A World Beneath Galapagos: Dr Alex Hearn on Hammerhead Sharks, Where Meaning Lies in the Sea, and a Hidden Underwater Swimway Through the Pacific

Jason Elias: 0:08

Hi and welcome to the Big Deep podcast. Big Deep is a podcast about people who have a connection to the ocean, people for whom that connection is so strong it defines some aspect of their life. Over the course of this series, we'll talk to all sorts of people and in each episode we'll explore the deeper meaning of that connection. Today, I speak with a marine ecologist in Ecuador whose work has been seminal in protecting the waters around the Galapagos Islands. Hello, this is your host, jason Elias. Welcome to the Big Deep podcast.

In today's episode, I speak with Dr. Alex Hearn, a marine ecologist at the Universidad de San Francisco in Quito, Ecuador.

Alex's work is focused on marine conservation in and around the Galapagos Islands, off the coast of South America, which is part of Ecuador. Alex is one of the scientists working to establish the Galapagos Marine Reserve, one of the world's largest underwater areas dedicated to protecting migratory pathways through the deep ocean.

This oceanic highway for marine life, as it's sometimes called, creates a corridor where endangered migratory species such as sharks, whales, turtles, and manta rays can travel without fear of illegal fishing. 

So, unsurprisingly, I found Alex to be very down to earth and rooted in a deep love for the ocean, and we discussed how he first connected to the ocean a remarkable personal connection to a deceased friend while tagging lobsters, and where he finds meanings in the oceans off the Galapagos.

Alex Hearn: 1:47

My name is Alex Hearn. I am a professor of marine biology at Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador, and I work mostly in the Galapagos Islands, studying the movements and behavior of sharks and other marine migratory species.

Jason Elias: 2:01

So, alex, can you talk a bit about when you first remember your connection to the water?

Alex Hearn: 2:06

I grew up in Madrid and just before I was 16, we went on a biology field trip to the north of Spain, the Galicia, and we spent a week there doing intertidal surveys, went out on boats and that just did it for me. The some reason, when I was out there on the shore, there was a clear path forward. There were questions whose answers came quite naturally to me and I realized something switched and now I miss not being close to the ocean. I need to be near it, close enough to sense it Right.

Jason Elias: 2:57

So you found this connection to the ocean and, of course, all you have to say is Galapagos to an ocean person and they immediately go into a reverential space is one of the most incredible places on the planet, even with most of us, including me, not having been there. But to you it's now, you're a home, and I'm wondering what about Galapagos drew you there and now, having come to know it so well, what is it that makes it so special?

Alex Hearn: 3:23

Galapagos is a challenge Environmentally. It's one of the most spectacular places I've ever been to, both on land and sea. But from a human perspective, it's almost like a microcosm of what's happening to our planet today. It's not an easy place to work and it's not an easy place to live. Back in the 80s there's only 4,000 people living there. Now there's over 30,000. So it's grown a lot in terms of human impact over the years and that poses a lot of challenges to an oceanic archipelago that is extremely fragile. When I see carallels how the human population on Earth has grown and how fragile Earth is I feel that there's challenges in Galapagos and if we're able to rise to meet them, then they may be scalable to the future of the planet. And then, of course, the biodiversity is just beyond belief. Biologists don't earn that much money, but last month we stopped in the middle of the ocean because a broody's whale and her calf were swimming alongside the boat and we jumped in and took photos of her. How much do people pay for that experience? That was just a day in the office, so those moments, they're intangible. And yet Galapagos after 20 years. There's always something that will surprise you and delight you in a way that you cannot imagine.

Jason Elias: 5:03

Right, that is incredible and in some ways it must feel great to have such a profound impact on an environment you care so much about personally. But one of the things I've discovered about doing this podcast is that everyone who does great things in the ocean bases that on a much more intimate private connection that they have to the water. And I know you had a deeply touching moment off an island in the Galapagos that came surprisingly well, tagging lobsters, and I'm wondering if you could tell us that story.

Alex Hearn: 5:35

When I first arrived in Galapagos, my first project was a mark recapture project for lobsters and that meant that we'd go out across the entire marine reserve, we'd catch lobsters, we'd measure them, we'd put a tag on them and we'd release them. And the idea was that if that lobster was recaptured we could measure it and we could see how much it had grown. When I first arrived in Galapagos I was living in the volunteer area. It was a castle actually. It belonged to a crooked politician and he'd fled. My bed was a heart-shaped concrete bed very bizarre. But my roommate, a guy called Hamish Saunders he was a terrestrial person, he was a biologist, but we became very good friends and he used to come out with me sometimes to dive and to catch lobsters. When he finished up in Galapagos he went back to New Zealand, where he came from, and he ended up volunteering down in Tasmania. They were doing some surveys there and there was a huge storm and a freak wave came and Hamish was lost. One of the last emails he said to me was had coming back to Galapagos to work with me as a volunteer over the summer. Of course, he never made it. Well, his older brother came after Hamish died and I took him out on one of my research expeditions and that trip was insane. We had Galapagos Hawks sitting on the rocks right where we were swimming. You could almost reach out. We came across an albino sea cucumber. I mean, galapagos really showed her best side on that trip and I just got the feeling that there was a reason for that. One evening we were out in the west of the islands, in Fernandina, which is one of the most pristine islands on the planet, and we went diving to catch lobsters. And when we came up, hamish showed me what he'd caught and one of the lobsters that he'd caught had a tag on it. When I looked up when that lobster had been tagged it had been caught and tagged by Hamish the year before I just felt like that was a moment that the ocean was giving us some kind of message of coming full circle, if you like, a reassuring sense that the ocean is there, that there's something beyond the physical, and I got the feeling that Galapagos wanted to show Andy its best side.

