Mark Packer (He/Him)
- Member directory
- United Kingdom
About Mark Packer
I am a Marine Conservationist, and I work at The Shark Trust. I cover our Science Communication work, this could be anything from running citizen science events, designing infographics or documents that support our conservation work, delivering our schools education programme, working with other organisations on how we communicate about shark conservation, assisting and presenting at events/conferences, hosting the Shark Trust Podcast, to running the social media accounts.
Beyond my conservation pursuits, I bring a wealth of experience as a Nurse, Phlebotomist, and Suicide Prevention Trainer. My professional journey includes roles as a Band 5 Nurse in Secure Services (forensics), Adult Acute, Psychiatric Intensive Care, a Clozapine Phlebotomy Clinic, and Perinatal Mental Health Services. And as a Clinical Team Leader (Band 6) in Rehabilitation Services for adults experiencing psychosis.
Which category below best describes the type of organisation you currently work for/or run?
Areas of expertise
Would you be willing to be approached and share your lessons learned in your area(s) of expertise with our community?
Would you like to be added to the calendar invitation for our monthly WildHub Socials?
Influencer Of
ALASSANE GUEYE
Adjoint Inspecteur des eaux et forets de kédougou, Direction des Eaux et Forets, Chasses et Conservation des Sols(DEFCCS)
Flavia Manieri
WildHub Community Advocates Coordinator|Interdisciplinary Researcher, Uppsala University
Recent Comments
This is great Flavia! A very important topic, and it is good to see these resources available
🦈 Thank you for sharing this powerful reflection, Flavia. It’s eye-opening to see how deeply media narratives have shaped our collective fear of sharks, and how those portrayals have real consequences for conservation. I’ve never seen a shark in real life, but I’ll admit that most of the movies I’ve watched made them seem terrifying! It’s fascinating (and a bit sobering) to learn that this fear was largely manufactured, and that even Peter Benchley came to regret the impact of his story.
I’m curious, how do you think we can shift public perception and storytelling to highlight sharks as vital ecosystem engineers rather than villains? Are there examples of media or campaigns that have done this well?
Thanks again for helping us rethink the power of narrative in conservation. 🌊
Thank you Flavia for highlighting the work at the Shark Trust!
Our communication and education work focuses a lot on this. Turning public perception towards fascination of elasmobranchs, and encouraging behaviour change and support for conservation. We have developed a communication toolkit that can be used for all marine conservation (not just sharks) to ensure that the way we talk about marine life, the threats they face, and how we can support their conservation, is having the desired impact. Sometimes you can say things that you think is helping but its actually having the complete opposite effect. So this toolkit is to help people create communication with impact.
It identifies the traps that we often fall into, how to avoid them, and then plan and assess the communications we are putting out.
Storytelling and the use of metaphor will always be extremely important, and balancing that with scientific evidence is how we can make positive change!
Thanks for sharing, Mark - this sounds like a fantastic podcast and one I’d definitely enjoy! I’d be happy to spotlight it on our WildHub LinkedIn page to help boost its visibility. Are you happy for me to tag you and/or Shark Trust in the post?
Hey Falvia,
That would be great :) Thank you so much! And yes, happy for tags :)