Ellie Farquhar

About Me

My love for the ocean inspired me to pursue a project in the marine biology field, however my decision to specialize in shark behavior was motivated by a dive I did with my family in the Bahamas when I was 13. My dad made the decision to bring my mom, my sisters and I on a dive boat to a shark site where we could snorkel on the surface while my dad went diving below (I was not scuba certified at this point), and we were given a presentation on the misconceptions about sharks before the dive. I was slightly skeptical at the profile of sharks the dive instructor presented, describing them as intelligent, aloof creatures that never intend to attack humans. However, watching the sharks drift past the divers meters below, I realized that they were almost completely uninterested in the presence of people. They were graceful and sleek, perfectly designed to cut through the water, and I found myself transfixed to the silhouettes of black against the white ocean floor. After this dive, I began to research the actual statistics of attacks, and the hypothesized reasoning behind the incidents. I discovered that approximately 100 million sharks are killed by fisheries annually, while six people are killed by sharks every year. I found this information staggering, as sharks are typically portrayed as “bloodthirsty monsters” in the media, however, it is obvious that humans are the truly destructive species. When I decided on a topic for my science research, I was motivated by the thought of being able to work one on one with the graceful predators, and educate the public on the misconceptions of the nature of sharks through my findings.