UTM Alumna, biology major, daughter to a professor and shark whisperer Kesley Gibson spoke to students at UTM on Tuesday, January 30 in Watkins Auditorium as a part of the Academic Speaker series for the honors program.
Gibson is in her graduate studies at Texas A&M University- Corpus Christi and during her time as a Ph. D. candidate she works with the Center for Sportfish Science and Conservation to tag sharks and research their migration habits.
She is the daughter of Dr. Michael Gibson, professor of Geology studies at UTM, and has used her vast array of different science classes to get where she is today. She explained that her career didn’t begin in Marine Biology and says that the skills she gained by being all over have helped grow her abilities in unique ways. Though she isn’t actually a shark whisperer, her experience with sharks, understanding their habits and her tagging of them shows her level of skill with the predators.
Some of Gibson’s stories to students included lively stories of climbing on top of sharks to make sure they get tagged, as well as informing students about the necessity of working relationships between shark angler’s and her center.
The anglers are trained to know how to tag sharks so that Gibson’s department does not have to do as much “leg work” and can work more on the research aspect. Her research included analyses of artificial reefs that have been developed to provide alternative habitats to animals like sharks and dolphins which often lose their natural homes on the hard-bottom of ocean floors.
Gibson says that sharks are being hunted and finned in incredible numbers and that consumerism is killing off the “wolves of the ocean” which would leave an unpredictable future for the ocean. Because sharks are the top of the food chain, if they were to be killed-off Gibson says that the expansions would be felt all over other species and it would not be safe.
Though she says her mother is often hesitant of letting her go into the field and do her own tagging, Gibson says she has gained an understanding of how the animals will behave and she knows how to keep herself safe.
To the concerned swimmer she says, don’t forget you are not actually on their food chain. If you are worried about a possible shark attack, avoid wearing jewelry and swimming during dusk or dawn.
(Kesley Gibson speaks to honors students regarding shark ecology. |Photo Credit/ University Relations)
