Shark The Illustrated Biography

As a group, sharks are not particularly speciose, with approximately 550 species currently recognised. Compare that to bony fishes, of which we have named approximately 28,000 species. Nevertheless, the core message that Shark: The Illustrated Biography drives home is that they are very diverse. Shark biologists Daniel C. Abel and Sophie A. Maycock focus on four representative sharks, introducing their ecology and life history, though plenty of other sharks past and present feature as well. Accessibly written, lovingly illustrated, and shorn of sensationalism, it makes for a great first book on shark biology for non-biologists.

Abel is a marine scientist working on shark ecology and physiology since the 1980s and has been rather busy with Princeton University Press in the last few years, writing The Lives of Sharks in 2023 and Sharkpedia in 2024. Maycock is an independent researcher, science writer, and the UK representative of the Sharks Educational Institute, an NGO involved in education and public outreach on sharks and marine conservation more widely. She also runs the website SharkSpeak that aims to do the same. They make a great team to write an accessible book about sharks and are ably assisted here by artist Adam Hook, who has drawn numerous watercolour illustrations for this book, giving it a unified look. As with many of Princeton's popular science books of late, this one is technically designed and produced by UniPress Books, which I have described elsewhere as the spiritual successor of Ivy Press and is similarly known for producing good-looking books.

Shark is a relatively compact book at 224 pages and a trim size just larger than A5. Most of the ten chapters top out at 20 pages and, with plentiful illustrations in each, they are a quick read. After an obligatory introduction and a chapter on shark evolution that, of course, includes notable extinct species such as the giant Otodus megalodon and the bizarre whorl-jawed Helicoprion, the book turns to extant species. The focus is on shark ecology and life history, with three chapters taking you through the life of sharks, from foetus to sexually reproductive adult. The penultimate chapter briefly looks at human-shark relationships, both their appearance in myths and belief systems, and their modern but mistaken demonisation in the Western world. Abel and Maycock naturally will not pass up the opportunity to reiterate that shark attacks are extremely rare. Sadly, the reverse is not the case, as humans kill orders of magnitude more sharks than vice versa. This logically leads into the last chapter that looks at shark conservation. The authors show themselves to be in line with other scientists, calling out overfishing as the main threat, and have a similarly nuanced viewpoint that I encountered in Shiffman's Why Sharks Matter on the hot-button topic of the trade in shark fins.

The take-home message in Shark is how diverse the group is. This shows in the decision to loosely focus on four species: Great White Sharks, Sandbar Sharks, Spiny Dogfish, and Smallspotted Catsharks. Why these? Because they offer a good cross-section of the variety in lifestyles, habitats, reproductive modes, and swimming styles. Rather than profiles of selected species as was done in Abel's earlier book The Lives of Sharks, other sharks instead make brief cameos. They live pretty much anywhere there is salt water: the deep, the open sea, coasts, coral reefs, and cold polar oceans. There is tremendous variation in reproduction, with females laying eggs, giving birth to live young, and mating reluctantly, readily, or, rarely, not at all (virgin birth or parthenogenesis). Feeding styles differ widely: though many sharks are generalist predators, some are specialists and there are examples of suction feeding, filter feeding, shell crushing, and (few sharks will turn this down) carcass scavenging. Shark diversity also shows in a chapter dedicated to the true weirdos of evolution with e.g. sawsharks, goblin sharks with slingshot jaws, flat wobblegongs, tail-slapping thresher sharks, giant whale sharks, and various bioluminescent species receiving brief mention. As the authors point out, all this diversity has consequences for conservation: there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Rigorous population surveys and tailored conservation plans will be needed for each species.

Shark is accessibly written with jargon immediately explained in brackets, or avoided where possible, the authors e.g. giving several examples of convergent evolution without ever mentioning this term. Hook's illustrations are helpful and a good example is the drawing showing the rete mirabilia. This vascular network acts as a countercurrent heat exchanger and allows some sharks to be regional endotherms, keeping part of their body warmer than the environment. It is one of those adaptations best explained with a picture.

That said, the book is not intended as a comprehensive introduction to shark biology, and especially morphology, functional anatomy, sensory biology, and physiology receive only glancing attention. There are no references to the studies the authors mention (understandable for a book of this calibre) but unfortunately also no recommended reading section for people who want to learn more. Personally, if I wanted to learn more about sharks, I would pick up a heftier textbook such as Abel's 2020 book Shark Biology and Conservation that he co-authored with R. Dean Grubbs, the slightly older The Biology of Sharks and Rays, or, perhaps, the edited collection Biology of Sharks and their Relatives. That is not to put this book down: biologists who have studied (bony) fish such as myself are obviously not its primary audience. However, if you asked me for a tip on a first book on shark biology for people without a background in biology, this one would be high up on my list of recommendations. Grounded in fact and shorn of sensationalism, Shark: The Illustrated Biography is a nicely illustrated book suitable for both young and adult students.