The Truth About Sharks

In this, the 20th anniversary of Discovery's Shark Week, I was asked to comment on the amazing changes I have witnessed in shark biology and natural history since I was a young graduate student in 1960 - and to highlight Discovery's role in those changes.

So what you may ask have I seen? First and foremost, I have seen the "death-fish-from-hell" image of the shark magically transformed essentially by television documentaries to a crucial element in the fragile marine ecosystem - at once an aquatic "Crown of Creation" and ancient "Lord of Time."

The latter is perhaps a more appropriate moniker for these magnificent animals but in the 1930s, great ichthyologists called them "Chinless Cowards" and even offered monetary rewards for anyone who could prove that a shark ever actually killed any human being! So our opinion is colored by an abundance of ridiculous myths from devil to angel and everything in between.

There is a dichotomy of beliefs about sharks, depending on one's cultural background. It seems English-speaking or westernized cultures hate sharks. They have a natural tendency towards revulsion because of hundreds of years of negative propaganda, more recently emphasized by movies like Jaws, which portray sharks as horrible creatures that hold a grudge and would eat a human anytime one came into view.

On the opposite side are the peoples of Oceania; Melanesians, Polynesians, Hawaiian Islanders and New Zealanders, like the Maori, who venerate the power and majesty of sharks. Perhaps the loveliest myth is that of the Polynesians who know and revere sharks as Aumakua or spirit master.

According to anthropologists Margret Beckwith, the shark is considered by Hawaiians to be a powerful Aumakua, having the ability to ensure that its family is always well fed and will never drown.