Shark Words

Doc Gruber began studying sharks in 1961, perhaps before any other scientist had done full-time research on a living shark. During his long career, he founded the Bimini Biological Field Station (Shark Lab), the Shark Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, (IUCN), a United Nations organization based in Switzerland, and the American Elasmobranch Society. He has published over 200 scientific papers, and his research is still ongoing today.  His decision to study sharks was as unplanned as it was final. Doc in 1957 with black grouper As a young man growing up in Florida, he loved to dive, and often went off for weekends of scuba diving and spear fishing on a 30 metre schooner called the Blue Goose. The ship had belonged to Hermann Göring, commander-in-chief of the German Luftwaffe (Air Force) under the Nazis, and it had found its way to Miami when it was liberated at the end of World War II. A weekend of diving fun on the Blue Goose ...

For Gruber, the study of sharks was more than a profession—it was a calling.  He grew up in love with the sea from the earliest age, and was already avidly collecting sea shells and swimming at the age of three. His family lived in New York during the Second World War, but when it was over, they returned to their house in Miami Beach—the region had been taken over by the military during the war years. Compared to New York, Florida's warm blue ocean sparkled even more invitingly, and Gruber couldn’t keep away from it. He excelled at swimming, and practised springboard diving with a coach. Then he would wander on the beach collecting seashells until it was time to bike down to the docks to see the sports fishermen come in. He was captivated by the bizarre appearance of many of the species of fish and sharks, and loved to draw them. His family still recalls that he was infamous for leaving his shoes on the fishing dock; he would go there after school, take them off, a...