers saw on certain dives like you know i was spotting all these um nurse sharks and reef sharks and manta rays even um so you know the energetic energetically my children were just mermaids from the start for sure they were born into it and one of them i believe it was one of your girls recently helped save a zebra shark yeah that's super beautiful so they've been immersed in it they've been watching the presentations from us from the start you know Olivia so she's nine she could well she does I hear her talking to her friends about sharks I hear her talking to and again it's not just sharks because sharks are apex predators they control the balance of our oceans you know take sharks away and it just kind of throws off balance everything below in that food chain because it's so intricate it can intricately link together so she's been learning about it from the start and she can recognize night sharks she can talk the talk if someone says that they're scared of them you know she does it in a very compassionate way actually so we'd just before Christmas we'd been with some new friends here on Atlanta we'd been on an exploratory day and we ended up in our local town we were all just we were hot thirsty and hungry so the choice of restaurants didn't wasn't a key factor in this thing that we ended up I didn't even actually notice it was a quite a a seafood restaurant but all along the front in our local time on the seafront they are seafood restaurants um and I'm just saying that because we normally wouldn't spend time in a seafood restaurant but in Thailand most of them serve seafood anyway you know we don't choose to to eat seafood so we're in this restaurant and the girls went out to the front and it turned out there was a little pen as you get you know these crappy little mesh pens where there's you know know lobster and there's the different ones for lobster and crayfish and then there's fish and things and I hate that kind of thing but we'd already sat down and had ordered by this point. 
Olivia comes running over mommy mommy you have to come and see this you have to be like this massive urgency dragged me over mommy look and I just saw this really small juvenile leopard shark zebra shark and i was like oh no oh my gosh like to see that in in the wild so to speak i do that with inverted commas because you can see these in aquariums you know zebra sharks do breed quite well in aquariums and this is how they are able to repopulate i actually saw the other day there's a there's a release program through breeding leopard sharks in aquariums in rajahampat that's about to start to try and reintroduce the species that's been totally wiped out there but you know historically there was lots of them so i see this and just think oh no oh my gosh what are we going to do about it she's dragging my hand saying mommy we have to do something about this and they are classified as endangered globally especially because in asia particularly they've more or less been wiped out so we started this process of speaking to the owners um it was a bit of a a lengthy process you can't just say let's have the shark let's take it away it turned out that they had paid a fisherman 5000baht so about 150pounds so that's probably around 200or so dollars if i'm right i'm not sure the conversion but just to give you an idea um but quite early on it seemed they were quite keen for us to take it away to get rid of like they could you could could see they were nice people I don't know the full intention of why they bought the shark they said that the fishermen had it and offered it to them maybe they saw it as an attraction for bringing people into the restaurant I don't think they had intentions to eat it as you know a lot of restaurants would within this country you're not seeing commonly but but shark steak is featured on them uh menus especially in phuket um and so we started to think about well how do we do this take it out on the boat and by this point you know we're two or three three months down the line it's a lengthy process we didn't want to pay for it to start like a cycle that's we've seen happen in other places but they were just like you can take it and and you know we're talking about taking it on the dive boat which is a good hour hour and a half actually on a slow boat you would probably probably have to do it it can be up to two hours to the local reefs Brendan was like look the mangroves are over there this is still a juvenile shark let's just just let it go let's just let it go into the ocean yeah it's a boat this is where the boats go but literally 100meters there are mangroves that's where these juvenile species live and they are so you know evolutionary advance with regards their tracking systems you know their sensory systems to know where they they need to go to be honest if we let it go it's going to have a better chance of survival than living in this part you know it's like a three meter by three meter mesh thing that that dips at the bottom so you know the circumference the space it had to actually move around was absolutely tiny so we rallied some of the world school communities we uh all schooling families so all the families that are living here that are you know that move around to different countries we did a little presentation we had the owners there and we literally guided the out into the ocean and it was one of the most beautiful things because it just swam off and we shared with everyone why we did that and why we didn't because putting it in a box or container and the journey out to a further distance reef that would have traumatized it you know that might have killed it in itself because it had already been living in such a small confinement so our hope would be that it swam off to the mangrove learned what it was supposed