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In the Seventies, when a younger filmmaker named Steven Spielberg was researching a brand new film based mostly on a novel about sharks, he returned to his alma mater, California State College Lengthy Seashore. The lab at Cal State Lengthy Seashore was one of many first locations in the US to check sharks in a rigorous means. Spielberg was creating a personality who was a shark researcher, so he despatched an artwork director to campus. There, the artwork director discovered the workplace of Donald Nelson, the unflappable biologist, spear fisherman, and shark fanatic who based the lab in 1966. Nelson’s workplace was an artwork director’s dream, stuffed with maps, scientific papers, shreds of napkins with engineering plans on them, varied shark repellents.
The director took each single piece of paper—all the pictures, nautical charts, scribbled notes on napkins—off the wall and made photocopies. Then he put all these items again of their locations, one after the other. He used them to construct the character of Matt Hooper, the charismatic double-denim-wearing shark scientist performed by Richard Dreyfuss.
The film was, in fact, a smash hit. It earned over $260 million in its preliminary home launch in 1975, sufficient to make it the most important moneymaker in Hollywood historical past to that time. It additionally left its mark on the status of sharks. The opening traces alone, backed by that daggered two-note musical rating, gave a way that sharks have been an almost demonic pressure: “It lives to kill. A senseless consuming machine. It would assault and devour something. It’s as if God created the satan, and gave it … jaws.” David Shiffman, a marine biologist and creator of Why Sharks Matter, says, “Jaws made a technology completely petrified of sharks.”
Nelson had an epiphany: Sharks should be drawn to sound.
Nelson was credited as a science advisor and absolutely supported the movie, in addition to its 1978 sequel, Jaws 2. However over the subsequent twenty years, as Nelson’s analysis profession took off, he would flip the script about sharks, bringing them out of the darkish realm of fevered creativeness into the clear mild of science. By researching shark habits up shut for the primary time, and making numerous documentaries that allowed individuals on their couches into the underwater world he beloved, he started to alter individuals’s minds. A lethal, despised predator with a face stuffed with enamel started to look weak, even elegant, a important choreographer of the ocean ecosystem. By the point Nelson died in 1997, sharks had develop into the main focus of conservation applications throughout the planet.
Nelson was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, as an solely little one, close to the jap shore of New Jersey. He grew up fascinated by fishing, images, and ornithology—when different children have been taking part in sports activities, Nelson was typically taking a look at birds, gathering hen nests, and taking footage. A lover of cameras and expertise, as a baby he had a daring ambition to {photograph} each residing species of hen on Earth.
However the ocean tugged at him, and his skill to spearfish meant he might make a pleasant facet revenue promoting fish to eating places. He acquired a biology diploma at Rutgers College in 1958, after which moved to Florida to check biology on the Marine Laboratory of the College of Miami. It helped that Miami was the spear fishing capital of the US on the time. Nelson joined a aggressive workforce of spear fishers known as the Glug Glugs. Aboard a 22-foot Prowler, he might spend a complete weekend catching grouper—and contributing to his training.
It was on a spear fishing journey in 1959, the story goes, that Nelson met his first shark. He had speared a small grunt—a bottom-dwelling fish recognized for the guttural noises it makes—and because the fish was making a racket on the seafloor, a shark darted in out of nowhere. “Right here was this 4-meter tiger shark taking a look at Don as if he have been a considerably impaired, massive, marine organism—maybe an odd sea turtle,” recalled colleague and former graduate pupil Samuel Gruber in a eulogy to Nelson printed in 2001. Nobody knew, on the time, whether or not such a shark may assault on the spot. Don speared it and took it residence with him. “That encounter on the reefs in 1959 was each to alter Don’s life and ultimately a lot of what we learn about shark habits,” Gruber writes.
After the encounter, Nelson had an epiphany: Sharks should be drawn to sound. That perception led to one of many first research of shark senses and habits on the earth. Collectively, Nelson and Gruber crafted artificial sounds of struggling fish and recorded them on audio tape. Then they used an ultrasonic underwater speaker developed by the Navy and a tape participant and arrange area checks with quiet, management durations.
Within the preliminary playback sequence, a complete of twenty-two sharks got here to research their phony fish sounds. The sharks solely appeared once they have been taking part in the recordings, not when it was quiet. The outcomes recommended that sharks have been attracted over probably lengthy distances to pulsed low-frequency vibrations like these emitted by wounded fish—or thrashing swimmers. Although the duo have been nonetheless simply graduate college students on the time and their analysis had by no means appeared in a scientific journal earlier than, the findings have been printed in Science in 1963.
