Jasmin Graham was on a mission. The marine biologist wanted to change not only the public’s often misleading perception of sharks — in many cases, drawn from their harrowing portrayal in the novel “Jaws” and calcified in pop culture over the last 50 years — but also that of the people who study them.
Once a marine biology doctoral student at Florida State University, Graham understood firsthand what it was like to try to make it in the field — and to be one of few Black women doing it. The challenges she faced in academia led to her fateful decision to leave the program in 2020 and pursue a career as a rogue scientist.
Graham, now 29, has since found success her own way, researching vanishing populations of sawfish, the harmful effects of red tides on sharks and even the local ecological knowledge found among Black American fishers. In the same year she left graduate school, she teamed up with three other Black women to create Minorities in Shark Sciences, a global organization that promotes diversity and inclusion in the field.
Graham’s disenchantment with the traditional path to being a scientist — and how she overcame those bounds to forge her own trail — is explored in her new memoir, “Sharks Don’t Sink,” published by Pantheon on Tuesday.
Sprinkled between shark facts throughout the book, Graham also describes how she came to identify with the animals she studies. “When Black women fight back, we are seen as the enemy,” she writes, “just like sharks, who, more often than not, bite only when provoked.”
In a recent interview, Graham spoke with The New York Times about why sharks are misunderstood and what these large sea creatures have taught her — about science, life and, most importantly, herself. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Q: What do you wish people knew about sharks?
A: The image that people have of sharks is more of the exception, not the rule. People usually think about the big three: great whites, tiger sharks and bull sharks. The truth is there are about 500 species of sharks. Most are small — the average size of a shark is about 3 to 4 feet long — and most live in the deep sea, so you’re not ever going to interact with or see them.
Some sharks are apex predators. But a lot of them are actually in the middle of the food chain, just vibing. There are a lot of them that are quite cute and adorable. Small and silly-looking.
Q: Explain the parallel you draw between the public’s perception of sharks and Black people.
A: Sharks have a bad reputation. They can’t catch a break in the media. There might be a shark bite and maybe it was a little leopard shark, but what would be shown was a picture of a big, scary great white.
And similarly, in police brutality incidents, when somebody died, what got shown was the most thugged-out picture of this person. Yet people who commit very heinous crimes who are not Black get a graduation photo or something. I started seeing that, ah, this is the same thing, and maybe we need to use similar approaches to tackling both of these issues.
Q: In your book, you wrote a lot about the support you had growing up and in college to pursue marine biology. How did that change in graduate school?
A: The academic toxicity, the competition and the distrust was all very different from what I had experienced before. I’d ask somebody for notes ,and they didn’t want to share. Or I’d ask somebody who won a grant if they could share their proposal with me, and they didn’t want to share because we were in direct competition for money.
I didn’t like that I was being forced into competition with a lot of people. I was raised in a community that was very much about lifting as you climb, that rising tides lift all boats.
I was definitely relieved to leave. We have this idea in society that quitting is weak or that just because you leave something means you can’t cut it. But some people just decide that they don’t want it, that it’s not worth it. And that’s a valid choice.
Q: Did you ever feel like you were too young to write a memoir?
A: When my literary agent reached out originally, I didn’t know that I had anything to say. But then I started thinking about why my gut reaction was that I didn’t have a valuable story. And how I probably thought that, as a young Black woman who is nearly 30 years old, it may be because I haven’t seen a young Black woman who is 30 do something like this.
That felt like reason enough to do it: to be the example that it can be done, that you don’t have to live this whole extravagant life to have a story worth telling. A story that is unfinished is still a beautiful story. I decided to write this book so that the next person that looks like me who gets asked to write a book doesn’t hesitate.
Q: That seems like the same philosophy that led you to help found Minorities in Shark Sciences. Has the field improved?
A: I met my first Black marine biologist in person when I was 22, while doing an internship at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. She was on a panel. I grabbed lunch with her afterward and told her she was the first I had ever met.
She asked me how old I was. And then she said, “Well, it’s getting better. I was 32 the first time I met someone that looked like me.” I think about that a lot, especially when I go to schools and talk to students. I’m keeping track in my mind that if I’m the first Black marine biologist they’ve met, then that experience for them was at age 12 or younger. It’s getting better.
Q: Does seeing those changes ever make you want to go back to finish your doctorate?
A: At this point, I don’t feel like I need to go back to school. It wouldn’t do anything extra for me. If I wanted to teach and be a professor, I’d probably need a Ph.D. But I don’t think I ever want to give up the autonomy I have to go do that and be absorbed by a larger institution.
It also feels a little redundant because I’ve done the equivalent of a Ph.D. in research. So it would just be going back to have somebody validate me, which feels unnecessary. I don’t need a piece of paper to tell me who I am or what I can do.
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