Paul de Gelder’s Shark and David Shiffman’s Why Sharks Matter aim to turn the all-too-common public panic about the predator into interest in their conservation
Life 7 September 2025
By Elle Hunt
A bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas) swimming in the Pacific Ocean
shutterstock/Leonardo Gonzalez
Shark, Paul de Gelder (HarperCollins) and Why Sharks Matter, David Shiffman (Johns Hopkins University Press)
BY FEBRUARY 2009, Paul de Gelder had spent thousands of hours in the water as part of his job as a diver in the Australian Navy.
Early one morning, he was conducting a counterterrorism trial, swimming solo around Sydney Harbour, when he was attacked by a 3-metre-long shark. The fish slammed into him with its jaws, pinning de Gelder’s right hand to his leg. He recalls …
