Introducing MISS: Minorities in Shark Sciences
“When you picture a shark scientist, what do you see? When you watch shark week what do you see? Do you see someone who looks like me? I am a Black woman and I am a shark scientist, and a darn good one at that.”
–Jasmin Graham, Co-Founder of Minorities in Shark Science (MISS)
In June of 2020 we, the soon-to-be co-founders of MISS, connected/reconnected on Twitter through #BlackInNature, a hashtag that went viral after @BlackAFInSTEM launched Black Birders Week. As the hashtag grew we slowly increased our ranks. Suddenly, four women who had felt completely isolated now had a community of scientists that looked like them. None of us truly understood how much we had been craving such a community until we found it. We jokingly tweeted, “let’s start a club,” but what started as a joke quickly turned into a reality once Field School offered their R/V Garvin as a potential meeting space for our hypothetical club. That was all it took to transform our dream into a reality. We arranged a virtual meeting. It was actually the first time we had seen each other face to face. Even though we barely knew each other, we saw each other in a way we longed to be seen in social circles. We had a collective vision to bring as many women of color into our little community as possible.
Founding members MISS
The goals of MISS are to 1) help women of color overcome the financial barriers that have historically kept women out of the field of shark science 2) create a network of support for women of color in shark science and 3) promote career growth among women of color in shark science. The first program we created to accomplish these goals are yearly workshops. These workshops will be all-expense-paid experiences (thanks to generous donations) for women 18 and older who have had little to no experience in shark/field research. During the workshops, participants will get to see what it’s like to do shark research, connect with each other, hear about some of the shark research being conducted by women of color in the field and participate in professional development seminars.
The future looks bright for MISS as we move forward. We are continuing to collect donations as well as apply for grants to fund some other potential projects that would provide MISS members with the opportunity to do research, share their research, attend conferences and connect with mentors. We’d also like to do outreach and engage girls K-12 interested in marine science and shark science early on to keep their love for the ocean alive. Ultimately we want to be an organization that supports women of color through every stage of their shark science career. We have high hopes for the organization and are excited to see how we grow over the next few years.
If you would like to support our organization, you can do so in several ways. First, you can spread the word about MISS by word of mouth or on social media. Second, you can support us financially by visiting misselasmo.org/donate. Lastly, you can donate time, services or products to assist us with our programming. Email us at miss.execboard@gmail.com to find out how. You can stay up-to-date with MISS by visiting our website misselasmo.org and joining our mailing list or by following us on Instagram/Twitter @MISS_Elasmo. We are thankful for all of the support we have received thus far and are grateful to each and every person who has helped us, is helping us and will help us grow as an organization.