The Devil’s Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America’s Great White Sharks
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- ISBN13: 9780805080117
- Condition: New
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Product Description
Susan Casey was in her living room when she first saw the fantastic white sharks of the Farallon Islands, their dark fins swirling around a tiny 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 winch, up a cliff face to the lonely 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-ancient house spackled with lichen and gull guano. Two days later, she got her first glimpse of the legendary, terrifying jaws up close and she was straight away 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 treacherous, forgotten islands that have banished every battle for civilization in the past two hundred years.
The Devil’s Teeth is a plain send off from an otherworldly station, a tale of crossing the boundary between society and an untamed place where humans are neither wanted nor needed.
Amazon.com Review
In a post-Jaws/Discovery Channel world, finding fresh data on fantastic white sharks is a feat. So credit Susan Casey not just with finding and spotlighting two biologists who have done truly pioneering meadow research on the beasts but also with following them and their subjects into the heart of one of the most unnatural habitats on Planet: the Farallon Islands. Though just 30 miles due west of San Francisco, the Farallones–nicknamed the Devil’s Teeth for their shabby appearance and raging inhospitality–are utterly alien, which may clarify why each autumn, packs of fantastic whites return to gorge on the seals and sea lions that gather there before returning to the Pacific and beyond. That Casey, via her biologist followers Peter Pyle and Scot Anderson, can even report that sharks rumor has it that follow migratory feeding patterns is a revelation. Throughout The Devil’s Teeth, Casey makes clear that year upon year of observing the sharks have agreed Pyle and Anderson (and by extension, us) insights into shark behavior that are entirely new and too copious to list. The otherworldly Farallon Islands, meanwhile, also dominate Casey’s engaging tale as she charts their transformation from ultradangerous source of wild eggs in the 19th century to ultradangerous real-life shark lab and bird sanctuary today. Despite the plethora of factoids on offer, Casey’s style is consistently palatable and very amusing. She also has a knack for putting things into perspective. Take this characteristic passage:
The Farallon fantastic whites are largely unharassed. They might cross paths with the occasional boatload of day-trippers from San Francisco, but they’re subjected to none of the behavior-altering coercion that scenery’s top predators regularly suffer so that people can sit in the Winnebago… and get a look at them. This is vital because despite their visibility at the Farallones, and despite the impressive truth that sharks are so ancient they predate trees, fantastic whites have remained among the most mysterious of creatures.”
By book’s end, it’s hard to know what’s more captivating: The biologists’ groundbreaking data, Casey’s primer on the evolution of the Farallones, the islands’ symbiotic relationships with the sharks, the gulls and sea lions they attract, or the station’s resident ghosts. Frankly, it’s a nice problem to have. –Kim Hughes
Getting to Know the Fantastic White
It was a BBC documentary on fantastic white sharks visiting California’s Farallon Islands that turned Susan Casey from an editor of adventure and outdoors tales in such magazines as Outside to a journalist obsessed with an outdoors adventure of her own. In her Amazon.com interview, Casey recalls the fascinations and the follies of her time with the sharks in the Farallones and discusses everything from the ethics of adventure television journalism to the stunning silence and size of scenery’s perfect predators. And in her answers to the Significant Seven (the seven questions we like to question every leader), she reveals her admiration for both Joseph Mitchell and Johnny Knoxville (once you’ve read her book, both choices seem appropriate).
 The outer edge of the fearsome Maintop Bay, a spooky, boat-eating stretch of water that makes everyone uneasy. Not surprisingly, the sharks seem to like it. (Susan Casey) |
 An 18-foot shark investigates a 6-foot surfboard. (Peter Pyle) |
 A shark attack at the Farallones is not usually a devious event. (Peter Pyle) |
 Scot Anderson (in orange) observes a feeding. Also in the boat are director Paul Atkins and cinematographer Peter Scoones of the BBC film crew that visited the Farallones in 1993 to film The Fantastic White Shark. (Peter Pyle) |
 The Farallones researchers see some action from a shark named Bluntnose. (Peter Pyle) |
 An unquiet cove: Just Imagine (Casey’s temporary home) at its moorage in Fisherman’s Bay, 150 yards west of Tower Point and 200 yards east of Sugarloaf. (Susan Casey) |
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Categories: Travel Tags: America's, Among, Devil's, Great, Obsession, Sharks, Story, Survival, Teeth, True, White
Full disclosure: I know the leader, as I’m sure do others who’ve reviewed here, but are too coy or rude to say so. Even if I didn’t know her, I’d review the book enthusiastically. It’s a fantastic read, an extended version of the kind of sweeping and personal adventure tales that made Outside mag’s reputation. The digressions are appealing but not disruptive to the narrative flow. Susan makes for an engaging, accurately flawed and naive narrator. And then there are sharks killing things. What’s not to like? It’s the platonic ideal of a beach book: You learn something, you shiver a small, you look at the water a bit hesitantly, and you can’t stop reading. Fantastic fun.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Take it from a name who’s read ravenously much of what’s been published, scientific and well loved, on the theme of the white shark over the last 30 years – this is a excellent but not a fantastic book on the theme.
In my esteem the best book on white shark safaris is still the first, the fantastic Peter Mathesson’s Blue Meridian, which documented Peter Gimbol’s expedition to produce the movie Blue Water, White Death, which in turn inspired much of the parody of The Life Water with Steve Zassou. Granted, it’s not a book about science – since they did none – but it is a soulful exploration of the eerie place shark’s inhabit in our collective unconscious.
What I did find unique and valuable about Casey’s book is its back tale on the history of the Farallones, and I would recommend it more for that than for her lackluster treatment of the sharks, which remain the ocean’s greatest enigmas in spite of all our efforts to explicate them.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
I bought this book because the title suggested it would be about sharks; I establish as a replacement for a 200+ page babble on a rocky island, birds and biologists with attitude problems (for example, only 7 out of 37 color photographs showed a shark from above the water, the rest showed absolutely uninteresting stuff).
This was an absolut [...].
Stefan von Brentano
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
The leader manipulates her way onto a wildlife sanctuary, causing at least one friend to lose his job studying the creatures he likes, and another to nearly lose a yacht.
She has the gall to complain about the measures taken to protect the sanctuary. This book did not place me pleased I had read it.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I read an excerpt from this book in SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, and knew I’d have to read the entire thing. Ms. Casey writes perfectly, and has you hooked (no pun proposed) from page one! You feel a small sorry for the seals who end up as entrees for the sharks who inhabit the Farallon Islands a few months a year, but that’s scenery. The strong survive and this is a book about the essential survivors and their peculiar pilgrimage to this unusual playground.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5