Guion’s Denizens Make Room for Live Sharks

Chain catshark eggs

Sweet Briar College’s Guion Science Center is home to an eclectic bunch of charismatic creatures, the faculty of the science and math departments notwithstanding. Now, the chameleons, monarch butterflies, and occasional visiting salamanders have been joined by a colony of sharks.

They are chain catsharks, a small species named for their chain-pattern markings and (some say) cat-like eyes. They are in the charge of associate professor of biology John Morrissey, who joined SBC’s faculty from Hofstra University on Long Island, New York, in August 2007.

Eventually he will set up three aquarium systems consisting of 20-gallon fish tanks to house egg-laying females, babies and eggs — which take nearly a year to hatch — and juveniles and adults that are not part of active studies.

So far, he’s moved some 25 juveniles and 21 eggs in various stages of development to SBC from Long Island. The remainder — there are a total of about 65 reared from eggs and eight or 10 wild-caught adults — will be moved at a later date. One baby, named “Steve” after the College’s physical plant director Steve Bailey, was born at Sweet Briar on Feb. 8, 2008.

Morrissey has spent his career studying sharks in the wild and in the lab. He started the colony nearly five years ago at Hofstra to study the catshark’s complete natural history.

Little is known about the species because it lives in the deep sea, which Morrissey believes is an under-studied habitat. Until recent years, catsharks were rarely seen, he said. But as commercial fisherman are forced into deeper waters by scarce fish nearer shore and conservation restrictions, the sharks turn up in their nets.

Balancing conservation with peoples’ livelihoods is among the reasons he finds catsharks useful to study. As lab subjects go, “They are like the white mice of the shark world and that really blows the lid off the research possibilities,” he said.

Because they are closely related to about a hundred other species, he can extrapolate what he learns about their biology to others in the family, said Morrissey, who once spontaneously jumped in the water with a pregnant 14-foot tiger shark to get a blood sample from her.

The catshark’s large shallow-water cousins have been studied extensively, but the research is usually with juveniles in the lab or with full-grown animals caught in the ocean and released. Much of their life cycles are difficult to observe in a controlled way.

At 18 to 24 inches long, adult catsharks can live their entire lives in modest aquariums at a small women’s college in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

“Another really useful perk about studying this shark is that it … excites the teacher in me,” Morrissey said, noting that students’ research interests vary widely, from cellular biology to working with live animals. “With this in-house colony I really feel like I can satisfy the preferences of all of our students.”

That excited Sweet Briar, too.

Chain catsharks

Biology chair Linda Fink said the department was searching for an “excellent teacher with student-friendly research, a personality and style that would mesh well with the rest of the department, and strength in new areas.”

Hiring Morrissey for a rare full-time faculty opening meant marine biology could be added to the curriculum, which students have asked for over the years, Fink said. “This is a course that John clearly loves to teach,” she added.

For his part, Morrissey, the son of a Maine chicken farmer, never was content in metropolitan New York, even after teaching and studying at Hofstra for a combined 23 years. “I was looking for tiny school in the woods,” he said.

Regarding his research, he doesn’t believe he’ll miss having graduate assistants. “If I could wave a magic wand, I’d rather have that exceptional Sweet Briar student than a mediocre graduate student.”