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Sharks and People: Exploring Our Relationship with the Most Feared Fish in the Sea
At once feared and revered, sharks have captivated people since our earliest human encounters. Children and adults alike stand awed before aquarium shark tanks, fascinated by the giant teeth and unnerving eyes. And no swim in the ocean is undertaken without a slight shiver of anxiety about the very real—and very cinematic—dangers of shark bites. But our interactions with sharks are not entirely the threats we pose to sharks through fisheries, organized hunts, and gill nets on coastlines are more deadly and far-reaching than any bite. In Sharks and People acclaimed wildlife photographer Thomas Peschak presents stunning photographs that capture the relationship between people and sharks around the globe.
A contributing photographer to National Geographic, Peschak is best known for his unusual photographs of sharks—his iconic image of a great white shark following a researcher in a small yellow kayak is one of the most recognizable shark photographs in the world. The other images gathered here are no less riveting, bringing us as close as possible to sharks in the wild. Alongside the photographs, Sharks and People tells the compelling story of the natural history of sharks. Sharks have roamed the oceans for more than four hundred million years, and in this time they have never stopped adapting to the ever-changing world—their unique cartilage skeletons and array of super-senses mark them as one of the most evolved groups of animals. Scientists have recently discovered that sharks play an important role in balancing the ocean, including maintaining the health of coral reefs. Yet, tens of millions of sharks are killed every year just to fill the demand for shark fin soup alone. Today more than sixty species of sharks, including hammerhead, mako, and oceanic white-tip sharks, are listed as vulnerable or in danger of extinction.
The need to understand the significant part sharks play in the oceanic ecosystem has never been so urgent, and Peschak’s photographs bear witness to the thrilling strength and unique attraction of sharks. They are certain to enthrall and inspire.
A contributing photographer to National Geographic, Peschak is best known for his unusual photographs of sharks—his iconic image of a great white shark following a researcher in a small yellow kayak is one of the most recognizable shark photographs in the world. The other images gathered here are no less riveting, bringing us as close as possible to sharks in the wild. Alongside the photographs, Sharks and People tells the compelling story of the natural history of sharks. Sharks have roamed the oceans for more than four hundred million years, and in this time they have never stopped adapting to the ever-changing world—their unique cartilage skeletons and array of super-senses mark them as one of the most evolved groups of animals. Scientists have recently discovered that sharks play an important role in balancing the ocean, including maintaining the health of coral reefs. Yet, tens of millions of sharks are killed every year just to fill the demand for shark fin soup alone. Today more than sixty species of sharks, including hammerhead, mako, and oceanic white-tip sharks, are listed as vulnerable or in danger of extinction.
The need to understand the significant part sharks play in the oceanic ecosystem has never been so urgent, and Peschak’s photographs bear witness to the thrilling strength and unique attraction of sharks. They are certain to enthrall and inspire.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published August 29, 2013
82 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 16, 2020
this book is the perfect size (huge) to appreciate its truly stunning photography.
the text is also good, and will cover all the things you want to know about the way sharks and people interact. it's written by a conservation photojournalist who began his career as a marine field biologist before he decided he could better raise awareness through his photographs, as people are more easily seduced through images than scientific data. and because he's really good at photography. these pictures are impressive in terms of both access and composition.
but the point is, this guy knows his sharkstuff, he's not just some guy taking pretty pictures. and while any sharkweek fan worth their fin knows a lot of this stuff already: we have a precarious relationship with sharks, we hunt them, they bite us, finning is deplorable, some of the attacks are our fault as we invade their territory, shark tourism can condition them to associate humans with food, endangered sharks = endangered everything else in the ocean because ecosystem, etc.
but if you don't know all this, this book is a way to learn about sharks and also be completely wowed by these photographs, which are again - stunning:
and i learned a couple of things myself, most interestingly:
The most fatalities attributed to a single shark occurred in November of 1993 along the southeast coast of Madagascar. In an ironic twist, more than 95 people died after eating the meat of a bull shark, and an additional 120 severely ill people were admitted to hospitals after their nervous systems were attacked by a toxin found in the animal's liver.
haha, says nature.
it's an important book to read if you still associate sharks with jaws or whatever - just to be able to better appreciate their majesty and to learn about how scarily unregulated the fishing industry is, and how wasteful and sad all the stories of bycatch are, along with all the animals needlessly killed in those useless shark nets. i eat plenty of fish, so i'm not preaching at anyone here, but waste really pisses me off, and all those dead dugongs - the sweethearts of the ocean - really get my goat.
the photos are better in the book, and there are so many i wasn't able to find on the old internet, but here is a sampling of some of his work, which is… wait for it - stunning.
and this iconic one,
which is real, but which has apparently been repurposed in a number of internet hoaxes beginning with this story
and then in images supposedly depicting the aftermath of hurricane katrina
hurricane irene in puerto rico
hurricane sandy in new jersey (which yes, is the same damn picture as the puerto rico one. lazy hoaxers! do your own photoshop!)
and a shark-tank supposedly breaking and flooding a mall in kuwait
he talks about the various hoaxes and his delight in them:
I always look forward to receiving e-mails from friends and family who have spotted the same white shark in a different context. While I will probably never become a legend in my own right, at least my white shark is well on her way.
so he has a sense of humor, which makes me like him even more.
