SPEAKER_00 0:42

You're listening to Word on the Reef, diving into marine science on the Great Barrier Reef and beyond with Tanya Murphy and Brett Goodban. Good morning everyone and welcome to Word on the Reef. I'm your host, diver and marine conservationist Tanya Murphy. And joining me, as always, is Cairns Aquarium's marine educator and fish whisperer Brett Goodban. Good morning, we're back. Before we dive into today's topic, just a quick marine news update. Unfortunately, some alarming news. The world's oceans have just recorded their hottest June on record, and they're now tracking through their hottest July on record. On Monday, the global average sea surface temperature reached 21.06 degrees Celsius, around 0.7 degrees above the average for this time of year. That might not sound particularly warm compared to some of the ocean temperatures we get around here, but this is the global average. And the oceans contain an almost unimaginable volume of water. So raising the average temperature of the entire ocean by 0.7 degrees requires an extraordinary amount of extra heat. The previous record was set in 2023 when scientists described the warming as worrying, terrifying, and even bonkers. Not cracking. Because it was so far outside what they expected. That period was followed by devastating marine heat waves, floods, and extreme weather around the world. Right now, the UK and many other countries in Europe have swelted amid new heat records, while Antarctica has just experienced unprecedentedly balmy winter conditions. The oceans absorb more than 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases from humans burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas, and that heat is accumulating at an accelerating rate. In 2020, scientists estimated the heat was equivalent to around five Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs being dropped into the ocean every second. By last year, that figure had roughly doubled to around 11 every second. The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has warned Earth is being pushed beyond its limits. It's not too late to take action, though. It should be a wake-up call for governments, including here in Australia. Our federal government is currently considering whether to approve the Browse Gas Project that's been proposed by Woodside off the coast of Western Australia. A project to drill up to 50 gas wells around Scott Reef. A project expected to generate more than a billion tons of extra carbon pollution over its lifetime. At a time when the oceans are sending us such unmistakable warning signs and renewable energy is cheaper than ever before, it's difficult to understand why we're still contemplating major new fossil fuel developments. There is public consultation open right now on that gas project though, so if you want to help have your say on it, visit marinconservation.org.au. There's a petition you can sign, which goes off to the Federal Environment Minister to save Scott Reef and stop that drilling proposal. Now, let's take a big breath in.

SPEAKER_03 3:59

Yes, okay. Reset.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

And a big breath out. And let's turn our attention to learning about one of the ocean's most extraordinary animals.

SPEAKER_03 4:07

Oh magnificent.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

And Brett, today I'm super excited. Don't give it away until I say who am I, okay? Okay, I'll take it. I'm sorely excited because we're going. I'm going to be talking about an aquatic animal that I know pretty much nothing about. Yep. And that's saying something. But rather than me telling everyone what it is, we're going to play Who Am I? Okay, let's go. Are we ready? Okay. I can grow over seven metres long. Whoa. I have a long flat snout called a rostrum with tooth-like projections called dermal denticles on either side, giving me what looks like a chainsaw for a nose. I use electro sensors in my rostrum to detect crustaceans and schools of fish, and then slash them to death with my face chainsaw. Croaky. Sounds terrifying. It does. Unless threatened, I pose little risk to humans. What am I?

SPEAKER_03 5:01

Oh, well, it's either a really cool superhero, which I think certainly couldn't. It's a sawfish for sure. They're magnificent.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

These remarkable relatives of sharks and rays once lived throughout tropical and subtropical waters around the world, but today they've disappeared from much of their former range, and one of their last global strongholds is right here in northern Australia. All five species are now listed as critically endangered, yet most Australians know surprisingly little about them. I've never actually seen a live sawfish. How about you, Brett?

SPEAKER_03 5:33

Uh I haven't been lucky enough to see them being at the aquarium because we had two juvenile ones in our big Billabong tank when we first started. Yeah, zig and zag, of course.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

Adorable chainsaw-faced fish. So what makes sawfish so important to our northern Australian ecosystems? What are the perks and pitfalls of having the world's most impressive headgear? How many sawfish are left? What are the biggest threats to sawfish and what can we do to help protect them? To help us sort through these questions. Joining us today is Dr. Barbara Waringa, founder, director, and lead scientist at Sharks and Rays Australia. For the past 16 years, she's travelled to some of the most remote parts of Northern Australia researching sharks, rays, and sawfish, capturing, tagging, and releasing these incredible animals to better understand and protect them. Her work has been featured by the BBC, National Geographic, New York Times, Science, and the ABC. Good morning, Dr. Warringer, and welcome to Wet on the Reef. Good morning. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to have you on the show. To start off, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your origins?

SPEAKER_02 6:39

Well, I'm originally from Austria, so I come from a landlocked country in Europe. And I made my way to Australia for my PhD and decided to stay and got stuck on sawfish back then, and that's it.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Yeah. So how did you first become interested in sawfish?

SPEAKER_02 6:56

So it was actually I knew already that I wanted to work with sharks and rays. I knew that that was my thing because I'd been to the the shark lab in the Bahamas and it's a pretty cool place, pretty awesome. Worked with juvenile lemon sharks over there. And then I came over here and I did the research for my master's on shovel nose rays. And then I went to the Sydney Aquarium and I remember seeing a sawfish, and there was also a little kid there asking the mom, like, why do they have a saw? And I was like, Oh, that's a that's a really good question. And I realized that nobody had ever looked into it, and so I think that's that's how I got to work with sawfish.

