2014 Legend of the Sea

Dr. Eugenie Clark: 93 years young…still diving, still committed to fish research. At the 38th annual Beneath the Sea Ocean Exposition and Dive Travel Show at New Jersey’s Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, New Jersey, March 28th, 29th and 30th, 2014, Beneath the Sea honors and celebrates Dr. Eugenie Clark as their Legend of the Sea.

Dr. Clark came of age in the 1930s and ’40s when women working in science were rare. Still she received her doctorate in zoology from New York University, founded the Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida, and taught marine science at the University of Maryland for more than 20 years. Her career earned her the honor of being known as “the Shark Lady.”

In 1949 Dr. Clark applied for a government grant to study and identify fish in Micronesia. Later she would write, “it was thought unlikely the government would send a single woman around the Pacific collecting fishes. Life would be too rugged in most places; tropical diseases and the heat might get a girl down.” But she received the grant and traveled into adventure in the South Seas.

She wrote a book about her experiences: Lady with a Spear, so popular it was a Book of the Month Club selection. Even better, Dr. Eugenie Clark discovered she was a good writer, capable of explaining the mysteries of the ocean to the public.

In 1954 the Vanderbilts invited her to lecture in Englewood, Florida. A turning point in her life, this led to Dr. Clark creating a research institute at nearby Cape Haze. It was here she began studying sharks and other species in her small laboratory. She remained at the Cape Haze Marine Laboratory until 1967. It was at Cape Haze that her fascination with sharks began. It would follow her to the University of Maryland, where she would continue to be fascinated by the entire shark family. Curiously, at one point in her illustrious career she would study a Red Sea fish called the Moses sole that had the ability to produce toxins that repelled sharks.

Once, though she is reluctant to tell this story in today’s world, when diving, a whale shark swam by. But let David Doubilet, a frequent National Geographic photographer, Beneath the Sea Diver of the Year, and this year’s Pioneer, who was there taking pictures, tell the story: “She grabbed on to this giant dorsal fin which was the size of a grand piano,” said David. “She felt no fear. The shark didn’t go deep. He stayed maybe 20 to 30 feet underwater, and I kept photographing her.” “I just felt like I was on a tour bus,” Clark says, “and then I started to think: How long have I been on this, and it’s quite a distance, and maybe my air might give out soon and I’ll have to find the boat. So I finally let go. But I was so sorry to let go of the most wonderful ride I’ve ever had in my life.”

At 82, in 2004, jumping off a dive boat in Papua New Guinea, her tank came loose and smashed into her heel, splitting open her Achilles tendon. Back ashore when doctors prepared to repair the tendon they discovered lung cancer. Chemotherapy followed, and NO DIVING! “They told my kids I had four to six months to live.”

I write this in 2014. Dr. Clark’s lung cancer is in remission and she is allowed to dive again. If you watch carefully, she still walks with a limp from her diving accident. Eugenie says that’s only a problem when she’s on land. “Underwater,” she said, “everything is more comfortable.”

Dr. Eugenie Clark, Beneath the Sea’s 2014 Legend of the Sea, said: “Not many appreciate the ultimate power and potential usefulness of basic knowledge accumulated by obscure, unseen investigators who, in a lifetime of intensive study, may never see any practical use for their findings but who go on seeking answers to the unknown without thought of financial or practical gain.”

If you are seeking inspiration, you could find no better source.