Rosie K. Moore: Sharks, Pythons, and Wild Florida Fieldwork

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 965 with Rosie K. Moore.

Getting Started in Shark Research

Tom Rowland: What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the Tom Rowland Podcast. We have an outstanding guest for you today, Rosie K. Moore. If you're on Instagram, you've probably seen her, probably on lots of other platforms too. She's an ecologist, an influencer, an author, into Apex Predator Research. She does crazy things, and I can't wait to dive in and find out what exactly got her started and where she's going with all this. She's got a new book out, which is exciting. I'm sure you've seen her. Rosie, how are you today?

Rosie K. Moore: I am great. How are you?

Tom Rowland: I'm doing fantastic. Thanks for joining, I appreciate it. I'm excited to dive in here. I've been watching your videos. You do crazy stuff. How did you get started doing all this?

Rosie K. Moore: Yeah, it's kind of a crazy mix of things that I do, but I actually moved to Florida probably ten years ago now, which feels like forever. I guess I'm getting old.

Tom Rowland: From where?

Rosie K. Moore: From Missouri.

Tom Rowland: Okay.

Rosie K. Moore: Big Midwest girl. So I moved here because I wanted to study sharks. I had it in my head, I was like, I want to work with something weird. Sharks scare me. I wanted to turn that whole fear-to-fascination thing around. I was like, let's go to Florida, let's go to FAU, and get involved in shark research.

Tom Rowland: Had you seen sharks before? Had you been around the ocean at all?

Rosie K. Moore: Yeah, so my dad plays a heavy hand in getting me into all this weird stuff too, because he's a tech diver. He was a search-and-rescue diver for the police, and he's also a pilot, a crazy extreme sports guy.

Tom Rowland: So that's where the scuba diving comes from, that's the background from your dad?

Rosie K. Moore: He forced me to get certified when I was ten. I was literally so scared. I remember crying, thinking I was just going to die the next day because I had no experience in the ocean.

Tom Rowland: And so when you do that, are you in a lake? I mean, you can get certified anywhere, a swimming pool for the most part. But when you're young and your dad is doing that, is the certification at a swimming pool, a lake, or did you go to the ocean?

Rosie K. Moore: I was privileged enough that he took us to Florida, and he taught us down here. So I got to experience the ocean, and that was the first time I saw a shark. It wasn't a baited dive, it was a natural interaction. It was super peaceful, easy. Now, compared to what I do, it would have been very different.

Tom Rowland: So what kind of shark was it? What was the first shark that you saw?

Rosie K. Moore: It was like a little innocent reef shark that wanted nothing to do with me.

Tom Rowland: Right? But that stirred something.

Rosie K. Moore: Yeah, that sparked my fascination. I remember thinking the whole night before that I was going to die. I saw all these sharks and I was like, this is kind of cool. And then I think Instagram really played a hand too, because shark-diving influencers really started blowing up around that time, about ten years ago. You're seeing all these little girls diving with massive tiger sharks and doing all this stuff that I never thought was possible growing up. So I was like, this seems like a cool industry. That was my whole intent on moving to Florida, I wanted to go to school and find a way to work with sharks.

Tom Rowland: And where did you go to school?

Rosie K. Moore: I did my undergrad and grad at FAU.

Tom Rowland: Okay, that's cool. And so when you go there, is there a pathway when you enter school, like, "I want to study sharks"?

Rosie K. Moore: So I didn't know anything, I was just winging everything. I signed up for an environmental science program, and I actually didn't get involved in shark research right away. I got involved a bit on the ecotourism side, helping run tours and stuff. I got involved in wood stork research instead, I ended up working on tree islands in the Everglades, getting the babies down. We were testing their thermoregulatory development, basically how they control their own body temperature and how they develop that ability. So I started with that research, loved it, got some experience in the glades, and then I went straight into grad school. Because the thing with wildlife research is there's no money in it. So the advice I got from one of my professors was, if you want to make money, either go into stats or go into GIS and remote sensing, the spatial technology they use, especially in shark research, to track their movements.

Tom Rowland: And there's money in that? Where does the money come from, studies or research?

Rosie K. Moore: I wouldn't say there's money in it, but there's more money in it compared to field work. If you have the harder office-based skills, like coding or remote sensing, you have a more advanced skill set that's more sought after. So typically that's where the pay is.

Tom Rowland: Okay. So ten years ago, where was shark research compared to where it is today?

Rosie K. Moore: I haven't read a study on this, so don't quote me, but I think shark research has become the hot new thing. Like I said, Instagram really blew up the shark-tourism industry, so many people are getting more hands-on experience with sharks, and I think that's really pushing more people to want to study them.

Are Sharks Disappearing or Multiplying?

Tom Rowland: Okay. And do you think, it wasn't very long ago that it seemed like everyone was talking about how the shark population was plummeting, that they were going to go extinct any day. But meanwhile, when you're in Florida, it surely doesn't seem like that. So I'm sure you have an opinion on where we are with those two narratives, one being that sharks are almost extinct, the other being that every time you go out anywhere in Florida, there are more sharks than we've ever seen before. Where do you sit on that?