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Oh, do you mean to say you were the first person to research these things and no one had looked into it before?

SPEAKER_02 7:33

There was one paper before where basically he described that you know the sawfish was using the saw to rake through the sand or something and then stir up little animals and then was feeding on those, but what I found was very different and much more active.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Much more violent. Yep. That's so exciting. Skilled, skilled, not violent. Oh yeah, definitely. They're amazing and remarkable. Yeah, it's so so wild how much we still don't know about the marine world until an individual comes along and says that's what I'm gonna research. So, how did the organization Sharks and Rays Australia come about?

SPEAKER_02 8:08

Yeah, so I founded Sarah in 2015 and initially, so my background was when I did my PhD, I was working on sensory biology of sawfish, I was figuring out how to use their saw and that kind of stuff. And then I really wanted to take that research out in the field, but also I wanted to work with community. I always found you can have all the right legislations and policies in place to protect something, but if the people on the ground don't know what's happening and don't understand how rare the animals are that they interact with, then you're not gonna get very far. So it's it's really that action on the ground, and for that I needed an independent organization. And then on the first field trips, you know, I was like, okay, we're gonna deploy these tags on these animals and figure out what they're doing in the wild and blah blah blah. And then we found a drying rack with sawfish fins in the middle of nowhere, nine years after the animals got protected.

SPEAKER_04 8:57

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

I thought people were still hunting that.

SPEAKER_02 9:00

Yeah, so there were still issues, and then on my first field trip as well, I got a video submitted from a member of the community who had caught a sawfish the day before in the Norman River and it had its saw removed and it was swimming around. And so I realized that you know there is a lot of knowledge in the community that is really important for science, but also that we need to feed the right information back to the community. They need to understand that you know you can't take the animals anymore, you can't take saws as trophies and stuff. And so that's really you know, within the first year, the whole direction of everything just completely changed into conservation.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

That's what we always say. Education leads to conservation. If people I've said I've said that a few times at work. That's why I'm looking at you. That's that's one of Brett's favourite sayings because if people people don't realize they don't understand these animals and they're just gonna keep making the same mistakes. Yeah. So are they a shark? Are they a ray? Oh, I love this one.

SPEAKER_03 9:51

I cop this every day.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Are you gonna answer it?

SPEAKER_03 9:54

Well, it's it's yeah, so it's a bit tricky because the one we have on the wall at work looks they look like a shark, obviously, because they have the dorsal fins, but people will go, oh gee, that I didn't know sharks had a chainsaw. And I go, Well, if we flip him over, and then he's got gills underneath, so technically he's a ray. So for people it's like they can't make that connection. Because the general public see rays is just round, flat, little barb out the back. Uh not a five-meter thing that they can't see the gills, but they're magnificent, aren't they?

SPEAKER_02 10:21

Yeah, they're they're fascinating. But then also when you when you think of rays, there is so many different body morphologies in that group. So it's like you've got the mentor raid and you've got sting rays that just look more like pancakes and shovel nose rays that have nose rays, shark rays with the rounded head and the rows of thorns and stuff. So there's a lot of different body shapes, and there's lots of animals that get grouped together as the shark-like rays because they still have that shark-like body, and sawfish are amongst those. Having said that, there is saw sharks as well.

SPEAKER_03 10:50

There is.

SPEAKER_02 10:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Just to confuse everyone. Not to be confused. Yeah. Wow, this is this is just seems like the most primeval animal. It's hard to imagine how they evolved to have this structure on the front of their face. What do they actually use it for? What did you discover about what they use their rostrum for?

SPEAKER_02 11:09

So they use the saw for feeding and also to sense their prey. So I think when you think of animals or vertebrates in the aquatic environment that have an elongated snap or rostrum, sawfish are the only ones that are known and have been proven now to use their saw basically for feeding and for sensing their prey. So when you think of marlins and swordfish, they use their sword to stab. And then when you think of platypos, for example, they have electrosensors on their on their bees, I don't know how you call it. Yep. So they use that to detect their prey, but swordfish use it for both.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

So it's a weapon and um detector.

SPEAKER_03 11:49

And then it's hyper-sensitive for a swordfish, isn't it? Because a normal shark has the ampulla of Lorenzini just across the snout and down the side. But the rostrum's full of it, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 11:57

It's full of it. And it's for me, it will always fascinate me about sensory biology. When you when you look at an animal and you look at its sensory systems and their different adaptations, it gives you an idea of what requirements or what habitats this animal is found in. So if you think of, for example, different species of rays, and even amongst sawfish, the ones that are found in in the most murky waters have the smallest eyes because they don't knead their eyes very often. But then they're the ones that have the most ampillary pores because they detect their environment through the electric field. So they're swimming around in completely dark waters and just sensing the electric field of what's going on around them. Which I think I mean I worked on the power. I worked on that for seven years and I still don't understand it. It's it's so cool.

SPEAKER_03 12:40

Yeah, it's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

Yeah, you know how they always refer to people as having five senses. But there's actually in the natural world, there's so many other senses that are not just, you know, seeing things or yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 12:52

And some of those things are really hard for us to understand because we're visual, we're visual animals.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

Yeah. I had the image of someone using a metal detector when you sweep it over the beach to try and detect things. So is that kind of how they they just swim along waving their saw from side to side to see if there's any tasty crustaceans under the sand?

