Eugenie Clark - Academic and Scientific Life

Academic and Scientific Life

Clark is the founding director (1955 to 1967) of the former Cape Haze Marine Laboratory, now known as the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida. In 1968, Clark joined the faculty at the University of Maryland College Park, where she is currently a Professor Emerita of zoology. Although she has retired from teaching, she still holds the title of Senior Research Scientist. She has given lectures at over 60 colleges and universities in the United States. She has also lectured in 19 foreign countries and conducted summer science training programs at both the high school and college levels.

Clark has studied the behavior, ecology and taxonomy of fishes for over 50 years, especially that of sharks. Her research has been supported over the years by such bodies as the National Science Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Geographic Society, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She has received three honorary D.Sc. degrees (from the University of Massachusetts, Long Island University, and the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada) and numerous awards from the National Geographic Society, the Explorers Club, the Underwater Society of America, the American Littoral Society, the Women Divers Hall of Fame, and other institutions. In 1976 she became a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and in 1994 she was awarded the Medal of Excellence by the American Society of Oceanographers. Several fish species have been named in her honor: Callogobius clarki (Goren), Sticharium clarkae George and Springer, Enneapterygius clarkae Holleman, and Atrobucca geniae Ben-Tuvia and Trewavas.

Clark has been diving with sharks for more than 40 years. During one phase of her research, she discovered that a milky liquid secreted on contact by a flatfish called a Moses sole could serve as a shark repellent. In ocean tests, shark would avoid eating Moses sole offered to them on a line.

People often ask if Clark has ever been attacked by a shark, and she reports that it has happened only once but that the accident did not take place in the water. She was driving to a school to talk about sharks and had the dried, mounted jaw of a 12-foot tiger shark beside her on the front seat. Stopping abruptly at a traffic light, she stretched out her arm to keep the shark jaw from nicking the dashboard. It fell against her arm, the teeth sank in, and Clark had a half circle of tooth-marks.

Clark's research has taken her around the world. She carried the flag of the Society of Women Geographers to Ethiopia and underwater off Japan and Egypt; and she carried the flag of the National Geographic Society to Egypt, Israel, Australia, Japan and Mexico. Clark remains active in scuba-diving-based field research on fish and submarine dives.

Clark has shared the adventures and excitement of her scientific research through her articles in scientific journals, lectures, and television specials, and in articles in such popular magazines as National Geographic and Science Digest. In addition she has written three books: Lady with a Spear(1951), which describes her adventures in Micronesia and the Red Sea and was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection; The Lady and the Sharks (1969), which describes the her starting the Cape Haze Marine Laboratory; and The Desert Beneath the Sea (1991), a children's book written with Ann McGovern which describes a scientist researching the sandy bottom of the sea.