Richard G. Fernicola
Auteur van Twelve Days of Terror: A Definitive Investigation of the 1916 New Jersey Shark Attacks
Over de Auteur
Richard G. Fernicola is recognized as the foremost authority on the New Jersey shark attacks of 1916. His research became the basis for the highly acclaimed television documentaries "Legends of Killer Sharks" & "Shark Attack: 1916", which aired on the Discovery Channel & The History Channel. He is toon meer also actively involved in the historic preservation & rescue of marine mammals. He lives in Allenhurst, New Jersey. (Bowker Author Biography) toon minder
Werken van Richard G. Fernicola
Twelve Days of Terror: A Definitive Investigation of the 1916 New Jersey Shark Attacks (2001) 121 exemplaren
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Algemene kennis
- Geboortedatum
- 20th Century
- Geslacht
- male
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- 1
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- 121
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- #164,307
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1) Was the same shark responsible for all the attacks? (Yes)
2) Was this the juvenile great white shark caught by the fishermen Schleisser and Murphy in Raritan Bay? (Yes, although he considers and dismisses the idea that the human remains discovered in that shark came from someone other than one of the four victims; he expresses considerable annoyance that the American Museum of Natural History didn’t save the human remains so they could be subjected to modern medical forensics.)
3) Was this a “rogue” shark, i.e. one that had been driven by some environmental condition or conditions to attack humans instead of its “normal” prey? (Not really decided)
Fernicola spends considerable time on this last (“rogue shark”) idea. There’s a lot of discussion about shark feeding habits, water temperature preferences, and the ocean conditions in July 1916. (He goes a little overboard, I think, in implying that the attacks were some sort of German secret weapon deployed by the merchant U-boat Deutschland). It does seem like a mystery; there had been no recorded fatal shark attacks in the entire history of North America, then four (and one near fatal) in twelve days. However, my take is that the null hypothesis is not refuted; there’s not enough reason to believe that attacks weren’t just bad luck.
Fernicola’s book is a harder read than Capuzzo’s; it’s less well organized but more thorough. There are many contemporary photographs in the plate section, the drawings of victims mentioned above, and a bibliography (although many of the books mentioned are “popular” works). Worth reading.… (meer)