Shark - Pick Of The Week

The Age

Saturday July 19, 2008

Fiona Capp

Shark

Dean Crawford

Reaktion Books, $31.95

IF A SHARK WERE TO write a book about humans it would be a horror story of genocidal proportions, on a scale that would expose our sharkphobia for what it is: a sensational beat-up. Like previous works in this excellent series, such as Oyster and Whale, Shark is both a cultural and natural history of the beast in question. Sharks have been around since the Jurassic period but their future is now in doubt. While Polynesians invested sharks with spiritual powers and respected them as gods, in the West we have demonised them to such an extent that we have channelled fears of world wars, infantile paralysis and the darkside of our collective unconscious into mass hysteria about sharks as "serial killers". More threatening to the species' survival than this act of projection, however, is the Chinese hunger for shark fin soup. As a diver, Dean Crawford has first-hand experience of the mysterious beauty of the myriad types of shark and makes an eloquent advocate for their protection.

Fiona Capp's novel Musk & Byrne is published by Allen & Unwin. She will be a guest at the Melbourne Writers Festival.

© 2008 The Age

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