Sharks are notoriously troublesome to check. They dwell within the murk, are inclined to shrink back from divers, and journey continually. Too massive to maintain within the lab, and troublesome to trace within the wild because of their in depth ranges and secretive natures, they weren’t the main focus of rigorous research till the Nineteen Fifties. In consequence, a lot of what individuals knew about sharks derived from transient, spontaneous encounters out at sea—or reviews and media protection of shark assaults.
One assault specifically captured the general public’s consideration. In 1945, a Navy heavy cruiser known as the Indianapolis sank between Guam and the Philippines, and sailors have been thrown into the ocean. Oceanic whitetip sharks have been drawn to the scene. Over the course of the subsequent few days, the sharks devoured sailor after sailor. Of the 1,196 males on board, solely 318 survived—150 have been eaten by sharks. (The occasion even turns up in Jaws as Quint, the shark-obsessed boat captain, is a survivor of the assaults.)
The incident is usually cited because the worst shark assault in historical past, but it surely wasn’t the one assault on Navy crews. As a result of many naval battles throughout and after World Warfare II passed off within the heat tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean, in addition to the temperate waters of the South Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea, and since rescues at sea might typically take days within the time earlier than GPS beacons grew to become commonplace, sharks grew to become a big concern for the Navy. It started funding lab analysis into the event of strategies that might stop assaults—with little end result.
Sharks are notoriously troublesome to check.
In 1965, Nelson acquired his Ph.D. in marine biology and was employed at Cal State Lengthy Seashore as a professor within the biology division. By that point, his work had a brand new focus—utilizing his rising data about shark senses to guard individuals from them. “U.S. navy morale was so low that they have been having a tough time getting sailors on ships, they have been so afraid of shark assaults,” says Chris Lowe, present director of the Shark Lab at California State College, Lengthy Seashore. Nelson had a grant from the Navy for 17 years.
Nelson and his college students wished to design shark repellents that might deter however not hurt sharks. They tried creating shark tasers—cattle prods that shock the shark if it got here too shut (the issue was, it additionally shocked the diver). One other undertaking checked out surfactants—soap-like substances—that could possibly be squirted right into a shark’s mouth. College students would fill hearth extinguishers with soapy water of various concentrations and exit into the Catalina channel with blue sharks. “You’d maintain a mackerel in your hand with one hand, and when the shark might are available in you stick this hose in its mouth and provides it a squirt,” says Lowe. The shark would swim away along with his mouth open. “The issue was that 20 minutes later, it will flip round and are available again.” Nelson’s shark repellents by no means panned out.
That Nelson spent years making an attempt to develop shark repellents was ironic, as a result of greater than any marine biologist, Nelson was devoted to getting near sharks, observing them of their pure environments. He was utterly at peace within the ocean, calm and unflappable. Nicknamed Reef by his associates, he was mentioned to be extra comfy within the water than out. He would free dive to 60 toes deep and simply swim round, peeking into the nooks and crannies of the reef. “He had zero concern of sharks,” his widow, Ginger Nelson, informed me. “Zero.”
An professional free-diver, Nelson swam proper as much as sharks to watch their habits. He was well-known for what grew to become often known as the Kamikaze Approach. “He would merely free dive on a reef shark minding its personal enterprise and chase it alongside the reef face till it grew to become quite trapped,” writes Gruber. “At that second, the shark would both flee or start the sinister underwater ballet Don known as an ‘agonistic show.’ ” The shark would increase its snout, depress its pectoral fins, arch its again, maintain its tail sideways, and swim in an exaggerated figure-eight sample. If he continued to method, the shark would launch a warp pace assault, lunging ahead after which retreating quickly. Nelson thought this ritualized habits was motivated by self-defense towards a perceived predator, partially as a result of it virtually by no means occurred in feeding contexts and didn’t appear to be particular to a specific residence vary.
However after a 1976 brush with a “quite pugnacious” shark, as Nelson known as it—he ended up driving it away along with his spear—he realized new strategies could be wanted to check sharks up shut. “With completely no engineering background, over dinner along with his college students, Don acquired out his pencil and on the again of a serviette, his favourite instructing system, he sketched out a design for a moist, one-man sub,” writes Gruber. He known as it the SOS: Shark Statement Submersible. A variation of the SOS remains to be in use right this moment.
A fiberglass contraption, the SOS allowed Nelson to lie on his stomach and look out on the underwater world, controlling it with fins and a small motor. Air tanks meant he might keep beneath the floor for extra time. Whereas he lay there within the submersible’s mattress, he was multitasking. He would management the route of his personal submersible and movie the shark, whereas one other submersible filmed him chasing the animals. “Logistically, it was a nightmare to do,” Lowe says. “And harmful as hell.” Often, the batteries would die and he’d sink to the underside, in want of rescue. Or a shark would chunk the propeller off the submersible.