Rosie K. Moore: That's definitely a hot-button topic. I'm always very cautious when I tell people I did anything with the shark ecotourism industry, because it's a very complex issue. On one hand, what we're seeing a lot here is the shifting-baseline theory, which I'm sure you've heard of. If my grandpa used to go fishing a hundred years ago and used to see a hundred sharks a week, but then I'm growing up and he's teaching me to fish, and when I go out I see twenty-five sharks a week, but then all of a sudden I start seeing fifty, to me that population is exploding. But to somebody in a historical context, it's still not back to normal levels. And on the other hand, local populations aren't an indicator for global populations. Then it gets a bit political too, why are we doing X, Y, and Z to conserve shark species when other countries aren't upholding their end of the deal, and the laws aren't global. So it's definitely a hot-button issue, obviously, to the shark-diving industry. We feed sharks, and that does change their behavior, every study has shown it does. But you also have to look at all the other ways people are changing their behavior too. If you're throwing scraps off a marina, you're bringing more sharks in, and that's not necessarily tied to the shark-diving industry, it's tied to people's behavior in general. They've always been accustomed to boat motors and other things like that. And some countries I've worked in, it's not like it is here in Florida. If you go to the Maldives, it's one of the biggest hotspots for tiger-shark diving, you'll have forty at one time. They have zero negative opinions of sharks. The fishermen love them. The shark-dive operations buy discarded scraps and tuna heads from the fishermen, so it brings a lot of ecotourism to a really small island that has always thrown scraps in the marina, and the sharks have always been there. So I don't think it's a clear black-or-white issue, it's a hard topic, and I understand everybody's side of it. It's almost like the tragedy of the commons. We all want to use the ocean how we want to use it. Fishermen want to catch fish, shark divers want to go shark diving, and our hobbies are kind of clashing.

Tom Rowland: That's right. Do you think that in the United States, we could ever get to a place more like the Maldives when it comes to sharks?

Rosie K. Moore: I think there are a lot of opinions of sharks that are so finely ingrained in certain communities that it's hard to overturn. It's hard to get people to come around to an entirely new opinion, once you already think a certain way, or it's just part of your community, it's really hard to change that.

Tom Rowland: And when you study sharks more, and learn more about them in a technical, classroom environment, does that change things? Do you have two different opinions of sharks, one where you're actually out there, underwater with them, and another where you're studying theories about them? Do those clash for you, in an academic setting versus a reality setting?

Rosie K. Moore: I think, if I'm taking the question the right way, there are studies on changing shark behavior, and I think you come at things with a different angle when you have a lot of hands-on experience with them, or you're doing it for an ecotourism purpose. But I also think it opens up a lot of doors, where you have different perspectives on a species, and it might open new pathways, well, we should do a study on this, or we should look into why this interaction is happening here and not there. So I think it does change your perception a bit.

Do Sharks Learn Behavior?

Tom Rowland: We have one question already, Charlie's asking if you think sharks are becoming more aggressive, because that certainly is something most fishermen are saying, and in my experience they are becoming far more aggressive in certain places, maybe not everywhere, but it sure does seem like everywhere. It's not just around the marinas and the fishing spots, we'll run to the Bahamas, stop in the middle of the ocean, catch a tuna, and boom, they're right on it. Do you think they're becoming more aggressive in Florida?

Rosie K. Moore: I wouldn't say they're becoming more aggressive per se, but I would agree they're becoming bolder. Even in the water with a bunch of bull sharks, they'll become very bold and assertive if you feed them a lot, the more they're hand-fed during a dive, the more fired up they get. I wouldn't say they're becoming more aggressive in general behavior, but I'd agree they're more willing and likely to approach a boat or a diver. Think about why we say don't feed bears or don't feed wild alligators, because they associate us with food, and then they're more likely to come close and investigate, and they lose their natural fear. I always use that analogy for feeding sharks. Those animals typically have more interactions with humans and are more of a risk.

Tom Rowland: So when you're studying sharks, as a fisherman out there all the time, or a diver, or somebody who's been in ecotourism, sharks are obviously capable of learning what a motor sounds like, or what fishing tackle hitting the bottom sounds like. They key in on certain things. Is that learning? Is it instinct? I don't know. But as you've learned about sharks and done all this research, have you come across any studies about their ability to learn, and how quickly, compared to other animals, mammals, other fish? Because that's what a lot of people say, that it's a learned behavior, that they're following the fishing boats, going to the dive spots, going where they can eat. They're the ultimate survivalist, right? They've survived everything, so they've obviously got a good sense for learning behavior.

Rosie K. Moore: Definitely. There's only been one really good study on it, because previous studies were lacking baseline data, they couldn't ensure that population had never been fed before or had human interaction. But I think Tristan published a paper a few years ago showing they retained the association from a new population, they started feeding them near boat motors, and they showed the sharks retained the association between the boat motor and being fed for up to thirty days after feeding stopped. So if you feed them for a while and then leave them alone for thirty days, they could allegedly lose some of the learned behavior.

Tom Rowland: I wonder, you'll hear other theories that if a certain population learns something, somehow other, unrelated individuals within the same species learn that behavior too, I think it's called morphic resonance. Have you ever heard of that? Where other sharks nearby that haven't been fed somehow learn the same behavior. It could happen with birds, it could happen with different things, one portion of a species learns something, and somehow other unrelated individuals in the same species learn the same thing. Have you ever heard or seen that?

Rosie K. Moore: I've heard of that in other animals, but never in sharks. I don't think anything's ever been done on that.

Tom Rowland: I don't know, it's a very interesting thing, because there were some studies, I think with mockingbirds or crows, learning about milk delivery, these crows or mockingbirds would learn to get the cream from the top of the milk, and then they learned it all over. All these other birds learned the same thing, but they weren't in the same area, they didn't seem to be interacting with one another. But then all of a sudden the same type of birds started doing that same behavior in other places. That's fascinating to me.

Rosie K. Moore: Yeah, definitely.

From Sharks to Pythons and Crocodiles

Tom Rowland: So from sharks to gators, do you just start going after all the different apex predators? Is that what's most interesting to you? How do you end up in the water with alligators and sharks, what else?

