July 31st, 2025The Secret History of Sharks: John Long
Sharks live in our consciousness. Each summer brings reports of swimmers or surfers being “attacked”.
A new book by a local shark expert reveals, however, that they do not set out to attack humans as in the hit film Jaws, but may take inquisitive bites or make a mistake in murky water. And of 500 types, most bites are caused by just three species: white, tiger and bull sharks.
Their longevity is amazing: scientists found by dating eye proteins that Greenland sharks live up to 390 years and could exceed 500 years.
These are just a few of the facts disclosed by John Long, a Daylesford resident for a year, and a prolific author whose latest work, The Secret History of Sharks, has been published globally. John, who turns 68 next month and is pictured in Central Park, New York on July 2, 2024, the day his book was released, sees this book as the culmination of his life’s work.
This began when he gathered shark’s teeth at the age of seven in the Melbourne bayside suburb of Beaumaris. At age 13 he topped a Victorian competition with a hand-written scientific study, complete with maps and drawings.
Some of his information seems almost inconceivable: such as a giant fossil shark in Italy up to 11 metres long and 90 million years old. He is almost exultant as he shows a video of a cage with the deadliest shark on the planet.
He spent three “fantastic” hours in the only place in the world where the bottom of the ocean can be reached, as well as six hours in a surface cage.
Then there is the goblin shark, resembling the Alien in sci-fi movies, it has spindly teeth that poke out in all directions, can reach seven metres in length and has a bizarre head with an elongated flat paddle-shaped snout full of receptors to find prey such as squid or small fish in its dark deep ocean habitat.
Away from sharks, he and other researchers recently made headlines around the world when they found that fossilised claw prints on the banks of the Broken River near Mansfield suggest that the ancestors of reptiles, birds and mammals evolved about 40 million years earlier than thought.
The discovery hints at their emergence in the ancient southern continent of Gondwana, rather than in the northern hemisphere. Researchers say the trackways of these creatures, called amniotes, represent the oldest evidence of these creatures on Earth.
With the 50th anniversary of Jaws upon us, John writes of the frenzy of fear caused by the film, leading to the killing of thousands of these “magnificent beasts”. He quotes the film’s director, Steven Spielberg: “I truly, and to this day, regret the decimation of the shark population because of the book, and the film.”
For this is a creature with a superb sense of smell, with special power that detects faint electric fields of other living creatures (that may be buried under sand).
Some sharks are, he writes, virtually unchanged from when dinosaurs roamed about 150 million years ago. Some change their colour as camouflage on the seabed.
“The patterns of adaptation, survival and extinction that we see in the long evolutionary history of sharks mirrors the trends in the evolution of all life,” he writes, “they can teach us about our own evolutionary journey.” They survived five global mass extinction events, several involving harsh conditions similar to those predicted by climate change models for our planet in the not-too-distant future.
“I think we can learn valuable lessons from these consummate survivors in how to cope with rapid changes to our environment. What worked for them might well work for us.”
In his years of searching, John has found fossil sharks in outback WA and during his four expeditions to Antarctica, where he narrowly escaped falling into seven mountain crevasses while out alone hunting for the Holy Grail of fossils.
John won a national award for a children’s book on evolution, one of many he has written.
“Sharks was the idea of a New York editor. I wrote a 150-page submission which then went out for bidding. The winner was Penguin Random House, one of the world’s largest publishers.”
He has two documentaries in development. His 55 articles written for The Conversation website have reached 2.7 million readers, he says, and he featured on two recent episodes of Britain’s popular History Hit podcast.
John has written or edited over 30 books that fill his home bookshelf, 220 peer-reviewed papers and 160 popular science articles, including a book on the origins of sex.
He retires next month as Strategic Professor in Palaeontology (the study of fossils) at Flinders University, in Adelaide.
In Daylesford, he and his wife, author Heather Robinson, have found everything they want, he says, a great coalition of ideas and friendships. “We have been coming here for a long time and we love it.”
Anyone keen to know more can hear from John at Hotel Bellinzona on Saturday, August 23 at 11.30am as part of the annual Words in Winter festival. Heather will also talk about her book, Beyond the Books: Culture, Value and Why Libraries Matter during the festival, at Stony Creek Gallery on Saturday August 30 at 5.30pm.
For the full program head to www.wordsinwinter.com
Words: Kevin Childs | Image: Heather Robinson