SPEAKER_02 13:10

When you just look at a sawfish of how they're sitting, because they're raised, they don't have to swim continuously. Okay, so a lot of shark species have to swim all the time to ventilate their gills. Sawfish, because they're raised, they can sit down and they can ventilate their gills passively. And so when you see a sawfish resting, quite often that saw is like at a 45 degree angle. They stick their nose up in the air. So that antenna is out. That antenna is checking for things swimming past it. And I've seen, for example, images of you know really small sawfish and they have a big barra scale embedded on the teeth, on the rustral teeth. So I don't know. I'm assuming you know this sawfish was just resting on the bottom and this big bearer swims past, and he's like, oh no, and just whacks him. So it's almost like they set a trap. Yeah, well they use it for defense as well. Yeah, yeah, but it could be a trap, but they also really actively feed and they are incredible hunters, and I think that's the thing that before my research wasn't really that well understood. Like they will not just because they're considered the bentic animals, which means they're close to the ground, anything like stingrays, what they do is on the ground. But they're actually they will go into the water column to hunt and they will hunt fish on the surface as well. And yeah, they're incredibly adapted to do that.

SPEAKER_03 14:20

Yeah, because I used to watch Ziggy do that in the morning before we opened, he'd be sitting on the bottom, he'd have his rostrum sitting up. Yeah. And he'd just be sort of panning it side to side. I'm like, Are you detecting this morning, big fellow? So leave me alone, I'm busy. Yeah, and you just he'd pick up everything, and then you see you see the barrist him over and go, Morning Ziggy. Uh-oh, I don't want to go near that. And you get a little little flick. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

Yeah, because the water at the water at the aquarium's really clear, so poor old Ziggy's not going to have much chance of surprising anyone. Oh, there's no surprising in that. No. Yeah. But I I know I I missed it. I've actually never seen a sawfish because I didn't get to the aquarium when Zig and Zag were there. And I can only imagine they must be hard to keep with the other fish in the tank.

SPEAKER_03 15:02

Yeah, I guess for the other fish, they were stuck with him day and night, so they'd learnt pretty quick not to play Tiggy with something with a chainsawing off the front. And it was funny because you could see he'd get really excited and want to play, and all the barrows would be hiding up in the corner going, uh no, we'll be fine, thanks. We're taking that, we're taking the day off. And and I used to, yeah, it used to be a bit sad because I used to look at him sitting on the bottom, looking up at the barrows and go, Can someone just play with me, please? I promise I won't stab anyone today. Uh but he used to come over to the front. So during the shows, after a period of time, he could tell that he was picking up the vibration from our voice, from my voice, because it was always there every day. And at certain times of my show, when I got right up close to it, he comes straight over to the side of the tank and just rub his rostrum up to the side and then just swim around in a circle. Does he know that you're there? And I said, Yeah, yeah, he does.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Good vibes only, and so where are sawfish found?

SPEAKER_02 16:02

Yeah, so sawfish used to be found in the tropics and subtropics all around the world. Okay, so the Mediterranean used to be a hot spot, for example, which it clearly is not anymore. So they're very likely extinct from there. But yes, tropics, subtropics, but then also the specific habitat type that they're found in is coastal areas, inshore areas, and also going up into rivers. So very different from other sharks and rays.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

I have definitely never seen one while diving or snorkeling on the outer reef, and that's probably because they're more coastal, right?

SPEAKER_02 16:33

Yes, but some people have seen them. Yes, yes, yeah, yes. So with our citizen science campaign, we get sightings in from from Exmouth Gulf, for example, where people see them when they're diving. And Florida, there is a wreck in Florida where a lot of people see big sawfish, and because the animals are coming back there now, so the protections are working. So I think I saw a video where somebody was diving with seven adult small tooth sawfish lying on the ground. Like incredible.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

Oh my goodness. I would lose the pot if I saw a small fish.

SPEAKER_03 17:04

Yeah. But they've been known to they can go a long way inland and a long way out to sea, can't they?

SPEAKER_02 17:10

Yeah, so in the Amazon, freshwater sawfish, which internationally are called large tooth sawfish, but they are known to travel up to 800 Ks upstream. That's right. And in Australia, it's around 400 Ks that we we know for sure. Yeah. So you know, part of it, part of their life cycle is they are a freshwater species at that at that point.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

For those listeners who can't see, you'll have to visualize it. Dr. Waringer has brought us five rostrums, which is the saw part of the front of a sawfish. How did you come by these specimens?

SPEAKER_02 17:42

Yeah, so we get a lot of donations from the general public and then also saws that get confiscated. So yeah, I brought some of them with me, which we also always bring at you know, public events and to schools, and because it really visualizes it, and and you can see that they're all different. So you can see based on where the teeth are and the shape of the teeth, you can identify the species. And so these are the four Australian species, and then also there's a baby saw. That's the fifth one. But I don't have a saw of the fifth.

SPEAKER_03 18:10

Oh, look at the little baby saw, look at it.

SPEAKER_02 18:14

It's really special, and when you look at it, that species actually, when they're born, they have the little hooks at the back of the teeth, and you can still see them.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

Wow, so yeah, we've got uh apart from the baby one, you said that these represent the four different species of sawfish, is that right? That are found in Australia, yes.

SPEAKER_02 18:30

And then there is a fifth one which is found in Florida.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

So Okay. And so yeah, what are the main uh differences to identify your sawfish?