ALL HAIL SHARK WEEK!!
come to my blog!
the text is also good, and will cover all the things you want to know about the way sharks and people interact. it's written by a conservation photojournalist who began his career as a marine field biologist before he decided he could better raise awareness through his photographs, as people are more easily seduced through images than scientific data. and because he's really good at photography. these pictures are impressive in terms of both access and composition.
but the point is, this guy knows his sharkstuff, he's not just some guy taking pretty pictures. and while any sharkweek fan worth their fin knows a lot of this stuff already: we have a precarious relationship with sharks, we hunt them, they bite us, finning is deplorable, some of the attacks are our fault as we invade their territory, shark tourism can condition them to associate humans with food, endangered sharks = endangered everything else in the ocean because ecosystem, etc.
but if you don't know all this, this book is a way to learn about sharks and also be completely wowed by these photographs, which are again - stunning:
and i learned a couple of things myself, most interestingly:
The most fatalities attributed to a single shark occurred in November of 1993 along the southeast coast of Madagascar. In an ironic twist, more than 95 people died after eating the meat of a bull shark, and an additional 120 severely ill people were admitted to hospitals after their nervous systems were attacked by a toxin found in the animal's liver.
haha, says nature.
it's an important book to read if you still associate sharks with jaws or whatever - just to be able to better appreciate their majesty and to learn about how scarily unregulated the fishing industry is, and how wasteful and sad all the stories of bycatch are, along with all the animals needlessly killed in those useless shark nets. i eat plenty of fish, so i'm not preaching at anyone here, but waste really pisses me off, and all those dead dugongs - the sweethearts of the ocean - really get my goat.
the photos are better in the book, and there are so many i wasn't able to find on the old internet, but here is a sampling of some of his work, which is… wait for it - stunning.
and this iconic one,
which is real, but which has apparently been repurposed in a number of internet hoaxes beginning with this story
and then in images supposedly depicting the aftermath of hurricane katrina
hurricane irene in puerto rico
hurricane sandy in new jersey (which yes, is the same damn picture as the puerto rico one. lazy hoaxers! do your own photoshop!)
and a shark-tank supposedly breaking and flooding a mall in kuwait
he talks about the various hoaxes and his delight in them:
I always look forward to receiving e-mails from friends and family who have spotted the same white shark in a different context. While I will probably never become a legend in my own right, at least my white shark is well on her way.
so he has a sense of humor, which makes me like him even more.
ALL HAIL SHARK WEEK!!
come to my blog!
December 9, 2013
Peschak is a conservation photographer with decades of dive experience and a particular interest in sharks. He's also responsible for one of the most iconic shark photos going, which is on the cover of this book. That photo shows a great white shark dwarfing a man in a yellow kayak--but it delivers less a sense of threat than of curiosity and unlikely juxtaposition. It's an image that provokes the viewer to think twice about the iconic dark shape in the water...which is exactly what Peschak wants.
This is a coffee-table book, probably of interest more for its large and striking images than for its more limited text. And the images are something. Peschak manages to make sharks--not the most expressive animals--seem serene, curious, even playful. He largely refrains from focusing on gaping jaws, and when he shoots a dorsal fin cutting the water it looks beautiful rather than ominous. That's a major accomplishment, given how programmed we are to think of sharks as nothing but marine buzz saws.
The bloodiest, most carnage-filled photos in this book all feature sharks as the victims. Peschak goes into some detail on the multi-million dollar shark-finning industry, as well as the longline and gill net fishing industries, which claim huge numbers of sharks, rays, dolphins, turtles, and other animals as bycatch. He points to recent research on the consequences of eliminating some species of sharks from their ecosystems.
For instance, a 2007 study reviewed 35 years of longline catches of large predatory sharks off the east coast of the United States, and found precipitous declines in many species. Cownose rays, a key prey item for the sharks, flourished as a result. The rays then exhausted the bay scallop population, which caused a collapse of the North Carolina scallop fishery. Aspects of the study are disputed, but other research on, for instance, the collapse of coral reefs when sharks are removed as predators of algae-grazing fish, is hard to ignore.
Fortunately, many countries have realized that sharks are worth more alive than dead. A single great white or tiger shark can draw millions of dollars to a small shark-tourism economy over the course of its life...while it may only bring $50 to the fisherman who kills and fins it. As a result, official shark sanctuaries have been implemented in the water around countries like Palau, Bahamas, Micronesia, the Cook and Marshall Islands, and so on. These countries control disproportionate ocean acreage to their small size, so as of 2013 a total of five million square miles is now considered shark sanctuary. The trouble, of course, is patrolling the water and enforcing the policies.
