By Stephen Rodrick – April 2013 Men’s Journal
[dropcap]R[/dropcap]achel Graham may be the shark’s fiercest protector – an Oxford-educated biologist who isn’t afraid to wrestle a bull shark into submission or face off with Guatemalan fishermen to learn more about the Earth’s most mysterious creatures.
Among conservation biologists, Rachel Graham is sometimes called the aquatic Jane Goodall.
The boat is pitching and reeling when the Shark Lady picks up her power drill. A Shaq-size monster is banging the shit out of the side of our vessel. There are eight onboard, but six of us are rookies – we know not what to do. Only the Shark Lady is certain. She barks orders at the men.
“Get a rope around him. Now roll him over. Now grab his ding-dong! No, grab his other ding-dong. Yeah, that’s right. Watch how docile he gets. Just like a man. He’s entering tonic immobility.”
The guys do as they’re told, and the shark is brought parallel to the boat. Rachel Graham reaches into the water and grabs the first dorsal fin of a seven-foot-long, 300-pound Caribbean reef shark. She flips on the drill. A high-pitched whine cuts through the duller sound of whitecaps slapping our boat a couple miles off the coast of Belize. The drill burrows into keratin, sending up a fine mist of eau de shark. Our aquatic friend is not amused. He regurgitates his stomach. This won’t do. The Shark Lady pushes the white lining back into the shark’s mouth like a magician disappearing a hankie.
That’s when the shark makes pleading, beady eye contact with me. Sharky, don’t look at me like that! I am not Ishmael; I am Stephen, secret puker and scarfer of Dramamine. I cannot help you. Besides, this is for your own good. Just ask the Shark Lady.
Maybe I shouldn’t call Rachel Graham the Shark Lady. Sounds reductive and sexist, even if she is the one who taught me that male sharks have two penises. Mom raised me better. The Shark Lady is a serious person: She went to Oxford, rowed crew, and has a Ph.D. in marine biology. She’s got two boys, once swam through a giant cloud of whale-shark shit, and has no problem taking a piss off the side of the boat in front of her all-male crew. And Graham isn’t drilling sharks for some weird fetish – she is giving them satellite tags so she can see where they go, what they eat, and, most important, what she can do to keep them alive. Read complete story […]
For the record, the real Shark Lady is famed ichthyologist Eugenie Clark.