However the SOS had different limitations, too: The period of time Nelson might spend monitoring sharks in it was transient—and it couldn’t inform him something about what they did or the place they went below cowl of darkness—at night time or within the deeper waters of the ocean that the SOS couldn’t attain. So Nelson additionally dreamt up new acoustic transmitter expertise that might permit him to trace sharks and research them remotely for for much longer durations of time. This similar expertise types the idea for contemporary research of sharks and rays.
“This occurred within the prehistoric period, earlier than built-in circuits, lithium batteries, and well-stocked telemetry distributors,” writes Timothy Tricas, a shark researcher on the Florida Institute of Expertise and former pupil of Nelson’s, in an essay about Nelson’s legacy. “There have been even fewer biologists who might sort out the customized electronics designs wanted for his or her analysis initiatives. Nonetheless, Don and his college students (the current creator included) spent numerous weekends and holidays designing and soldering collectively ultrasonic transmitters from discrete transistors, capacitors, and resistors.”
Nelson’s lab was solely the second group on the earth to place an acoustic transmitter on a free-ranging shark. Transmitters—both hooked up to the animal or popped inside a fish that might be fed to them—opened up a completely new world of distant shark analysis—following them as they moved over tons of of miles of open ocean.
Over 30 years, Nelson’s lab produced virtually 50 publications about shark habits. His detailed area research of enormous free-ranging shark species, resembling the grey reef, reef whitetip, blue, angel, leopard, and megamouth sharks, took him to websites all around the world, together with the Gulf of California, Marshall Islands, Polynesia, Australia, and the Bahamas. In research after research, Nelson uncovered proof that sharks are complicated and clever social animals, quite than the solitary, unpredictable killers pushed by primitive instincts and insatiable starvation featured in Jaws.
Many shark behaviors are, in reality, extraordinarily predictable, Nelson discovered. One of the crucial elegant examples is the agonistic show. However Nelson additionally discovered that shark feeding and migratory exercise is intently tied to the rising and the setting of the solar: Although it varies considerably from one species to the subsequent, most sharks journey primarily after darkish and feed at daybreak and nightfall, with some seeming to make use of the solar as an orientation cue. Nelson and his colleague Richard Johnson studied one species of shark in French Polynesia that’s so common in its each day actions that they have been capable of forecast the place the sharks would seem alongside a longtime route inside a matter of minutes.
Nelson swam proper as much as sharks to watch their habits.
Nelson additionally discovered that many sharks are social and able to studying: In repeated research of sensory operate, he confirmed they have been capable of “habituate” to each visible and auditory stimuli and to the presence of people. They usually make associates: A variety of species journey in teams, he discovered, most notably the scalloped hammerhead shark, which types daytime colleges off of a number of islands and seamounts within the Sea of Cortez. The lemon shark additionally associates with its personal type, in addition to with different species of sharks and rays and sure species of fish, relationships which are mutually helpful—the shark gives safety to the fish, for instance.
Overt aggression, he discovered, is definitely uncommon in sharks, outdoors of the grey reef shark. Few species have interaction in chasing or threats—both to different sharks or to people. Even throughout energetic feeding, together with notorious “feeding frenzies”—during which a number of sharks vigorously feed collectively over an prolonged interval in a single space—sharks appear solely in getting meals versus competing with each other. And few species exhibit territorial habits, Nelson reported in his analysis.
Observing and describing shark habits put them within the class of animals that could possibly be understood. Nelson discovered to decode their physique language and create a dictionary of that language for others. Taken as a complete, his work painted a sympathetic image of a creature that’s like so many different acquainted species roaming the Earth: defensive when threatened, social by nature, offering ecosystem advantages to different creatures, pushed by the rhythms of the solar and the seasons.
In October 1990, the lab’s cellphone rang. The message: A shark thought of to be a residing fossil had been caught in a fisherman’s gill internet off Dana Level, California. The fisherman had introduced it in, alive, within the waters off the purpose.
Nelson was instructing a category, however everybody within the lab knew what to do. They began mobilizing a small military of researchers—armed with transmitters—to fulfill the shark. Nelson would drive his boat, The Discovery, to Dana Level, whereas others raced there in vehicles.
