From Gene Helfman
George Burgess and I both became fascinated with sharks at an early age.
My shark “career” began when I was maybe 9 or 10. Someone landed a
Basking Shark at the Santa Monica Pier in southern California. The Los
Angeles Times ran an article with a photo, including an interview with a bi-
ologist from the California Department of Fish and Game, Dr. John Fitch.
At my father’s encouragement, I wrote Dr. Fitch a letter that I’m sure I
would find embarrassing today; I probably asked some basic questions and
said what a neat animal the shark was. To my astonishment, he wrote back.
That’s really all it took. I was hooked. Someone important thought my in-
terest was worthwhile.
I read just about every shark book available in English before I was 12.
All my reports, for science or other classes, were about sharks. When I
entered Van Nuys High School, I hooked up with a couple of other shark
nuts, and we formed a group we called the Shark Research Committee.
(The Shark Research Committee still exists, still chaired by Ralph Collier,
who has since written a book on shark attacks along the Pacific coast.) En-
couraged by a biology teacher, we contacted Dr. Marshall Urist at UCLA, a
researcher interested in shark blood chemistry. We happily spent all-night-
ers catching Spiny Dogfish from fishing barges off Redondo Beach for Dr.
Urist. We were collecting sharks for science! We were on top of the world.
I entered college at UCLA, intent on a career that would lead to devel-
oping an effective shark repellant. That intent evaporated when I realized
I was not a gifted chemist, or at least not a very good chemistry student. I
completed my undergraduate studies, as a zoology not a chemistry major, at
UC Berkeley, where I got more serious about sharks and fishes in general.
I learned to scuba dive and managed the zoology department’s fish collec-
tion. I took ichthyology (fish biology) from the late Dr. George Barlow, an
animal behaviorist, which got me started observing fish behavior. Upon
graduating, I joined the Peace Corps in Palau, Western Caroline Islands,
as a fisheries specialist. Palau has spectacular coral reefs, and I spent most
work hours and every weekend diving, catching, and watching fishes. I had
my first up-close-and-personal encounters with a variety of reef sharks, of-
ten in the form of keeping them from stealing fish I had speared. I also was
fortunate enough to serve as a local guide and field assistant to Dr. John
(Jack) Randall of the Bishop Museum in Hawaii, a world expert on coral
reef fishes. Jack and I published two papers on fishes in Palau, one on lo-
Introduction
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