Red Sea Swimmer

Some scientists do things as work that other people do for pleasure. Dr. Eugenie Clark, 29, comely ichthyologist of New York's American Museum of Natural History, picked as her job a stint of swimming in the warm Red Sea. She made her base at Ghardaqa, Egypt, where Fouad University has a marine biological station. For the next ten months, Dr. Clark was one of the sights of Ghardaqa. The Moslems of Ghardaqa, who wrap their own women like mummies, watched with open amazement as she went down to the sea in a bathing suit. Their jaws dropped even lower when she cruised face down on the surface, aerated by a snorkel tube, and skewered fish with a spear. "But," said Dr. Clark, "they seemed to get used to it after a time."

Besides spears, she used hooks, nets and poison to catch her prey. Often great sharks cruised along beside her. They never took even a nibble, but once when her husband came to visit, she saw a big barracuda looking at him fixedly with one round eye. Barracudas' minds are not hard to read. Fish-wise Dr. Clark realized just in time that this one had mistaken her husband's white sneakers for two small, edible fish. She got him into the boat before the barracuda could swallow either of them.

Last week Dr. Clark put aside her snorkel tube and swim suit for a while. Back in the museum, she began the much less exciting task of classifying and studying the biggest collection of fish ever dragged singlehanded from the Red Sea.

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