Inside Shark Biology and Conservation, Second Edition

Every shark course needs a bible, and this one just got a second edition. Five years after the first Shark Biology and Conservation: Essentials for Educators, Students, and Enthusiasts landed on shelves and in classrooms, co-authors Dan Abel, Dean Grubbs, Tristan Guttridge, and Josh Moyer rebuilt it from the ground up: new chapters, new contributed essays from researchers around the world, and two co-authors who weren't part of the original book at all. Three of the four join Andrew and Dave (Dean's internet dropped him from the call, but he's credited throughout) to talk about why a book that was already considered the accessible alternative to a dense academic textbook needed a full rewrite so soon.

Dan walks through where the book started, a shark biology course he and Dean taught together at the Bimini Biological Field Station, and why they brought in fresh voices for the second edition instead of writing it alone again. Tristan and Josh talk about what it was like joining an established two-author project, the freedom they were given to shape their own chapters on behavior and sensory biology, and the unglamorous realities of textbook publishing: turnover with editors, humor that gets cut by copy editors who remind you that you're a scientist, not a comedian, and illustrators like Elise Pullen and Marc Dando who redraw a shark's fin position a tenth of a percent at a time until it's right. Josh also shares how he ended up adopting the first edition for his own shark biology course at Yale, and how that classroom experience shaped what he pushed for in the second edition.

The conversation closes with each author's advice for readers, professors deciding how to structure a course around the book, and a look at what's next: a batoid biology book from Dean and Dan, a title called How Sharks Work from Dan and Josh, and Tristan's focus for now on building a research field station in the Bahamas rather than a fifth book. It's a fun, candid look at what actually goes into building the reference book an entire field ends up using.

Takeaways:

• Shark Biology and Conservation is now in its second edition from four co-authors, Dan Abel, Dean Grubbs, Tristan Guttridge, and Josh Moyer, illustrated by Elise Pullen and Marc Dando, published by Hopkins Press.
• The second edition added two new co-authors and dozens of contributed mini-essays from researchers worldwide specifically to bring in fresh perspectives Dan and Dean felt they'd already exhausted after the first edition.
• Co-authors got real creative freedom: Tristan and Josh were each given latitude to shape their own chapters (behavior and cognition for Tristan, sensory biology for Josh) rather than being handed a rigid outline.
• Textbook publishing has real friction most readers never see: editor turnover, cut jokes, and illustrators redrawing figures repeatedly to get anatomical details right, all without royalties for the original artwork licensed into the second edition.
• The authors' shared advice to readers: don't stop at what the book says. If a fact or figure interests you, go track down the primary source.

Website: https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/53846/shark-biology-and-conservation

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Dave: 
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Andrew:
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