Sy Montgomery - The Great White Shark Scientist

ONCE AGAIN, AND ALWAYS, FOR DR. MILLMOSS. S.M.

TO MY LOVING NIECE, MAYA, AND ALL CHILDREN IN A HOPE TO INSPIRE SHARK CONSERVATION AND AWARENESS OF THESE MAJESTIC ANIMALS. K.E.

Text copyright 2016 by Sy Montgomery
Photographs copyright 2016 by Keith Ellenbogen

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

www.hmhco.com

The display font is set in Flood.

Maps on pages NOAA

Shark illustration on pages , and dingbats throughout by Mariah Mordecai

Maps on MA Division of Marine Fisheries and Ocearch

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Montgomery, Sy, author.

The great white shark scientist / written by Sy Montgomery. pages cm.(Scientists in the field)

Audience: Ages 10-14.

Audience: Grades 7 to 8.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-544-35298-8

1. Skomal, GregoryJuvenile literature. 2. Marine biologistsUnited StatesBiographyJuvenile literature. 3. White sharkJuvenile literature. 4. Wildlife conservationJuvenile literature. 5. Marine resources conservationJuvenile literature. I.

Title. II. Series: Scientists in the field.

QH91.3.S575 2016

578.77'092dc23

[B] 2015003494

eISBN 978-0-544-82934-3
v1.0616

Its pretty treacherous right here, says Greg Skomal, a fifty-two-year-old great white shark biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. But hes not the least bit nervous. Piloting the twenty-four-foot powerboat Aleutian Dream through the shallow, six-foot-deep channel of murky green water at Cape Cods Chatham Inlet is risky businessbut skipper John King is up to the task. No, Gregs got only one concern today. Though in the thriller film Jaws (shot not far from Chatham on Marthas Vineyard), everyone worried about seeing a great white shark, Greg is worried about the opposite. Hes worried about not seeing one!

Greg knew he wanted to be a shark biologist since he was in eighth grade, growing up on Long Island Sound, watching Jacques Cousteaus adventures on TV. In Gregs thirty-nine years on the job, hes always had plenty of sharks to study. New Englands waters host two dozen species of sharks, from the strange-looking, schooling scalloped hammerhead to the spiny dogfish, a small shark caught here mainly to ship to England for fish and chips. But recentlywithin the last decadeCape Cods marine ecology has dynamically changed. Now, each summer, just as the beach-going season begins, the Capes cool waters are attracting new visitors: the most powerful, storied, and mysterious of all sharksand the sharks who are also the most misunderstood.

Greg Skomal, shark scientist.

Great whites are not at all what people say about them, Greg stresses. Theyre not hyper, all curmudgeonly and angry and wanting to kill something. Theyre not like that at all! Ive never met one like that. Theyre laid back. Theyre calm. Theyre beautiful. In fact, great whites are Gregs favorite sharks. And now, finally, he has a chance to study thempractically in his own backyard. His big smile, flashing as bright as the reflection of sun on waves, shows hes relishing the adventure.

Great whites live all over the worlds cool and tropical seas, but until recently were best known from off the shores of California, South Africa, and Australia. This season, with a team of volunteers, Greg begins a new study of the great white shark population off Cape Cod. His plan calls for eyes both on the sea and in the sky. Working with a spotter plane flying overhead, Greg hopes to locate great whites and then get close enough by boat to take video of them so he can identify individuals. In this study, taking video is more important than tagging sharks. Ultimately, he explains, the goal is to determine whos out there, and whether weve seen them before. The more we know about individuals, the better. We need to spend time getting the demographics of the population, such as male or female, size and age.

The wind was perfect for kite-surfingnot flying or boating.

How many great white sharks are swimming off Cape Cods famous beaches? Maybe more than most people think. Though in recent summers sightings have prompted beach closings several times a season, Greg thinks that great whites could be harmlessly passing near busy beaches remarkably often, unseen and unsuspected. Greg estimates that his study will take three years to find out.

But studying great whites isnt easyespecially today.

Wayne Davis with his single-engine Citabria.

Chatham Inlet is a pretty dangerous area on a normal day, Greg tells us. And this isnt a normal day! Until just an hour ago, the National Weather Service had a small-craft advisory in place. To even attempt to find great whites, the weather has to be good enough so that both the spotter plane and the boat can go out. Wind, rain, and fog will scuttle an outing. Waves make the job harder: they crinkle the waters surface and stir up sand from the bottom. You can be right over a shark and not see it, Greg says. And when a shark is spotted, waves make it difficult to keep the animal in viewand exceptionally difficult to film it.

But according to the weather forecast, today may be our best shot all week. We had hoped to go out yesterday, but the winds were too high. Flags, awnings, and Fourth of July bunting snapped and billowed on shore, whipped by twenty-two-miles-per-hour winds. Conditions were perfect only for kite-surfers. By the end of the week, the forecast was for weather even worse.

So on this Tuesday morning in early July, Greg had resolved to try again. At the Chatham Fish Pier, he had gathered todays team: our skipper, John King, and his wife, Pam, who live here in Chatham and own the Aleutian Dream; Cynthia Wigrin, the founder of the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, which funds Gregs great white shark work; and Jeff Kneebone, who was a student of Gregs at the University of Massachusetts, working on a Ph.D. on sand tiger sharks. So that I could write this book for you, they let me come along, with the photographer Keith Ellenbogen to take these pictures.