JU teams up with shark tracking, advocacy group for Ocearch at Jacksonville University

Chris Fischer, founder of the shark advocacy group Ocearch, said he’s moving his shark-catching ship and his entire operation to Jacksonville for many reasons, not the least being this one: It’s where the great white sharks are.

“It’s right in the middle of the North Atlantic white shark puzzle,” he said Thursday morning on the campus of Jacksonville University. “Anyone who swims in the ocean here has been swimming with white sharks their entire life.”

He came to JU as the school announced that it’s partnering with Ocearch, a move the university figures will boost its academic opportunities and magnify its public profile far beyond what is typical for a small private school.

The new operation is called Ocearch at Jacksonville University.

That’s a name that JU President Tim Cost expects to be seen millions of times on social media, in thousands of news articles, on TV shows featuring the Ocearch crew, and all over the group’s shark-tracking app.

Fischer, a charismatic entrepreneur, TV star and shark advocate, will join the JU faculty and receive a salary. His title: explorer-in-residence.

The group will have offices at JU, and its boat, the Ocearch — a steel-hulled, 126-foot vessel that once braved the Bering Sea — will be docked in Jacksonville, probably in Mayport, when it’s not out roaming the globe.

Both groups announced the partnership at a press conference on the riverfront campus, home to slightly more than 4,000 students. The Ocearch was docked by the marine science department building on the choppy St. Johns River.

Slideshow:OCEARCH and Jacksonville University create partnership for shark research

In an interview before the announcement, Cost said the move will expand the school’s reputation to countless prospective students. “There are millions of people between 12 and 18 who know about Ocearch,” he said. “They’re now going to know about Ocearch at Jacksonville University.”

During the ceremony, before a couple of hundred onlookers and a live Facebook feed, Fischer said something that must have tickled JU administrators. Over the years many people, he said, have asked him how to get involved in Ocearch.

”We have an answer now,” he said. “Go to Jacksonville University.”

Fischer’s shark adventures have been featured in thousands of news articles — journalists are frequent guests aboard the Ocearch — and were made into a TV series that ran on the National Geographic Channel and the History Channel. Fischer’s new show, “Shark Trackers,” premiered Tuesday on the Travel Channel.

A lengthy Outside magazine profile in 2015 noted the public’s voracious appetite for great white shark stories, a taste met on many fronts by Ocearch. “That ability to engage the public makes Fischer more like (Jacques) Cousteau than his detractors want to admit,” the story said.

Fischer and Ocearch host researchers from a variety of scientific institutions, a practice that will continue. Many shark experts say their work in catching and tagging sharks with GPS-enabled trackers has been invaluable in understanding the range and habits of the animals.

Fischer does have some critics though, who say he’s a reality-TV showman whose methods — catching the shark and then using a platform to lift it onto the boat — endangers the animals.

Quinton White, head of JU’s Marine Science Research Institute, said he’s well aware of that criticism, but said the information gained by the trackers has revolutionized shark research.

“We went into (the partnership) with eyes wide open,” he said before the announcement. “There are people who don’t like a lot of things scientists do. You try to do things in a humane, logical manner … (Ocearch) takes a lot of data and releases the sharks and the sharks do well. You see them swimming all over the world, literally.”

Ocearch and Jacksonville have made news before.

Mary Lee, a 3,500-pound great white caught near Cape Cod, created a stir after it was tracked into the surf zone off Jacksonville Beach on a chilly January night in 2013. That led to warnings on Facebook and a 12:46 a.m. phone call from Fischer’s home in Utah to police in Jacksonville Beach.

Weeks later, Ocearch took its first of two expeditions toJacksonville, during which it caught, tagged and released a 14 1/2-foot great white shark given the nameLydia. It was pulled from the water 0.6 miles from the Poles at Hanna Park, one of Jacksonville’s prime surfing spots — close enough to plainly see the individual poles that give the spot its name.

Mary Lee and Lydia are two of Ocearch’s celebrity sharks, followed by many thousands of people on the group’s Facebook page, which has some 445,000 “likes,” and on Ocearch’s free shark tracking site and app.

White said the trackers show that great whites often go back and forth through the waters of Northeast Florida. “Jacksonville turns out to be the center, if you would, of great white shark activity,” he said. “Sharks come through here. This may alarm some.”

The partnership has been in the works for two years, and stems largely, Cost said, from the friendship between Fischer and White, who has been at JU for 40 years.

Cost declined to put an exact dollar figure on what he called a multiyear agreement. “I would say six figures, but seven would be too much,” he said.

Legal issues were examined by the school’s attorneys, while two doctoral students and a professor worked on Fischer’s business plan, trying to look for all rewards and pitfalls.

Cost and White said it won’t be just marine science students involved in the Ocearch partnership. Instead, it will take in students from diverse majors, including engineering, public policy, film, art, English, communications, business and aviation.

Fischer remains the owner of the ship, and will continue to get corporate sponsorships for journeys. He added that the agreement with JU might enable the group to add more ships down the line, to expand Ocearch’s work.

Fischer said the partnership is a way to make sure his work continues, in a city he said has shown more support than Ocearch has received anywhere. “Now it can live beyond any one individual,” he said. “Now we have the opportunity to have an entire community behind it.”

Matt Soergel: (904) 359-4082