There are still a few days left to vote for me to win the 2011 blogging scholarship, which provides $10,000 towards research and education expenses to the winner! If I win, some of the money will be used to support shark conservation research at my lab. It will help support our citizen science program, which has brought over 1,000 high school students and teachers out into the field to learn about sharks and participate in an active research program. It will help support my dissertation work, which focuses on the ecological importance of sharks to coral reefs. It will also be used to adopt a satellite tagged shark in the name of you, the readers of Southern Fried Science. You’ll get to name it (through a contest), and I’ll post regular updates about where our shark is and what it’s likely to be encountering.

Remember, you can vote once per day until noon Pacific time on November 30th. For those of you who only know me as WhySharksMatter, my real name (as it’s entered on the voting page) is David Shiffman.

The voting page is here. Please vote for me to win $10,000 for shark conservation, and please share the voting page with your friends, colleagues, and fellow ocean lovers! You can also write a comment on the voting page explaining why you think sharks are important. Thanks for your continued support, everyone!