The Shark Club

by Ann Kidd Taylor

Maeve, the shark whisperer. It implied I could somehow get close to these apex predators, even tame them, which was, of course, a fatal kind of lunacy. The nickname had caught on even here at the Marine Field Lab in Bimini,

YOO IVE BEEN HERE. Already hype for this book

The sea, its creatures, its sharks—they were my religion. I could die for that.

sending me back to Dr. Marion, a child psychiatrist over in Naples, I still don’t, but I did wonder how Robin’s hating sharks was viewed as perfectly normal and my loving them was considered detrimental.

the top of the shark’s gray head, its teeth clamped into my leg, the fin’s black tip, the tail ruddering back and forth.

Blacktips that live in the atlantic dont have a distinctive black tipped fin like the black tip reef sharks of bora bora. They are different species

The shark let go of my leg and swam off. I had no idea why. Now I know it was exhibiting classic hit-and-run behavior: a bump, a single bite, and then a retreat when it realizes its prey is not food, but a case of mistaken identity.

I forgave the shark, who was just being a shark.

But I’ve never felt about anything the way I feel about sharks.”

When I think about sharks, I feel happy.”

Whatever makes you feel alive, you ought to pay attention to it. If it makes you happy, it’s worth following.”

“I went to my room after that and thought: she was literally bitten by the object of her obsession. That made you the single most fascinating person I’d ever met.”

turned his room into a workspace, or as Robin called it, the Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Room. I’d attached underwater photos to every wall, images of the sharks I’d tagged and surveyed.

WHERE IS THE LIE

One hammerhead after another was caught, had its fins hacked off, and was then tossed overboard, where it drowned and hemorrhaged in a slow, torturous death.

“They’re wiping the sharks right out of the ocean—some estimate that eighty million were slaughtered last year. Eighty million, Marco, and for what? Shark fin soup! Jesus Christ! There’s nothing in that soup but a lot of gelatinous goo and it’s thought of as a delicacy.”

Do you know how many people were bitten by sharks last year?” “Two hundred?” he guessed. “Fifty-eight bites and four deaths. Probably all cases of mistaken identity.”

What was my work for? What difference did it make? Eighty million dead sharks. I would never be able to save them. What I was doing was a drop in the bucket.

Nicholas wrestled a grocery cart free from the queue and pushed it into the produce section at Publix. “They make really good subs here,” I said.

Haha pub subs!!

silver Jetta.

NOT A SILVER JETTA

In less than three months I would be underwater again, swimming with giants.

“With this fin, I do swear. To love sharks even when they bite. When they lose their teeth, I will find them. When I catch one, I will let it go. This is the Shark Club vow.”

This is so cute wtf

If it had been dolphins or whales, the whole world would be up in arms. But it was sharks.

“There are probably hundreds of more sharks in the Gulf getting slaughtered but people don’t give a shit unless it’s a whale. Save the whales. We all love whales; I love whales. But humans are torturing sharks for profit and pleasure. For shark fin soup. But who cares? It’s just a shark.”

“I’ve always cared,” I said, then, turning to Leigh, “Sharks matter. Everything swimming in the oceans matters. Dolphins, stingrays, the tiniest sea horses, and the smallest crabs.” The smallest, purplest crabs, I thought. “The thing is, without sharks our oceans will die, and if the oceans die, we’re next, but they don’t matter just because they benefit us; they matter simply because they exist.”