Half a year, already??
June 14, 2026
Congratulations Elisa Estrada, who received some sharky funding from us back in March 2014!
Damn, that’s how late we are with our Research Fund posts, but we’re struggling to catch up!
At the time Elisa wrote to us explaining that ever since she first became interested in Marine Biology, sharks and rays were always at the very top of her list of dream animals to study. So, when the time came to choose both an internship and a dissertation for her Master’s degree, she decided to go all in and split the experience between two different projects to maximize the learning adventure!
For her dissertation, Elisa wanted to work with the mighty Nuno Queiroz and the prestigious CIBIO research group, studying the foraging behavior of blue sharks in the Azores. Sadly, she contacted the team halfway through Summer and missed the field season where the sharks were tagged, which left her craving for a more hands-on experience.
And that is exactly how she found herself heading to Sharklab-Malta between April and June 2024, where she finally got to put her “hands in the sharky dough”, as we scientifically call it around here.
But there’s more! Elisa also took the time to thank the professor who gave her those first contacts years ago, back in her undergraduate days, long before anyone could imagine she’d end up chasing blue sharks around the Atlantic Ocean. Apparently, even without realizing it, the professor became some sort of an inspirational marine biology mastermind figure in her life. Damn! those are big shoes to fill and, as you probably guessed, “the professor” is our esteemed founder.
With accommodation expenses reaching around 500 euros per month — plus flights — there’s absolutely no way we could let Elisa face this adventure alone, so we happily transferred her 590 euros to help her along the way.
Go Elisa! And remember: if you accidentally tag “the professor” instead of the sharks, please release him back into the wild unharmed, because none of us want to do his job, especially the 100+ emails per day!
:p