to do as a juvenile and has a lovely life we don't know but we feel that was the the better of the situation and all thanks to olivia and she was she was there and helped us guide it out and um and actually we were bringing people down to the pen one at a time because it was down below the restaurant and she was there pointing it out and there were all the fish and creatures within the pen and we were educating them so it was yeah she she wants to be a marine biologist and a vet she's got a great foundation for it that must have been a really proud mom moment for you and having Olivia do that is she still like over the moon over the whole experience oh for sure and it just shows the passion it just shows those they are capable of so much more our children the next generation they are capable of so much more than we could ever give them credit for and we have to support that and nourish that you know and living in an environment like this I mean certainly we get to nurture that she is somebody who will rescue absolutely everything you know we've had um um I mean we have cats so sometimes we've had injured birds geckos whatever that we've rescued from the cats and we've nursed them back to health they don't always survive we have all sorts of critters out in the jungle around us you know so we're learning about these things all the time but but there's often a box with a a gecko or something inside that she's looking about you know and getting that hands -on connection is is so amazing and yeah you know we're all capable of so much more but certainly the children there's a reason we were born at this time there's certainly a reason and our children were born right now because they're gonna have to tidy up the messes that we humans have created yeah we've got quite a big mess to clean up that's for sure and sharks in particular they're portrayed as this big scary mindless man -eating monster and as we're recording this in may it's going to air during shark week and it capitalizes i feel a lot on fear and drama because that's what sells however that's not what sharks are like can you dispel the myth for us and why we should be at peace with sharks yeah i mean it's crazy what the movies and media do and this. 
This is that was always our intention was to expose that with our presentations. 
I mean, Jaws was made in 1975.
We share this all the time. 
That's before myself and Brendan were born yet. 
We grew up with that movie and that fear instilled into us. 
And it's actually the parents, you know, we can be at a swimming pool or at the beach here in Thailand. 
And we hear the parent making this, you know, did it, did it. 
And we're going watch out watch out there's a shark coming you know for their little kids like 1975guys you're still replaying that narrative it's like it's time for it to change and i think with the evolution of technology and drones are a beautiful thing and you are you know you do your drone stuff don't you i don't know what you'd call your drone expert. 
But, you know, this footage, the footage that we are seeing of people paddle boarding or surfing, 
you know, all these things, when you can see great white sharks and other sharks within that vicinity, 
even coming up to and checking out those people and going away. 
Way like we have to share the truth that for millions of years what if you talk about for hundreds of years with with humans have been coexisting in the ocean this is what we have to learn to do is to coexist it is their environment the drones are showing that that is happening it is happening all the time those creatures that are potentially dangerous i'm gonna say you know they're still wild creatures but we are not their food source look at what they actually eat accidents occasionally happen but they are not wanting to they're not hunting they're not looking for humans they are looking for seals and turtles and things they might come up and see somebody on a surfboard or paddleboard in a curious fashion and they use their amazing senses to decide decide if it is something they want to have interaction with and nine times you know i was going to say 99.9999they're coming up and checking and just swimming away i think that's such a beautiful thing um but they are portrayed as these monsters and it's because when attacks happen or deaths happen it is blown up and sensationalized on such a crazy level that that's what people people remember. 
So again, we share the facts that it's between two and 13deaths from shark attacks per year, 
the most it's ever been in one year. 
And this is in records that's almost 500years old. 
The most it's ever been in one year was 13.
There was a really bad year when stuff was going on in Australia or something. 
And who knows the reason for that? 
The average is two. 
And we're talking globally and they don't share the reasoning behind the other thing is when you get an attack classified as well so for example there's been attacks when it's been a fisherman pulling a shark out the water on a hook and that shark has lashed out at it and it's got injured that's passing an attack you know come on whose fault is that the actual deaths that have happened are so so rare but you think about the populations you think about how many people are in the water each day swimming diving kayaking surfing you know and occasionally attacks have happened that people have said yeah there was a warning flag out i shouldn't have been in the water when. 
When I'd been warned that there was great whites or bull sharks, you know, 
bull sharks are able to swim in fresh water as well as salt water. 
They sometimes hang out in estuaries. 
You know, sometimes people have gone swimming or surfing again when they've been told not to. 
And attacks have happened. 
There's been there's been attacks. 
