Eugenie Clark, The 'Shark Lady' Who Took a Bite Out of Marine Biology

Hidden Voices began as a collaboration with the Museum of the City of New York that was initiated to help City students learn about the countless individuals who are often "hidden" from traditional historical records. Each of the people highlighted in this series has made a positive impact on their communities while serving as outstanding examples of leadership, advocacy, and community service.

Today, we're sharing the story of Dr. Eugenie Clark, a fish scientist from New York City who earned herself the nickname, "Shark Lady," thanks to her trailblazing research on fish and shark species around the world as well as her personal dedication to protecting sharks and their ocean habitats from extinction.

Before the historic Castle Clinton in Battery Park became the ticket office for the Statue of Liberty, it served as a a defensive fort in the War of 1812, an entertainment center that hosted former presidents, the first official immigrant processing center in the nation, and the original site of the New York Aquarium, before it moved to its present day location in Coney Island. 

When the aquarium first opened in 1896, it welcomed over 30,000 visitors on its opening day, and quickly became one of the most popular attractions in Manhattan. By 1902, the New York Zoological Society took over operations, and the new management sought to both entertain and educate the aquarium's visitors, particularly City schoolchildren. As a result, thousands of students were invited to visit the aquarium and introduced to the wonders of aquatic life, including a young Eugenie Clark (1922–2015).

Clark, born in New York City, would grow up to become a groundbreaking shark researcher, and she attributed her trips to the aquarium as one of the first things to spark her interest in ichthyology, or the study of fish. She also credits her Japanese American mother, Yumico Clark (née Mitomi), for teaching Eugenie about the central role the sea has in Japanese culture.

Eugenie's interest in the sea—and the creatures who lived there—grew as she advanced through school, including her time as a student at William Cullen Bryant High School in Queens.

She'd eventually turn her interest into a more serious academic pursuit when she enrolled in Hunter College and earned a bachelor's degree in Zoology in 1942. She then continued her education and enrolled at New York University, where she earned a Master's degree in 1946, and a PhD in 1950—the same year she received a Fulbright scholarship. Later, she held research positions at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California and the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Throughout her studies, Eugenie was often the only person of Japanese descent and one of only a few women in her classes. Because of this, she often experienced prejudice that her peers did not face. In 1994, she recalled in an interview:

Another hurdle came in 1947, when Clark had been commissioned by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to study animal behavior in the Philippines. Unfortunately, at this time she was detained by the FBI in Hawaii due to World War II-era laws that discriminated against people of Japanese ancestry. She was never able to complete this research. 

Fortunately, Eugenie did not let these challenges discourage. She maintained her dedication to her academic and career-related pursuits, and by 1955, Eugenie was asked to set up the Cape Haze Marine Laboratory on the west coast of Florida. As the longtime director of the lab, which was later renamed as the Mote Marine Laboratory, Eugenie conducted groundbreaking research on local aquatic life, like an experiment in which she trained sharks to press a target to obtain food, proving their intelligence. It was in this role that Clark earned her nickname: The Shark Lady.

Her research was not confined to Florida waters—Clark traveled around the world to learn as much as she could about different marine species. In a dive off the coast of Mexico, she and her team helped disprove the myth that sharks must keep moving to survive when they discovered caves where the water was high in oxygen, but low in salinity, and allowed the “sleeping” sharks that lived in those waters to stop and rest.

She also became the first woman to conduct any scientific research in the Red Sea, where her and her team discovered a native species known as the “Moses sole” that produces a natural shark repellent that protects them from the deadly predators.

Unfortunately for humans, the team’s subsequent experiments proved that the unique chemical was ineffective for protecting divers against potential attacks. However, Clark would have argued that such a thing was mostly unnecessary anyway; despite the common perception of sharks as vicious and dangerous creatures, Eugenie maintained that they had a relatively calm nature. “No creature on earth has a worse, and perhaps less deserved, reputation than the shark,” she wrote in National Geographic in 1981. “During [my] years of research on sharks I have found them to be normally unaggressive and even timid toward man.”

Clark was so unafraid of the sharks she researched in fact, that she not only dove into the waters they called home, but once even rode on the back of a 40-foot long whale shark traveling at over three knots along the coast of California.

Despite Eugenie's experiences, it is not surprising that most people view sharks in a negative light; popular media—like the film "Jaws" and the Discovery Channel’s "Shark Week" programming, among other examples—has portrayed sharks as violent, human-killing machines, despite the reality that they rarely go after humans. This has had a noticeable real-world effect: in the years since "Jaws" premiered, shark populations in the United States have suffered noticeable declines.

Clark knew that public perception and conservation efforts are intrinsically linked—studies have found that “flagship species” which are viewed more positively or considered cuter (like polar bears or pandas) have been favored both as recipients of donations and funding, and as research subjects. So, she dedicated herself to “rebranding” sharks as creatures worthy of saving and devoted her life to educating people on the important role they play in their ecosystem.

One way that Clark made use of her expert communication skills was as an educator; while she held many teaching positions at different universities throughout her career, the longest by far was at the University of Maryland, where she joined the faculty in 1968, became a full professor in 1973, and where she remained until her retirement in 1992.

Conservation and research were truly lifelong pursuits for Clark: when she died at age 92 in 2015, after having battled lung cancer for several years her obituary in The New York Times counted that over a nearly 75-year long career, she “wrote three books, 80 scientific treatises and more than 70 articles and professional papers; lectured at 60 American universities and in 19 countries abroad; appeared in 50 television specials and documentaries; was the subject of many biographies and profiles; made intriguing scientific discoveries; and had four species of fish named for her.”

To be able to publish all of this work, she made more than 5,000 dives over the course of her life, the last of which took place only a year before she died, in 2014. The long list of awards she received during her lifetime included a Medal of Excellence from the American Society of Oceanographers, a place in the International SCUBA Diving Hall of Fame, and the Legend of the Sea Award from Beneath the Sea, among many others.

In her own words, Clark did not use these statistics to summarize her contributions and legacy, though. Instead, she once wrote, “In total, my popular and scientific articles have helped dispel some of the myths about sharks that are so unfair to sharks, added a piece to the puzzle here and there towards our ultimate understanding about fishes, and inspired young people, especially girls, to study science.” 

Cover photo: Features images from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (left), the Academy of Underwater Arts & Sciences (center), Mote Marine Laboratory (sketches on center right), and National Geographic (right).