Dr. Eugenie Clark, The Shark Lady Dies at 92

March 2, 2015

Legendary Shark Lady, Dr. Eugenie Clark, passed on last week after a long battle with cancer at the age of 92. She was a pioneer for women in marine science who inspired millions with her boundless enthusiasm for the ocean and its critters, especially sharks.

“When I was nine years old,” Genie said, “my mother took me every Saturday to the New York Aquarium at Battery Park, and I just was crazy about the fish. In the back of the aquarium, there was a big tank with some sharks inside. I used to put my face up against the glass and imagine that I was underwater and swimming with them. On rainy days, it was fun because all the derelicts would come in from the park and hang out at the aquarium. Some of them would ask me questions like: ‘Why are you looking at that fish for so long?’ or ‘What’s that fish doing?’ Pretty soon, I had a little audience, and I felt like a teacher.”

There was something magical about her down-to-earth nature that transmitted an ‘anyone can do this’ attitude, inspiring thousands to follow in her footsteps. Dr. Sylvia Earle was one of these people, having met Genie as a young aspiring marine biologist on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

In the words of Dr. Earle:

Genie was a mentor, a friend and a source of inspiration for so many people, including myself. Her love affair with fish was present throughout her life. I think it was absolutely mutual, I think the fish loved Genie too! She was the fish whisperer.

As a young would-be ocean scientist myself, Genie let me tag along on expeditions around Sarasota, diving around Point of Rocks and at Boca Grande. She had a magic way of engaging people of all ages – her enthusiasm was infectious.

I was particularly taken with her expedition to Palau and the South Pacific in the late 40s or early 50s. She managed to engage people who then wanted to help her out as she went from place to place, travelling completely on her own with limited funds, but with a purpose. One picture in Lady with a Spear tells the story particularly well. Genie is sitting down, drinking Kava, making friends with the chiefs and local people. She truly became their friend, and so they shared with her essential knowledge about their local ecosystems and ocean wildlife.

I was there for the arrival of her several children and even lived with Genie and her mother for a little while. When circumstances in her life changed and she went to live temporarily in New York, she asked me to be the resident director of the lab from 1965-66. I also worked with Bill Mote and Genie during the transition to the Mote Marine Laboratory.

When I was at Mote as Resident Director, I worked with Genie’s staff to continue her shark work to study the Gulf of Mexico sharks – and there were quite a lot of them! They all knew Genie, and she certainly knew all of them.

I remember watching her once when she was being interviewed about sharks and I was so impressed with her poise and her way of speaking to the camera as if she were speaking to a friend. She was so real, so genuine and so deeply moving, yet entertaining. And I thought, ‘wow, that is really how you get people onboard to be able to share with others what you see.’ She always had a special capacity to do that with a mischievous sense of fun.

She’s been a personal friend and certainly a great ambassador for the ocean and the creatures who live there. She really could get inside a fish, be a fish, feel what a fish feels and see what a fish sees. We will all miss her greatly.

“Her contributions were astounding,” said her lifelong friend David Doubilet. “She never outgrew the absolute fascination of looking and seeing and observing under water. Even when I was a younger man and she was older, I couldn’t keep up with her. She moved with a kind of liquid speed underwater.”

“When you see a shark underwater, you shouldn’t be afraid! You should say, ‘How lucky I am to see this beautiful animal in his environment.”

During her graduate and doctoral study years in zoology, she worked at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, where she learned to dive; the American Museum of Natural History in New York; the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts; and the Lerner Marine Laboratory in Bimini, Bahamas.

Publishing more than 175 articles in scientific journals and mainstream magazines, leading more than 200 expeditions to her beloved Red Sea, the Caribbean, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, Japan, Palau, Borneo and the Solomon Islands, and penning two bestselling books – Lady with a Spear (1951) and The Lady and the Sharks (1969) – Genie wasted not a moment of her life. She, like Mission Blue founder Sylvia Earle, was a pioneer in the days when scuba was first being developed as a tool for underwater research. Genie also piloted deep sea submersibles and conducted more than 70 expeditions as deep as 12,000 feet.

Our lady of the sharks was also the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees including the Explorers Club Medal; the Medal of Excellence from the American Society of Oceanographers; memberships in the Underwater Society of America, Society of Women Geographers, National Geographic Society, International SCUBA Diving Hall of Fame, and Women Divers Hall of Fame; Legend of the Sea from Beneath the Sea; and the NOGI Award from the Academy of Underwater Arts and Sciences.

The Saturday Evening Post featured Genie in 1959 showing pictures of her adjusting her goggles in a yellow bathing suit, performing a Caesarean on a shark, and peering through a microscope. The caption said, “Dr. Eugenie Clark, a marine specialist who looks like a college girl, probably knows as much about sharks as anyone else in the world. The reason: She’s not afraid to meet them on their own terms.”

Genie tells the story of the only time she’s been bitten by a shark: She was driving to give a lecture with the dried jaws of a twelve-foot tiger shark on the car seat next to her. When she stopped short at a red light, she shot out her hand to stop the jaws falling on the floor, and the long-dead shark teeth lacerated her arm.

Last May, just after her 92^nd birthday, Genie led an expedition to the Gulf of Aquaba and the Red Sea where in 1983, her advocacy led to the area becoming Egypt’s first underwater national park.

“She was a trooper to the end, always wanting to finish her work,” said her son, Tak Konstantinou, who accepted her Legacy Award at the Blue Ocean Film Festival last November. “She was unstoppable. Driven. Passionate. Tough. Strong.”

“She still gets fan mail from little girls all over the world,” said her son Tak. “Little girls still play mom for their science projects and in science fairs.”

He remembers his mom working all the time: “Instead of coming home and hanging out with mom, we’d go to the lab and hang around the shark pens.” We received a similar story from Liz Taylor, daughter of Sylvia Earle and head of DOER Marine in Alameda, California:

As a kid I spent quite a bit of time at the Mote Marine Lab – sorting and pressing algae specimens but also helping out with the resident sharks kept by Eugenie Clark. These were mainly nurse and lemon sharks captured locally for Dr. Clark’s studies. She encouraged me to spend time observing them as individuals and to note their behaviors. The nurse sharks were like big dogs – curious and not at all aggressive. I remember the first time feeling their skin – smooth in one direction, rough in the other. I still have a set of little lemon shark jaws that Dr. Clark let me keep.

In a 2011 interview with Florida Trend, Genie said, “My health is not too good. I have lung cancer, but I never smoked a cigarette in my life. In 2004, they told me I had four to six months to live. The medicines don’t make me feel so great. I’m pushing 90, but I still come to work every day that I don’t have a doctor’s appointment or feel too sick from the chemo.”

“I can’t think of anything I regret,” she continued. “Everything I’ve done, I’ve enjoyed doing. I’ve had five husbands, four children. I’ve done it all, but mainly I’ve enjoyed studying fish and being underwater with them, being in their natural habitat, looking at the fish and the fish looking at me.”

Feature Photo: (c) David Doubilet / National Geographic Creative