And I think I saw a death a few years ago in Egypt and there was a lot of chumming or there was restaurants that were dumping their fish carcasses in the oceans. 
That was close to shore you know it's like there's when those attacks or deaths are broken down there's normally factors that could have been avoided but accidents happen we share the statistics and it's particularly interesting or funny here in in asia so you know for sharks it's between 2and 14each year again the average is like you know so super super low 150people die die each year from falling coconuts in coconuts in southeast asia like like you know you wouldn't not walk out and about in asia for fear that you're gonna get dunked on the head with a coconut there's a whole list you'll know this yourself lauren you know vending machines cows selfies i don't even know they i imagine they can't even get the actual number of people that die each year from selfies because people do crazy stupid things to get that shot or video for social media um yeah you know sharks are still portrayed at this as this monster and this is one of the big things after our presentations people walk away and go huh yeah i am gonna i'm gonna reframe that and it's because at the same time they learn about that they're not as scary and dangerous as they're made out and at the same time they realize or they learn they learn how important they are for our ecosystems and for our survival. 
I used to dive at an aquarium and my job was to talk to guests about sharks all the time and my favorite statistic was you're more likely to get struck by lightning than you are to get bit by a shark. 
Well a year after I quit that job I was on the beach and I got struck by lightning and now I can say you are more definitely definitely more likely to get struck by lightning than ever get bit by a shark because I still have all my fingers and toes but that's the other thing we share and it's wonderful you know I go in and say I've got I've got probably around 2,000dives I stopped counting around a thousand Brendan has like almost 9,000dives and it's like hey we're still here with all our fingers with all our limbs and we haven't we cannot describe a scary shark experience we can only share amazing experiences and that is getting up close and personal with different sharks you know sharks that do come and are curious like it's an amazing experience and it's not a scary experience in any way so what has been your favorite shark experience um the two really i mean there's three pre doing all this so after i'd first been traveling and i got into diving i went on a liverboard trip to. 
Egypt with a very good friend and we were just a bit bored with the diving that we'd been doing and there was this one dive and Egypt's great for diving we just didn't have the bad experience that year so I do need to go back we decided to swim out into the blue to see what we could find and I was facing one way my friend was looking towards me and she said she just saw my eyes widen because there was this huge oceanic white tip um shark that just appeared and you know and they're known for being quite playful and they're on the potentially dangerous list because they have bigger teeth and you know they're they're big scavengers um and it just kind of came she saw my eyes and then turned and saw it and it just like swam around us four or five times and then just swam away and we just kind of looked at each other and we're like breathing heavily and it was like this. 
This was way before I understood or knew what I knew about sharks. 
So that's likely the most memorable. 
But also diving in South Africa and Aliwoshol, the raggies, we call them raggies, 
they're ragged tooth sharks or known as sand tiger sharks. 
You see them in the aquarium. 
They've got long pointy noses and they're kind of the eyes. 
Yeah, the teeth that are just kind of exposed, aren't they? 
And they just kind of float by really slowly. 
So at certain points of the year the the um the females go and congregate in alawal shawl for mating you know the males then start to come in and there's a lot of surge going on so you're kind of moving from side to side and have to navigate how you move forward and i ended up just in this basin um with probably 20of these shot and just you know i was well i didn't intentionally swim into where they were it was just i was kind of carried there and again just had to just hang out and they would just kind of come you know we're talking within a meter or so some of these sharks would come in and they're up to four or five meters long and they're coming quite close and the eye is just there and you just stay calm there's the eye contact and the main thing is to stay calm no sudden movements and I'm just like hanging out with them and there's some beautiful videos of me doing this and I think that just. 
Just being at one with the ocean and everything that's going on at that point was just such amazing experience that it's amazing that I can now share that with others as well. 
It's beautiful. 
What are some things that we can do to help with shark conservation, 
whether we are living inland, far, far away from the ocean, or we are on vacation and we're in the ocean? 
What are some things we can do every day to help improve their future? 
Yeah, I think it goes without saying, you know, do not buy or consume any shark related products. 
I'm sure, you know, people know not to eat shark fin soup or shark steak, 
but it's out there. 
And also increase your knowledge about what shark is used in that you don't realize. 
So head to our website. 
There's something called squalene that's shark liver oil that's used in some beauty products still. 
So just check that that's not on the list. 
