The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America's Great White Sharks

by Susan Casey

Book Overview

Journalist Susan Casey joins a strange band of surfer-scientists on a remote island off the California coast for some close encounters with the jaws of the world's most mysterious and fearsome... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805080112
• Release Date: May 2006
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.2" x 0.8" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Questionable "journalism" at play here.

I was born in San Francisco, raised in the East Bay, and I can't recall having ever seen the Farallons. I knew they were out there, but a truly clear day is pretty rare with the prevalent marine haze. I found the geography, history, and biology to be fascinating. What I had trouble with was the author's tendency to be part of the story. She compromised the jobs of researchers for her own selfish reasons.

A vastly entertaining, funny, and scary-as-all-get-out book!

"The Devil's Teeth" is a vastly entertaining, very well-written account of one woman's experience out on The Farallon Islands. Those islands are a particularly inhospitable group of rocks ("rock designed by a cubist on peyote" as she says) sitting off of San Francisco. A small hardy band of researchers study sharks out there, and she went to go check it out. I'm a "Jaws" freak. I thought I knew everything about sharks. I didn't know ANY of this. First of all, they are not simply studying "sharks". We're talking about great whites. The big bad ones.The depictions of those fish are unlike any you've read before. You will change the way you think and feel about them. If possible, you will become even more freaked out about them. They're genuinely scary creatures. She writes like an impossibly gifted dinner guest, telling stories that have every one at the table mesmerized. She's colloquial; there are lots of italics and capitalizations and fragments and such. She writes like a real good talker. Her prose is vivid. The appearance of these sharks, of the researchers, of the islands themselves...all are artfully described. Imagine a shark as wide as "Yao Ming is tall." Her perspective will make you laugh. When she tries to ram home that sharks have been around for quite some time, she says they "predate trees." Not 'a' tree, but trees in general. When sharks first appeared, plants hadn't yet figured out how to become trees. When describing the sensation of walking through a gauntlet of kamikaze gulls, she thanks "Alfred Hitchcock" for her "state of mind." A cormorant becomes someone from "Flintstones central casting." I can't tell you how many times I laughed out loud while reading this book. And read it I did. As fast as I could. I was fascinated by these relatively new discoveries on "shark character". They don't act like we thought they did (and in general, we don't know that much about them...) and some of the basic fundamentals of shark physiology and behavior are frankly disproven. These buggers can see just fine. They'll stick their head out of the water to check you out. They have personalities. Different sharks "act" differently. They are not simply the cold killing machines we all thought they were. They're worse. Really. They're cold CALCULATING killing machines, who have an ability to learn things. I digress...I could have read volumes more about these sharks, the Sisterhood (the giant, ethereal murderesses) and the Rat Pack (the smaller, more visible but somehow less sinister male cohort)...about Cal Ripfin, Stumpy, Whiteslash. It's like the psychopathic oceanic version of "Watership Down." Casey also conveys the "lunar isolation" of the colorful folks who "live" out there on those islands. She gives us a taste of the political bureaucracy involved in maintaining that precious environment, and also the delicate nature of those island's own biosphere (in direct contrast to the harsh living conditions). There is an extended

Farallone Islands & Great White Sharks

If you're at all familiar with the Northern California coastline and are remotely curious or even fascinated by great white sharks (their behavior and how scientists study them) you will love this book. As a native San Franciscan who became fascinated with sharks in his youth (first recorded great white shark attack off our shores in 1959) and went on to become a deep sea diver I find this book very exciting, accurate in it's detail and very informative. The author (Susan Casey) tells a gripping story of her own fascination with the creatures. She balances her grand obsession by recounting the obstacles she encountered (bureaucratic, environmental and personal)on her quest for understanding. She also does an excellent job of portraying the lives of research scientists who set out to study the birds on these islands, scientists who couldn't help but study the great whites when they realized that the Farallone Islands were part of the sharks migratory pattern a breeding ground that they returned to every autumn.

"They're not too bad... unless you're a seal." -Peter Pyle

THE DEVILS TEETH is an exceptionally well-written account of the Farallon Islands and, in particular, the white shark research project that has been based there over the past several decades. Susan Carey profiles Peter Pyle and Scot Anderson, two biologists who have been leading shark research at the islands which are located just 27 miles due west of San Francisco. She also documents her own (ultimately disastrous) experiences gaining access to the islands which are largely prohibited to the public. The stars of the story are the sharks themselves, who turn out to be far more individualistic and personable than you would probably ever imagine. The white sharks of the Farallon Islands are perhaps the best studied in the world in their natural state. The circus atmosphere which surrounds white shark research in places like Australia and South Africa have largely compromised the sharks natural habitat making it difficult to observe sharks behaving naturally. The Farallon Islands, known to 19th-century mariners as "The Devil's Teeth," are a dangerous and foreboding locale, but one that lends itself well to scientific investigations. Carey takes us through the history of exploitation, inhabitation, and research that has taken place on the islands over the past 150 years, and she includes a healthy amount of information about the other wildlife in evidence on and around the islands. But she clearly (and admittedly) developed an obsession with the sharks, and the narrative of the book is continually steered back toward them. The thing that struck me the most in THE DEVIL'S TEETH was the description of the individual white sharks' strong personalities. I would never have thought that a white shark could be described in terms of being "gentle and maternal" (Whiteslash) or "happy-go-lucky and somewhat goofy" (Half Fin). Other individual sharks, of course, had more sinister reputations. Still, one can come away from reading this book with the impression that the great white shark is truly a likeable animal, if not exactly huggable. Another revelation (to me, at least) was the evidence that at least some white sharks, like whales, apparently have fixed migratory routes that can take them thousands of miles through the course of a year. Some (the females) appear to have two-year migrations since they only show up every other year in the Farallones. Susan Carey takes us into an exclusive place, to be sure: a world where cage divers and eco-tourists are looked down upon with disdain. In a way, it hardly seems fair that the experience of witnessing the thrill of a white shark kill should be so restricted. As Peter Pyle himself said, "I feel sorry for anyone who hasn't seen one." Of course, it is understandable. As in nearly other place in the world where white sharks congregate, the delicate ecosystem of the Farallon Islands would suffer tragically and research effort would be compromised from increased human intrusion. THE DEVIL'S TEETH is a glimpse into th