SPEAKER_02 18:41

So the saw is the easiest way to identify them. So number of teeth, position of teeth. Um, when you look at the narrow sawfish, for example, there is no teeth at the base. Okay. So that makes it quite easy. The narrow sawfish also has these when you look at the teeth, they're really flat, they're more like fingernails. Whereas from the other sawfish, the teeth are really spiky and like nails. Yeah, and then the shape of the saw as well. So you can see two of them are very tapered. So that one and the and the dwarf, so the first one, and then the two other ones, the green and the narrow, are really straight and really long.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

Mm-hmm. We're passing around these giant. So this is showing saws in here. Yeah. I'm really clumsy, so I better put these down before I hurt someone.

SPEAKER_03 19:24

Well, I used to we've got one as a display.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:27

And when we used to do the the shows when Zig was in there, I used to hold onto the rostrum. Yeah. And I'd show it until one of the staff members was looking through the security camera one day, watching me do my show, and I'm waving this thing around like a sword. And they said, Bretstar, you might want to watch this dude. You're pretty animated. And I looked at it and I'm just waving this rostrum around in front of people, going, Look at the size of this thing. And they're like, okay, I won't, I'll I better not hold that thing anymore.

SPEAKER_02 19:51

I think you guys at De Aquarium have one that has a handle corved into it, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_03 19:55

No.

SPEAKER_02 19:56

No?

SPEAKER_03 19:56

No, we've just got uh just a normal freshwater sawfish. Yeah, okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:00

I've seen one that had a handle.

SPEAKER_03 20:02

Oh, it's in the display.

SPEAKER_02 20:03

In the display. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes people used them as weapons. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:07

It's awful. Actually, we've got another one over there that I brought in. Yeah. Do you want to talk about that one or not? Oh, well, yes. Well, it was donated by someone who found it in their backyard and knew that I worked in the aquarium and cornered me one day in the car park and said, I've got something for you. And I thought, uh oh. Okay, is it a tooth? She goes, Oh, it's got a few. And no one was more shocked than me when she came over with that thing. It's a huge rostrum. How big do you reckon that was?

SPEAKER_02 20:37

So I think that sawfish would have been maybe three to three and a half meters.

SPEAKER_03 20:41

It's so terrible.

SPEAKER_02 20:43

Yeah. But the good thing is it made its way to Sherricks and Rays Australia. So if we can take that DNA sample, my former PhD student also looked at some of the rostral teeth and did microchemistry on them to identify if we can trace back where the different sawfish sores come from, if we can trace them back to the rivers of origin. So there is a lot of data that we can collect from those soils. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:05

So you'll get a sort of a rough idea of where that was found.

SPEAKER_02 21:08

Maybe one day.

SPEAKER_03 21:10

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 21:11

We gotta fine-tune the methods more and more, but yeah, Nikki has just proven that the method works, which has been a really big step.

SPEAKER_03 21:17

Yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 21:19

So how long can they live and how big can they get?

SPEAKER_02 21:22

Yeah, so that's a good question. How long can they live? I would say 40 years plus, but it is probably a lot longer. And how big can they get? There is reports of seven meter sawfish. I I don't know if anything beyond six meters has actually been proven. We can calculate the length of an animal based on the size of the saw. And then also, for example, if we know, you know, if we can identify the species and we look at the number of teeth, then we can figure out is that saw complete, you know, is there something missing from the base and stuff? So I mean there's shockingly big saws out there. Um when we did our stall at the Eco Fiesta, we brought some saws in. One of them was one and a half meters long, so the kids can take a picture with a saw that is bigger than them. And so, yeah, I would say about six meters. But I think one of the things is you know, the bigger an animal gets, the less they grow every year. So when sawfish are pops, they will grow a lot because they you know try to get big fast so they can get away from predators and not be on everybody's menu. But then once they've reached a certain size, their growth really slows down. And so that means you know, a six meter sawfish versus a six meter ten sawfish could actually have, I don't know, ten years difference. So so it's then really hard to tell.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

Can a sawfish use its saw to Who fight with other sawfish or defend itself from predators like crocodiles? And I'm very interested to know who would win in a fight between a sawfish and a crocodile.

SPEAKER_03 22:44

Yeah, so this is something that I the yeah, the customers go, You've got a five metre croc model there, and you got a five metre sawfish, who'd win? It's like Yoda and Superman. Who do you reckon? My money's on the sawfish if it's in the water.

SPEAKER_02 22:56

That's a hard one. That's a really hard one. Because the crocodile crocodiles have, you know, they have bone plates in every scoot of their skin. So they've they've got a pretty good armor around them. They have. But yeah, sawfish are pretty agile with their saws. Like they can, you know, a sawfish can sit still and with the head do a figure eight. So that's how Yeah. I mean, that's fantastic, right?

SPEAKER_03 23:19

He could hypnotize the crocodile then.

SPEAKER_02 23:22

He can also whack him in the feet. I think if he gets a soft spot, he would definitely win.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

But do you think they do that? I mean, and the and everyone's probably witnessed it. Do you think they fight with other predators to protect themselves? Because a crocodile might try to eat a sawfish. It's gonna defend itself.

SPEAKER_02 23:37

Yeah, so it's it's really hard to get the scientific data on that. Like we've got different ways of looking at food webs, for example, but we can't actually figure out whether large crocodiles would attack large sawfish or something like that. But I would think that in those river systems in northern Australia, who gets eaten by home also depends on your size. So we know that small sawfish will be on the menu to a large crocodile. But I would assume if you have a really big sawfish and there is a small baby croc swimming around, then that would also give it a try.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

So yeah. Yeah, the interesting thing that you told me is that the teeth-like structures on its rostrum are not actual teeth. They're not made from enamel, are they? They have modified scales.

