Sara Andreotti (1983), following her passion for the sea obtain in 2008 the master in Marine Biology at the Trieste University (Italy), graduated magna cum laude. She started to work on the sea since the age of sixteen, as a naturalistic guide for the Natural Marine Reserve of Miramare (Trieste, Italy) and since 2007 she’s working on white sharks.

The lucky encounter with Michael Rutzen allowed her to work from Shark Diving Unlimited cage diving boat since April 2009, to build, in cooperation with Oceans and Coasts of South Africa, the White Shark Photo Identification Database to study the species population dynamics.

Since February 2011 she is working at her PhD Project “Evolutionary behavioural genetics and population structure of the great white shark Carcharodon carcharias” at Stellenbosch University (Evolutionary Genomics Group) under the supervision of Prof. Conrad A. Matthee. The work includes (1) white sharks photo identification (2) morphometric and population dynamic data collection (3) biopsy samples collection in team with Michael Rutzen and (4) laboratory component for the genetic analyses.