Scientists estimate that, worldwide, populations of some species of sharks have dropped by 80 percent. Though precise numbers of white sharks aren’t known, there is a growing consensus that they are not reproducing at a rate sufficient to maintain the population. What is known now is that great white sharks—scarce by nature and growing scarcer thanks to contact with man—are, for all their grace and power and manifest menace, remarkably fragile.

Exactly how fragile I discovered one day in the small South Australian resort town of Glenelg, home to the world’s uniquely qualified white shark expert, Rodney Fox. In 1963 Rodney was attacked while spearfishing. He was snorkeling, with a dead fish dangling from a float nearby. The shark struck, retreated, then struck again. “I looked down,” Rodney said when he told me the story years ago, “and saw that great big jaw rising at me through a cloud of my own blood, and I knew I was in trouble.” Trouble, indeed. Only a series of amazingly lucky breaks—including the fact that the strands of his neoprene wet suit held his guts in—saved his life. He spent weeks in the hospital and months in recovery, sewn together, like a quilt, with 462 stitches.

Rodney went on to win the South Australian team spearfishing championships one more time, and ever since he has devoted his life to the study and protection of great white sharks. (As David Doubilet puts it, “The shark bit Rodney and then inhabited him.”) He has never held a grudge against the shark that chewed him up (“He was only doing what sharks do”), and he offers advice to any diver who finds himself in the water with a great white: “Make sure he knows you’ve seen him. Great whites are ambushers, and once one knows he can’t surprise you, he’s probably not going to expend a lot of energy to get you. Move slowly to other divers or the boat.”

Rodney was David’s and my cicerone in our search for great whites, and he had heard that the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) had acquired a huge dead female. Before she underwent scientific dissection, her body was to be shown to the public as part of South Australia’s ongoing effort to protect the sharks. (Though not officially designated as endangered worldwide, great white sharks are protected off South Africa and Namibia, Australia, the Maldives, and parts of the U.S.)

The day of the display dawned foul: wind, mist, and a pelting rain. Nevertheless, 12,000 people stood in line—some for more than an hour—for the privilege of walking by and seeing and smelling and touching the sad and sorry corpse of this single animal.

To be sure, she was impressive: about 18 feet long, 3,000 pounds, a robust, mature female with teeth two inches long and dark, impenetrable eyes. Child after child, adult after adult touched the shark not only with their fingertips but with their entire hands, as if to commune with the great creature. They were not afraid; they were awed, almost reverent.