SPEAKER_02 24:16

Yeah, but so so sharks and rays have denticles on their skin, so they're we call them also skin teeth. And from those denticles is also that the oral teeth of sharks have evolved from that. And then the rostral teeth have also evolved from the denticles. So kind of maybe they are teeth. They're just very different because in sawfish the teeth can grow continuously, so like the teeth of a rabbit or a rat. So they also need to sharpen the teeth on the substrate to keep them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

Yeah, it's a lot of work maintaining your chainsaw. Wow, good. Yeah, they're just there with their knife sharpener, just why they always went missing from the kitchen at work.

SPEAKER_02 24:56

We sometimes get sighting submissions where people haven't seen the actual sawfish, but they just send us a picture of the mud at low tide and the sawfish just whacked the mud. And so you just you see the line where it just scraped over it.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

The imprint of uh chainsaw schnoz. And and then you also told me that inside their actual mouth they don't have very big, sharp teeth because they've already chopped everything up outside the front of their face and then they just suck it up.

SPEAKER_02 25:23

Yeah, that's exactly it. Good summary. So the oral teeth basically look like the teeth of most rays. They're just microscopically small, yeah, and and just looks like sandpaper, basically. But um, you were asking before as well whether sawfish would use the sort to defend themselves. That's an absolute yes. So if you accidentally catch one, stay away from the wacky end.

SPEAKER_03 25:45

The Texas chainsaw massacre section. Oh goodness. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

Yeah, but they don't, you know, they don't prey upon humans. They're just defending themselves if they get caught. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:55

Just like all animals will.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

So how do they reproduce? Do they give live birth or have eggs and and what's their reproduction?

unknown 26:05

Live.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

Live.

SPEAKER_02 26:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

I think Brett knows the answer.

SPEAKER_02 26:09

Well, I think it sounds a bit uncomfortable, doesn't it? It does.

SPEAKER_03 26:12

This is when all the mums in the crowd used to wince because they're going, listen, you ladies might want to have a spare sort for poor old chickens baby chainsaws.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

Does the saw come like all wrapped rolled up?

SPEAKER_03 26:23

It has a little protective sleeve over the little thingy. Yeah. For mum.

SPEAKER_00 26:29

Yeah, right. So live birth. Actually, a lot of sharks are like the Virgin Mary. They can give birth to five percent.

SPEAKER_03 26:37

Yeah, like our leopard shark throws in Clio. They've had Cleo's had two pups in eight years. She's never seen a male shark in her life. She doesn't need it.

SPEAKER_02 26:44

That's also been proven with um small tooth sawfish in Florida, so they can give five percent. Oh, and Parthenon as well. They've got it as well. Yep. Wow, they're independent women, you know. Add that to my shot. I reckon I reckon it's a good fact, isn't it? It is. I love it. I mean, I think I think the life birth fact is something that still gets me. Like, yes, they have when you see a newborn, you see that the teeth aren't fully poking out yet, so it does protect the mum a bit. But um yeah, there is a lot of intrax arrays, there's a lot of those life births where you would think that it could get quite uncomfortable, like hammerheads. Manta rays. Oh, stop it, hammerheads. No, the manta rays come rolled up, but they come rolled up like a yeah, like a pancake, like a baby hammerheads, poor mum.

SPEAKER_03 27:28

Have you seen a baby sawfish? Because it'd be pretty cute, right?

SPEAKER_02 27:31

Yes. Well, I haven't seen a live newborn one. When I did my PhD, I got sawfish donations from fishers, and I I had a newborn pup that I dissected so I could really look at that sheath over the teeth. Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:45

So given that giving birth to a baby with a sore on its face must be quite difficult, I think they don't do it until they're quite advanced in age, so that makes them sort of slow to reproduce, is that right? Maybe they come out backwards. Then they don't have very many.

SPEAKER_02 28:01

They only come out soft first. There is actually pictures there's pictures from Florida where Yeah, yep, they come out soft first.

SPEAKER_03 28:06

Mum.

SPEAKER_02 28:07

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 28:09

Evolution didn't think that one out, did they?

SPEAKER_00 28:13

In terms of them being critically endangered, they don't have a high replacement rate, do they?

SPEAKER_02 28:18

Yeah, so eight to ten years is what they have to reach to become sexually mature, which is quite late, you know. That's hard. If if you think in fish, that's very old age. Narosaurfish are the only ones that um so neurosaurfish are a different genus. So their genus is anoxypristis, whereas the other species are in the pristis. So they have a lot more differences to the other species, but one of them is that they become sexually mature at about three years. Right. So and they're the ones that in Queensland I think are the most abundant, most commonly found. Don't get that big. How many pups on average can they have? I think up to twelve. Twelve? Yep. Twelve chainsaws.

SPEAKER_03 28:54

Yeah, twelve chainsaws. Get that woman a couple.

SPEAKER_02 28:56

But at least they don't eat each other in the um in the uterus like in like like in sharks.

SPEAKER_03 29:01

Yeah. Yeah, baby grape whites.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

Imagine baby sawfish fighting. Yeah, it just gets worse. We we need to make sure we don't go off topic today, otherwise we won't finish off the sawfish. But in case any listeners didn't catch that, there are a type of sharks where the baby shark fetuses eat each other in the womb. Exactly. It's it's really a survival of the fittest before they're even born. And that's how they make sure that they only give birth to the strongest one, right? It's fascinating. Brutal out there in the shark world.

unknown 29:36

Dr.

SPEAKER_00 29:36

Waringer, I understand sawfish are critically endangered. What has caused this massive decline in their populations?

