The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America's Great White Sharks
A journalist's obsession brings her to a remote island off the California coast, home to the world's most mysterious and fearsome predators-and the strange band of surfer-scientists who follow themSusan Casey was in her living room when she first saw the great white sharks of the Farallon...
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A journalist's obsession brings her to a remote island off the California coast, home to the world's most mysterious and fearsome predators-and the strange band of surfer-scientists who follow themSusan Casey was in her living room when she first saw the great white sharks of the Farallon Islands, their dark fins swirling around a small motorboat in a documentary. These sharks were the alphas among alphas, some longer than twenty feet, and there were too many to count; even more incredible, this congregation was taking place just twenty-seven miles off the coast of San Francisco.In a matter of months, Casey was being hoisted out of the early-winter swells on a crane, up a cliff face to the barren surface of Southeast Farallon Island-dubbed by sailors in the 1850s the "devil's teeth." There she joined Scot Anderson and Peter Pyle, the two biologists who bunk down during shark season each fall in the island's one habitable building, a haunted, 135-year-old house spackled with lichen and gull guano. Two days later, she got her first glimpse of the famous, terrifying jaws up close and she was instantly hooked; her fascination soon yielded to obsession-and an invitation to return for a full season. But as Casey readied herself for the eight-week stint, she had no way of preparing for what she would find among the dangerous, forgotten islands that have banished every campaign for civilization in the past two hundred years. The Devil's Teeth is a vivid dispatch from an otherworldly outpost, a story of crossing the boundary between society and an untamed place where humans are neither wanted nor needed.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780805080117 (0805080112)
ASIN: 805080112
Publish date: May 30th 2006
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
Pages no: 304
Edition language: English
Category:
Adventure,
Non Fiction,
Travel,
Autobiography,
Memoir,
Science,
Adult,
Environment,
Nature,
Natural History,
Animals
I am really torn about this book. On the one hand, I really enjoyed being introduced to the incredible history, both natural and otherwise, of the Farallon islands. I also really enjoyed hearing all the anecdotes about shark behavior and the unique group of animals that spend fall at the Farallons...
The jaws of a megaladon could open so wide that a modern quarter-horse could stand upright in them and not nick his head on teeth that were estimated to have been over 7 inches long. The ancestor of the great white shark, they survived at least four mass extinctions and evolved into a perfect predat...
I really liked this book a lot. Though it was uneven, it was still utterly fascinating. I learned a lot about great white sharks and the Farallon Islands. I was captivated by the stories Casey told about the sharks and the biologists who love them. I was less enamored of the endless suffering Casey ...