Rosie K. Moore: Well, I couldn't find a job after grad school, well, I was still in grad school, but I was looking for an internship or lab job to get more research experience. And the only thing that was really hiring near me was a reptile lab in Dayton. The job advertisement said working with pythons and crocodiles and stuff, and I was like, well, that could be cool, it's not my intended target, but I'd be interested in learning more. Turned out to be the coolest thing I've ever done, and now I feel like I'm more heavily associated with snakes and crocs and gators than I am with sharks.

Tom Rowland: That's interesting, something unexpected like that. What is it about the alligators and snakes that you liked, that was not expected when you first went to that lab?

Rosie K. Moore: Well, I knew nothing about pythons when I started there. I remember, probably my first week or two, they said in our group chat, "who has never caught a python before?" And I said, well, I haven't done it yet. They said, okay, show up at the lab at this time, and they literally just dumped an eleven-foot python on the floor and said, "okay, grab it." And I was like, what? This is my training? I don't know how to do that. Or they would just send us out to the Everglades in the middle of the night on an airboat and say, alright, you've got to catch the alligators, and we'd have to learn to snare them and bring them up. It was really cool, really pushed me out of my comfort zone, and I had to do a lot of crazy things. I think it's like sharks, I like the weird, crazy animals. I think reptiles are more understudied right now than sharks. I think we're going to see the same shift, it's kind of blowing up on social media, with all these Everglades influencers now, so I think we'll see more people going into herpetology research. But I learned so many crazy things, and if you want to work with something cool in Florida, Florida is the Wild West for invasive species and reptiles. It's insane.

Florida's Invasive Species Crisis

Tom Rowland: So what is it that's being studied? I mean, we've had a bunch of different python hunters and invasive-species people on the podcast, but from an academic standpoint, what's being studied when you're going out from this lab, or from a school or university, on the alligators and the invasive snakes?

Rosie K. Moore: I mean, there's a lot. We actually have more invasive reptiles than native ones now. And Burmese pythons get all the attention, but we have the craziest species, have you ever heard of chameleon ranching?

Tom Rowland: Well, not really. I can only imagine what that is, you go out, catch a whole bunch of chameleons, and probably sell them.

Rosie K. Moore: Yeah, it's like an underground industry here. People will import chameleons, and since they thrive outside so much better than trying to raise them in captivity, there's no overhead cost. There's this whole underground illegal trade where people purposely seed chameleon populations in neighborhoods. We used to have to go eradicate chameleon populations, there was one in Boynton, it's published now so I can talk about it, we'd go out and remove thousands from someone's backyard. Or we have the Argentine black-and-white tegu, which I always say is going to be way worse than the python. Give it ten years, and that is going to be a serious problem.

Tom Rowland: Tell me about that, because we had another guy on here who was catching some of those occasionally. But tell me about that animal.

Rosie K. Moore: Yeah, they're really cool. Basically, if you don't know what it is, they get up to five feet, this huge black-and-white lizard, almost looks like a Nile monitor. I feel like people usually recognize those a bit more. They're omnivores, and their main diet is ground-nesting animals' eggs. So we used to trap them by putting eggs in a trap, and they'd go in to try to predate the egg, but that's a huge problem, because we have so many ground-nesting animals, including the American crocodile, which is just now rebounding. And they just found out the Argentine black-and-white tegu is now in the same habitat as crocodiles.

Tom Rowland: Wow, that's unexpected, that that invasive lizard would affect the crocodile population, but it certainly could look like that. So where does that animal come from?

Rosie K. Moore: Argentina. And they're a little bit scarier too, because unlike the pythons, they can overwinter, they can go throughout the whole state. They've shown them overwintering in Georgia, through freezes. So they don't have any sort of temperature limitation like we see with Burmese pythons or the established caiman we have here.

How Invasive Species Arrive and Spread

Tom Rowland: And so how does something like that, or the pythons, or any of these invasive species get here? Is it the pet trade? What is it? How do you think they get here?

Rosie K. Moore: A lot of it's the pet trade, we have such a crazy pet trade in Florida with the exotics and venomous species, so a lot of them escape from that. People always think Burmese pythons got out from the hurricane and the pet facility in Florida, but they've actually shown that's not true. They said the most likely form of release, based on spatial-temporal studies, would be two or three medium-sized Burmese pythons released around the Flamingo area. But it's also interesting, I mentioned the underground chameleon industry, it's also a very well-known thing within the herping community for people to intentionally seed invasive species so they can go look for them for fun.

Tom Rowland: Wow, so they'll put them out there and wait. Tell me about the Flamingo Boat Ramp, because that's an area this audience is very familiar with. They think that's where the python problem started, that it traces back to two individuals being released somewhere around the Flamingo Boat Ramp, and that's how we end up with hundreds of thousands of pythons in the Everglades?

Rosie K. Moore: Yeah, there are two different release events they hypothesize, based on where we're finding them, at what stage, and how it spread throughout the state. The second release, I believe, was in Naples. So there's one pet release over here, and then one on the other side, and they're kind of converging.

Tom Rowland: How many do you think there are in the Everglades? We've heard so many different numbers.

Rosie K. Moore: Yeah, you really can't give a number, people say hundreds of thousands, or a million, or whatever. But if you've been in the Everglades so many times, it's like you could walk right by one and have no idea. They're so camouflaged.

Tom Rowland: So do you think this is something we can ever get control over, or is it now just its own kind of thing?

Rosie K. Moore: I think, like with the Argentine black-and-white tegu and some other species, there's something called an eradication curve, it's basically the point of introduction, and then you see the curve for management. Once it's past a certain point, you're basically in a management phase where you'll never get rid of it. Eradication isn't possible, but you can manage the populations as best you can.

