Word: fishly
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...works, Meyer repeats under his breath, over and over, "No biting, no biting, no biting..." The object of his mantra gapes below us--a foot-wide crescent studded with hundreds of razor-sharp, serrated, half-inch-long triangular teeth. This fish is only half-grown--an adult tiger shark can surpass 14 ft. in length--but it could easily take off a hand or an arm, or a chunk of torso you wouldn't want to try and live without...
...water," orders Meyer. This is the scary part. The shark, having been manhandled and disoriented, may be too groggy to swim away, and unlike other fish, most species of sharks must swim constantly to keep oxygen-rich water flowing over their gills. Someone has to be ready in case it needs help getting restarted. And to my surprise and fear--the image of those teeth is still very clear in my mind--I have been elected. I slip over the side. Meyer unbinds the captive, and the huge fish and I are floating free in the crystalline blue water. This...
Humans, in short, have little to fear from sharks. The reverse, however, isn't close to being true. Fish of all kinds are being hauled from the sea faster than they can reproduce, but until quite recently sharks were exempt from this reckless harvest. Not anymore. Each year between 30 million and 100 million sharks are caught for their meat (boneless and mild-tasting), their fins (a great delicacy in Asia), their hides (source of an exotic, high-quality leather), their jaws (worth thousands of dollars from collectors) and their internal body parts (made into everything from lubricants to cosmetics...
...trying to learn how much energy it expends and how much food that takes. He has designed a miniature sensor that attaches to the baby shark's back and registers every beat of the tail as the shark swims along. By feeding the babies a precise amount of fish, then putting them in a tank with constantly flowing water--a sort of shark treadmill--he can determine just how many calories they burn in swimming a given distance...
...frequently by taking risks others would call insane. While a graduate student in the 1970s, Klimley became the first scientist ever to swim directly into schools of adult hammerhead sharks. He dived as deep as 70 ft. without scuba gear so his air bubbles wouldn't disturb the skittish fish...