Junior SeaKeepers 24-25 Webinar 9: Emily Yeager - Shark Research and Conservation

Overview

On Monday, June 2nd, 2025, The International SeaKeepers Society hosted the ninth and final Junior SeaKeepers Program webinar for 2024-25 cohort students. For this virtual talk, we were thrilled to have Emily Yeager, PhD Candidate with the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science through the MacDonald Lab for Shark Research & Conservation. Emily joined us virtually to discuss her work doing shark conservation research, including studying symbolic relationships between various marine species that interact with sharks here in South Florida.

Emily Yeager is a fifth year PhD candidate in the Macdonald Lab and Shark Research and Conservation Program at the University of Miami. Originally from Massachusetts, Emily grew up spending summers by the ocean and was always fascinated by nature. It wasn’t until she studied abroad at the Island School in Cape Eleuthera, Bahamas, however, that she discovered her passion for Marine Biology. Emily attended Wellesley College for her undergraduate degree, graduating in 2020 with a B.A. in Biology and Environmental Studies. While at Wellesley, Emily worked under Dr. Steven Biller and studied marine microbial nutrient cycling and Prochlorococcus, a marine cyanobacteria responsible for up to 20% of Earth’s oxygen. At the University of Miami, Emily studies symbiotic relationships (or how organisms interact in the ocean) and her research ranges from sharks and manta rays to reef-building coral and bacteria. Beyond her work on symbiosis, Emily has also conducted research on shark osmoregulation and on nurse shark home ranges in Biscayne Bay. Emily is a 2025 Guy Harvey Fellow and the proud author of a children’s book titled Bonnie the Bull Shark and the Coral City which she wrote with the support of funding from the Robert K. Johnson Center for Marine Conservation. Outside of academics, Emily enjoys sharing her passion for marine science with the public and has connected with more than a thousand students around the world and in her local community. Emily is also an avid adventurer and enjoys backpacking trips, exploring new places, kayaking, and reading good fiction books in her free time.

By attending webinars led by partner research scientists, our Junior SeaKeepers have the opportunity to learn first-hand about the diversity of work that exists in the marine conservation realm. Additionally, students get direct access to accomplished professionals and can see the advancements in the field that are the result of research happening every day all over the world. Emily's research was a finale to our webinar series, as it highlighted the challenges associated with working with illusive apex and mesopredators like sharks. We are especially excited to join the UMiami SRC team at the end of this month for a shark tagging expedition to see some of this work happening firsthand! Through speaking with Emily about her research and personal history, we hope that our JSKs were able to collect some inspiration for both their research projects and their professional futures moving forward.