Twenty meters below, twenty degrees centigrade, beyond Cape Catastrophe and near Dangerous Reef, South Australia, I found myself in the unique position of being the first human trained in biology to be at one with the great white shark, Carcharodon carcharias. (I preceded Timothy Tricas, an excellent animal behaviorist, by only a few minutes, pulling the rank allowed professors over graduate students.) Others had been in shark cages prior to and since the film Jaws. But with my training in ichthyology, oceanography, and animal behavior while at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, I had the supposed and distinct advantage of making sense out of what appeared to be nonsense. I was attempting to discover if there were patterns in the shark's behavior that would assist our kind in predicting what its kind would do when we are in the potential relationship of prey and predator, respectively.

There, within the questionably safe confines of the half-inch steel shark cage, I recalled the advice given to me when I was a student, originating with the 19th-century biologist Louis Agassiz, namely, "Learn from Nature, not from books." The tutor at that moment was approximately five meters in length and weighed about two tons. Although it was unquestionably the largest living flesh-eating fish and responsible for the majority of attacks on human beings in all temperate seas-the star of Jaws and beneficiary of all selachiian superlatives-I found it curious that so little was known about the proclivities of this elasmobranch. Did it attack out of hunger or a territorial imperative? Did it forewarn its potential victim or did it attack by stealth? Was it the paragon of predators, such that there was nothing that I could do on realizing that I might be its next prey? A swimmer or diver would find little solace (or useful advice) in all of the accumulated literature concerning Carcharodon at that time.

Students and I implanted telemetric transmitters in the flanks of the sharks in order to track their movements and depth preference. We studied the sharks' muscle temperature relative to the seawater and discovered that, rather than being cold-bodied like other poikilotherms, this robust creature was able to capture the heat that is muscles generated during swimming and return heated blood to its heart and musculature, taking advantage of quicker neural transmission and stronger muscular response associated with elevated body temperatures. Ken Goldman and I fed transmitters to the sharks and discovered that they could elevate their stomach temperature by as much as 7.4° C, perhaps allowing them an accelerated rate of digestion, a particular advantage when food is sporadically abundant. Tim Tricas and I observed their attack and feeding behaviors and proposed that their attack behavior is such that humans have a high probability of surviving attack by this behemoth, especially if one is cognizant of its behavior patterns and prepares and reacts appropriately. Much remains to be learned, and what has been hypothesized is continuously being tested and reexamined.

And each time that I enter the ocean I am buoyed with exhilaration, learning from Nature. Having done so and survived, time and again, I now consider the white shark not great, but nonetheless fascinating, and appreciate Agassiz's sage advice.