As the Lead for Spot A Shark, Sarah manages the research, events, awareness campaigns and plays a key role in advancing the organisation’s mission to monitor and protect shark populations. As both a professional PADI SCUBA Diving Instructor, an amateur photographer and a committee member of the Underwater Research Group of NSW, she actively contributes to the photo-ID project from underwater, raising awareness in the community and from behind the computer screen analysing the data. Sarah is the administrator of sharkbook.ai and manages the photo-ID process for the Grey Nurse shark species ensuring that every encounter captured in the water translates into meaningful scientific data.

Sean Barker began SCUBA diving at 17 and later became an instructor in Sydney and on the Great Barrier Reef, where he gained valuable sea experience. He pursued a degree in Marine Science, focusing on subjects like Coral Reef Ecology and Shark Ecology. His research on Grey Nurse Sharks led to the creation of the “Spot a Shark” initiative, involving citizen scientists in monitoring shark populations. Barker’s work has significantly contributed to understanding and protecting marine life. Sean continues to promote the project and offers a mentoring role to newer members of the team. Sean's work has led to the publication of a number of papers on Grey Nurse Sharks and has a wealth of experience in photo-ID techniques.

Jason Holmberg is the Executive Director of Wild Me lab of Conservation X Labs, a non profit organisation focussed on monitoring 233,000+ individual animals (from gray whales to leopards) across 1.2M+ sightings and 11M+ images. Jason is the brains behind the software used by Spot a Shark. As a scientific software developer and leader of machine learning experts he has been instrumental in advancing Wildbook to meet the needs of wildlife researchers and their study species. Jason’s journey into wildlife research began in 2002 when he encountered his first whale shark off Djibouti, inspiring him to modernize mark-recapture methods by using the sharks’ natural spot patterns for digital tagging.

Peter Simpson is a founding member of Spot a Shark and has played a pivotal role in gathering large datasets of shark images for the project. Peter built a community of divers up and down the coast of Australia to coordinate shark surveys and gather photos for the project. Peter also organised shark rescue missions and has helped a number of sharks.

Lisa serves as a key executive at the CID Foundation, an organisation dedicated to protecting the ocean’s beauty and its inhabitants. Lisa has a background in supporting crucial research to protect biodiversity, habitat and species conservation. In her role as our Treasurer, Lisa brings her extensive financial acumen to the Spot a Shark team.

Simon Pierce is a lead researcher and scientist supporting the Spot a Shark project. Simon and his connections with universities across the world are using the data collected by Spot a Shark to drive positive change for the species. Simon is a SharkBook.ai lead administrator for not just grey nurse sharks, but whale sharks, leopard sharks and more.

The ‘Spot A Shark’ website, logo and brand was created by Made Agency under Richard Stenlake’s leadership and exemplifies how deep compassion can drive meaningful change. Motivated by a love for sharks and a commitment to their conservation, Richard and his team developed the foundation of a brand as a passion project, dedicated to the cause rather than financial gain.

Jarrod is a PHD Candidate studying what makes Wolf Rock so unique, as the only known gestation aggregation in Australia. He brings to the team a range of scientific expertise, personal charm and passion to help bring science to life.