When the researchers arrived, they discovered a circus of motion across the animal. It seemed like a hippo’s head had been pasted onto an unlimited fish physique—15 toes lengthy, bronze like a statue, with a large jaw. Tied by its tail to the boat that caught it, the animal garnered gawkers from each land and sea. Jet skis zoomed in, and a helicopter circled. Some onlookers have been shouting about letting the shark—dubbed Mega—go free, whereas others stripped off their garments and dove into the chilly waters to have the prospect to swim with such a uncommon shark. Solely 5 megamouths had ever been found, and so they have been all lifeless by the point they have been caught. This was the primary one caught alive.
A diver with a dart gun implanted two transmitters into the shark that might ship again indicators about how deep the shark dove and its location.
After which, the rope was untied and the shark disappeared into the waters of southern California. Nelson hadn’t made it along with his boat but, however the younger graduate college students caught a journey aboard a ship owned by Ethan Wayne, son of film star John Wayne, and Nelson met them at sea and took over the chase.
Over the course of the subsequent three days, the workforce of biologists tracked the shark aboard the boat, because it zigged and zagged south and west, away from shore, sending again indicators to a radio they monitored from the transmitters it carried below its pores and skin. Nobody had ever seen or recorded a dwell megamouth earlier than. And now, a ship was following one via its murky underwater habitat for days on finish. Among the graduate college students free-dived to see if the megamouth emitted bioluminescence. The sensation on the boat was considered one of complete elation.
“It was like strolling on the moon,” remembers Jim McKibben, director of the Science Studying Middle at Cal State Lengthy Seashore, then a grad pupil in Nelson’s lab, “doing one thing that no person has ever accomplished earlier than.”
Nelson spent hundreds of hours filming sharks and picked up an enormous library of 16-mm movie that features footage of the animals responding to low-frequency sounds and interesting in exactly coordinated behaviors. Between 1968 and 1994, he and his college students made 25 documentaries that aired on tv or made their means into college school rooms. These reveals reached thousands and thousands of viewers every week, and far of his footage nonetheless seems on tv right this moment—for instance, Nelson’s work featured within the widespread 2019 documentary Deep Blue, concerning the largest nice white shark ever recorded.
In considered one of his movies from the ’90s, Shark Medical doctors, Nelson describes preemptive efforts to guard the white shark, which scientists suspected on the time was endangered, probably numbering within the low tons of of people, regardless of an absence of exact inhabitants information. “It wouldn’t take a lot to knock that inhabitants means down and probably threat extinction,” he tells us, as we witness on display screen the gleaming jaws of a white shark clamp down on a chunk of bait. Shark fishing, for his or her meat and fins, was already decimating many species of sharks: They have been dying sooner than they may reproduce.
By the point Nelson died, a global effort to preserve and defend sharks had begun. It took one other decade earlier than main protections could possibly be put in place within the U.S.—two prohibitions of shark finning in U.S. waters have been handed in 2000 and 2009. Internationally, conservation approaches are nonetheless gaining steam.
Immediately, the shark lab that Nelson based at Cal State Lengthy Seashore spends about half its time on outreach efforts—to teach the beach-going public and lifeguards about sharks off California’s shoreline—and about half its time on analysis. Attitudes are dramatically completely different from what they have been within the ’70s. “The pendulum has swung from individuals pondering that sharks are so harmful and violent, that in the event you dip your toe in your bathtub a shark goes to eat your complete household—to some individuals saying sharks are simply harmless, lovable, cute pet canine that simply want hugs and kisses and love,” Shiffman says. “We actually have the total spectrum now.”
Many surfers and swimmers around the globe, who proceed to undergo uncommon, remoted assaults, discuss sharks with reverence and respect, describing themselves as guests within the sharks’ properties. In Australia, authorities officers have accomplished away with the time period “assault,” as a substitute preferring to make use of the time period “detrimental encounters”—which they argue is extra correct, as a 3rd of encounters between people and sharks depart no accidents in any respect.
Nelson’s work someway straddled either side of the divide, first serving to to stoke concern of assaults via his work in Hollywood, then encouraging us via his analysis and movies to know sharks as clever social creatures, very important companions within the Earth’s ecosystem.
In 1995, Nelson discovered a mole on his left forearm and confirmed it to his spouse Ginger. “He thought it seemed suspicious,” Ginger remembers. Nelson was honest skinned, had grown up with no solar safety and spent most of his days diving and swimming. So he visited his physician, who got here again with the outcomes: nothing to fret about.
A few yr later, the mole returned and Nelson went again to the physician, who discovered proof of stage 4 melanoma, which had already unfold to his lymph nodes, Ginger says. Nelson insisted on persevering with to show and analysis as much as a month earlier than he died in 1997. “He simply didn’t wish to hand over,” Ginger says. “He completely beloved what he did.” 
Lead photograph courtesy of the Shark Lab at California State College
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