FORT LAUDERDALE, FL. – Earlier this year while getting ready for work, Nova Southeastern University’s (NSU) media relations/public information officer Joe Donzelli had NBC’s Today Show on in the background when something caught his attention.
It was the story about Ella Reed, a Florida teenager who had been bitten by a shark while wading in the surf near her home.
“Working at NSU all these years, my ears prick up when I hear someone talking about sharks,” Donzelli said. “When I focused in on the story, I said to myself, ‘oh, we’ve gotta get her to come shark tagging with our research scientists. That can’t be the only encounter she has with a shark,’.”
He was impressed with her poise and courage – not everyone would be so blasé having been bitten by a shark. And something else in the story caught his attention.
“I heard that Ella was interested in being a marine biologist, and given NSU’s preeminence in the field, I knew this was a perfect match,” Donzelli said.
So, when he got to work, Donzelli reached out to the reporter who did the story for the Today Show. Almost immediately the reporter was intrigued and said he’d reach out to the family to see if they were interested, after all, he already had a relationship with them. And, sure enough, they jumped at the chance.
“When I got the invitation to go shark tagging, I was super excited,” Ella said.
Fast forward a couple of weeks and researchers from NSU’s Guy Harvey Research Institute (GHRI) welcomed a crew from NBC’s The Today Show, along with Ella, her friend Kloe (who was with Ella and helped her when she was bitten), her brother and parents, who joined Mahmood Shivji, Ph.D., Director of NSUs GHRI and the Save our Seas Foundation Shark Research Center, Derek Burkholder, Ph.D., an NSU research scientist and their crew for a day on the Atlantic Ocean to catch, tag and release sharks off the Florida Coast.
You can see The Today Show story HERE
“Understanding sharks is vitally important for restoring and maintaining the overall health of our oceans,” said Shivji. “As high-level and apex predators, they play a major part in balancing the marine ecosystem, and if there are no sharks, the oceans and by extension, the Earth, will suffer.”
Shivji said that some estimates show that annually 100 million sharks are removed from the oceans – yes, you read that right.
“Clearly that is not a sustainable number, and many shark species have declined by 70-90 percent” he said. “By learning as much about sharks as we can, that information can be used by ocean management authorities to properly conserve sharks for generations to come.”
When the day finally came to head out on the ocean, Donzelli said that the one thing everyone was nervous about was would they be able to catch a shark during the trip. He had been on trips in the past where they spent the entire day on the water and didn’t catch a thing.
“There’s an old saying – it’s called fishing, not catching,” he said with a laugh.
But nothing was going to dampen this day for Ella – after pulling up a few empty bait lines, bingo, they had a shark. And not just any shark, a nine and a half foot long, 500+ pound female tiger shark.
The group managed to catch two additional sharks – nurse sharks – during the trip, and each time Ella and her group was right there working with NSU researchers, enjoying every minute. In fact, with one of the nurse sharks, Ella, fearless as ever, jumped in the water and got up close and personal with the large fish.
When the group returned to shore, there was one more surprise for Ella and her family.
“We talked with our admissions folks, and they agreed that we needed to nurture her love of the ocean and marine biology,” Donzelli said. “So, we are reserving a spot for Ella when she graduates from high school and will work to provide her with as many scholarship opportunities as we can. We’d be lucky to have her become an NSU Shark.”