SPEAKER_02 29:44

Yeah, so they're critically endangered globally, all five species, and I think there is a few factors that have led to their declines. One thing is the trophy taking. So I think that's a pretty important factor. The other thing is that you know, if you get a saw attached to your face with those teeth pointing sideways, you have a very high chance of getting stuck in things. So by catch in nets is a really big thing. One of the sightings that we have in their sawfish sighting submission campaign is a sawfish that was caught on an anchor rope of a yacht.

SPEAKER_00 30:17

Oh no.

SPEAKER_02 30:17

So they released it alive. It was a four-meter animal, but basically when they pulled the anchor up, they pulled the four-meter sawfish up.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

They must have been wondering why is it so rough? It's not even windy. Why does the boat keep moving around?

SPEAKER_03 30:27

Or what the hell is that thing hanging out? What the hell is that?

SPEAKER_02 30:31

But so this is an animal that just got stuck in one rope.

SPEAKER_00 30:35

So it really shows, you know, it really shows how um I think their survival tactic, as soon as they get it stuck, they'll start thrashing it around to try and cut their way out, and then they just get more entangled themselves up.

SPEAKER_03 30:46

Maybe they should have kept that protective sleeve from when they were a baby, and then if they're not using it, they could just slide it over to the channel. Well, they can just reach forward their flippers and take it off and put it in their pocket. Olive.

SPEAKER_02 31:02

But so another thing is that sawfish fins were quite valuable on the shark fin trade. And they were actually the most expensive fins back in the day.

SPEAKER_00 31:10

Which is all superstition anyway, because sharks, fins, sawfish fins have no special medicinal properties. No, it's just cartilage like what we have in our earlobe. No nutritional value, nothing. But it's just literally because people say, Oh, it's got a fancy snout, it must have special powers. Yeah. Magical powers. Well, it does have magical powers if you leave it alone in the ocean. There you go. That's it.

SPEAKER_03 31:34

Perfect.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

Okay, so uh here in Queensland, I think I read on your website that they used to be found even in the Brisbane, Brisbane River.

SPEAKER_02 31:43

Yes, so when we started our citizen science campaign, that was one of the first outputs from it. We got people sending us historic newspaper articles, and we realized that the Brisbane River used to be a pupping ground for freshwater sawfish. And before that, they were thought to be found on the East Coast, but with their distribution ending in Mackay, so that was the most sudden point. And then we realized no, it's actually 800 kilometers south. And so we published a paper on that, and since that time there has been more and more saws being found. So a colleague of mine, Kathy Townsend, who I think was here for the mentores. Yeah, so she told me that a traditional owner from Morton Bay also donated a saw to the Stretbrook Research Station, Morton Bay Research Station, but on Stratbrook Island, and that's a saw that was taken locally as well. So that's another data point showing us that these animals used to be found in Morton Bay.

SPEAKER_00 32:34

Yeah, I'm sure they had these animals had a lot of significance to traditional owners.

SPEAKER_02 32:39

Yeah, so I think it depends on the different groups. So, for example, we now collaborate with Rinuro Corporation, so they're in Lakefield or Rinnuro National Park, and then also with the LoRa Rangers. And the LoRa Rangers are the custodians of Quinkin Country, for example, where you have sawfish and rock art. So that that shows that they have been of importance, traditional importance for a very long time. But different groups have different reasons behind it, and I think that's their stories to tell. But yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

So how much I don't know if it's possible to know, but do we know how much the population has declined and how many do you think are left?

SPEAKER_02 33:14

We don't know. These are some of the most difficult questions to answer in biology. And you know, for example, when you think of sawfish, they inhabit murky waters full of crocodiles, they don't come to the surface to breathe like a dolphin or something like that. So it's really hard to do population estimates. CSIRO are attempting to do those Australia-wide now by collecting genetic samples. But again, you know, it might take a while to get to that point to actually be able to figure it out. But what we do know is from looking at historic newspaper articles and also sightings now, what we do know is that the animals get smaller. So large animals are hardly ever seen. So that's a really good indication of you know there are declines. And yeah, also the range contractions. So the range contractions are a really, really big thing as well.

SPEAKER_00 34:02

So they're not found down in Brisbane anymore, are they?

SPEAKER_02 34:05

Not really. And uh green sawfish, for example, used to be common all the way down to about Sydney, and I would think the most southern of green sawfish now is is in the Whitzun days. So again, massive range contraction. And with freshwater sawfish as well, why I mentioned Rinurou and Laura before is because these guys are now the custodians of what I would assume is the last population of freshwater sawfish on the east coast of Australia, and that population is very likely also genetically different from the rest of Australia, so we really need to look after them.

SPEAKER_00 34:37

Yeah, if they if they are living in one particular river. Yeah. There's definitely some irrigation projects planned for the Cape as well, which could impact the river system. So I'd be interested to know how that's going to impact on the sawfish. What do you think are the biggest misconceptions or misunderstandings about sawfish? Well, that's a good one. So I as a sub-question to that, they're not dangerous to humans unless they're defending themselves, right? So in the past, was there like a fear around them as there is misplaced fear around sharks?

SPEAKER_02 35:07

I think there definitely was, and I think this is also part of human history. Like I see that in my own family as well. When I think about my grandparents, like I think, you know, back in the 50s and 60s and even before, people quite often when they saw a large animal, they would kill it. For whatever reason. Maybe they were scared of it or something like that. Yeah. And this is something that has I think we have to.

