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Science's Blind Spot

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You are freed from the spell of the primate drama when you understand human behaviour in its correct context. But unfortunately, science has a blind spot that for centuries has caused it to stand in the way of the search for the true understanding of life.
True science began with the work of Aristotle, in an effort to systematically analyse our surroundings—the lines, the curves, the way a stone would fall—for the understanding of our environment and from there, the universe. Through observation, measurement, and reflection, a detailed picture of reality and its mathematical underpinnings emerged over the centuries, independent from the folklore of the times. Thus the edifice of science was built in tiny increments, as facts that could be mutually verifiedaccumulated through pure research done in the quest for knowledge. The Mechanical Philosophy In the 1600s western society was making swift progress in the invention of machines, and some intellectuals declaredthat the universe, too, is…
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Rebuttal to Shiffman and Hueter, Shark Finning Fisheries Lobbyists

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"The Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act"is considered to be vital in the fight against shark finning. Yet shark fisheries lobbyists David Shiffman and Robert Hueter are doing their best to block it. They have published a paper opposing the legislation, which has been echoed by the press in ways suggesting that banning the shark fin trade in the United States could be "bad for sharks."
But their short and vacuous paper gives only three reasons to support their position and concerns itself with the well-being of shark fisheries, not sharks.  Firstly, they state that passage of the Act will "undermine decades of progress made towards ensuring sustainable shark fisheries in the United States and around the world." But in the absence of any evidence or reasoning in support this allegation, it remains nothing more than an opinion. The statement is neither scientific nor relevant to the real issue.
The second reason given is that the legislation "will likely have…
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Shark Week 2017 Offering | A Film

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Finally The True Nature of Sharks can be glimpsed in a trailer!
I got The True Nature of Sharks published on July 17, with a colored kindle edition, and then the updated third edition of The Shark Sessions on July 19. So the trailer for my new book was delayed. But it is out in time for Shark Week anyway! 

Please share in the interests of #RaisingSharkAwareness!
For the first timeThe Shark Sessions is available in color, as a kindle edition.
I'm also glad to tell you that I was able to get the price of the printed book down below twenty dollars, which was what I had always planned, so that any shark and nature lover could afford it. 
The publishers of the first and second editions priced it originally at over forty dollars, and it was with great difficulty that I was finally able to have it priced at $33.00 US. Neither publisher paid me royalties, by the way--both squeaked out by simply ignoring their contracts. 
Luckily, the opportunity to publish independently on Amazon has made trad…
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Glenn Ashton's Review of The True Nature of Sharks

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"Occasionally a special book appears that makes you sit up and reconsider your understanding of the world, or at least a part of it. The True Nature of Sharks is such a book. It echoes the way that Diane Fossey and Jane Goodall forced us to completely reassess how we perceived the great apes, our closest relatives. While sharks may be only a very distant relative, Porcher’s book is no less revolutionary, in that it forces us to reassess how we perceive and understand sharks. Her work is instrumental in firmly shifting our understanding of sharks away from the obsolete trope of sharks as killing machines. Instead she portrays them as intelligent, predictable individual animals capable of so much more than generally assumed. "Through the ages sharks gained a largely unquestioned reputation as frightening predators just waiting to eat anything and anybody entering the watery realms. Modern history reinforced these tropes with stories of pilots and sailors being attacked during t…
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Raising Shark Awareness

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My personal campaign to raise shark awareness began when the entire community of hundreds of sharks that I was studying, as animals and individuals, were finned for shark fin soup.

Sharks (and fish) had turned out to be more interesting, more varied, and in many cases, more beautiful, than the North American wildlife I had known. They were just as intelligent, and far more responsive to me. They were definitely more alert, and made decisions more quickly, than people.

Sharks were the first wild animals I had met that came to me instead of fleeing, and though I had fed the birds all my life, they never fluttered down around my shoulders when I went outside, or alighted in my hands to be stroked. But fish did.

So it is especially sad to see how these remarkable submarine animals are considered and treated in our society, as being low, cold and not even capable of suffering pain.

That is why I have been on a personal campaign ever since to improve public awareness of their true nature, and …
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The TRUE NATURE of SHARKS Now Available for Pre-order

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At last this long awaited presentation of wild shark behavior is on Amazon.com. It can be pre-ordered at this link : 
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072WSKK3M/ref=sr_1_5

I have prepared some gifts for everyone who pre-orders to thank you for your interest in what sharks are really like, so please send your receipt to
the.true.nature.of.sharks@gmail.com
and I will send you the link to the page where you can download them, and the password. These gifts include a copy of my latest book about sea turtle intelligence, MERLIN : The Mind of a Sea Turtle, an ode to a bird called Legend of the Dinosaurs, and some of my favorite shark illustrations and paintings, as files that you can download and print for your enjoyment.


Here is the official description :
The True Nature of Sharks is a full-scale exploration of the natural behavior of wild sharks. Written by one of the worlds few shark ethologists, and the only researcher to have studied them as individuals through long-term underwater observation, it…
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Why I Turned to Sharks

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I was a wildlife artist when my husband and I moved to Tahiti, so I went out each morning looking for something to paint. The fringe lagoons lay glimmering turquoise and silver under a ringing blue sky, protected by a barrier reef and sheltering an intricate lighted world that put fantasy to shame. Fish of every imaginable shape and colour gazed from the coral formations, ranged across the white sand, and travelled purposefully though the blue. There seemed to be so much life that even the water sparkled with it.
One morning I was roaming upon the barrier reef, lost in a spell. The sunshine ran in golden lines across the coral and flashed upon the fish. It was mesmerizing. When I raised my eyes, a grey shark of about my size was moving languidly towards me and all my lights went on. Everything about her was just right—her curves, her fins, her face—the inarguable shape of shark. Nothing had prepared me for the sight of that splendid creature gliding forth through the rushing landscap…
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