By Jessica Jang

Three weekends ago (3/18~3/20), the Pacific Shark Research Center (PSRC) had the opportunity to attend the 2nd Northeast Pacific Shark Symposium.This symposium was to gather elasmobranch biologists and aquarists from the west coast and share their research and potentially collaborate on future research. People from Canada and Mexico were able to join us for this bi-annual event. What better way to have this conference at the famous USC Wrigley Center in Catalina!

All of us board the ferry at 8 AM and then prepared to spend two days talking about elasmobranchs!

We had a couple hours to explore the island before the first set of presentations, I had the opportunity to hike around the island and look at the beautiful scenery.

After having lunch, had people present about their research and learned lots of really neat things about elasmobranch research; the talks ranged from the charismatic white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) to the less attentive batoids (flat sharks). We also became aware of the new opportunities to collaborate with other scientists.

After learning two long days of hearing interesting talks, we had a group photo of everyone in the conference and had some downtime before getting on the ferry to head back to the mainland.

We were greeted with a stubborn individual that refused to leave the dock when the ferry approached.

It had to take one of the brave deckhands to scare him off so we could disembark off the boat. But what a way to wrap up our successful conference at Catalina!