Last modified: Sunday, July 29, 2007 11:29 PM EDT Greg Gaudreau, a Foxboro resident and student at Bridgewater State College, keeps an eye out for basking sharks that he can photograph and catalog while at sea as part of his summer internship. (Submitted) Foxboro student studying with sharks BY DOMENIC POLI FOR THE SUN CHRONICLE FOXBORO - Like many young people his age, Greg Gaudreau of Foxboro is keeping busy this summer with an internship. But his is a little different than most. Instead of being trapped in a cubicle pushing paper or in a car as a gopher running errands, Gaudreau is on a boat 20 miles offshore, around the tip of Provincetown. A senior biology major at Bridgewater State College, Gaudreau, 21, spends much of his time at sea studying sharks, more specifically, basking sharks. "What I'm doing is I'm taking GPS (a satellite-based navigation system) and photographs of the sharks, and we're using them to photo-ID them," he said. "We're trying to see if the same sharks are reappearing year after year in the same areas, or if they're different sharks - or if there's more of them, if there's less of them. "We're also cataloging their behavior and what they're doing, because these sharks are planktivores - they eat plankton. They don't eat fish like conventional sharks." Gaudreau has always had a passion for sharks and, looking back, he says there were always subtle signs he would go into the field. At an aquarium as a young boy, his friends would retreat whenever a shark came close to the tank's glass. Gaudreau says he always inched forward for a closer look. Then, years later in a biology class at Foxboro High School, his interest literally struck him when the class was assigned to dissect spiny dogfish, a small type of shark. "They were all in this big tub of formaldehyde and I reached in and I grabbed a shark and as soon as I grabbed a shark my teacher goes, 'Oh, by the way, watch out for the dorsal fin," he said. "It was a little late at that point because the spine had already gone into my hand, and it hurt something fierce. It was bleeding and I had to go down to the nurses' office. But I turned around and came right back because I wanted to keep going with it. His interest has blossomed since then, and he now spends about four days a week on one of four vessels owned by Capt. John's Boats, a whale watching and deep-sea fishing company in Plymouth. The second-largest type of fish in the world, a basking shark, or Cetorhinus maximus, usually grows to be 35 to 40 feet long. The only bigger fish known to man is the whale shark, which can span 60 feet. Gaudreau says he is trying to work out with Capt. John Boats a shark adventure trip, which would take children offshore where they could catch little dogfish. Children would also learn that sharks are not the monsters of the sea that, Gaudreau says, Hollywood and the media - through movies like the "Jaws" series - have made them out to be. "They're not the mindless killing machines that everyone thinks they are," he said. "You have more of a chance of getting struck by lightning twice than getting bitten by a shark. More people die every year from elephant attacks than sharks." After he receives his diploma from BSC, Gaudreau - who just got his scuba diving license only a few days ago - says he would like attend graduate school. He is eyeing the University of Rhode Island to earn a master's degree in shark biology and restoration ecology. He says his dream job is help restore coral reefs. "Sharks are a major part of a coral reef's ecosystem and, right now, 20 percent of all coral reefs are dead, and it's supposed to triple by the end of the century," he said. "(Biologists and restoration ecologists) are kind of like the natural Band-Aid. What we do is we try and put certain things in place so that the natural reaction to it will be to regrow, to fix itself."