Minorities in Shark Science

Emerging shark scientist and FAU alumna Carlee Jackson is on a mission to create opportunities for minority girls to get into marine science. And to do that, last summer she co-founded an organization called Minorities in Shark Science, (MISS) along with four other young Black women.

“There are still obstacles in science and marine science that are preventing minorities from succeeding. MISS is here to break down those obstacles that we ourselves have experienced,” Jackson said.

Growing up in Detroit, Jackson was enamored with sharks from a young age. At a book fair she discovered a book with a shark on it when she was about 5 years old. “I was just drawn to it,” Jackson said. “And I was immediately hooked on sharks and anything about the ocean. That has stuck throughout my whole life.” Though it was a little surprising to her parents at the time, (her mom is a musician and her dad is a lawyer) they always supported her. Her dad even got scuba certified so they could explore underwater together.

But most of the featured scientists on Discovery Channel’s Shark Week did not look like her — they were white and male, she said. Rather than be deterred by that, however, Jackson just figured “she would be the first.”

To chase her passion, Jackson left Michigan in 2012 to attend Florida Atlantic University and study biology, where she was often the only person of color in her classes, she said. Though busy as a student athlete, she volunteered with shark scientist Marianne Porter, Ph.D., a professor in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, in her senior year. It was during this time as an undergraduate she also saw her first shark in the wild – a small nurse shark under a rock – while snorkeling from the beach in Boca Raton.

After graduating from FAU in 2016, she attended nearby Nova Southeastern University for graduate school. She was researching sharks and studied the impacts of feeding nurse sharks for tourism in Belize. Jackson has a particular fondness for nurse sharks, which she says often get overlooked by the more charismatic species like tiger sharks and hammerheads. “I’m an underdog, and maybe that’s why I like nurse sharks so much,” she said.

In an effort to help the other underdogs — the minorities in marine science — she launched MISS.

It started when she and her co-founders, three other young Black women, in shark science connected online. That’s how MISS was born, she said. “We wanted to create something for women of color, so that other Black girls don't feel the same way we do, which was very alone in the field,” Jackson said.

Now, MISS has more than 200 members and is providing fully funded opportunities for other young students to get experience with sharks, including workshops, summer camps and internships. To do that, they are partnering with research organizations including the Bimini Shark Lab in the Bahamas, and Ocean Research Institute based out of South Africa, as well as the Field School in Miami.

For Jackson, the ultimate goal is to provide more opportunities to diversify this field, adding, “Diversity of thought, leads to innovation and new discoveries.”