Sharks: The Animal Answer Guide

Introduction

From Gene Helfman George Burgess and I both became fascinated with sharks at an early age. My shark “career” began when I was maybe 9 or 10. Someone landed a Basking Shark at the Santa Monica Pier in southern California. The Los Angeles Times ran an article with a photo, including an interview with a biologist from the California Department of Fish and Game, Dr. John Fitch. At my father’s encouragement, I wrote Dr. Fitch a letter that I’m sure I would find embarrassing today; I probably asked some basic questions and said what a neat animal the shark was. To my astonishment, he wrote back. That’s really all it took. I was hooked. Someone important thought my interest was worthwhile. I read just about every shark book available in English before I was 12. All my reports, for science or other classes, were about sharks. When I entered Van Nuys High School, I hooked up with a couple of other shark nuts, and we formed a group we called the Shark Research Committee. (The Shark Research Committee still exists, still chaired by Ralph Collier, who has since written a book on shark attacks along the Pacific coast.) Encouraged by a biology teacher, we contacted Dr. Marshall Urist at UCLA, a researcher interested in shark blood chemistry. We happily spent all-nighters catching Spiny Dogfish from fishing barges off Redondo Beach for Dr. Urist. We were collecting sharks for science! We were on top of the world. I entered college at UCLA, intent on a career that would lead to developing an effective shark repellant. That intent evaporated when I realized I was not a gifted chemist, or at least not a very good chemistry student. I completed my undergraduate studies, as a zoology not a chemistry major, at UC Berkeley, where I got more serious about sharks and fishes in general. I learned to scuba dive and managed the zoology department’s fish collection . I took ichthyology (fish biology) from the late Dr. George Barlow, an animal behaviorist, which got me started observing fish behavior. Upon graduating, I joined the Peace Corps in Palau, Western Caroline Islands, as a fisheries specialist. Palau has spectacular coral reefs, and I spent most work hours and every weekend diving, catching, and watching fishes. I had my first up-close-and-personal encounters with a variety of reef sharks, often in the form of keeping them from stealing fish I had speared. I also was fortunate enough to serve as a local guide and field assistant to Dr. John (Jack) Randall of the Bishop Museum in Hawaii, a world expert on coral reef fishes. Jack and I published two papers on fishes in Palau, one on loIntroduction xiii xiv Introduction cal fish names and a second on the biology of and attacks by Blacktip Reef Sharks in the journal Pacific Science. I was now a bona fide shark researcher! What followed was a master’s degree from the University of Hawaii on land crabs and a Ph.D. from Cornell University on the behavior and ecology of lake fishes. Sharks had to be put on hold as other opportunities and interests developed. I was then hired at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, as an ichthyologist, where I taught ichthyology, animal behavior, and conservation biology for 30 years. Although I studied marine and freshwater fishes, mostly by diving and observing predator-prey interactions , I always managed to get in as much shark biology and conservation as I could into my classes. In essence, this book is really a boyhood dream come true. I can honestly say that I’ve fantasized about writing a book about sharks for as long as I can remember. In the meantime, I’ve published more than 50 research papers on various fishy topics, numerous book chapters, an ichthyology textbook (The Diversity of Fishes: Biology, Evolution, and Ecology, published by Wiley-Blackwell, with three co-authors), and a fish conservation book (Fish Conservation: A Guide to Understanding and Restoring Global Aquatic Biodiversity and Fishery Resources, published by Island Press), as well as co-authored with Bruce Collette of the Smithsonian Institution another book (Fishes: The Animal Answer Guide) in the same Johns Hopkins University Press series as this book. But really, all along, I wanted to write a book about sharks and was delighted when the Press invited me to do so, with George Burgess as my co-author. From George Burgess Like Gene, I...