in viruses and genetics, which was related to my college research. However, I did not feel good because I knew I wouldn’t be helping the wildlife that needed our urgent attention. I turned down the Ph.D. admission offer and volunteered for conservation NGOs. I had a great time hiking in the rainforests looking for leopards in India and working with dolphin data from Hawaii. I remember feeling scared because I didn’t know what was next, but after a year, I got admitted to several master’s programs and decided to attend the master’s in the environmental science program at the Yale School of the Environment. At Yale, I studied critically endangered Indian wolves in South India and the diversity of understory plants in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador. In Ecuador, I had the most magical experience in my life watching a baby pink river dolphin jump in the Tiputini River in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, surrounded by sloths, monkeys, and anacondas! I became more interested in predators and the role they play in balancing the ecosystem (yes dolphins, too, are predators because they eat other fish!).
I decided to study sharks in French Polynesia because it has the largest marine protected area in the world and sharks are provided legal protection, which means that for the most part, sharks are in their natural state and undisturbed unlike in the rest of the world. I was really interested in studying the natural behavior of predators, so this was the perfect opportunity for me.
French Polynesia is a country with several islands that span the same area as the continent of Europe. Tahiti is the biggest and most populated island of French Polynesia. I work in a field station located on a remote atoll called Tetiaroa, 33 miles away from Tahiti.
