A. Peter Klimley

I devoured this fantastic book describing some highlights of a marine biologist's career studying sharks over thirty years. Well-written, the book focuses on the process of science, as fascinating results are slowly teased out. You feel like you are there: diving, tagging the sharks, tracking them, trying to interpret the data. (On the flip side, though: despite the book's title, if you want a shark encyclopedia, look elsewhere.)

The two major studies detailed are of hammerhead sharks -- trying to understand why they school in great numbers in certain locations, and how they navigate -- and great white sharks -- trying to understand how they hunt, and how they interact with each other. (Were I a scientific reviewer, I might argue that the author is too eager to ascribe intelligence and social characteristics to sharks, before collecting bulletproof data. Also, some of his math -- for example, the "fuzzy logic" used for measuring great white shark tail slapping social displays -- is a bit immature.) The book concludes with a sobering chapter on the disappearance of the hammerhead schools the author had studied.… (mere)