On 15 June 2026, Professor Jodie Rummer appeared on FINcast | Shark Conservation for the episode Baby shark research In French Polynesia | Prof. Jodie Rummer.
The episode listing puts it plainly: Jodie discusses newborn-shark research taking place in French Polynesia. FINcast bills that work as the “Mama Shark Project.” On this site we call it Physioshark — RummerLab’s long-running conservation-physiology programme on shark nurseries.
Why French Polynesia
Physioshark fieldwork is on Mo'orea, French Polynesia, with science4reefs. Mother sharks give birth to blacktip reef sharks (Carcharhinus melanopterus) and sicklefin lemon sharks (Negaprion acutidens) each austral summer. Those shallow nurseries are where the team can study how newborns cope now, and how they may cope as oceans warm.
French Polynesia is also one of the world’s largest shark sanctuaries, which makes it possible to do this work without a lethal shark-control programme in the background.
What the lab actually measures
Newborn reef sharks arrive with no parental care, high predation risk, and — for a short time — an open umbilical wound. RummerLab and collaborators have been quantifying how those pups heal, grow, and perform in the heat and low oxygen of a changing reef.
That physiology is the through-line of Physioshark: not just “are there still sharks here?” but “can these athletes of the reef keep performing as the habitat shifts?”
If you want the peer-reviewed version of the baby-shark healing story, start with Debaere and colleagues in the Journal of Fish Biology, and with Episode 2 of Athletes of the Reef.
Listen
The FINcast conversation is about 23 minutes.
