The Save Our Seas Foundation aims to build a sustainable future for the earth’s oceans with a specific focus on the conservation of sharks and rays.

“Sharks and rays are key predators that play a whole different array of roles in marine ecosystems,” said James Lea, Ph.D., CEO. “As predators, they help maintain balance within ecosystems through a direct role of eating and being eaten but also through something called the landscape of fear. Simply by being present, they change the behavior of other animals that then shapes the environments that they’re in.”

“A great example of this is tiger sharks in sea grass habitats. Tiger sharks prey on all kinds of grazers like turtles, dugongs, or manatees. Without the tiger sharks, these animals over graze the sea grass and the ecosystem collapses,” Lea explained.

Sharks also transport nutrients, foraging in the deep, and then depositing waste in the shallows. They are important not only to ecosystems, but to the earth in general because they help keep the ocean balanced. A healthy ocean regulates the climate, human’s vulnerability to storms, and the earth’s food supplies.

SOSF started 20 years ago to fill the gap of funding for researchers focused on sharks and rays. At the time, there was no centralized global body for these conservation efforts. To date, the foundation has funded more than 500 research, education, and storytelling projects in over 90 countries.

In addition, the foundation established three centers—an education center in South Africa, a research center in the Seychelles, and the Shark Research Center in partnership with NSU.

“The Shark Research Center is particularly interesting because it’s almost entirely based on genetics and genome studies,” Lea said. “Genetics is an incredibly powerful tool and you can get indicators of the health of a population based on their genomes.”

The Founder of SOSF had a connection to NSU through family and learned of the pioneering genetics work on sharks being done by Mahmood Shivji, Ph.D., NSU professor and director of the SOSF Shark Research Center and the NSU Guy Harvey Research Institute at the NSU Halmos College of Arts and Sciences . The globally recognized research of Dr. Shivji’s team fit with the aims of the SOSF and the partnership was born.

The Shark Research Center also studies the  migration patterns of endangered shark species in several places around the world, and especially in the eastern tropical Pacific. The area is home to a lot of shark diversity, but it’s also an area of intense overfishing, which is a critical issue for conservation. The research has shown strong links between remote island locations managed by different countries and key parts of sharks’ life cycles, like pupping and migrating to forage. The Center’s research is revealing these important areas and how they can be connected to create migration corridors that can be protected from industrial fishing.

SOSF takes the information garnered from the Shark Research Center’s work and other efforts around the globe and uses that data to brief policy makers.

“One of the key things we do is help projects communicate their science in an accessible way,” Lea said. “As well as being direct donors to projects, I also see us as facilitators, helping people maximize what they can achieve through working with other people.”

Education is another a core piece of the foundation’s efforts. The foundation’s center in South Africa, works with children from under-resourced communities who may not have a connection to the ocean. The Seychelles research center has a field station that provides educational programming. At NSU, the foundation has invested in building capacity for early career researchers.

“NSU provides access to the kind of research opportunities that could have real-world conservation value to the next generation of up-and-coming, highly talented researchers,” Lea said. “Graduate students and postdoctoral scientists can learn from researchers at the center, but they also have the opportunity to have their own cutting-edge projects in an on-site, world-leading genetics lab.”

“What we’d like to see is the next ocean conservation leaders coming from places like NSU, where they are inspired and develop the research skill set to help save our oceans.”