Sharks Don't Sink

Sharks Don’t Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist, Jasmin Graham, 2004

I’ve been reading this book while sailing around the oceans of the world – sometimes up by Alaska, sometimes California, sometimes the Caribbean – passing over sharks in the water all the time. It has been a fascinating setting to ponder the ideas in this book. The book was a kind gift from my friend Thao Ha, a legend herself in the world of social justice, who invited me to hear Graham speak.

Jasmin Graham’s joyous love of the ocean soaks through in her evocative writing. She’s a dynamic and engaging marine biologist who for a long time thought she was the only Black woman in the world researching sharks.

She shares the wonder of how sharks have uniquely adapted over the millennia. She parallels this with her frustration at being supremely skilled in her field, yet being forced to ensure constant sexism and racism from those in the marine biology community and beyond. She describes how sharks are perfectly adapted for our planet’s vibrant ecosystem – until humans came along and all-too-predictably ruined things. Then she looks at the way sharks are brutally slaughtered for no reason other than existing, paralleled with the murders of Black people. It got me thinking, and led to me recently correcting a travel writer who casually said the common phrase “shark-infested waters.” Would we go to someone’s home and call it a “person-infested house”? It’s the same language used to demean people, which then becomes an excuse to hurt them, or worse.

Graham intimately understands these links between science and social justice. She lives them. She also understands how science loses much of its power unless it is communicated skillfully to general audiences. As a dynamic communicator, she’s overcoming fear of science, fear of predators, and fear of people different than you. She champions the misunderstood and the vulnerable with humor and grace, but also with determination. She’s pushing the boundaries of science and of stuffy academia, by skirting obstacles and creating new methods of collaboration and cooperation. I encourage you to read this moving and inspiring book – and work out how you can help break some barriers yourself.