THE WILD ONES: FREYA ASPINALL

From land to sea, Freya Aspinall and Ocean Ramsey find family amongst apex predators. Together, they dream of a world where all species are lent the same respect.

By Libby Hsieh

For most of us, home means safety: a warm meal, a soft bed, loved ones gathered between four walls. Freya Aspinall’s idea of home is just the opposite. The young conservationist finds it in the outdoors, amongst gorillas and lions and tigers. Ever since she could walk the grounds of Howletts Wild Animal Park, an animal reservation ground made famous by her family’s legacy, Freya’s family tree has expanded beyond her own species. Most of her education came from experience; she picked it up not in libraries or classrooms, but in interpreting the behaviors of the animal kingdom—laying in the dirt, sitting in silence beside apex predators.

As the daughter of wildlife conservationist Damian Aspinall, Freya grew up alongside the many creatures under the care of the Aspinall Foundation, an organization dedicated to rescuing and returning animals to the wild. She doesn’t take her birthright lightly. Every day is devoted to the needs of the foundation, whether that be hand-rearing lion cubs or vocalizing the importance of rewilding to the public.

To this day, Freya is one of the only humans who has forged a personal connection with a silverback gorilla, a species of tropical primate known for its faithfulness to hierarchy—often displayed through physical dominance. But Freya is not afraid. She knows that, underneath our civilized, fearful perceptions of these animals, they are shy and gentle. If unease ever does cross her mind, she quickly guides it towards empathy, considering her own feelings in the instance of someone disregarding her personal space. Her friendships with the animals are defined by mutual respect and spatial awareness. After all, sitting face-to-face with a 430-pound gorilla inside an enclosure takes an incredible amount of presence and savvy.

Freya’s unique relationship with wildlife was immediately apparent to marine conservationist Ocean Ramsey, co-founder of One Ocean Diving, a platform dedicated to marine education, conservation, and research. For decades, the freediver and model has been fixated on changing the conversation around sharks—shifting focus from the frightening images we see on screen to the ways in which humans are jeopardizing their populations, causing disruptions in marine ecosystems. Freya and Ocean’s connection is abundantly clear: They’ve each committed their life to learning from, coexisting with, and giving respect to species humans have long villainized and hunted for sport. With their separate efforts, they seek to reinforce that, while we humans may not understand the language of the jungle or the deep sea, the earth doesn’t belong to just us.

Soon after Freya reached out, the pair set sail off the coast of Oahu with Ocean’s husband Juan Oliphant. They got up close and personal with the great whites, swimming in deep blue waters, carefully watching the steady movements of the 1,500-pound predators. For many, this experience would be overwhelming. For Freya and Ocean, it was just another day.

OCEAN RAMSEY: Aloha! Good to see you.

FREYA ASPINALL: How are the beautiful sharks?

OR: Queen Nikki gave birth! The shark that you were swimming with.

FA: Have you ever seen a shark give birth?

OR: Actually, nobody’s ever filmed it, but I’ll send you some pictures. I mean, she was so big—she had a jelly belly, it was very obvious. We’re happy for her and happy for the little baby.

LIBBY HSIEH: You both work with animals that people perceive to be violent. What is it like to gain those animals’ trust?

FA: It’s a very humbling and grounding experience. For me, these animals are like family. You said it beautifully when I was in Hawaii: They are like family members, but they’re also apex predators and they need to be respected. My father always goes, “When humans try to dominate, train, or tame an animal, or get overconfident, it goes wrong.” You know, people say, “Well, are you humanizing the animals?” I’m like, “I’m not humanizing any animal! They’re lionizing me!” When I’m with a lion, I’m acting like a lion. Seeing you with the sharks, you become a little bit of a shark; you have to cater to their environment. I don’t really like when people pretend that these animals are humans, or that we have these magical powers to communicate with animals. We don’t—they can kill us! In my opinion, that’s the beauty of the relationship.

