Eugenie Clark (born May 4, 1922 New York City), popularly known as The Shark Lady, is an American ichthyologist known for her research on poisonous fish of the tropical seas and on the behavior of sharks.
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Eugenie Clark was raised in New York City by her mother, Yumiko, who was of Japanese-Scotch descent; her American father, Charles Clark, died when she was not yet two.[1] Yumiko later married a Japanese restaurant owner in New York, Masatomo Nobu. As a young girl, Clark became fascinated by fish through visits to the New York Aquarium (then located in Battery Park) and began keeping collections of fish, amphibians, and reptiles.
She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Hunter College (1942), where she majored in zoology, and her Master of Arts (1946) and doctoral degrees (1950) from New York University, where she became especially interested in triggerfish and filefish. Not long after receiving her B.A., Clark married a pilot named Jideo Umaki. Their marriage lasted seven years.[2]
During her years of graduate study, she carried out research at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, at the Marine Biological Station in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and at the Lerner Marine Laboratory in Bimini. Her most extended research trip in this period began in 1949, when she joined a program sponsored by the Office of Naval Research to undertake scientific research in Micronesia. In the course of a year or so, she carried out fish population studies on Guam as well as in the Marshall islands, the Palau islands, the northern Marianas, and the Caroline islands. Her research and travels in Micronesia formed the subject of her first book, Lady with a Spear (1953). The book was very popular, running to several editions and being translated into a number of languages.
In 1950, after receiving her doctorate, she received a Fulbright scholarship to pursue ichthyological studies at the Marine Biological Station in Hurghada, on the northern Red Sea Coast of Egypt. During her sojourn in Hurghada, she married her second husband, Ilias Papakonstantinou, a Greek physician. They had two girls and two boys: Hera, Aya, Themistokles Alexander, and Nikolas Masatomo.
In 1968, Clark joined the faculty at the University of Maryland College Park, where she is currently a professor of zoology. She has given lectures at over 60 colleges and universities in the United States. She also has given lectures in 19 foreign countries, and conducted summer science training programs at the high school and college levels. [1] Her Ph.D. from New York University in 1950 involved her work on the reproduction of species of platys and swordtail fish [2].
She is the founding director (1955 to 1967) of the former Cape Haze Marine Laboratory, now known as the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida[3]. She joined the Department of Zoology at the University of Maryland, College Park in 1968, she still holds the title of Senior Research Scientist and Professor Emerita even though she has retired from teaching. She has studied the behavior, ecology and taxonomy of fishes for over 50 years, especially that of sharks. She has received three honorary D.Sc. degrees and awards from the National Geographic Society, the Explorers Club, the Underwater Society of America and the American Littoral Society.
As a world-famous scientist and pioneer in the field of scuba diving for research purposes, Clark's search for answers has taken her around the world and below the waters of the seven seas. She carried the flag of the Society of Women Geographers to Ethiopia, carried it underwater off Japan and Egypt and carried the flag of the National Geographic Society to Egypt, Israel, Australia, Japan and Mexico.[4]
Clark has been diving with sharks for more than 30 years. She is active in the scuba-diving based field research on fish and submarine dives. An accomplished and prolific writer, she has shared the adventures and excitement of her scientific research through her articles in scientific journals, lectures and television specials, and articles in such popular magazines as National Geographic and Science Digest. In addition to Lady with a Spear (which was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection), she is the author of The Lady and the Sharks (1969).
While working at the Marine Experiment Station in Sarasota, Florida, Clark investigated a shark-bite incident. Douglas Lawton was attacked by a shark while playing with his 12-year-old brother. He was almost dragged beneath the water before his brother grabbed him and his parents, an aunt, and an uncle were able to rescue him. Douglas' relatives saw the shark distinctly; it was described as being five feet in length, a blue-gray color, with a slender and streamlined physique. It hung on to the boy's left thigh even as the boy was being dragged ashore. It finally let go, but the damage it had done was so extensive the boy's leg had to be amputated close to the hip. Clark conducted thorough questioning of the witnesses and a close inspection of Douglas's amputated leg and concluded that the attack was made by a young tiger shark. Her conclusion was confirmed by comparing the wounds with preserved jaws of tiger sharks.
People often ask if Clark has ever been attacked by a shark. She says it has happened only once but that the accident didn't happen in the water. She was driving to school to talk to some children about sharks. Beside her, on the front seat, was the dried, mounted jaw of a 12-foot tiger shark. The traffic light she was approaching turned from green to red. Eugenie stopped short and slammed on the brakes, stretching out her arm to keep the mounted jaw from falling off the seat. The jaw fell against her arm, and the teeth sank in and made it bleed.[3]
Clark once noticed that if one touches a flatfish called a Moses sole, milky white liquid would ooze out that it felt tingly on the fingers. When she discovered this, she started testing the liquid with other types of fish.
After many tests she decided to test it with sharks. She found a Moses sole that still had some liquid. She tied it with string and lowered it into the water. She watched as the shark swam towards the fish but stopped abruptly in front of it and looking as if its mouth were frozen. After a moment, the shark swam away from the poisonous fish. As a result she performed more experiments with fish and sharks and finally confirmed that the poisonous substance would "repel" sharks.
She then decided to test this with sharks out in the ocean. She tied many types of fish each to a line and cast them into the water. One by one, the fish were eaten but the sharks kept avoiding the Moses sole fish. The Moses sole is safe to eat if it has been washed in red wine, an alcohol. Otherwise, it is poisonous.