Netflix has a new (sarcastic air quotes) “documentary” out about Ocean Ramsey, who longtime readers and followers know is a serial wildlife harasser who also coordinates massive online harassment campaigns against scientists and conservationists who criticize her. In 15 years on social media, I’ve never gotten more (or nastier) harassment then when I criticized her pseudoscientific nonsense. Several of my professional shark conservation advocate colleagues have gotten death threats from her supporters. It is worth noting that I asked about dozen professional colleagues if they wanted to comment on this post, and they all refused out of fear of being targeted by her. Every time I speak out against this, many of my professional colleagues privately thank me and say that they refuse to speak up publicly because of her well-earned reputation for online harassment against experts.
Anyway, I am not linking to the documentary, you can find it if you care. I have not watched it and I probably won’t, even though there’s apparently a clip of me criticizing her in it. I do not need to watch the movie to write this post, because she’s been sharing the same nonsense for years.
In no particular order, here are some thoughts, many of which I’ve shared snippets of over the years.
Please do not do this.
Ocean Ramsey claims to be a shark scientist, but is not.
Let me be clear that I am not the “who counts as a real scientist” police. I am, however, a member of the Board of Directors of the oldest and largest professional society for shark research and science-based management, the American Elasmobranch Society, and I helped write the code of professional ethics for shark research. It notes that we should “strive to represent scientifically-based understanding and knowledge accurately, and to avoid and discourse dissemination of erroneous, biased, or exaggerated statements.” It also notes that we should “properly acknowledge all existing published data,” “never fabricate, falsify, or suppress results, deliberately misrepresent research findings, or otherwise commit scientific fraud including misrepresenting ones status, title or affiliation.” It notes that we should “always conduct research to minimize adverse environmental effects…in compliance with legal requirements for protection of research organisms,” and finally that we “have an obligation to correct errors and misconceptions propagated by others.”
Ocean Ramsey does not collect data, does not publish research, does not collaborate with researchers who do except for a study testing the effectiveness of shark repellent where her role is not clear, does not present at scientific conferences, does not train students in research methods, does not have research ethics permits for her activities, regularly misrepresents her own expertise and credentials, and regularly shares unequivocally factually incorrect statements about background issues related to shark biology and conservation despite being repeatedly corrected. In my capacity as a scientific journal editor, I would never assign her to peer review a paper because she does not have the qualifications or credentials. And that’s not counting the aforementioned coordinated cyber-harassment of legitimate scientific researchers and mainstream conservationists.
It is not elitist or exclusionary to say that words mean things and that professional fields require some degree of training, experience, or credentials, of which she has none. Ocean Ramsey is not a scientist, full stop.
And I just wanted to briefly stress here that another way of saying “does not have research ethics permits for her activities” would be “behaves unethically.”
What Ocean Ramsey does is wildlife harassment.
Swimming with sharks is not inherently wildlife harassment, and lots of people do it all the time in ways that are safe for humans and non-disruptive to sharks. However, grabbing, riding, and poking sharks is wildlife harassment, as is bothering them while they are feeding. This can cause physiological stress, prevent hungry animals from eating and refueling during a long migration, or, in extreme cases, cause pregnant sharks to spontaneously abort. I discuss why this behavior is harmful for sharks (and potentially for people) in this CTV news interview, a brief clip of which is apparently featured in the film. (I did not speak to the filmmakers at any point during their research or production about any of this). I also discuss it in this Washington Post article, which is apparently quoted in the “Controversies” section of her Wikipedia page, and in a Jaws 50th anniversary article for Outside magazine.
Whether or not something is wildlife harassment is not determined by whether or not her online army believes that she personally has good intentions and is trying to help. What she does is wildlife harassment, full stop.
Inevitably, whenever I point out that this is wildlife harassment, some of her supporters say something like “even if what she’s doing hurts sharks, surely that’s better for sharks than being killed and having their fins cut off?” Those are not our only two choices in how to interact with sharks.
