Sure, sharks are sexy – that’s why so many people watch Shark Week; to see all the muscular, sleek, and popularly-thought dangerous species depicted. But what about all the other members of the Class Chondrichthyes? The skates, rays, and those fascinatingly curious chimeras? Don’t they deserve a bit of attention as well?
As Johns Hopkins University Press so well and succinctly points out in the description of the their new “Sharks of the Shallows,” “few places on Earth are home to the amazing diversity of shark species that beautify the shallow waters of Florida and the Bahamas.” Consequently, its author Jeffrey C. Carrier no doubt decided that this was the region on which to focus as a new book about the lives and behaviors of some of the planet’s most often mentioned sharks.
Turning on the most recent edition of Steve Mirsky’s Scientific American podcast, I was delighted to discover that the entire episode was devoted to an interview with Susan Ewing and her recently published book from Pegasus Books titled “Resurrecting the Shark; A Scientific Obsession and the Mavericks Who Solved the Mystery of a 270-Million-Year-Old Fossil.”
There are times when the publication of a particular new natural history book can only be appropriately reported with song; “Rays of the World” is such a book.