There are, you know, synthetic substances to replace that. 
And fish and chips, you know, it's rock salmon, flake is something in Australia that they say it's flake, 
or it's labelled as rock salmon, but they are species of sharks, they are small dogfish sharks. 
So so just check that there's not false advertising with your seafood with your fish and chips with your beauty products even pet food you know it's not always labeled correctly so just check because those things are still fueling sharks being killed um especially shark fin soup you know that's a whole topic under itself but you know make the education so make your friends friends and family know as well you know you might have um chinese linked family you know brendan's half chinese we have family who historically did eat shark fin soup you need to make them know why we shouldn't be eating it because it's such a brutal practice of killing the sharks to fuel the sharks in trade and this is what's been beautiful going into schools that kids have been presented to shark fin soup at banquets like birthdays weddings you know it's traditionally been used to show wealth if you can have the right information they can change what they're doing you know that there are changes there are fake substitutes that can be used it's a slow process that um but we have had success of children stopping parents um serving shark fin at weddings and things um but i think that the education is key get yourself educated get people people learning and liking sharks more than they do to give them a better press they're not cute and cuddly like dolphins and elephants that are out there you know that are there so just following organizations like ours sharing our posts to educate others you know we strive to do that and if you're a snorkeler or diver or just like to get in the water go and support conservation efforts or just eco -tourism there are places where you can go on boats like us going and taking people snorkeling to see the sharks um if you're a diver you know support our expeditions we just announced our amazing new expedition to galapagos did you see it we're doing scheming on how i can go because that's closer to my neck of the woods i'm like i could actually meet liz in person this would be awesome yeah oh you know and you know and dive and snorkel with people who are gonna share the education and the research you know support what you're doing the ripple effect of that is absolutely massive and organizations like ours rely on that kind of interaction um so yeah yeah oh it'd be amazing to have you with us that's going to be that's just top of the bucket list trip galapagos you know and again in the philippines i'm taking a few divers there so you're getting to dive like you would normally but getting the extra education that then you can pass that on to others and that's what it's about spreading in the word that's what we've done from the start and then where can people find you so that they could go on these trips yeah so our website www .sharkguardian .org if you just put shark guardian in your search engine it will come up so we have a website we're on all social media as well as um shark guardian so there's links that you can click to join if you go on our website there are free resources there's like posters that you can download um you can subscribe to our newsletter so you get up -to -date information and then if we are involved in any kind of campaigns like petitions writing letters to MPs we will put it on there and you will get notified so little things like that you know petitions do work that's how we ended up getting the UK to ban the import and export of shark fin you know it was still happening and last year it efficiently the law of change so that together we are stronger our voices can be heard we allow the information to be shared with you and then you can take the action simply so they're the they're the simplest things you can do fantastic and we have just about a minute left before we go what's one way that people can connect with nature just get out there just take steps you know have something in your mind like every week i'm going to do something new so go to a new place space go do a new walk go to a new park you know if you're not near the beach there is somewhere nature nearby that you connected to go experience it see it write about it get your shoes off if you can go barefoot get your hands in it that's the main thing because we came from nature we are nature like and we just need to be absorbing it more than we are get out the city get out your home get away from the screens connect and watch the magic unfold perfect thank you so much and. 
And until next time, get outside and see what develops. 
Thanks for joining Wild Development Studio. 
We hope this exploration into the world of wildlife arts and adventure has sparked a desire to get outside and connect with something wild. 
If you have an adventure that's awe -inspiring, don't hesitate to share. 
Click the link in the description to submit your story to have it featured on our show or be a guest. 
Until next time, keep connecting to the wild and see what develops. 
The views, opinions, and statements expressed by individuals during Wild Development Studio productions do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Wild Development Studio or its affiliates. 
Participation in any activities, expeditions, or adventures discussed or promoted during our content may involve inherent risks. 
It is strongly advised that individuals conduct thorough research, seek professional guidance, and take all necessary precautions before engaging in any such activities. 
Wild Development Studio, its representatives, or employees shall not be held responsible for any injury, 
loss, damage, accident, or unforeseen incident that may occur as a result of participating in activities inspired by or discussed in our content. 
By choosing to engage with our content or act upon any information provided, 
individuals do so at their own risk and discretion.