Managing the Python Problem

Tom Rowland: And so what's the most accepted approach to management? Is it the python hunters, contract python hunters, or just allowing recreational hunters to go out there? What do you think is the most effective way?

Rosie K. Moore: I've got a lot of opinions on this. I'm super anti-Python-Challenge, because you're having a bunch of novices go out into the Everglades, I used to do the intake data for that and just see the condition of the pythons turned in. People misidentify them, they kill our native snakes. If you're sending people out there purely with the intent of finding pythons, a lot of times they don't care about native snakes, and they're running over natives in environmentally sensitive areas, just trying to find a big python to post on Instagram and look like this macho Everglades person. The contractors do a really good job, there are so many good contractors who are ecologically sensitive, aware of the issue as a whole, and don't sensationalize it to the point of vilifying the pythons. So I think the state-run programs are probably the best, it gives them a lot of oversight on the contractors' behavior, on social media and otherwise, to keep it a very professional program.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, we've had some of the guys on, Snakeaholic, do you know him? He's great. And the Python Cowboy, and we've had Gator Boy Chris on. Have you ever worked with him?

Rosie K. Moore: Yeah, actually, the lab I worked with, Chris also got his start at the same lab.

Tom Rowland: Very knowledgeable, I mean, very knowledgeable, and all of those guys are. They know so much about these creatures to be able to find them consistently. It's just like being a fishing guide, the best fishing guide is really like a scientist. You're going to know what the fish eat, what they like, what they don't like, where those areas are, and you try to replicate those areas across many different places, at different tides, different times of year, different temperatures, all of that goes into finding them consistently. That's what I've found with all of those guys, and probably yourself too, you have to study so much to know all about them. So the python made it to the Keys, how are they getting there now? We're seeing more and more videos recently, interesting how they got there by water, someone's asking, that's Nick. What's your opinion, do you think those are release events, like out of a truck, or into the water? How does it happen?

Rosie K. Moore: Yeah, so I've actually read, there's only one really good study on the Burmese python's spread to the Keys, in terms of their ability to survive in saline water. I think they showed a hatchling could survive up to ninety days without a freshwater source, which is a long time. But if you look at the shape of the Keys and the ecology there, you can find some freshwater sources, but you're pretty locked in, so I think they're pretty limited in their ability to spread efficiently throughout the Keys. They've been found all throughout the Keys now, I think as far as Key West, somebody found one. I even know somebody personally who was recreationally catching one, and it got loose in his house.

Tom Rowland: Well, my neighbor in Key West had two of them, and they were massive. There was a fence between our two yards, and he had this long box there, I didn't know what it was for a while, but then one day I looked over the fence, and he's got this python out in his yard, stretching the thing out. And he's like, yeah, it sits in the cage this long. I've got kids right next door, and this thing is big enough to eat a kid. No doubt, and it would be no problem for it to get out, it could happen easy.

Rosie K. Moore: Well, yeah, and it made it worse too when FWC changed the rules to prohibit certain species. You could technically get a few species grandfathered in if you'd already had them for a long time, but it actually resulted in a lot of people with now-prohibited species just releasing them.

Tom Rowland: Let them go.

Rosie K. Moore: So they didn't have to deal with the changes in legislation and cage enclosures.

Tom Rowland: And so if somebody just lets a python go in Key West, what are the chances of that thing surviving?

Rosie K. Moore: I mean, I think it would be found pretty fast, because there's not really anywhere for it to escape to.

Tom Rowland: Lots of chickens down there.

Rosie K. Moore: Yeah, and it would probably predate on cats and chickens and any stray animals it finds, but I think it would be captured and euthanized very quickly.

Tom Rowland: Probably. What invasive animal is the biggest threat, and why? Also, I'm a big fan of both of you, so this is awesome, thanks Johnny Gap. So what do you think is the biggest threat, is it the tegu?

Rosie K. Moore: I think the tegu is going to be the biggest up-and-coming one, as well as, obviously, the Burmese python does a lot of damage too. I think those two combined are going to be the biggest threat to all of our natives.

Life and Work in the Everglades

Tom Rowland: What about when you think about the amount of time you've spent in the Everglades? I love your opinion on this, because you're really an outsider, you're from Missouri, so you come down to the Everglades. When you see the Everglades for the first time, what's your first impression of this place? Because when you go to the Flamingo Boat Ramp, that's way different than going to some of these places I see you diving, for the alligators, the water's perfectly clear, you're standing on the peat. It's a different environment. It's all the Everglades, but it's different. So what was your initial introduction to the Everglades?

Rosie K. Moore: I started working as a wildlife biologist, that's when I really got the deep experience, going to some of the more remote places looking for crocodiles. And most of the water, like you said, isn't actually very clear, it's very murky. You see bull sharks everywhere, you see crocodiles popping out, so it's very intimidating and a little scary. But then if you go to Big Cypress, the water's super clear and pretty, and the trees are majestic. So I think where you go really depends on what you think of the Everglades. It's often portrayed as this big swampy, mosquito-filled wasteland, but some of the areas are just insanely gorgeous.

Tom Rowland: What's your favorite area?

Rosie K. Moore: Big Cypress. I wish I could just live there for a few months and explore, because I'm sure there are the craziest spots there.

Tom Rowland: What's your least favorite area?

Rosie K. Moore: Probably the Flamingo area.

Tom Rowland: No doubt about that. I mean, can you believe, have you read A Land Remembered? Did you read that book? You should. I think everyone who lives in Florida, or vacations in Florida, or has any interest in it, should read about what Florida used to be like a long time ago. And Florida a long time ago, you know very well, was like the Flamingo Boat Ramp, it was rough. And that place in July, could there be a worse place for mosquitoes on Earth? I haven't found it yet. Have you?

