There are no products in your basket.
The Shark Lady
It’s time to celebrate the women who have excelled as adventurers and explorers of the underwater world, pushing boundaries and raising awareness of this incredible part of our planet.
Photos by David Doubilet
Dr Eugenie Clark was a pioneering marine scientist and a leading authority on sharks, devoting her life to understanding their behaviour and promoting shark conservation. Known as “The Shark Lady”, she was the first to dispel the myth that sharks needed to keep swimming in order to “breathe”.
Eugenie began her love affair with the underwater world at the age of nine, when she would spend all her time at the Battery Park Aquarium while her mother worked at a local news stand. Her passion grew and led to a lifetime of marine study and exploration, including a doctorate in the 1950’s and three honorary degrees.
“When you see a shark underwater, you should say, ‘How lucky I am to see this beautiful animal in his environment.’”
Perhaps one of her most significant contributions to the world of marine research was to create and build the Florida Mote Marine Laboratory in 1955. This one-woman operation was supported by the Vanderbilt family as a place to study the oceans and share information with the world. It has since grown into a fully fledged research laboratory with twenty-five diverse research programs, a formal education division and the public Mote Aquarium.
Eugenie was an active researcher throughout her entire life and earned many prestigious awards including The Explorers Club Medal, Medal of Excellence from the American Society of Oceanographers, Underwater Society of America, Society of Women Geographer, the National Geographic Society, International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame, 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.
Eugenie continued diving into her 90’s and was a pioneer in using scuba gear for underwater research. She made thousands of dives including over more than 70 deep dives in submersibles (one to 12,000 feet), and led more than 200 field research expeditions around the world.