Ila France Porcher | September 11, 2014 09:59pm ET
Ila France Porcher is a self-taught, published ethologist and the author of "The Shark Sessions." A successful wildlife artist, she documented the behavior of animals she painted. In Tahiti, intrigued by the native sharks, she launched an intensive study to systematically swim with them and record their actions, following the precepts of cognitive ethology. Credited with the discovery of a way to study sharks without killing them, Porcher has been called "the Jane Goodall of sharks" for her documentation of their intelligence in the wild. She contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
The ancestors of modern sharks were already roaming the oceans 455 million years ago, when green plants were first transforming the land. Their presence now, in the form of more than 470 species split across 14 orders, is woven throughout the marine environment, and they are considered vital to oceanic ecology. Yet humanity has branded them as mindless killers, and is hunting them to the brink of extinction.
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