|
Eugenie Clark, Adventures of a Shark Scientist by Ellen R Butts and Joyce R Schwartz
Eugenie Clark, Adventures of a Shark Scientist by Ellen R Butts and Joyce R Schwartz
Eugenie Clark is one of the world's foremost divers, among the first of the few women to become internationally famous. She has variously been called the American Jacques Cousteau, the Lady with the Spear (after the title of her first book) and the Shark Lady, because of her later exploits with those creatures.
Early in her career after earning a zoology degree, 'Genie' found jobs in the South Seas and the Red Sea. She went on to create a marine laboratory in Florida, where she established her reputation as a shark expert.
Her later research into marine life, both above and below water, took her to more than 20 countries , including Japan, Mexico, Australia and the Caribbean, but she fell in love with the Red Sea, describing it as the most extraordinary place on Earth.
She became the first ichthyologist to study Red Sea fish in 70 years but it was sharks that became her enduring passion, both in those waters and elsewhere, a passion that won her greater fame.
Genie is now 75 and can look back on an amazing and outstanding life. That's why Eugenie Clark, Adventures of a Shark Scientist comes as something of a disappointment.
The authors have done a workmanlike job, but the biography deserved more than 108 pages and is sadly short on accounts of Genie's great adventures. And where are the colour photographs of the lady at work, thousands of which must have been shot?
All in all, this is an unambitious book that provides a mere sketch of a fascinating life. Bernard Eaton |
Eugenie Clark, Adventures of a Shark Scientist by Ellen R Butts and Joyce R Schwartz, Gazelle (01524 68765). Hardback, 96pp, £13.99
|
|
|
Archive | 
