Dr. Dean Grubbs, a world-renowned shark scientist, grew up thinking he could follow any number of career paths—as long as they didn’t demand regular haircuts. But he kept coming back to the fascination he felt catching a small shark when he was only 7 years old.
Research into the smalltooth sawfish in Florida and The Bahamas is gradually revealing important information about this mysterious species. Perhaps the biggest question of all is whether marine national parks can provide sanctuaries in which its population can recover.
Save Our Seas recently wrote a profile on Dr. Dean Grubbs and his research in on sawfish populations in Andros Island, Bahamas. Read more to learn about Dr. Grubbs' decades long research on sawfish and other elasmobranch species.
Grubbs Lab Graduate Student discusses her Deep Sea research conducted at Cape Eleuthera
Read about Dr. Dean Grubbs research as it relates to the Chesapeake Bay’s misguided war on the Cownose ray.
For the first time in 17 years of Florida-based research, scientists have discovered a mating ground for the Endangered smalltooth sawfish. During an expedition early April to the shallow-water back-country of Everglades National Park, a research team captured, tagged, and released three adult sawfish (one male and two females) in an area previously known almost exclusively as juvenile sawfish habitat. All three had distinctive lacerations, apparently sustained during mating, that match the pattern of teeth on the animals’ saw-like snouts.
Since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Dr. Dean Grubbs and his team have planned numerous research cruises to produce the largest survey of deepwater sharks in the Gulf of Mexico.
Dr. Grubbs described the experience as "the biggest day of my research career!" His team captured a female sawfish who started giving birth. This is the first time a live sawfish birth has been documented in the wild.
In the latest issue of Save Our Seas magazine, the article "Hidden Mortality: The effects of by-catch" by Dr. Grubbs, weighs up the world’s fisheries and explains why some are better for elasmobranchs than others.