Rosie K. Moore: No, it's terrible. I used to wear full bug suits and put rubber medical gloves on our hands just to protect them, because if you're outside for any length of time, you just get eaten alive.

Tom Rowland: So what do you have to do in July in Flamingo? What kind of study, what kind of person would send you to Flamingo in July, and what would you be studying?

Rosie K. Moore: We used to have to go scoop up all the baby crocodiles when they hatched, so you'd always be in that area in summer. As soon as they hatched, we'd have every nest marked, we'd go to that nest, collect all the babies, and tag them before releasing them. So it's a long night, the hours would be fifteen, sixteen hours, working out there collecting babies. You can imagine how many mosquitoes you're exposed to in that.

Tom Rowland: How many babies would be a good night?

Rosie K. Moore: I think some nights we got over two hundred.

Tom Rowland: Do they bite, those little ones?

Rosie K. Moore: I mean, they do.

Tom Rowland: Not bad, though, I mean it seems like, sometimes a puppy bite, they have the super sharp teeth, but they don't really bite you so much as scrape you. I don't know, what's the worst bite you've gotten? I saw you get bit on your Instagram, was it the tegu that bit you, one of those things?

Snakebites, Venom, and Handling Risk

Rosie K. Moore: I don't remember, I've been bit by a lot of things, tegus included. I've had one technically venomous snake bite, but I was fine from it, it was a mild venom, in South America, and luckily I didn't have a reaction. But that same bite sent my friend to the hospital, his heart almost failed.

Tom Rowland: And you had to get antivenom?

Rosie K. Moore: They're actually very hesitant to administer antivenom unless it's an extreme reaction to the bite. So even if you got bit down here, say by a copperhead, your chance of dying from that bite is less than one percent, even untreated with no antivenom. So a lot of snakes really aren't that lethal.

Tom Rowland: We just had David Orin on the podcast yesterday, do you know who he is? He got bit by a rattlesnake.

Rosie K. Moore: Rattlesnakes are the worst, that's actually something like ninety-something percent of all snake bites in the U.S. are caused by rattlesnakes, and it's the most severe bite.

Tom Rowland: I mean, he had a bad time with it, but that was a month ago. Do you want to handle those types of poisonous snakes?

Rosie K. Moore: I've been working on my venomous license. In Florida, to legally handle or keep a venomous snake, you're supposed to have a thousand documented hours, signed off by two people who are currently licensed, showing you know how to feed and care for them and have hands-on hook experience. I don't really want to keep anything crazy, I have friends who have insane inland taipans and cobras at their house, but I would like a small, cute little viper.

Tom Rowland: So why do people want that in their house? I'm just wondering, everybody's got their thing. Certain people, like Kevin, love snakes, think they're beautiful, love everything about them, and the fact that they're venomous is even cooler, because it's like a weaponized animal. But what is it about wanting to keep a poisonous snake in your house?

Rosie K. Moore: I think there are a few mixed reasons. For the most part, people I know who do it use those animals for social media content, it's a slippery slope with the YouTubers, they get one, start getting a lot of attention, and next thing you know they've got two hundred. I also know people who breed them and do the whole export business of venomous snakes, and they make amazing money doing it.

Tom Rowland: Well, what's interesting for you about it?

Rosie K. Moore: I just want a small one, one small, cute one at my house. I have no desire to have two hundred snakes or anything like that. I just like learning how to handle them, it's interesting, how to hook an arboreal, tree-based snake versus a ground snake, and how they behave. I think it also spills over into practical field experience in different countries, having one to practice with, and consistently handling venomous species, teaches you a lot of skills that transfer.

Fieldwork Abroad: Suriname and Beyond

Tom Rowland: How many different countries have you been to?

Rosie K. Moore: A lot, I think just in the past six months.

Tom Rowland: It's been twelve years, in the last six months?

Rosie K. Moore: Yeah.

Tom Rowland: So what takes you to so many countries?

Rosie K. Moore: Top secret. Yeah, I mean, I did two Shark Week episodes this year, so I went to Australia and the Bahamas for that. And then I had a bunch of projects that followed, and I had to go to Canada for a meeting, and some other things. You kind of just bounce around, wildlife is so spread out.

Tom Rowland: What's your favorite place you've been to for crazy animals?

Rosie K. Moore: I think Suriname is the craziest spot I've ever experienced in my life. Everything lives there. And it's such an underdeveloped country as far as tourism, I would walk outside the little resort my friend owns, and there would be anacondas in the ditches. You could literally just walk outside your house and catch an anaconda, or find a small pond in the forest with a baby caiman and anacondas right next to them. And then you could go for a stroll in the park and see forty vipers on the ground. It was like snakes were raining from the trees.

Tom Rowland: So what's the population there, as far as the snakes go, is it like we have dogs all around us, and you just learn to navigate around all these snakes?

Rosie K. Moore: I don't really know, I talked to some of the locals there, and they all liked snakes. But again, I'm in this little bubble, so I'm not really talking to the general public. I know my friend is actually creating a little school to do outreach there, to help with public perception too. So I'm assuming it's like us, they probably have a bit more respect or understanding of large constrictors like anacondas, and that it's probably not really going to attack you. So it's probably less of an issue than Burmese pythons are to us.

Anacondas vs. Pythons

Tom Rowland: What is it about the anaconda, it seems like, when I was growing up, people had anacondas, not so much pythons. That was the more popular snake you'd see at people's houses, and it would seem to me that that would have been the snake that ended up in the Everglades, just because I saw way more of those growing up. But how did the python end up being the snake that basically took over the Everglades instead of any other constrictor?

