Most people would have panicked. But Pikitch, like a handful of Rosenstiel School scientists, has logged enough bottom time with these highly evolved creatures to know that humans prey on sharks more often than the other way around.

Increased demand for shark fin soup and other shark foodstuffs, as well as the large numbers of sharks caught by mistake in commercial fishing nets (bycatch), are the primary causes of what some scientists believe is a 90 percent decline in global shark populations within the last 50 years. Only three species, Pikitch explains—great whites, bull sharks, and tiger sharks—are responsible for the vast majority of shark attacks, and fewer than 100 people worldwide are attacked per year.

“People often say sharks attack people by accident, but I really think they’ve decided they’re going to attack, whether for food or to get us out of their territory,” Pikitch says.

And since more than 90 percent of shark attack victims survive, Pikitch believes shark aggressors are displaying more of a territorial warning to humans than an attempt at dinner.

In the late 1990s, Pikitch and Rosenstiel School professor Elizabeth Babcock developed a new method of calculating how quickly depleted shark populations could rebound, considering their long gestation period, late maturation, and small number of offspring. Their assessments of the Atlantic Coast shark population helped pass the U.S. Shark Finning Prohibition Act of 2000.

Since 2000, Pikitch and Babcock have collaborated on another study of sharks in Belize that “has already generated the longest data series on shark abundance in the Caribbean,” Babcock explains. “This information will be useful for the design of protected areas.”

Sonny Gruber, B.S. ’60, M.S. ’66, Ph.D. ’69, a Rosenstiel School professor and director of the Bimini Biological Field Station, has been studying sharks, primarily lemon sharks, for almost 50 years. He has appeared on the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week annual series multiple times, beginning with the show’s 1986 debut. Discovery tapped him again this year for a show called Dirty Jobs, showcasing his role in extracting a shark repellant from “rotting, disgusting, horribly stinky” shark corpses. He does this job with a company called Shark Defense, which is developing a product that may one day reduce the 50,000 sharks killed every night as bycatch.

Gruber will retire next year, following a lifetime spent examining shark sensory systems, life cycles, and behavior. He’s witnessed them “learn a conditioned response faster than my cat,” retrieve a ring on their noses like seals or dolphins do, and remember how to run a simple maze after being away from the maze for an entire year.

Pew Institute research associate and graduate student Neil Hammerschlag has studied sharks of California, Honduras, Mozambique, and his native South Africa. His Ph.D. dissertation investigates how sharks affect their ecosystems by impacting the abundance, diversity, diet, and behavior of their prey fishes.

“I am fascinated by and passionate about sharks,” Hammerschlag says. And he is. He devotes his spare time to directing shark educational and research programs with students from South Broward High School, MAST Academy High School, and the University of Miami. His Web site, www.neil4sharks.org, is peppered with his own action-packed, professional-grade marine photography. “If you look at my pictures, you can see I get very close to sharks,” he says. “These are smart, curious creatures that are very aware of their three-dimensional space.”

While scenes from Jaws and media hype on shark attacks degrade the shark’s public image, Rosenstiel School and Pew Institute scientists continue to push for their protection.

“It takes between 40 and 50 years from the last time scientists see a species to the time it is documented as extinct, and there are already more than 100 documented ocean species extinctions,” Pikitch says. “Sharks are at the leading edge of this gathering wave of extinction. Our overall theme is to advance conservation by generating new science.”