Inevitably, whenever I point out that what she does is wildlife harassment, some of her supporters criticize the non-lethal minimally-invasive research methods that my professional scientist colleagues use to gather data that actually helps protect and manage threatened shark species. Our work is done following best practices and research ethics permits, and the result is data that’s actually useful and used, not just for an instagram post.
Finally, when someone crazy and harmful does something crazy and harmful and all the experts say “that is crazy and harmful,” please do not report this as something “controversial” or “disputed.” It is something that is crazy and harmful and you can and should say that.
Ocean Ramsey is not an educator, and does not “raise awareness” of anything true or useful for shark conservation.
It’s true that raising awareness is a vital part of conservation advocacy- if people aren’t aware of a problem or why it’s bad, and aren’t aware of a solution, they won’t help us build the political support to enact that policy solution. However, raising awareness of incorrect information does not help. People incorrectly understanding what the problem is and what the possible solutions are also does not help us to build the political support to enact a policy solution. A great deal of the information shared by Ocean Ramsey and here team about threats to sharks and possible policy solutions to those threats, as well as things people can do to help, is wildly inaccurate, by which I don’t mean “I personally disagree because I have a different opinion.” And yes, misinformation from shark enthusiasts is absolutely a real problem for legitimate shark conservation advocacy.
Notably, whenever I point out that she regularly shares wrong information, some of her online defenders say things like “What do you mean? Without her, I never would have learned____” followed by a list of things that are simply not true.
Ocean Ramsey does not contribute to shark conservation in any meaningful way.
I’m never really sure what the argument is here. “People think sharks are dangerous killing machines. Watch me annoy this animal and it won’t eat me. See, we should save them!” It doesn’t make any sense. Also, the people most often being shown this behavior are people who pay a lot of money to go shark diving, so they’re probably at least a little convinced that sharks aren’t dangerous already?
Even if wildlife harassment like this was the best or only way to convince people that sharks are not a threat to your safety, people wrongly believing that sharks are a threat to your safety is absolutely not a significant threat to sharks, and therefore correcting that misunderstanding absolutely does not help sharks that much (there’s a reason why I have just one slide on this in my 50-slide “Why Sharks Matter” book talk, it’s just not that important). The number one threat to sharks is unsustainable overfishing, and unsustainable overfishing is not fixed by videos of people riding sharks.
Speaking of overfishing as a threat to sharks, whenever I criticize her dramatically overstated role in shark conservation, people point to a series of social media graphics claiming that Hawaii banning shark fishing, a campaign she was involved in, as some sort of major conservation victory. That rule refers only to shark fishing within Hawaiian state waters, not to the adjacent Federal waters where something like 99.99% of local shark fishing actually happens, so this rule did not actually do very much. Ocean Ramsey knows this, but doesn’t want you to know this, because then you’d realize that her supposedly greatest accomplishment didn’t actually do anything. Additionally, the shark fishing that occurs in adjacent Federal waters is relatively sustainable, meaning it’s not something that legitimate conservation organizations or conservation scientists are focused on stopping- see above about misunderstanding threats and solutions.
And sure, it’s absolutely true that the global SCUBA diving industry has been extremely helpful for ocean conservation by increasing the non-consumptive value of marine wildlife, sometimes oversimplified as “making sharks worth more alive than dead.” But that refers to aggregate behavior, not any individual dive operator, and the aggregate impact of a mostly well-run industry does not excuse poor behavior by extremist elements of that industry.
Sharks really do need help, but this ain’t it.
Sharks are some of the most threatened vertebrate animals on Earth, and they absolutely need conservation. Fortunately, there is detailed data on the threats to sharks, and detailed evidence about what policy solutions do or don’t work. We don’t need to guess here, and people who say “but my opinion is” are not contributing meaningfully to the discussion. Trying to help and wanting to help are not the same things as actually helping. Sharks need data-driven evidence-based conservation policy informed by their actual threats, not glory-seeking from people who misrepresent their credentials and attack actual experts.
We can do better, and we should.
