The Island of the Sharks

OCEAN CONSERVATIONIST GEORGIENNE BRADLEY AND THE FIGHT TO PROTECT COCOS ISLAND'S MARINE LIFE

- Joseph Taylor

Ten-year-old Georgienne Bradley enjoyed helping her parents out at the marina they operated off Pennsylvania's Delaware River. One day in the early 1970s, as she tied off a speedboat, she spotted her father. He was walking with Frank Rizzo, Philadelphia's police chief and future mayor, and his younger brother, Joe, the city's future fire department chief. The Rizzo brothers were carrying an old metal tub between them. It held a large snapping turtle they'd just caught in the nearby swamp. Snapper soup was a common dish in Pennsylvania at the time.

Young Bradley couldn't stand to think of the turtle being eaten. While the three men were inside celebrating their catch, the girl tipped the tub over and shooed the turtle away. "What in the world?" one of the brothers exclaimed when they returned. Her dad helped the Rizzos search for the turtle-but they never did find the animal. It wouldn't be the last time Bradley spoiled someone's dinner.

The Undersea World Calls

Young Bradley cherished the river and the swamp near her home, but she dreamed about the ocean beyond. One evening, she came across the TV show The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. In this true-life adventure series, Cousteau sailed his research ship Calypso to far reaches of the world to study fascinating marine animals such as sleeping sharks, 2,000-pound (900 kg) manta rays, and diving marine iguanas. "This was a new world," Bradley recalls at her beach house in Malibu, California. "To me, it was better than going to the Moon. It was going to the Moon with animals."

While working as a lab researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) after college, she had the chance to take a scuba diving course. She adored diving and the undersea access it granted her.