We are very excited to be featuring Dr. Eugenie Clark this month! She is a true pioneer of shark research and we are happy to share her bio with you all today! Eugenie Clark, PH.D Mote Founding Director and Senior Research Scientist Senior Scientist and Professor Emerita, Department of Biology, University of Maryland Eugenie Clark is an ichthyologist with a special interest in sharks and tropical sand fishes. She was born and raised in New York City where at age nine she had her first experience fish-watching at the old New York Aquarium at Battery Park and started a life-long love and studying and diving with fishes. She attended Hunter College and completed a PhD in 1950 from New York University. Currently Genie lives in Sarasota and works in the Center for Shark Research at Mote Marine Laboratory. She was the Founding Director of Mote Marine Laboratory (formerly Cape Haze Marine Laboratory) (1955-67), and is now a Trustee Emerita and Senior Research Scientist. She is also a Senior Research Scientist and Professor Emerita in Biology at the University of Maryland. She joined the faculty in 1968 and taught courses in ichthyology and marine biology until 2001, after which she taught her popular course “Sea Monsters and Deep Sea Sharks” as an adjunct professor at the University of South Florida, given as a distance learning course from Mote Marine Laboratory to four campuses in Florida. Genie was a research assistant at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and at the New York Zoological Society, and a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. She is the recipient of three honorary D.Sc. degrees and numerous awards for her work in marine biology, conservation, exploration and writing from the Explorers Club, the Underwater Society of America, the American Littoral Society, the Gold Medal of the Society of Women Geographers, the Presidents Medal of the University of Maryland, the National Geographic Franklin L. Burr and DEMA Hall of Fame awards. In March 2014 she received Beneath the Sea’s Diver of the Year Award and in November 2014 she will be presented with the BLUE Ocean Film Festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Genie has conducted 71 submersible dives as deep as 12,000 feet and over 200 field research expeditions to the Red Sea, Caribbean, Mexico, Japan, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Thailand, Indonesia, and Borneo to study sand fishes, whale sharks, deep sea sharks, and spotted oceanic triggerfish. Her studies have been featured in 12 National Geographic magazine articles. Dr. Clark has been a consultant, narrator, co-director, and/or principal in 24 half or one-hour television specials in the U.S.A., Australia, England, Egypt, Israel, Japan and Mexico. The Sharks, a National Geographic special (1982) still holds the highest Nielsen rating on PBS; Naturewatch: Ras Mohammed National Marine Park (1985) received Best Film Award, Wildscreen International Film Festival; Reefwatch, live from the Red Sea (1988) the first satellite TV series broadcast from underwater in the Red Sea to the USA and Europe; and the first IMAX film on The Great Sharks released in May 1993. Genie is listed in Whos Who (in America, the World, in the East, International. of Women) and American Men and Women in Science; Encyclopedia Britannica (15th edition). Three biographies have been written about her and she has been featured in numerous profiles in magazines, newspapers, chapters in books and articles in textbooks. She has authored three books and over 170 scientific and popular articles. Genie has four children, Hera, Aya, Tak, and Niki, all of whom are avid divers, photographers, and writers and have helped her on many of her research expeditions. Her grandson Eli at the age of five was featured as the youngest photographer ever published by National Geographic magazine for his remarkable underwater photographs of whale sharks. Genie currently lives in Sarasota, FL and works once or twice a week at Mote Marine Laboratory, writing up a manuscript on the nesting behavior of the spotted oceanic triggerfish, Canthidermis maculata. This species was the subject of her most recent expedition to the Solomon Islands in June 2014, where Genie dived to 84’ and observed the structured nests of this fish. Photo by Nina Leen
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 13:08:31 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015