Rosie K. Moore: Well, it's funny, because people always try to say we have anacondas in the Everglades, and I'm always like, it's not true. We could, but the ones that have been reported and captured were all in suburban areas, likely individual pet releases. There's been zero evidence of a breeding population anywhere. A lot of news agencies were running stories like, "oh, we have anacondas in Florida," but it was simply because one or two got found in a neighborhood, and it was an adult pair that weren't breeding. If we did have anacondas, it would be extremely difficult to find them, say they were released in Big Cypress, that's a species that's extremely aquatic, meaning they don't come out on land a lot, unless maybe they're basking or thermoregulating. So it would be very difficult to identify the problem before it happens.

Tom Rowland: What's the difference in behavior between the Burmese python and the anaconda? You said aquatic, but what's the difference that makes the python easier to find?

Rosie K. Moore: I think anacondas would actually be harder to find, sorry, the python is easier to find. I think because anacondas would be mostly underwater, and we all know how dark the water can be in the glades, so it'd be very rare for them to come out on land, except maybe every once in a while to heat up. Even when I'm looking for them in South America, I'm looking in the water, not on land. Whereas here, a lot of the pythons we find are from road-cruising, land-based areas that are easy to access.

Tom Rowland: Interesting. So Suriname, is that an area you want to go back to?

Rosie K. Moore: Yeah, I would love to live there for a few months again and find all the weird, creepy species they have.

Tom Rowland: I think they have good fishing there too.

Rosie K. Moore: It's supposed to be insane, actually, a lot of the people on my last expedition there were trying to fish, and we were catching fish and they'd cook it fresh.

Tom Rowland: Did it taste good, like a white-meat fish?

Rosie K. Moore: Yeah.

Tom Rowland: Nice. So do you fish, do you like to fish?

Rosie K. Moore: I'm trying to.

Tom Rowland: You're trying to learn? No bass fishing in your Missouri background?

Rosie K. Moore: No. But I just went trout fishing, we got a few trout down in the Everglades a few weeks ago. So I'm slowly learning.

Tom Rowland: Careful of the bones on those things, fried trout is one of the best things you could eat, but they do have these tiny little bones that get people. I had a friend get one stuck in his throat, not good. But you do have to be careful with trout. So no bass fishing in Missouri?

Rosie K. Moore: No. I really want to try noodling, though. I heard it's kind of contested, but it just seems like an interesting thing to try.

Tom Rowland: You're going to be great at it immediately. Seems like there'd be some places to noodle in Tennessee, but I'm sure Hannah Barron would be more than happy to show you how in Alabama. Noodling, I don't know, that's another one I'm not super crazy about, because of all the snapping turtles up there, those things will bite you, I would think, worse than anything we've talked about today. If you got bit by a snapping turtle, don't you think that would be, they have a massive bite on them.

Rosie K. Moore: I always say I'm more scared of running into one of those on accident when I'm in the murky glades water than an alligator, because the alligator's going to run from me, but a snapping turtle wouldn't.

Tom Rowland: Has one ever bitten you, or tried to, or run into you?

Rosie K. Moore: Nope, I've seen a few in the wild, but never had a real encounter.

Tom Rowland: There used to be that guy, Turtle Man, he seemed to have a social-media future, and then I don't know what happened to him, he just kind of disappeared. But he used to get bit by those things all the time. So tell me about your book.

Writing Her First Book

Rosie K. Moore: Oh, I'm so excited, that took me forever to do. It's the first book I've written, and I was determined to do it all myself. I wanted to write it, design it, do the layout, and process it.

Tom Rowland: What do you know about writing a book? I've had a number of authors on, and I find each person's journey into writing a book is different, a lot of people get started, and it's far different than they thought, and most say it's the hardest thing they've ever done. What was your experience?

Rosie K. Moore: I redid it, like, six different times. I basically started with a big Google Doc, and I wanted it to read very adventurey, kind of a Lemony Snicket tonality to it, because it's all about weird Florida exploration, like where you can go to see venomous snakes being milked, or go see alligators up close. Then I got halfway through, redid the whole thing, changed the cover like seven times. The original book versus what I actually published are two very different things.

Tom Rowland: Do you think you'd prefer, sometimes these things take on a life of their own, and it takes you down a road you never intended. Sounds like maybe that's what happened.

Rosie K. Moore: Yeah, that's exactly what happened. But I'm really happy with how it turned out. I was nervous about publishing it myself and seeing how the printed copy would come out, and it came out perfect, honestly, Amazon does a good job with drop-shipping and sending everything out.

Tom Rowland: And so where do you sell it? Do you have your own website too, or just straight off Amazon?

Rosie K. Moore: Amazon, straight off Amazon, and they do everything for you, all the shipping.

Tom Rowland: Sold? Through your own social media, are you just pushing it through your own social media?

Rosie K. Moore: Yeah, I've only pushed it a little bit, made one or two posts about it, and it's doing extremely well. I was iffy, but people are always asking me on social media, "where is this? Where's your spot? How do I get there?" And I was like, I'm tired of telling people for free. So I just wrote out my favorite spots, how to get there, and what it's like. People are responding very well to it.

Tom Rowland: That's great. Are you thinking you'll write another one?

Rosie K. Moore: Yeah, I'm actually working on a children's book series right now, top-secret topics again, but hopefully it should be out in a few months.

Tom Rowland: Wow, well you must be working hard at it, for it to be out in a couple of months. But you now have this experience from publishing one, I guess it's not as hard as you thought it would be.

Rosie K. Moore: Yeah, no, now that I've done it once, I feel like I've got a good handle on it, and learned how to do it, and how not to do it.

