Lara Sousa
Who I am
I grew up in a seaside town on the outskirts of Lisbon, Portugal, and spent my childhood searching tidal pools and strolling on the beach looking for shells and shark eggs. Always connected to the sea, I fell in love with sharks and I followed my dream, pursuing my undergraduate degree in marine biology. For this, I spent a semester in Brazil, where I took every opportunity to increase my knowledge of elasmobranchs, attending short courses and all relevant curricular subjects. Back in Portugal, I was very fortunate to study the movements and distribution of blue sharks in the north-eastern Atlantic for my final-year thesis. For my MRes I then moved on to analyse the vulnerability of this charismatic and commercially important species to longlining activities in the region, realising how endangered pelagic sharks are in relation to human activities. Finally, my PhD focused on the behaviour of another charismatic species, the ocean sunfish, and its predator–prey and fisheries interactions. Throughout my career I have been extremely lucky to establish long-term collaborations that examine the environmental integration of satellite-tracked movements of pelagic species, including bull, hammerhead and tiger sharks. More recently, I have become extremely curious about how species move through landscapes and how the environment, including climate-driven changes, shapes individual and group behaviour. I have been developing my research skills and pursuing projects that aim to conserve marine megafauna while improving modelling techniques in both terrestrial and marine environments during my years as a post-doctoral researcher in zoology.
Where I work
While deeply connected to tracking many pelagic species throughout the entire Atlantic Ocean, this project focuses on a region subject to heavy traffic off the coast of western Africa, an area where several endangered marine megafauna species are known to occur. The Gulf of Guinea, in particular, sees approximately 25% of African maritime traffic, with about 1,500 ships per day, and faces significant challenges from illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. This combination is likely to represent increased collision risk for charismatic megafauna. When not on board fishing vessels searching for whale sharks, our daily work will take place at CIBIO/BIOPOLIS, a research unit in biological sciences located in northern Portugal. This unit conducts both basic and applied research on the three main components of biodiversity: genes, species and ecosystems. Its facilities include a high-computing cluster and an electronics lab, which is essential for the analytical processing required for our project.
What I do
While deeply connected to tracking many pelagic species throughout the entire Atlantic Ocean, this project focuses on a region subject to heavy traffic off the coast of western Africa, an area where several endangered marine megafauna species are known to occur. The Gulf of Guinea, in particular, sees approximately 25% of African maritime traffic, with about 1,500 ships per day, and faces significant challenges from illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. This combination is likely to represent increased collision risk for charismatic megafauna. When not on board fishing vessels searching for whale sharks, our daily work will take place at CIBIO/BIOPOLIS, a research unit in biological sciences located in northern Portugal. This unit conducts both basic and applied research on the three main components of biodiversity: genes, species and ecosystems. Its facilities include a high-computing cluster and an electronics lab, which is essential for the analytical processing required for our project.