My high school marine biology teacher, Joel Teret, inspired a lifelong passion for ocean life in me (click here for more on that). One of my most memorable moments while taking his class was a whale watch trip that my class went on at Cape Cod during the Spring of 1984. I’ve been fascinated by whales ever since.

Jaws came out in 1975. About seven years later, I took two years of marine biology with Mr. Teret. From his classes, I learned fascinating information about sharks that I still remember today. Here are some things I can still recall:

1. Of the 400+ species of sharks, only about 10% are dangerous to humans.
2. Sharks are cartilaginous and have no bones except for their teeth.
3. Most sharks have a primitive gill system and must constantly swim to force water through their gills to breathe. Swimming burns energy, and that is why they are always eating.

Any effective teacher knows that they cannot solely rely on books to educate their students. They understand that a hands-on approach often works best. Mr. Teret wanted his students to do a deep dive into shark anatomy by requiring students to dissect a dogfish shark. It was both exciting and traumatizing for me since I had to cut deep into its body with cutting tools to reveal the various organs that were hiding inside. One of the “treasures” that I removed during the dissection was the shark’s eyeballs. Their eyeballs are perfectly spherical and resemble small marbles. I am embarrassed to admit that I presented one of these “marbles” to a female classmate whom I liked, who was in another class of mine. As soon as I handed it to her, she dropped it on the floor once I told her where it came from. What a way to impress a woman, right?.

A few years later, my family and I ate at a seafood restaurant called Captain’s Quarters. Since the image of man-eating sharks was still very much on people’s minds, I thought it would be ironic, or even poetic, if I turned the tables and ordered shark for dinner. In doing so, I would literally be a man eating a shark. That was the first and last time that I ever ate shark meat.

In 2017, I directed a 5-mile road race along that same Shore Road Promenade. To show that the race was being held next to the ocean, I included an orange shark in the logo design for the race shirt.

My friend Joe was once the assistant coach for the Sheepshead Bay High School football team. Today, he lives in my neighborhood. One day, I visited him at his home, and he was wearing a Sheepshead Sharks football t-shirt. The Sharks were the name of my high school’s football team.

In 2022, I performed with a troupe of improv performers at the Figment Festival in Staten Island. There was another group of performers nearby called the Kostume Kult. Besides performing in all kinds of fun costumes, the Kostume Kult was a charitable group that offered free costumes to all who visited them. Among the many costumes that I could have chosen, I picked the most bizarre and shocking: a t-shirt with a great white shark chewing its way out of the middle of it, blood and all. I had no idea when the right time to wear such a “costume” was, but it intrigued me enough to grab it. A month later, I was slated to be a presenter at the NYSMEA Conference. I would be referring to a slideshow about the history and future of Coney Island Creek in Brooklyn. I thought it would be great fun to conduct my presentation by wearing the shark t-shirt. After all, any good teacher knows that gaining the student’s attention is half of the battle. Those who were at my presentation thought it was funny, and it definitely got their attention. I was happy that Mr. Teret was one of my students in attendance.

For years, I wanted to participate in the Coney Island Mermaid Parade. I never did since I didn’t have a costume that would fit the nautical theme of the event. Finally, in the summer of 2024, I decided to have a go at it by wearing my shark t-shirt. I had no idea how the audience would react to it. It turned out to be a big hit. My photo even ended up in the Daily News!

After 50 years, I am still learning amazing things and new discoveries about sharks. The latest is this particular specimen of Greenland shark (see photo below), which is now 500 years old. Another is that great white sharks are no longer apex predators. These sharks fear killer whales, which attack and kill great whites to eat their livers. You can view video evidence of that here. I also learned that sharks existed on Earth much earlier than the dinosaurs. Early sharks go back so far in time that they are older than the planet Saturn.

Here are some posts I wrote on my Facebook account about sharks over the years. One is serious, most are funny. One was written by my brother Aaron Pesin.