Career Identity, Social Media, and Nonprofit Work

Tom Rowland: So when we first started talking, I said that on your Instagram it lists that you're an ecologist, an influencer, an author, a master freediver, into Apex Predator Research, a scuba diver. What do you consider your profession? If you were to meet somebody at a party and they asked what you do, what would you say?

Rosie K. Moore: I usually don't like to go on a long tangent about myself, so I usually just say I'm a wildlife biologist, that way they understand what I do, and I leave it. But like you said, I started as a full-time scientist, and I got kind of swept into the TV and media world. So now I feel like I do half science, half media, half outreach.

Tom Rowland: And where does your social media fit into that?

Rosie K. Moore: I'm trying to just use my social media to promote things like my nonprofit, and other actual work, but it's kind of a time sink, social media takes up so much effort.

Tom Rowland: What does your nonprofit do?

Rosie K. Moore: I do snake conservation and outreach. Tonight, for example, I've got an event where I take young girls to come see snakes in person and teach them how to herp, and teach them more about the ecology in Florida. So we do a lot of outreach, and I publish all my manuscripts through it.

Tom Rowland: Herping, this seems like a new activity. Well, it's not really new, people have been doing it forever, but it's got a new name. And you're also taking young girls out there, are the young girls interested in doing this? Are they hesitant? What do you see as the future of herping, is it girls, guys, everybody? What's the future of herping?

Rosie K. Moore: I think it's kind of everybody, but I get a huge response from girls all over who want to learn how to herp. The problem is there aren't many girls doing it a lot, or at a high level. So if you're a girl and you want to learn, it's not something you can just walk out of your house and grab the first snake you see, you have to have experience identifying the snakes, being able to tell a cottonmouth from a banded water snake, knowing where you can and can't legally do it, or touch the snakes, and understanding things like venomous permits and how those work. So it's more like offering mentorship to girls who want to safely learn how to get into the field. But there are also so many new influencers touching on herpetology, there's that guy from Love Island, Rob Rausch, who all the girls have a crush on, and he's a big snake guy, I think that also helps show people that herping is cool and gets more people into it. It's just making sure they do it right, and don't turn into one of those social media people who's abusing animals for content all the time.

The Ethics of Wildlife Content and Herping

Tom Rowland: So somebody that's a good herper, in your opinion, is just going to go out, find the snake, pick it up, look at it, and let it go?

Rosie K. Moore: Yeah, it's basically catch-and-release.

Tom Rowland: Literally.

Rosie K. Moore: Exactly, you don't need to keep it. I mean, a lot of people, especially serious photographers, will bag snakes, put them in their car, and keep them until the next day to shoot them in daylight. Or you see a lot of those crazy influencers, like the one we mentioned, who are either intentionally getting bit or messing with venomous snakes and doing stupid things for social media attention. And then there's the same guy who was also taking iguanas out of trees and letting them rip off part of his arm for videos. So it's like the crazy stuff that gets the most traction on social media is usually the least ethical.

Tom Rowland: So how do you teach people about that? When you have this opportunity to mentor young girls, and you're teaching them what's responsible and what's not, how do you go about doing that?

Rosie K. Moore: There's actually a pretty well-known Instagram page called Herper Circus, and that's kind of where they put all the people doing it unethically on blast. So I always show a slideshow from that, and then teach them about being able to discern when somebody is doing something unethical. Like, if I'm holding twenty king snakes and posing in the Everglades, do you really think I just walked upon twenty king snakes? That's literally impossible to find. Or if I have all these alligators or caimans that I'm posing with in the daytime, do you really think I caught that that day, or do you think I caught it the night before, taped it up, put it in my bathtub, and used it for content the next day? So it's kind of just using common sense when you're watching videos, to see if this is actually a natural interaction, or something staged to be viral.

Tom Rowland: Interesting. Well, it's a lot the same with fish and catch-and-release fishing, you can see proper handling methods versus, you know, sticking your hand up in the gills and the fish bleeding all over the place, and then you let it go and say, "yeah, let it go", I mean, that's not cool, right? So people have to get into it in a way where someone who's mentoring or teaching them is actually doing it right. So where do you think that's going? You're obviously doing it yourself, and there are a couple of social media accounts working on that. But I'm interested, even in the fishing world, we could probably learn from what's going on in other worlds about how to mentor people properly who want to get into it. They get in originally because they just want to explore and see, but if they get mentorship from the wrong person, it only creates more bad behavior.

Rosie K. Moore: Yeah, exactly. And I think, like I said, the more unethical stuff you're doing, usually the more viral you go on social media. And I think social media following typically gets perceived by the general public as expertise or credibility. So what sucks is a lot of the accounts that do it wrong get a huge following, people look up to them, and start thinking that's how we should interact with wildlife. So it's kind of about unlearning those behaviors, or trying to get the other accounts big, like Chris Gillette and Snakeaholic, like you mentioned, they're great, they do everything by the book, they never do anything unethical. So there are a few big accounts that give off more wholesome vibes and do more education than sensationalism.

Tom Rowland: So as far as herping goes, with conservation, how does getting more people into herping help with conservation, in your opinion, in the future?

Rosie K. Moore: I think it gets more people involved, it's almost the same thing as with the shark industry blowing up. The more people get hands-on experience with snakes, the more they care, or care to learn about the actual issues happening, and want to get more involved in conserving them. But if you don't know anything about snakes and have never had a positive experience, you're probably not going to care or be motivated to do anything toward conservation.

Tom Rowland: That's what I think about fishing, and closed areas, too, if you're not fishing in there, and they don't let anyone go in there, people just kind of stop caring about that area. That's my big thing, access. I don't want limited access, or restricted access, or no access. We need to be able to continue to go in there, because really the hunters and fishermen, and people like yourself, the herpers, these are the people who care the most about those particular areas. And so if no one goes in there, and then there's a proposed strip mall, you have no resistance to it. Nobody cares, because nobody's been in there in thirty years, nobody knows what's in there, right?