There's much more here of interest here--details about sharks' incredible migratory patterns; the logistics of tagging them; and the ethics of "provisioned" shark tourism (i.e. chumming water with blood and fish entrails to draw sharks for tourists to photograph.) Peschak is not a brilliant writer but his prose is serviceable enough and he clearly knows (and cares about) his subject.
I admit I got this book because sharks have always given me a frisson of fear and excitement, not to say mortal terror. I cut my teeth (no pun intended) on Jaws, and while I know that Peter Benchley later expressed regret for the harm that his book and Spielberg's movie did to sharks, I've never met a shark book that didn't to some extent play to that fear. Peschak's book is different. He doesn't discount our fear of sharks, or the seriousness of the few attacks they commit. But he's also in love with sharks and their underwater world, and by the end of the book I was seeing things at least a little through his eyes.
This is a coffee-table book, probably of interest more for its large and striking images than for its more limited text. And the images are something. Peschak manages to make sharks--not the most expressive animals--seem serene, curious, even playful. He largely refrains from focusing on gaping jaws, and when he shoots a dorsal fin cutting the water it looks beautiful rather than ominous. That's a major accomplishment, given how programmed we are to think of sharks as nothing but marine buzz saws.
The bloodiest, most carnage-filled photos in this book all feature sharks as the victims. Peschak goes into some detail on the multi-million dollar shark-finning industry, as well as the longline and gill net fishing industries, which claim huge numbers of sharks, rays, dolphins, turtles, and other animals as bycatch. He points to recent research on the consequences of eliminating some species of sharks from their ecosystems.
For instance, a 2007 study reviewed 35 years of longline catches of large predatory sharks off the east coast of the United States, and found precipitous declines in many species. Cownose rays, a key prey item for the sharks, flourished as a result. The rays then exhausted the bay scallop population, which caused a collapse of the North Carolina scallop fishery. Aspects of the study are disputed, but other research on, for instance, the collapse of coral reefs when sharks are removed as predators of algae-grazing fish, is hard to ignore.
Fortunately, many countries have realized that sharks are worth more alive than dead. A single great white or tiger shark can draw millions of dollars to a small shark-tourism economy over the course of its life...while it may only bring $50 to the fisherman who kills and fins it. As a result, official shark sanctuaries have been implemented in the water around countries like Palau, Bahamas, Micronesia, the Cook and Marshall Islands, and so on. These countries control disproportionate ocean acreage to their small size, so as of 2013 a total of five million square miles is now considered shark sanctuary. The trouble, of course, is patrolling the water and enforcing the policies.
There's much more here of interest here--details about sharks' incredible migratory patterns; the logistics of tagging them; and the ethics of "provisioned" shark tourism (i.e. chumming water with blood and fish entrails to draw sharks for tourists to photograph.) Peschak is not a brilliant writer but his prose is serviceable enough and he clearly knows (and cares about) his subject.
I admit I got this book because sharks have always given me a frisson of fear and excitement, not to say mortal terror. I cut my teeth (no pun intended) on Jaws, and while I know that Peter Benchley later expressed regret for the harm that his book and Spielberg's movie did to sharks, I've never met a shark book that didn't to some extent play to that fear. Peschak's book is different. He doesn't discount our fear of sharks, or the seriousness of the few attacks they commit. But he's also in love with sharks and their underwater world, and by the end of the book I was seeing things at least a little through his eyes.
April 30, 2014
A beautiful, fascinating, and instructive book. Did you know that sharks have jelly-filled pores that sense electrical impulses (ampullae of Lorenzini)? This unique sense is being exploited to develop shark deterrents for divers and surfers. The most difficult photographs were the wanton destruction of sharks for the shark fin trade. Study of shark ecology is essential to learn about the shark's role in healthy reefs and to educate the public on the importance sharks are to natural ecosystems. As one Sengalese environmentalist says "In the end, we conserve only what we love, we love only what we understand, we will understand only what we are taught."
June 19, 2015
"In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, we will understand only what we are taught." - Baba Dioum
That quote, found in this book, nicely sums up the general idea of Sharks & People. It is filled with beautiful photographs and interesting information on the future of sharks. It reads more as a conservation book than another shark fact book.
It was a lovely read and I would highly recommend it to any ocean lover.
That quote, found in this book, nicely sums up the general idea of Sharks & People. It is filled with beautiful photographs and interesting information on the future of sharks. It reads more as a conservation book than another shark fact book.
It was a lovely read and I would highly recommend it to any ocean lover.
May 3, 2017
This is the second story I've read about a scientist chosing photography instead of statistics to tell a story about our world (the first scientist was James Balog). Too bad I study things that are microscopic.........
Beautiful photographs! I learned a lot about sharks too! :)
Beautiful photographs! I learned a lot about sharks too! :)
March 30, 2014
Great snap shot overview of a number of environment issues surrounding sharks. But the highlight to this book is it's beautiful photography.
August 6, 2015
Have been reading this book on and off. An interesting look at sharks from a environmental photojournalist's point of view.
Looking also at Shark and Human interactions.
Looking also at Shark and Human interactions.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews