Austin Gallagher

Professional Research

Gallagher is a broadly-trained biologist focusing on studying survival in wild animals,^[8] including some of the planet’s largest and most threatened species such as sharks and other terrestrial predators. He is known for his expertise on sharks,^[9][10][11] focusing on advancing our understanding their movements, stress, nutrition and energy, and reproduction, with the purposes of advancing their conservation worldwide.^[12][13] He has been credited as being one of the first scientists to demonstrate that sharks were worth more alive for tourism than dead for fishing,^[14] and he also helped discover the largest aggregation of pregnant apex predatory sharks in the world. He was the first PhD student in the famous Shark Research and Conservation Program at the University of Miami, where he published over 25 papers as a graduate student.^[15] He is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Miami, collaborating on research with Dr. Neil Hammerschlag and mentoring graduate students. Gallagher completed a post-doctoral research program at Carleton University^[16] with Dr. Steve Cooke, looking at the effects of stress on freshwater and coral reef fishes. In 2016 he received a prestigious Banting Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to conduct research on deer and large carnivores in British Columbia through Western University. The majority of his collaborative research is now focused through his NGO Beneath the Waves. In 2017, he led the science on the BVI Art Reef,^[17] a collaborative project with Sir Richard Branson that sunk a derelict WWII ship for the purposes of establishing an artificial reef to restore overfished species in the British Virgin Islands.^[18][19] Current projects including tracking the movements of sharks and fishing boats through the Global Fishing Watch,^[20][21] in partnership with Oceana, Google, and SkyTruth, as well as a project to monitor the health and movements of Caribbean sharks through acoustic telemetry.^[22]

Entrepreneurship

Gallagher is the founder and CEO of Beneath the Waves,^[23] a global platform for promoting ocean health. The mission of Beneath the Waves is to advance the conservation of sharks through cutting-edge technology and engaging media. In its early days, Beneath the Waves served as a marine science film festival, whereby it hosted events in over 20 countries and directly reached over 20,000 people worldwide. Gallagher has helped activate Beneath the Waves into a variety of influential communities and pop-culture events, including Summit Series, the 1 Hotel, Tortuga Music Festival, and Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. In 2017 he co-founded a beverage startup called Tempo,^[24] which produces plant-based, functional, and clean beverages and hopes to inspire positive environmental change in the beverage industry.^[25][26]

Awards

In 2016, Gallagher became the first American marine biologist to make the Forbes 30 Under 30 List, at the age of 29.^[3] He was also the only conservation biologist on the list in 2016. His relationship with the Forbes community has expanded, as he currently is a member of the Forbes Non Profit Council, an invitation-only group of CEOs of successful nonprofits generating over $500,000 in annual revenue.

In April 2016 he was awarded the Loyola University Young Alumni Award, and in the same month he gave a TEDx talk in San Diego, CA^[27] on facing your fears to change the world. In 2015 he led the first ever multi-national expedition to study sharks in Japan, which was featured as the cover story of the February 2016 issue of Outside Magazine^[28] and covered by GoPro.