Acclaimed ‘shark lady’ Eugenie Clark dies at 92

Eugenie Clark, a world authority on sharks who defied society’s expectations about women’s roles in science and the much-feared underwater creatures she studied, died Feb. 25 at her home in Sarasota, Fla. She was 92.

Clark, an ichthyologist and oceanographer, divided much of her career between the University of Maryland and the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota. The cause of death was nonsmoking lung cancer, said her son Nikolas Konstantinou.

Clark traveled the globe to study reef fish, sharks and mollusks. She made 71 dives in submersibles, a practice that is still done by a relatively small number of explorers, plunging at one point to 12,000 feet.

As a leading champion of marine life and conservation, Clark criticized the 1975 fright movie “Jaws” and other popular depictions of sharks that gave them “a bad rap.” For decades she had traveled with them underwater, studied them in captivity and saw them as a way to understand the globe’s vast seas.

One of Clark’s most significant academic contributions came in the late 1950s, when she proved sharks could be trained to pick a target based on visual clues and could learn tasks as quickly as mammals.

Clark received awards throughout her lifetime, including the Explorers Club Medal and high honors from the American Society of Oceanographers and the National Geographic Society. She wrote more than 175 articles for the academic and popular press, said a Mote spokeswoman.