Jason Elias: 9:43

Well, that's beautiful, but I think epitomizes the underlying message of what this entire show is about. What I also think is interesting is that, like most everything in life, in order to love something you must first know it, and in to know it, you have to engage with it and understand it, and that's what I feel like you do with Galapagos, and that recently led to a major ocean victory for ocean conservation with the Galapagos Marine Reserve Swimway, which made major headlines around the world. Can you tell us how that came about and what it is?

Alex Hearn: 10:24

When I came to Galapagos, I came to work in fisheries and, of course, I was diving with sharks, and it's not often you get to have a close-up experience with the top predator tiger sharks and silky sharks, as well as the hammerheads of whale sharks in Galapagos. There is a visceral connection when you're down among them. But more than that is fishermen in Galapagos were pushing to allow longlining inside the Galapagos Marine Reserve and, from the fisheries perspective, I was trying to put together a white paper on why that might not be a good idea, and I realized there was no information at all on the behavior and ecology of sharks in Galapagos. No one was doing anything, and so I contacted some specialists. Galapagos is a name that has a three-digit pool, so it wasn't hard to persuade people to come, and we started tagging several species of sharks, and what we found was that hammerhead sharks in particular were moving from Galapagos to Cocos Island. Cocos Island is 700 kilometers northeast of Galapagos. It actually belongs to Costa Rica, and in order to get from the Galapagos Marine Reserve to the Cocos Marine Reserve, they've got to travel across 600 kilometers of ocean. But it's not protected, and so that means that Ecuadorian and Costa Rican fishing fleets can harvest sharks in those areas. So we began to think maybe we need connecting marine reserves in the region, and we found several of these species of sharks and turtles seem to use a chain of underwater mountains as a reference, using the magnetic signal of those underwater seamounts to navigate. It's called the Cocos Ridge. So we started talking about creating a swimway, a protected corridor that leads to marine reserves across boundaries, and we started talking about this about seven years ago, and that is what resulted, in December, in the declaration of this new marine reserve that extends protection from Galapagos all the way to the border of Costa Rican waters.

Jason Elias: 12:36

Well, that is an incredible victory and I have to say I have tremendous respect for someone who dedicates themselves completely to something they're passionate about, as you have. But, dropping beneath what you've done, I'm curious if there are deeper, more personal motivations for why you have devoted yourself to the world's oceans.

Alex Hearn: 12:56

It's several things, I think. I think it's the mystery. You have that layer that you see when you're standing on the beach or the cliff and then there's so much going on underneath. I always wanted to do something as a career that wouldn't just be a job and then go and have fun. I wanted to have a rich experience in my life 24 hours a day, not just before and after work, and finally, I love it In retrospect. I wanted to work on something that would make some kind of difference when I move on, to being able to look back and say, well, I tried to make the planet a little bit better than it was when I was on it. I tried to clean up a little bit that idea that we're stewards and so we need to look after it. If we can leave it just that little bit better, then good on us. So I think that's what really motivated me. I got a feel for the first time of the link between humans and the ocean. That really opened my eyes to the idea that we do need to have some management, some regulation, and I just thought, well, I need to get working then.

Jason Elias: 14:49

Finally, we end every interview and every episode with a single open-ended question. We ask everyone we talk to what does the ocean mean to you?

Alex Hearn: 15:01

It's provided me with my purpose here in this short time that I have. It's provided me with fear and pain. Provides me with joy. I've taken my kids out snorkeling. My eldest has even helped me out with some research. I think that provides me with a connection to my kids that will outlast me. It's just a part of my life that I cannot turn my back on, even if I wanted to.

Jason Elias: 15:34

Thanks for listening to the Big Deep podcast. Next time on Big Deep there were about 30 lemon sharks and some bull sharks down at the bottom of the school and being in the water with them, I knew I had to save those sharks. We really appreciate you being on this journey into the Big Deep as we explore an ocean of stories. If you like what we're doing, please make sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Also, please find us on the socials where you can like and comment, because those subscribes, likes and comments really make a difference. For more content from our interviews in our series, photos of every guest or just to get in touch, please reach out at our website, bigdeakcom Plus. If you know someone you think we should talk to, please let us know at our Big Deep website, as we are always looking to hear more stories from interesting people who are deeply connected to our world's oceans. Thanks again for joining us.