Demon Fish (43 page)

Once I finished the manuscript, I relied on some fellow journalists to give it a close read. Nils Bruzelius pored over every single line of my first draft, and three of my favorite nonfiction authors, Eric Roston, Tom Zoellner, and Sasha Issenberg, also examined it in detail. As thanks, let me recommend that anyone reading this book buy these writers’ amazing work—
The Carbon Age, The Heartless Stone
and
Uranium
, and
The Sushi Economy
, respectively—as soon as possible. My dear friend Mark Allen makes documentaries, but he asks all the right questions when you’re in the midst of writing a nonfiction book.

A group of talented photographers and generous institutions have allowed me to reprint their images, and also deserve my appreciation: Conservation International, Edith Blake, Neil Hammerschlag, Grant Johnson, and Dos Winkel.

On a personal note I would like to thank my friends and family, not just for their constant support, but for their greatest gift to me: an ever-expanding brood of little ones. I especially appreciate how so many of these children—including Sam and Nate Fox-Halperin; Noa, Jacob, and Gideon Rosinplotz; Io, Violet, and Clover Demos; Nava and Tatum Parker Mach; Edith Sklaroff Carey; Alexandra Duncan; Jennifer Jurkowski; Grace Sutherlin; Ayden Light; Alexander and Liana Raguso; Zora Citerman; Theo Baker; and Anya Morrison Biggs—have shown such interest in my shark stories. Collectively, their existence has improved my life immeasurably.

Finally, I want to thank my own environmental ethicist, Andrew Light. Andrew, I might have met you under the mistaken assumption that you would be a source for this book, but at least I was smart enough to figure out by the end of the evening that I would be better off marrying you instead. To help me research and write this tome, you’ve navigated cratered Mexican highways, suffered through exploding glass bottles in Surabaya, and plunged to the depths in Raja Ampat. On top of that, you agreed that there was nothing wrong with me taking our son, Miloš Eilperin Light, during my maternity leave to three different continents to see sharks firsthand. For all of this and a hundred other things, I love you beyond words.

Notes

INTRODUCTION: SHARK

  
1.
WildAid and Oceana,
The End of the Line? Global Threats to Sharks
, 2nd ed. WildAid, San Francisco, 2007, p. 12 (
http://www.wildaid.org/PDF/reports/EndOfTheLine2007US_Oceana.pdf
).

  
2.
Interview with Dalal Al-Abdulrazzak, Watson fellow, Dec. 10, 2007.

  
3.
Jeffrey C. Carrier,
Discovering Sharks
(St. Paul: Voyageur Press, 2006), pp. 9–10.

  
4.
Tom Vanderbilt, “When the Great White Way Was the Hudson,”
New York Times
, May 29, 2005, sec. 14, col. 1.

  
5.
ReefQuest Centre for Shark Research Web site, Biology of Sharks and Rays.

  
6.
EurekAlert! press release, July 15, 2005.

  
7.
Mote Marine Laboratory, “Sharks Smell in Stereo: Mote Research Explores Shark Senses as Never Before,” press release, June 11, 2010.

  
8.
Jennifer L. Molinar, ed.,
The Atlas of Global Conservation: Changes, Challenges, and Opportunities to Make a Difference
(Berkeley: University of California Press and the Nature Conservancy, 2010).

  
9.
“Nature conservation has become one of the most important human endeavors on the planet, and the area under protection now exceeds the total area of permanent crops and arable land.” Stuart Chape, Mark Spalding, and Martin Jenkins, eds.,
The World’s Protected Areas: Status, Values, and Prospects in the Twenty-First Century
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).

1 THE WORLD-FAMOUS SHARK CALLER

  
1.
Glenys Köhnke,
The Shark Callers: An Ancient Fishing Tradition of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea
(Boroko: Yumi Press, 1974), p. 15.

  
2.
Ibid., p. 16.

2 AN ANCIENT FISH

  
1.
Nicholas H. Barton et al.,
Evolution
(Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2007); Eric Roston,
The Carbon Age
(New York: Walker, 2008).

  
2.
Skomal,
Shark Handbook
, pp. 16–22.

  
3.
“Origin of the Egyptians: Petrie Derives Them from the Stock Whence the Phoenicians Come,”
New York Times
, Aug. 9, 1894.

  
4.
Xavier Maniguet,
The Jaws of Death: Shark as Predator, Man as Prey
, trans. David A. Christie (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2007), p. 21.

  
5.
Oppian,
Halieutica
5.20ff., at
www.theoi.com/Ther/Ketea.html
.

  
6.
From the collections of the National Archives in Waltham, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C., the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, the Marblehead Historical Society, and smaller collections in other archives. These logs have been rediscovered and collated by Dr. William Leavenworth at the University of New Hampshire under the aegis of History of Marine Animal Populations (HMAP), the Gulf of Maine Cod Project, and other organizations doing research in the environmental history of the sea.

  
7.
Louis Agassiz, “On the Method of Copulation Among Selachians,”
Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History
14 (1871), p. 340.

  
8.
Matthew T. McDavitt, “Cipactli’s Sword, Tlaltecuhtli’s Teeth: Deciphering the Sawfish & Shark Offerings in the Aztec Great Temple,”
Shark News: Newsletter of the IUCN/SSC Shark Specialist Group
14 (March 2002).

  
9.
Matthew T. McDavitt, “The Cultural Significance of Sharks and Rays in Aboriginal Societies Across Australia’s Top End,”
MESA’s SeaWeek
(2005), pp. 3–4.