The Future: TV, Media, and New Projects

Tom Rowland: Where do you think, in the next five years, this journey is going to take you?

Rosie K. Moore: I don't know, I've got some more TV projects coming up in the works. I'm trying to take more of a producer role, more of an active role in creating shows, and getting the topics I care about on a big screen, and more eyes on them, especially involving snakes. Because snakes are very hard to get on TV shows, you'd be shocked, unless you're doing something crazy like python hunting. A lot of networks don't want to touch anything snake-related.

Tom Rowland: Why is that? It seems like, you had Steve Irwin, you had Austin Stevens, all these people who were on TV for a while and made the network tons of money. Steve Irwin made the network lots of money. You'd think they'd want to replicate that.

Rosie K. Moore: But they don't, no network touches it now. I mean, the TV industry is kind of finicky, and we're also seeing a huge crash in actual TV. Animal Planet's done, Nat Geo's Green Light is thin for the next two years, Discovery Channel's still great. But also, I don't know, I want to say the consumers are smarter now. What Steve Irwin did was cool, but he was also just kind of going out and wrangling animals for the most part, and people don't want that anymore. Unless you have a purpose for wrangling those animals, it needs to be a good, solid mission with a message. And like I said, on the flip side, there's really nowhere to sell those shows to anyway.

Tom Rowland: And so who are you working with these days? I know my video just went dark, but he's fixing it, who can you say you're working with?

Rosie K. Moore: I can say some of it, I have some other projects that are super under wraps that I'm not allowed to talk about, but I'm still working with Discovery Channel, I've been working with them for a few years. History Channel as well, and then some smaller foreign networks.

Tom Rowland: And what's your favorite part of the process? We create television shows as well, and there are certain things about it that I really like, and other things I don't like so much. What's your favorite part of the process when you're going to produce or be on one of these shows?

Rosie K. Moore: I like finding the creative angle. For any show that you want to sell, or for it to go anywhere, you have to have a unique angle that nobody's ever done before. So being able to take a complex scientific issue and say, what if we went at it this way, and made it entertaining for audiences, but also explored something new that nobody's ever touched on before, I think that's a really cool opportunity.

Tom Rowland: That is. Have you done that already, on some of these other Discovery Channel shows you've been on that you can talk about?

Rosie K. Moore: I have, but not that I can talk about.

Tom Rowland: Okay, I understand how that works too, because television is slow, very, very slow. Even when we own our own production company and network, it's very slow. We'll produce these shows, and they don't come out for a long time, and we don't talk about them, we don't put anything out on social media until it drops. Social media is much faster, and that's one of the things I like about social media, and don't like about television, how slow it is. But I understand where you're coming from, you can't say certain things, that's cool. But your social media is very good, you were just recently with Goliath Fishing, saw that with Mac Hoover, those guys are super creative. What did you end up doing with them?

Rosie K. Moore: I love them. So I'd never met them before, and I wasn't sure how they'd be in person, I literally just met up with them in the middle of the Everglades by myself. My friend Casey came in with us too, so I was like, well, let's see how this goes. But it was cool, I actually got them pretty deep in the glades, and we did a really cool episode. I got them up close with wild alligators, and we did some filming, some underwater filming too. It was cool, they seemed to really like it.

Tom Rowland: Well, I'm sure they did. And did that tie back into fishing somehow, or I don't know?

Rosie K. Moore: You'll have to wait for the episode, I mean, I'm hoping they did something else, but we didn't do any fishing.

Biggest Threats to the Everglades

Tom Rowland: That's cool. So one last thing on the Everglades, you've seen it from Big Cypress down to Flamingo. What do you think is the biggest threat to the Everglades today?

Rosie K. Moore: I think just development. We're all seeing it, even the Homestead area, you just see it getting more built up, building eco-tents and other things. It's hard, because, like we mentioned, accessibility to natural areas, you always want to push people to get experience or go into nature. It just sucks when that results in people wanting to cut down a lot of it to develop facilities and other things. So it's a give and take.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, it definitely is. What about the water issues associated with the Everglades, what do you know about those?

Rosie K. Moore: I mean, I know cursory information, but I'm definitely not an expert on the water quality or health issues there.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, that's something that, as fishermen, is kind of front and center for us all the time. But even though the Everglades is a big system, and depending on where you're going, and what your experience is, whether you're experiencing it from the Keys up, or from Big Cypress down, there's a different experience, and different threats, in each of these quadrants. It's taken me a while to get my head around it, and I still don't fully understand it, or what the solutions are, but there are solutions, it seems, and some good groups out there doing great work. Do you have any organizations you particularly like that are working with the Everglades?

Rosie K. Moore: Yeah, there's a bunch. The Everglades Foundation is a kind of newer one that's been blowing up, and obviously Captains for Clean Water is blowing up and doing really cool work too.

Tom Rowland: Okay. Alright, Rosie, well, I appreciate you coming, I've learned a ton, and man, you've got a lot of things going on, so I really wish you all the best. And if you want to get her book, it's on Amazon. If you want to watch her, do you have a YouTube?

Rosie K. Moore: I do have a YouTube.

Tom Rowland: What is that? How do they find it?

Rosie K. Moore: Rosie K. Moore.

Tom Rowland: Rosie K. Moore, is that across everything?

Rosie K. Moore: Yep.

Tom Rowland: Alright, Rosie K. Moore across everything, go follow her and check out her book. But Rosie, thanks, we should do this again.

Rosie K. Moore: I'd like to. Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.