OR: I love that. That’s really well-said. It’s respecting that species for all its qualities, adapting to its behavior, and finding that beautiful coexistence if we are hypervigilant and mindful. We can only control our reactions. We’re not trying to control wildlife. As a matter of fact, I’m trying to teach people how they can adapt to the behavior of sharks. The ocean—that’s the shark’s home. That’s where they sleep, where they eat, where they breathe and exist. We are visitors. When you go into someone else’s home, you need to play by their rules. [Sharks] have a really important ecological role in picking up the weak, wounded, injured, sick, dead, and dying. And if you’re not paying attention, you may have an adverse interaction. It’s completely possible to avoid. They really aren’t the monsters that Hollywood generally portrays them as. So I love getting to see real behavior, but it needs to be done with a high, healthy level of respect for their ecological role. I love to share that information because it helps other people be safer and better understand sharks and their capabilities, which leads to a deeper appreciation that, in turn, can help with conservation.

LH: Have your attitudes towards wildlife impacted your understanding of human nature, or helped you understand yourself?

FA: We can learn so much about who we are as people from animals. They have taught me a lot about myself. They’ve taught me patience because I’m on their timeline. Like, if the lions and gorillas are not in the mood to hang out or play or be extra cute, I have to go with that. A lot of my relationships with these animals have been thousands of hours where I’m doing nothing. You’re not playing with them. If you search lions in Africa on Google, the pride members are just sitting next to each other, sleeping all day. If you want to be treated like an honorary lion, you just gotta sit next to them and do nothing. That’s patience. They also can humble you to your core. The lion cubs I’m raising have now just hit from being a young cub to teenage adults, and there’s definitely a shift. They look at me now, like, Be careful. Don’t get too confident with me. It’s brutal, because if a lion wants to tell you to stop, they’ll give you a little swipe. The way gorillas tickle you—in the most loving way—is by biting you.

OR: I think patience is number one. Sharks have been evolving for over 50 million years—before dinosaurs, before trees. We have a lot to learn from them. Humankind is using up resources and destroying environments, and that’s going to be catastrophic for our species’s future. If we look at long-standing species like sharks, they’re very energy-efficient. They don’t waste time fighting with each other. It’s really, really rare that they resort to violence. If more people mimicked the behavior of sharks, we would solve problems a lot quicker.

And even with these predators, like you were saying, they’re just kind of sleeping. They have a nice social hierarchy and, sure, sometimes they have confrontations, but those species would not continue to exist and evolve if they didn’t find solutions—if they didn’t make compromises. On a global scale, humans can learn a lot from wildlife. I love those signs that they have on the beach, like, “Animals don’t trash the beach. When you go to the beach, please act like an animal.” Humans are animals, too, and I think a lot of people put themselves on a pedestal. That lost connection can lead to apathy and cruelty.

FA: I have spent my life meeting so many people in the conservation space. Controversial opinion—but most of them are frauds. Most people are just so full of it. I really felt like you spoke my language. Very, very rare individuals, like you and Juan, are much bigger heroes than me. You’re on the ground doing it every single day. You really are where I want to be. You don’t just talk the talk, you walk the walk. I think it’s incredibly important that—especially my generation—we celebrate [that kind of] work. You have been doing this way before Instagram existed, way before it was cool, because it was the right thing to do.

OR: Thank you. That’s huge. That means so much to me. I’m always redirecting attention back onto the sharks. I’m naturally an introvert and would prefer not to be in front of a camera. I’m putting myself out there because I know that people look first and listen second, and we bring that feminine energy to these predators. It really gets people to question what they know about them. I’m so grateful, though, for social media. Because of it, we’ve been able to grow a community with the support of people like you, who are like, Hey, I resonate with this. I am like this with the gorillas and the lions. I want to support that. That’s how we are able to actually get laws changed. That’s why sharks are now protected in Hawaii.

FA: And we’re both still here.