Eugenie Clark, 92, shark expert

EUGENIE CLARK, a world authority on sharks who defied society's expectations about women's roles in science and the much-feared underwater creatures she studied, died Feb. 25 at her home in Sarasota, Florida. She was 92.

Clark, an ichthyologist and oceanographer, divided much of her career between the University of Maryland and the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota. The cause of death was lung cancer, Mote officials said.

An unabashed adventurer and prolific researcher, Clark traveled the globe to study reef fish, sharks and mollusks. She made 71 dives in submersibles, a practice that is still done by a relatively small number of explorers, plunging at one point to 12,000 feet.

Clark, whose mother and stepfather were Japanese, grew up immersed in a family and culture that valued the sea and all its life forms. Her career preceded Rachel Carson's book "The Sea Around Us" and oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau's book and documentary "The Silent World," which in the 1950s helped generate broad interest in undersea research.

As a leading champion of marine life and conservation, Clark criticized the 1975 fright movie "Jaws" and other popular depictions of sharks that gave them "a bad rap." For decades she had traveled with them underwater, studied them in captivity and saw them as a way to understand the globe's vast seas.