SPEAKER_00 35:28

I'm thinking about bears and like giant elk or deers or whatever you have in Austria. Like, oh, there's a huge animal, I can't wait to kill it and display it to my buddies.

SPEAKER_02 35:36

My grandparents actually used to go hunting in Africa as well. Oh no, no. But um, you gotta I think you gotta take the judgment out of this because back then people didn't know better. This was just how it was. But now we do know better, and I think a lot of people now have changed their ways, and instead they're starting to take pictures of the animals and and you know, that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

It's much better to get a selfie with a live animal than to safer way to shoot an animal, isn't it, with a kid.

SPEAKER_03 36:00

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 36:01

For everybody. So speaking of the newspaper articles that you mentioned, I saw a picture on your website from a really old black and white photo of this ginormous sawfish. And just knowing that you're never gonna see that. It's gonna be so rare to see one get that big nowadays.

SPEAKER_02 36:16

I this picture actually for me, that's the one that was caught of air or in townswell, bowling green bay. And so yeah, it it's absolutely gigantic. It's I show this picture every time I give a public talk because it really brings home the message of what we have lost. When you look at the the people in the picture with that sawfish, the width of the base of the saw is wider than a human head is long. So it's it's just it's huge. But I do have hope that one day, you know, when I'm old, I'll be walking on the beach with my dogs and I'll see one of those big animals come back into the shallows.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

Ah, and you'll be like, Trixie, Fifi, come back here, get away from that giant saw.

SPEAKER_03 36:53

No, you're not playing tiki with that. Come back. I think that sometimes when I look at the big one on the wall, it worked. Yeah. You know, just have a bit of a glance at it every now and then and just sense. Yeah, it's like, how could we how could we get rid of an animal?

SPEAKER_00 37:06

It's it's that's what can spare us on, though, is just thinking if we do the right things now, we can have that again in the future. That's generally the consensus of the customers, though half of them haven't even heard of a sawfish.

SPEAKER_02 37:17

I know, and it's so important to get the word out. But yeah, the more you do it, the more people like everybody loves sawfish. Everybody is excited about them. They're really cool animals. And yeah, I think there is a chance that you know, if we all work together and do this together, that we can get these animals to come back.

SPEAKER_00 37:33

I think another misconception might be people thinking, well, if it gets tangled in my nets, I'll just cut the rostrum off as the easiest way to release it and it'll grow back. But that's not the case.

SPEAKER_02 37:45

So that's that is actually thank you for mentioning that. That is a misconception that we've been fighting for a long time because for some reason people thought that the saw would grow back. It does not, it cannot grow back. And we know my colleagues in WA they were able to put an acoustic tag on a sawfish that they captured and it had the saw removed, and the wound was still open, so it must have been a few weeks ago. And so they were able to track this animal, and it basically it took three months to starve to death. So it's this is not something anybody should be doing to anything. No, you know what? This is not nice. It's like a rhino. We don't want to do that.

SPEAKER_00 38:20

It's like blinding it because it can't see its prey without its senses.

SPEAKER_03 38:24

Exactly right. So even if there was even a 0.01% that it could survive without it, all its senses are gone.

SPEAKER_02 38:29

Yeah, so it can't feed itself properly. It it probably can't defend itself. No, it's not. It can't be, I would assume that it would it it couldn't mate anymore because it can't be, you know, that would another sawfish detect it as a sawfish? Probably not.

SPEAKER_04 38:43

No.

SPEAKER_02 38:43

So there's a lot of issues around that. And I think it's really important for everybody to know that, you know, the sawfish needs its saw much more than we need them as decoration on our walls. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 38:53

So, what should someone do if they find a sawfish that's entangled in their fishing net or in something?

SPEAKER_02 39:00

Yeah, so I think, you know, we always say how you release that animal really depends on your own skills. You know, if somebody has never handled a big a big animal before, then for them it might be more difficult. So, for example, if you're always targeting small fish and suddenly you catch a big sawfish and just cut the line and just let the animal go. If you can, please take a picture of it and then submit that sighting to us because we have a sawfish citizen science campaign and we collect sightings from all around Australia.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

And you said it's become protected, so it's no longer legal for fishes to take sawfish. Has this helped their population rebound? Do you think?

SPEAKER_02 39:35

I think it has, but I think there is that second aspect to it. So, and I think I said that before as well, where you know you can have all the protections you want on paper, but unless the people out on the ground understand them and are happy to implement them, you're not going to get anywhere. And I think what has really helped is that community involvement where people now understand that they should release the sawfish alive, they should, you know, report them back. And everybody's really excited about them. You know, when we started that citizen science campaign, we got sightings in from people who are like, that was 20 years ago, and I remember the tide was going out and it was next to the mangroves at that area because it's a really, really meaningful thing when somebody sees a sawfish because most people only see one in their lives, if at all.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

That's amazing. So if there's anyone out there listening who has ever seen a sawfish or has a photo of one, send it into Sharks and Rays Australia. Yes, please. Are there any other threats to sawfish that you'd like to talk about, or is it mainly the fishing and the entanglement?

SPEAKER_02 40:31

So it's mainly the fishing and the entanglement. I think that's the urgent threats, which in many ways are being regulated strongly in Australia now. Globally, that's still a huge issue. You know, I I just came back from a conference, Sharks International, in Sri Lanka, and I remember seeing one talk, for example, from a woman who was working with fishers in Sri Lanka, and just out of this one port there was 30,000 trawlers.

SPEAKER_03 40:54

So what hope have they got? Seriously.

