“I would come to port and see all these shark fins — 30 tons of shark fins — and I didn’t know how to wrap my head around the issue,” Randall says.
“One of the strongest reasons I was able to phase out the shrimp fishery was because we had the full support of the small-scale fishermen. Once they saw that this was working, they all came behind us.”
“A big change during my years of research has been the schools of hammerheads around Cocos Island. They’re not as frequent as they used to be. Before they were uncountable… and now I can count them.”
“Having this data will help us to not just protect the hotspots, like Cocos Island and Galápagos, but the entire corridor from point A to point B. These animals know no boundaries, so we need the connectivity. We desperately need to protect these corridors.”
“Keep on going. Don’t give up. Change takes time, but like I said, you have to do all your homework. You gotta do the research. You gotta do the policy work. And you have to work with the politicians and garner support from different society groups — that’s how you get tens of thousands of people mobilized.”