Myrtle Beach marine biologist considers sharks 'adorable' in new book
Forget Jaws. Jasmin Graham thinks sharks are "adorable."
Graham, who grew up in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, is a marine biologist who's made a career studying sharks.
In "Sharks Don't Sink," Graham spends much of her time dispelling legends and falsehoods about the sea predators. Fact: You're more likely to be bitten by a dog than a shark. Most are far smaller than the great whites in the "Jaws" movies, and most would rather avoid humans.
In truth, people are a far greater risk than sharks are to people. Like many apex predators, sharks have relatively few pups and mature relatively late -- some species, not until the age of 20. As a result of human slaughter, some sharks have seen their numbers plummet by 75 to 90 percent, and many are endangered.
Graham's enthusiasm bubbles over as she describes her subject. Like skates and rays, sharks have cartilage instead of bone, making them extremely light and capable of great agility.
Contrary to legend, not all sharks have to swim constantly to run water through their gills; some can sit still for hours. Their livers, rich in fat, promote buoyancy, rather like a swim bladder in other fish -- hence the book's title.
They're ancient; sharks predated the dinosaurs and have outlived them by millions of years, virtually unchanged.
To paraphrase Jimmy Buffet, Graham thinks the real danger are the sharks that swim on the land.
Frustrated by the "boys' club" atmosphere in many universities, Graham left academia to work outside -- hence, her nickname, "rogue scientist." "Sharks Don't Sink" follows a season aboard a research vessel in Biscayne Bay, Florida, as Graham trains undergraduate biologists and follows her passion, studying the bonnethead, a small variety of hammerhead shark with a head shaped roughly like a baby's bonnet.
Along the way, she recalls her childhood in Myrtle Beach, pier-fishing with her dad, a commercial fisherman, and visiting the aquarium at Ripley's Believe It Or Not.
Graham tends to take a contrarian view of topics. For instance, she's wary of beach renourishment, since all that pumped sand tends to wash away again after the next big storm -- often burying marine habitat that small fishermen like her dad rely upon.
Graham is a co-founder of MISS, an organization promoting women and minorities in marine sciences.
"Sharks Don't Sink," is well-paced and easily accessible. It would make an excellent volume to encourage young women to consider science as a career.
Book review
Sharks Don't Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist
By Jasmin Graham
Pantheon Books, $28
This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: 'Sharks Don't Sink' book calls out myths, lies about sharks