UNC academics research shark ecology and mislabeling of shark meat in grocery stores

Shark Week is an annual, week-long television event on Discovery Channel, originally premiering on July 17, 1988. Scheduled content can range from educational and informational to thrilling and entertaining, meant to debunk negative representations of sharks while still offering a fun viewing experience for audiences. 

"Shark Week is amazing at spreading that kind of information and combating the negative narrative that's spun around sharks," Ella Parry, a rising sophomore in the Department of Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences, said. 

"It's important that people tune in and pay attention because it just shows how beautiful sharks are and how important they are," Angelina Klepp, a rising sophomore in the EMES department, said. "You learn a lot about them, and you just see how they act naturally." 

Though it brings positive exposure to sharks, Shark Week has also faced criticism for highlighting programming that paints the creatures out to be more vicious than they are, Klepp said. 

At UNC, sharks take the limelight for longer than a week, with many professors and students researching and studying the creatures year-round. 

Joel Fodrie, a professor and the director of the Institute of Marine Sciences, leads a lab group that is broadly focused on estuarine ecology and how different organisms interact with one another within the larger coastal community, one of them being sharks. The lab is also the primary caretaker of the UNC-IMS longline shark survey, the oldest of its kind in the United States. 

The survey helps gauge shark behaviors over the course of decades, Fodrie said. It aids with longer-term understanding, something that is vital in fully comprehending the behavior and nature of sharks from many species. 

Fodrie said that North Carolina's coastline, estuarine systems, temperature changes and abundance of seagrass all provide for a prime environment that can support over 50 species of sharks, with around 20 that can be caught with some regularity.

Over the past three years, Fodrie's lab has been looking into the trophic ecology of sharks, dealing with what sharks eat. By studying the subject, the lab is able to gauge what conditions are conducive to a proper habitat for various shark species. 

Studying trophic ecology has been vital in deducting larger patterns of migration and interaction for sharks within a larger ecosystem, along with understanding where they fit into a larger food web. 

John Bruno, a professor in the Department of Biology, primarily researches marine biodiversity, macroecology, coral reef ecology and conservation and climate change's impact on marine ecosystems. 

Bruno teaches Biology 221: Seafood Forensics, a course-based undergraduate research experience typically offered in the fall, providing students the opportunity to conduct research on topics of their choosing.

"It's so much fun to teach these classes too," Bruno said. "It's way more rewarding than just teaching a lecture course because you make a lot of connections with the student. You really get to know them."

Bruno said that a group of four students came up with an idea to study the mislabeling of shark meat at grocery stores, and conducted the research themselves in fall of 2022. After the project’s success, Bruno's next fall section in 2023 repeated the experiment, but with a greater sample size with previous students serving as Undergraduate Learning Assistants. 

Bruno's class found that within the 30 samples they collected, 97 percent were mislabeled. 70 percent were labeled as shark but not to species, and of the nine that were named to species, eight were mislabeled. Out of all 30, one sample was correctly labeled. 

Bruno said the mislabeling of the meat had hidden the fact that some samples came from shark species that are classified as critically endangered and two of said species were also high in mercury, a material that is harmful in frequent doses. 

Beyond that, Bruno leads a lab group that works in the Galápagos and the Caribbean, where some of his graduate students study sharks. He primarily works on the impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems, coral reefs and bleaching. 

Fodrie said he would be teaching a first-year seminar on shark conservation and ecology this upcoming fall, an opportunity for incoming first-years to further explore the world of sharks. 

Parry said that the EMES department holds research colloquiums and that she had heard of some students who did their theses on sharks or ocean climate change.

Parry also suggested students continue following Shark Week and reading articles about sharks. She also said picking a shark, learning about it and sharing fun facts about it with your friends is a great way of learning while educating others. 

"Re-educating yourself is the big thing," Klepp said. "Sharks aren't vicious. They're really cool."

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