10.
Martha Warren Beckwith, “Hawaiian Shark ‘Aumãkua,” in
Nanaue the Shark Man & Other Hawaiian Shark Stories
, ed. Dennis Kawaharada (Honolulu: Kalamaku Press, 1994), p. 2.

11.
Ibid.

12.
Leighton Taylor,
Sharks of Hawai’i: Their Biology and Cultural Significance
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993), p. 20.

13.
Young,
Shark! Shark!
p. 93.

14.
Beckwith, “Hawaiian Shark ‘Aumãkua,” p. 15.

15.
Pa’ahana Wiggin, “Mikololou,” in
Nanaue the Shark Man
, pp. 71–72.

16.
“Ka’ehikimanõ-o-pu’uloa,” in
Nanaue the Shark Man
, pp. 75–83.

17.
Emma M. Nakuina, “Kahalaopuna,” in
Nanaue the Shark Man
, p. 41.

18.
Emma Nakuina, “Nanaue,” in
Nanaue the Shark Man
, pp. 19–32.

19.
Martha G. Anderson and Philip M. Peek,
Ways of the Rivers: Arts and Environment of the Niger Delta
(Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 2002), p. 153.

20.
Matthew T. McDavitt, “Cultural Significance,” in:
Sharks, Rays, and Chimaeras: The Status of the Chondrichthyan Fishes
, ed. Sarah L. Fowler et al. (Gland, Switzerland, and Cambridge, U.K.: IUCN, 2005), p. 31.

21.
McDavitt, “Cultural Significance of Sharks and Rays,” pp. 2–3.

22.
Ibid., p. 3.

23.
Gerald L. Crow and Jennifer Crites,
Sharks and Rays of Hawai’i
(Honolulu: Mutual Publishing, 2002), p. 147.

24.
Brent M. Handley, “Role of the Shark in Southern New England’s Prehistory: Deity or Dinner?”
Bulletin of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society
57, no. 1 (1996), pp. 27–34.

25.
McCormick and Allen,
Shadows in the Sea
, pp. 137–40.

26.
McDavitt, “Cultural Significance,” p. 30.

27.
Tom Jones, “The
Xoc
, the
Sharke
, and the Sea Dogs: An Historical Encounter,” in
Fifth Paleugue Round Table, 1983
, ed. Virginia M. Fields (San Francisco: Pre-Columbia Art Research Institute, 1985), pp. 211–220.

28.
Oxford English Dictionary Online, shark, n., 2nd ed. (1989).

29.
Ibid.

30.
Dampier’s Voyages
, ed. John Masefield (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1906), vol. 1
, P. 107
.

31.
Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 426–27.

32.
McCormick and Allen,
Shadows in the Sea
, p. 148.

33.
Marcus Rediker,
The Slave Ship: A Human History
(New York: Viking, 2007), pp. 37–38.

34.
Ibid., pp. 38–40.

35.
Marcus Rediker, “Slavery: A Shark’s Perspective—a Strange Text Sheds New Light on the True Roots of Abolition,”
Boston Globe
, Sept. 23, 2007.

36.
Julius L. Esping,
Adrift and at Anchor: A Sailor’s Experience Among Sea Dogs and Land Sharks: With an Account of His Conversion and Labors as a Missionary Among Seamen
(Boston: H. L. Hastings, 1870), pp. 112–23.

37.
George Barker,
Thrilling Adventures of the Whaler
Alcyone:
Killing Man-Eating Sharks in the Indian Ocean, Hunting Kangaroos in Australia
(Peabody, Mass.: George Barker, 1916), pp. 33–34.

38.
Capuzzo,
Close to Shore
, pp. 88–103.

39.
Ibid., pp. 141–246.

40.
Ibid., pp. 168–79.

41.
Young,
Shark! Shark!
p. 78.

42.
Ibid., pp. 18–19.

43.
Ernest Hemingway,
The Old Man and the Sea
, excerpted in
Great Shark Writings
, ed. Taylor and Taylor, p. 317.

44.
Zane Grey,
An American Angler in Australia
, excerpted in
Great Shark Writings
, p. 234.

45.
McCormick and Allen,
Shadows in the Sea
, p. 31.

46.
Mitchell Landsberg, “Roy Scheider, 75, ‘Jaws’ Star Excelled in Tough-Guy Role,”
Los Angeles Times
, Feb. 11, 2008.

47.
As National Public Radio’s Cory Turner reported in his excellent June 2, 2010, piece, “Hunting Bruce; or, On the Trail of the ‘Jaws’ Shark,” the head of the mechanical shark measured six feet eight inches and weighed four hundred pounds. There were three mechanical sharks, nicknamed Bruce, since one was pulled by a boat to replicate swimming while two sat atop a metal arm in order to leap onto the deck of the
Orca
. All three Bruces were destroyed and the mold was lost, but a fourth shark, which was likely cast from the same mold, now looms above Aadlen Brothers Wrecking in Sun Valley, California.

48.
Benchley,
Jaws
, p. 94.

49.
Erich Ritter, Kai Lutz, and Marie Levine, “When Humans and Sharks Meet,” in
New Developments in the Psychology of Motivation
, ed. Filip M. Olsson (New York: Nova Biomedical Books, 2008), pp. 45–52.

50.
EurekAlert! press release, Aug. 28, 2003.

51.
Klimley,
Secret Life of Sharks
, pp. 195–215.

52.
Ibid., p. 185.

53.
WildAid and Oceana,
The End of the Line? Global Threats to Sharks
, 2nd ed. pp. 13 and 40.

3 A DEMON FISH