Shark Senses | NightSchool, ep. 93

This NightSchool, three incredibly special guests are giving us an exclusive, behind-the-scenes tour of a place seldom explored, and even more rarely granted media access: the inside of a shark’s nose.

• Amani Webber-Schultz: We’ll begin our tour by exploring the myriad shapes a shark nose can take (we see you, hammerheads). PhD Candidate Amani Webber-Schultz will share how shape impacts a shark’s sense of smell. Amani is a co-founder and the Chief Financial Officer of Minorities in Shark Sciences, a nonprofit dedicated to fundraising for and creating a welcoming space for gender minorities of color in shark sciences. She also studies shark functional morphology and swimming kinematics in Dr. Brooke Flammang's lab at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

• Gabi Castillo: Next, we’re headed inside shark nostrils, where undergraduate researcher Gabi Castillo will share about the intricacies of the sensory structures that detect odors in the water. Gabi is a senior attending Florida Atlantic University, where she works with Dr. Lauren Eve Simonitis to expand our understanding of how different shark species use internal structures to smell.

• Dr. Lauren Eve Simonitis: To close out the night, we’ll hear about how it all comes together from Dr. Lauren Eve Simonitis, an aquatic sensory biologist who knows noses like no other. She studies the shapes, sensitivities, and water flows of different shark noses, and how these features affect the ways sharks interact with their environment. Lauren is a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Biology at Florida Atlantic University and the University of Washington, where she uses a suite of biovisualization techniques to study sharks.

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Missed the party? Just want to relive the magic? Watch the recorded livestreams on YouTube!