Simon Dedman

@sharkmagneto.bsky.social right up your straße if you're coming to SI chap

Fun find from @sammy-shark.bsky.social; scholargoggler.com wordcloud from my work. Shark & tuna spatial stuff [nobody gasps].

Nature's blueprint defines species makeup for sharks, rays A new study led by shark ecologist and FIU alumna Naomi F. Farabaugh found the type of species and number of sharks and rays differed between islands. The reason? Natural factors.

New work led by @travelingshark.bsky.social with FIU & UW colleagues: revealing natural variation in shark & ray richness on healthy French Polynesian reefs can assist understanding & management of human-impacted systems. news.fiu.edu/2025/natures... & paper www.int-res.com/abstracts/me...

Frontiers | Stay or go? Space and resource use of the great hammerhead (Sphyrna mokarran) off Andros Island, The Bahamas

🔗 Want to learn more? doi.org/10.3389/fmar...

Thanks to our funders for supporting this project: Discovery Shark Week, @myfahlo.bsky.social, The Lackland Foundation and Storm Story. Thanks to all the volunteers who attended research expeditions and have supported us since our inception.

Why Important:
🔹Expands GHH ecological knowledge in NW Atlantic; some individuals stay in the Bahamas all year.
🔹So the Bahamas shark sanctuary could be an all-year refuge, key for regional GHH rebuilding goals.
🔹We must analyse genetic samples to see how these GHH fit in the NW Atlantic population.

🔹Year-round residency of Andros-caught GHH in Bahamas w/ site-fidelity to & high use of habitats along Andros reef dropoff & flats.
🔹Possible mating + small juvenile sightings: Andros could be a reproduction ground.
🔹GHH mainly ate barracuda & small sharks/rays, linking pelagic & shoreline foodwebs.

Map of Florida with heatmap blobs of high residency for great hammerheads around West Andros

Recently published in Frontiers in Marine Science: "Stay or go? Space and resource use of the great hammerhead
(Sphyrna mokarran) off Andros Island, The Bahamas"

Residency, space use, and trophic role of great hammerheads (GHH) in Andros, the largest island in The Bahamas 🇧🇸

Lead author @andreakroetz.bsky.social has just joined bsky, welcome!

Predicting Sawfish Habitat in a Changing Environment NOAA Fisheries and partners published research that identifies key habitat features of juvenile endangered smalltooth sawfish and predicts where else they could be.

Press release: www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-stor... and paper: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...; LMK if you can't access the PDF.

Satellite map of south west Florida showing hotspots of juvenile smalltooth sawfish abundance as small pixels scattered around inshore coastal bays.

Smalltooth sawfish are beautiful, weird, and endangered. With colleagues at @noaa.gov and @coastalelasmos.bsky.social, our 15-year study revealed habitat preferences and hotspots of juvenile sawfish, suggesting key areas to protect around SW Florida as climate changes. Data access was a key hurdle.

Spring may bring an exciting shark movement modelling project, helping conserve these endangered creatures. I'm blessed to work with friends on projects for a better planet. I hope you've got positives to look forward to & your life is enriched by the connections you've made and work you do.

2025 starts with a workshop in San Diego with mid-career shark scientists, discussing shared challenges & building a support network we hope will benefit us for years to come. I'm also running the 1st US West Coast alumni meetup for Hampton School alumni on April 17 in San Francisco.

December 2024

I was profiled in my school magazine issuu.com/hamptonschoo... and interviewed by BBC radio and the Potato Sisters podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...

Ecological roles and importance of sharks in the Anthropocene Ocean In ecosystems, sharks can be predators, competitors, facilitators, nutrient transporters, and food. However, overfishing and other threats have greatly reduced shark populations, altering their roles ...

With a stellar team, I co-first-authored a paper in top journal Science Magazine, explaining the ecological role of sharks, and why it’s so important to protect them www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... thanks SayoStudio, Marc Dando, & Kylene Gilmore

We revealed what causes differences in shark communities in the world’s largest shark sanctuary, French Polynesia. Congrats Dr. Naomi Frances Farabaugh www.int-res.com/prepress/m14...

With NOAA Fisheries we modelled juvenile smalltooth sawfish habitat in SW Florida, highlighting challenges and conservation opportunities (link coming soon).

I was grateful to be included with Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford colleagues on work showing how bluefin tuna would be affected by a nuclear accident in Spain pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39317088

Frontiers | First evidence of white sharks, Carcharodon carcharias, in the tongue of the ocean, central Bahamas The white shark, Carcharodon carcharias, is an iconic apex predator, playing an important ecological role across its range. Persistent bycatch and overfishin...

With Saving the Blue & Atlantic White Shark Conservancy we reported the first evidence of white sharks in the Bahamas www.frontiersin.org/journals/mar...

Four years in the making, with friends from Bimini (2006), GMIT (2013), and @fiu.bsky.social (2021), we showed the movement & hunting patterns of lemon sharks across tides & as they grew up tinyurl.com/yz83yasj

I'm grateful for many experiences and achievements in 2024, generally from approaching new opportunities with positivity & enthusiasm, being blessed to work with great people, and having been based in the same team and field for >=3 years (rare for me but SO key to efficiency & productivity).