Mote Marine Laboratory

More Than Just 'Shark Lady'

By: Rebecca Evanhoe

Imagine having the chance to meet a childhood hero and the opportunity to sit down for a meaningful conversation. Mote Magazine intern Rebecca Evanhoe had just that chance when she was asked to interview Dr. Eugenie Clark, founder of the lab that would become Mote and author of the best-selling books Lady with a Spear and The Lady and the Sharks, based on her experiences as a marine scientist.

Rebecca first “met” Genie when she was 8 years old and she read the children’s book Shark Lady: True Adventures of Eugenie Clark, by Ann McGovern. “I fell in love with Genie’s story. I begged my parents for a fish tank like the one Genie had,” says Rebecca. “I finally got a 29-gallon tank one Christmas, and kept some sailfin mollies. I was obsessed with the fish lives playing out in that tank. I loved to check the water quality, making sure the levels of nitrates and the pH were all at their proper levels. From that, I became interested in aquatic chemistry. Now I’m working toward a chemistry degree at the University of Kansas, largely due to Genie’s book.”

Little did Rebecca know that she would have the chance to talk to Genie at length. But what do you ask a woman who has been interviewed hundreds of times, a woman who has already summed up much of her career in her memoirs? Well, for one thing, you ask her if it’s really true that she was arrested three times.

— Editor

Unexpected science adventures

Genie’s world travels have given her international recognition in countries such as Japan and Israel. She has greeted royalty — from the Crown Prince of Japan (who is now the emperor) to Ueg, King of Ulithi, a South Seas island. But some of her travel adventures have ended in less than royal treatment.

“I was arrested several times in Israel — I’ve been to the same jail in Eilat three times for all kinds of crazy things,” she says, revealing her sense of humor. The first time, Genie was a visiting professor at Hebrew University and working with her students after sundown on a Friday during Shabbat. She was released when police realized that she didn’t understand that as a university representative she wasn’t supposed to be working then.

The second time, she was by herself studying fish at the coral reef next to the Jordanian border when men in a Jeep with rifles threatened to shoot her. She didn’t have her passport with her and the men thought she had illegally crossed the border. Further confusion ensued because she didn’t speak Hebrew and the police didn’t speak English but she was eventually released.

The third time Genie landed in the slammer, she ended up staying the night. She’d been collecting fish with two assistants on the Sinai coast, and they were returning after the marine lab they were working in had closed. When the bus got close to the bus stop there, Genie pulled the cord and rang the bell, but the driver refused to stop. “You don’t have any business in the marine laboratory. It’s closed,” he told them. Genie — who had a key to the lab — protested. The irritable bus driver got fed-up, stopped the bus in the middle of the desert and told Genie and her assistants to get off the bus. “I said, ‘But we’ve got all this stuff to carry; you can’t leave us here’ — it was already dark, in the middle of the desert. But he threw the three of us out with our fish collections. Then he started the bus up.”

Genie, always a spirited woman, was displeased and continued protesting. “But he said ‘Just get out of my way.’ So I stood in front of his bus and said ‘You’ll have to run over me.’ He started the bus up just the same, and he looked like he was going to run over me.”

After the bus driver threatened her, Genie picked up a rock, pitched it at the bus, shattered the windsheild then was arrested. “There I am standing in my bare feet with the head of the police station who didn’t speak any English, so they got a translator. He said ‘We’ll have to put you in jail for the night,’ but I knew from my previous two experiences the cells were air conditioned and very comfortable, so I said ‘That’s alright, I don’t mind staying overnight — what are you having for dinner?’ ” All ended well and the bus driver was in more trouble than Genie — after all, it was illegal for him to drop passengers off between stops.

The fish lady

Although Genie gained the most public attention for training sharks to recognize certain targets and ring a bell for food, most of her research focuses on bony fish. Genie has published more than 170  scientific and popular articles, including 12 in National Geographic magazine, describing her discoveries and her adventures. She has discovered and named five fish species and had another four named after her.

One of her famous discoveries focused on the Serranus fish, a tiny grouper she studied in 1956 while serving as director of Cape Haze Marine Laboratory. She found an abundance of pregnant females, but no males. She eventually discovered that the “females” could also become males — they were hermaphroditic, and produced both eggs and sperm at the same time. The fish can fertilize their own eggs with their own sperm, or mate with others by switching back and forth from male to female through a complicated ritual. Genie’s most recent work is on the convict fish. It appears that the plankton-eating juveniles may actually feed their tunnel-confined parents — a trait unique among vertebrates.

Scientist meets the sea

This famous scientist grew up in Woodside, Long Island. She cultivated her love of the sea in New York Aquarium at Battery Park; where her weekly Saturday visits inspired her love of aquatic life. She begged her mother to allow her to keep aquarium fish herself. “When I was a little girl, I only had fish tanks. But it’s almost like being underwater,” she said. “You get up close to it,” she said, putting her hands to the sides of her face as if to peer against the glass, “and you feel like you’re underwater with the fish. It’s a wonderful feeling.”

Although a glass wall separated Genie from her childhood fish, she now swims in waters all over the world. At 85, Genie still dives.

“There’s a certain euphoria about being underwater,” said Genie. “When you go underwater and you’re part of the sea yourself and you’re breathing underwater, it’s just so incredibly beautiful. It’s magical. And you never lose that.”


Curiosity creates the scientist

Genie’s love of the sea is an emotional one. “I never think of it as intellectual; each time, it’s ‘wow, it’s so gorgeous,’” she said. “I love to dive in clear waters where I can see all this beauty. But having studied many years and seen so many reefs, I know when there’s something unusual, so I suppose it becomes intellectual — but you never lose the wonder.”

Genie believes in the importance of keeping that sense of wonder and curiosity — the driving force of scientists like herself. “A famous quote that I like from Einstein is ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge.’ It’s true; some people can look at something beautiful like a reef and just say, ‘oh that’s nice.’ But other people can look at it and imagine all the things going on in this beautiful scene. I think education helps you to appreciate beauty – although it doesn’t always have to be formal education. I think that has a lot to do with imagination, which involves curiosity in a way.”

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