SPEAKER_02 40:58

And I think that's why also I I really think that in Australia it's important to regulate our fisheries in a way that we still have that protein and we're still able to provide that, but at the same time we look after our threatened species.

SPEAKER_00 41:09

Yeah, it's gonna be a big contribution that gill nets are being phased out next year. Do you think?

SPEAKER_02 41:14

Yeah. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 41:14

It's gonna be massive.

SPEAKER_02 41:15

And honestly, in some areas we see sawfish coming back. Like in some areas where gillnets have been phased out, we see pups coming back.

SPEAKER_00 41:22

Amazing. Well, there's progress. There's your vindication and and your success story moving in the right direction, aren't we? Yeah. So I understand you and some fearless volunteers head out on regular expeditions to the remotest areas of far north Queensland to research sawfish and other Elasmo branks. It sounds really exciting. What happens on these research trips and if there's anyone who wants to help out, can people get involved?

SPEAKER_02 41:46

Yeah, so people can join our trips. Many people who join our trips are students or biologists who want to get that remote area experience as well. So they can sign up for it. There is a process with signing up, so you have to submit an application as a field assistant and you have to be assessed to be capable of fitting, you know. And I also always try and put teams together where I have a feeling that everybody can learn from each other. So it's not that everybody needs to know everything and you need to have all the qualifications and blah blah blah. But I want to make sure that, you know, we have a good team and there's enough people who have, you know, a recent first aid course. There's more people who have, you know, four-wheel driving experience, that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 42:21

Because you're camping out in remote areas, aren't you? With a lot of wild animals and things.

SPEAKER_02 42:26

Yeah, and yeah, we're sampling in rivers where there is crocodiles, so it's like we gotta have a good team, we gotta watch out for each other.

SPEAKER_00 42:32

And we but you're not snorkeling or diving with the animals, you're sampling from a boat.

SPEAKER_02 42:37

We're sampling from a boat, and we even have a bucket on a rope, on a lanyard that we throw over the side, pull back in if we want to wash our hands. So we don't even, you know, don't lean over the side. No, we don't, we don't. It's just too you just don't want to take that risk.

SPEAKER_00 42:53

Yeah, wow. It sounds really exciting, like getting it.

SPEAKER_02 42:56

It is really exciting, and it's really beautiful, and it's so, you know, it's I think it's a it's a privilege to be able to work in those remote areas because there isn't that many remote areas left on our planet, to be honest. So so what we have up in Cape York is pretty awesome.

SPEAKER_00 43:12

Oh, primeval. You can almost imagine that you're pre-existing industrialization until an airplane goes overhead.

SPEAKER_02 43:19

Exactly. But then we don't have internet all the time. It's a very good watch.

SPEAKER_03 43:25

Oh, how nice is that.

SPEAKER_00 43:26

One of the last places where you can't get internet. How amazing is that? There's very few places left now that there's all these like stars.

SPEAKER_02 43:32

Yeah, I think most people like we also have our Starlink, but we can't turn it on all the time. So there is a lot of time where you just, you know, you're just out there and you're just listening to the birds, and you know, you're trying to figure out which birds they are and just being out of nature.

SPEAKER_00 43:45

Amazing. So, what can listeners do to help protect sawfish?

SPEAKER_02 44:02

I think the biggest thing is submitting sightings to us. You know, if you have a soul, let us know about it as well. If you have a soul and you don't know what to do with it, you want to get rid of it, you can always donate it to us as well. We're happy to take those donations. We put a lot of those souls back into the public for display to raise awareness around sawfish. Yeah, so it's really important that everybody understands that these animals exist and talks about them. You know, excitement is really what shares the common cause further.

SPEAKER_01 44:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:31

And yeah, if you if you're keen, you can join us in the field. If you're keen to support us, you know, you can volunteer for us. You can also donate to us. We are a non-for-profit, a small organization. So I think there's many ways to get involved.

SPEAKER_00 44:43

Where can people head if they want to learn more? You've got uh social media and you've got a website and everything, haven't you?

SPEAKER_02 44:49

Yeah, so we've got our homepage, which is saw.fish, and then you can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. We've got a very good social media volunteer team. They're putting awesome content out.

SPEAKER_00 45:02

That's amazing. It's really hard to find uh really, really experienced social media people.

SPEAKER_02 45:06

Yeah, no, just shout out to them. They're all volunteers and they're fantastic. Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 45:09

Yeah, so so the website is saw.fish. Yeah, but uh social media you're gonna be searching for Sharks and Rays Australia. Yeah, that's it. Sarah. Let's do one last question. If there's one last note that you want to leave everyone on, I'll go with this question. What gives you hope?

SPEAKER_02 45:24

What gives me hope is the people.

SPEAKER_00 45:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:26

It's hundred percent the people, like the people who I work with, and also, you know, I'm I'm training up a new volunteer to work on our sawfish sightings at the moment, and so I looked through a lot of the sightings in the last five days, and it is so awesome to see how people get excited about seeing Saulfish and you know how they submit their sightings to us and tell us all the stories around it off. Yeah, it's just I think it's really the people, it's the community.

SPEAKER_00 45:50

Amazing note to finish on. Sadly, that's all we have time for today. Dr. Barbara Wuringer, founder, director, and lead scientist of Sharks and Rays Australia. Thanks for all your amazing work and thanks for joining us on Word on the Reef today. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 46:03

Thank you. It's been great.

SPEAKER_00 46:04

And thanks to you, all our listeners. We'll be back next week. Best fishes. See you next time.