Shark (Reaktion Books - Animal) | Date: 28 April 2011, 04:59
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Shark (Reaktion Books - Animal)
By Dean Crawford
* Publisher: Reaktion Books
* Number Of Pages:
* Publication Date: 2008-08-01
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 1861893256
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9781861893253
Product Description:
A sleek hunter of the seas, the shark has struck fear into the hearts of men since the days of the first fishermen. Dean Crawford now explores here the long relationship between shark and man, revealing that behind the fearsome caricature is a complex animal that deserves a thoughtful reconsideration.
With a lineage stretching back over 100 million years, the shark has evolved into 350 different species, from the great white to the pike-bearing goblin to the tiny cookie-cutter. Crawford compiles here a fascinating narrative that analyzes how and why the animal looms large in our cultural psyche. While sharks have played a prominent part in religion and mythology, they are more commonly perceived as deadly predators—in such films as Jaws and Dr. No—or as symbols of natural violence, as in Hemingway’s Islands in the Stream. Shark ultimately argues, however, that our ill-informed emotional responses, spurred by such representations, have encouraged the wholesale slaughter of sharks—and our ignorance endangers the very existence of the shark today.
Both a celebration of their lethal beauty and plea for their conservation, Shark urges us to shed our fears and appreciate the magnificence of this majestic animal.
Summary: A convert
Rating: 5
Sharks have had bad press. With this book, they finally have a skillful P.R. agent working for them. Dean Crawford loves sharks and wants us to like and help protect them. He asserts that sharks are merely "fish going about their business of prowling for and gobbling other fish life."
Let me say that I thoroughly enjoyed *Shark* - the grace and humor with which it's written and the details, how, for example, the membranes of a shark's eye operate while feeding and that some feed on "baby" elephant seals. I was taken aback that Dean, trying to evoke sympathy for the shark, came up, fully self-conscious, I'm certain, with the word "baby" instead of "young" seals. He must have figured, if you read on after that, you're ripe to take sharks to heart. Then follows the picture and the horrible details of what happens to sharks when their fins are harvested for food. Who knew? Makes me want to become an activist.
And who knew that all current species of sharks date back to the Jurassic age? Anyone interested in dinosaurs and their classifications would want to latch on to that fact. And who knew, certainly not I, that there are 450 species of sharks, most totally charming and innocuous, all endangered, "fish going about their business?" Only the GREAT WHITE is the TYRANNASAURUS REX of sharks, and, like Tyrannsaurus Rex, can't be blamed for being a carnivore.
Even I, who had no particular affinity for sharks, after finishing this book, care deeply about them, though, I have to admit, not as deeply as Dean Crawford, who clearly adores them. Most sharks are pretty homely. Bullhead sharks, at least from their picture, have faces only their mothers and Dean Crawford could love. He is never critical of sharks, continually talks about their "beauty" or extraordinary "engineering."
I learned in this book that, until the mid-16th century, sharks were not called "sharks," but "sea dogs." Now isn't that nicer? Sure some sea dogs, if aroused, bite, but not all sea dogs. And sea dogs are so despised that fishermen today think nothing of torturing and slaughtering them, 100 million annually. Dean has riled me up into a state of outrage over these killings. The book's sympathy for one of the world's oldest and most venerable families, is contagious
Summary: A Study that Delivered More Than I Expected.
Rating: 5
SHARK is an encyclopedic study of a fascinating animal. Dean Crawford is a tireless (and, evidently, fearless) researcher as well as an elegant writer, and he has written a book that should delight anyone interested in animals in general or in the survival of species essential for the survival of our own.
This book taught me a great deal about sharks, about their amazing variety, about their extraordinary longevity. Sharks were old before the first dinosaur was a twinkle in nature's eye. In the world of the survival of the fittest, they are just that.
But that's only the beginning of what I took away from this book. Besides its virtues as a readable biological study, SHARK is also an incisive examination of how humans demonize other species. One work of fiction and a handful of incidents so rare as to flirt with freakishness have created an apparition: a monster, a killing machine. Statistics don't bear this hallucination out. Through another source I have learned that I am more likely to be killed by a blue jay than I am by a shark.
The difference is that no one yet written a best-selling book or movie called BEAK. The equivalent book about sharks (JAWS), it seems, generated much more than sales. It managed to create a new species, one that terrifies the imagination even though its connections to reality are tenuous at best.
In the end Crawford is a conservationist as well as a scholar. His arguments for some limits on the current slaughter of sharks or all shapes and kinds (largely for their fins) are compelling. As is usually the case, the extermination of a species often has appalling ramifications for other species, and that includes Homo Sapiens.
Of course, arguing for the preservation of sharks is a bit harder than arguing, for instance, for the preservation of Bambi. One might start the comparison by with noting the apparent non-cuddlability of sharks and then move on to the question of teeth.
Read SHARK, however, and you will find that JAWS distorts reality at least as much as BAMBI does. Neither comes within shouting distance of the truth. If BAMBI has done no harm to the species it tries to represent, that is not the case with JAWS. Once you have read Crawford's book, you will be left with a choice: whether it is better to found your opinions on a piece of pulp fiction or, on the other hand, on the facts.
Peter Grudin
Stamford, VT
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