Eugenie Clark and the power of passion

I wonder how many scientific discoveries have been made by people who were just curious about a subject and wanted to know more about it? How does it work? Why is it like that? What else is there like this?

Honestly, I have a special place in my heart for stories about people who first realized their passion as a child and spent their life pursuing it. And especially for those who had to overcome some kind of naysayers, ignoring anyone who said they couldn't or who questioned the value of their work. Imagine the determination needed to just keep going anyway, just "doing your thing" simply because it's just so fascinating. And to then have it pay off in such a huge way with some unexpected discovery that changes everything.

When Eugenie Clark (May 4, 1922 – February 25, 2015) was a kid she visited the New York Aquarium and was immediately entranced. So much so that she returned nearly every weekend to stare at the fish and try to learn as much about them as she could. She wrote school papers about what she learned and followed the doings of other marine scientists of the era. Her hero was the explorer/naturalist William Beebe, famous for his deep dives in a kind of personal submarine off the coast of Bermuda.

Despite her evident passion for the subject and her determination to learn as much as possible, when she told her parents she intended to become a marine biologist, they tried to discourage her. "I told my family, I said, 'I'd like to go down and be like William Beebe,' and they said, 'Well, maybe you can take up typing and get to be the secretary of William Beebe or somebody like him.'"

She did it anyway.

She studied zoology at Hunter College and spent her summers working at the University of Michigan Biological Station. She went on to graduate studies from New York University, and prestigious research opportunities at places like Woods Hole Marine Laboratory and the American Museum of Natural History. She traveled to Micronesia for an Office of Naval Research project to study fish populations. And she earned a Fulbright Scholarship to study fish in the Red Sea, which she wrote about in her wildly successful book Lady with a Spear, which brought her to the attention of the wealthy Vanderbilts who built Cape Haze Marine Laboratory along the coast of Florida for her.

It was at Cape Haze where she began to study sharks more seriously. She worked with a local fisherman to catch sharks for research. Through her research many of the dangerous myths about sharks have been dispelled, replaced by newfound respect for their intelligence and understanding of their behavior, which she wrote about in her second book, The Lady and the Sharks.

When she left Cape Haze in the mid-60s, it was to teach college zoology and marine biology classes for another four decades, only semi-retiring at the age of 77. She continued diving until the year before her death, and was still working on research projects right up to the end.

"Not many appreciate the ultimate power and potential usefulness of basic knowledge accumulated by obscure, unseen investigators who, in a lifetime of intensive study, may never see any practical use for their findings but who go on seeking answers to the unknown without thought of financial or practical gain."

I'll say she knew more than most the power and potential usefulness of following one's passion, seeking answers to the unknown. Over the course of her long career, she traveled the world, taught thousands of students, conducted over 70 dives using submersible equipment, led more than 200 field research expeditions, and helped create the very first IMAX film.

And she did it all because she was curious about fish and wanted to know more.

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