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 local 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.
Like Gene, I have had a lifelong interest in sharks. The son of a career Air Force parent, I moved around a lot as a kid, as my father and our family were transferred about every three to four years. Luckily for me, those assignments were always at coastal locations, sequentially landing us in Hawaii, Virginia, Italy, and New Hampshire before we settled in on Long Island, New York. My father’s love of the sea, coming from the angle of boats, seamanship, and swimming, opened the door for me to get hooked on its biota. We always had a family boat, and weekends and summer vacation activities frequently involved time at sea or on the beach.
I suffered mightily from asthma in my youth, at a time when medical treatment for the condition was all but lacking (and my parents smoked until I was 10 years old, a killer for asthmatic kids). Because breathing was a difficult task, I was especially reluctant to stick my head in the water. But while we were living in Naples, Italy, in 1957, skin diving, usually involving spearfishing, had become a developing pastime for younger guys. Noting my great interest in the writhing and dead critters being delivered to shore by local divers and in an effort to teach me to swim, my father bought me a mask and snorkel. The seas parted, and I could see what lived down there! Breathing issues moved to the back burner, and my parents’ problem became, not getting me in the water, but getting me out. When I wasn’t in the water, I was walking the beaches or probing tide pools, looking for prizes.
As I got older, fishing became more important. My father manned the wheel, and I deployed the fishing gear. I’d set the hook, and we’d alternate reeling in the catches. Often, he’d bring some of his buddies with him, and they’d share their fishing knowledge with me. He noticed I wasn’t as interested in the benchmarks of the other anglers—numbers and sizes of the catch—but was concentrating more on the diversity of species captured and the morphology of those fishes. An ichthyologist was incubating. My first shark catch was the mighty Spiny Dogfish, two feet of terror.
My first biology class in ninth grade sealed the deal. Blessed in having a dynamic teacher, Ernie Ernest, who was more fish than human, I discovered that I could turn my passion into a career, as had he. From there on, my goal was to become a biologist. He told me stories of close encounters he had with Sand Tigers while diving in nearby Long Island Sound and about their aggressive nature around speared fishes, my initial insight into shark attack. I needed to graduate into scuba, which I did my freshman year at the University of Rhode Island. Subsequent educational stops took me to the University of North Carolina and the University of Florida, where I studied oceanography and zoology. While in North Carolina I was able to finally work with “real sharks”—the kind seen so commonly today on TV and in the print media: Tigers and Whites, makos and Sand Tigers, Bulls and Blacktips. Research cruises in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico introduced me to deepwater sharks like lanternsharks, miniature bioluminescent sharks that made my first Spiny Dogfish look like a giant.
After taking a position at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida, I was fortunate that my scientific hero, Stewart Springer, retired to Gainesville. Despite a 40-year difference in ages, we became fast friends, most of my work days ending with a visit to his house for a couple hours of shark talk and collaboration on studies of lanternfishes and their kin. Stew had more hands-on experience with sharks than anyone of his or my generation, and I tried to absorb as much of it as I could. There never could be a better mentor.
My interests in sharks and rays are diverse. Colleagues, students, and I have collaborated to study their reproduction, food habits, age and growth, ecology, and movements; and we have discovered new species, including the two smallest species of sharks. We are deeply involved in fishery management and conservation, and as curators of the International Shark Attack File, we investigate and study shark attacks. The plight of sawfishes is of particular interest, and we maintain the International Sawfish Encounter Database, which documents the occurrence of these endangered species. I am proud to have been a founding member of the American Elasmobranch Society and the IUCN Shark Specialist Group and have served as a president and vice-chair of those organizations. Our interest in shark attacks has naturally generated a lot of media interest, which opens the door to sharing thoughts on more meaningful shark-related issues. Gene and I hope this volume will serve to debunk some myths and spark additional interest in these fascinating animals.
Gene Helfman waits at the Shaw Island, Washington, ferry dock with Cary, his helium-filled, radio-controlled White Shark. Gene and Cary lecture regularly to school and community groups about sharks and shark conservation. Cary is very adept at keeping people’s attention. Photo by Stephanie Buffum
George Burgess with Dusky Shark jaws and preserved shark “pups” in his lab at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Large duskies are now rarely caught in the Gulf of Mexico, and museum specimens like these unfortunately document the way the natural world used to be. With proper fishery management, duskies and other sharks can return to their former level of abundance within our lifetimes. Photo by Florida Museum of Natural History
Together, we have reflected on how great it would have been to have found a book such as this one when our fascination with sharks was new. Springer and Gold’s excellent 1989 volume Sharks in Question came out about 25 years too late to educate us in our formative years. We hope this present book answers questions and sparks the kind of excitement about these wonderful animals that we have felt for so long, in readers from youngster to adult.