After finishing his undergraduate degree in zoology, Doc began his graduate studies in marine science, focusing on shark sensory systems initially under the tutelage of Dr Warren Wisby. Following Dr Wisby’s departure from the University of Miami, Doc continued his sensory biology line of work under the advisement of well-known fish ethologist Dr Arthur Myrberg. The students in Dr Myrberg’s lab included Don Nelson, who would become Doc’s long-time friend and colleague. Much of the work conducted by Dr Myrberg and his students was funded by the United States Office of Naval Research with the motivation of preventing shark attacks on downed pilots. Dr Myrberg was also conducting work out of the Lerner Marine Laboratory on North Bimini, The Bahamas, which gave Doc his first exposure to the islands that would eventually become his research home.

For his PhD research Doc focused on the visual systems of sharks, using the lemon shark as a model species. His reasoning, that lemon sharks were locally accessible and did well in captivity, developed into a long relationship between Doc and his favourite species and he often professed that he owed everything to it – life, career and notability. It can be argued that today the lemon shark is the most comprehensively studied of all the shark species, and in turn that fact correlates directly to Doc’s connection with it.

Following the completion of his PhD, Doc took up a professorship at the University of Miami, where he continued his studies using the lemon shark as the core species but, in collaboration with Dr Myrberg, he expanded the research focus into shark ecology and behaviour. At this time, his early study population of lemon sharks in Florida had become depleted, which he attributed to lobster fishermen using the juveniles as bait in their traps. Conversely, across the Gulf Stream in Bimini lemon shark populations were thriving. Funded by a string of National Science Foundation grants, Doc took students and colleagues on research cruises to Bimini two or three times a year and spent months at a time studying the lemon sharks in the shallow North Sound of Bimini. This was the heyday of shark research as almost anything was a new discovery. Doc and his team made great advances in areas such as bio-energetics and spatial ecology, including one of the first home range studies to be conducted on sharks using manual tracking.

During his battle to live Doc made a promise to himself: if he could beat the cancer, he would open his own dedicated research station at Bimini. Once he had recovered, there was no chance that he wouldn’t follow through and realise his dream. With blood, sweat and tears, in 1989 Doc and his wife Marie, with a team of students, built a field laboratory that was officially established as the Bimini Biological Field Station (Shark Lab) the following year.

Doc created not only a permanent research facility where world-class shark research has been conducted for the past three decades, but also a place where aspiring young scientists could gain crucial hands-on field experience. The number of opportunities the Shark Lab has provided to graduate students and volunteers over the years is unrivalled in the field. There are not too many places where a shark enthusiast with no prior practical experience can work and leave with the skill sets they gain at the Shark Lab. Doc and Marie always took great pride in the lives that were touched at Bimini and the thousands of perceptions about sharks that were forever changed for the better. In the Shark Lab, Doc’s legacy and passion will live on for decades to come.

Although Doc enjoyed a stellar professional career, it was his family that he took most pride in. He and Marie recently celebrated 50 years of marriage and throughout those years Marie was his rock, often the only one who could calm Doc’s sometimes irascible tendencies. A true example of commitment through sickness and health, their union supported Doc through his life and career; indeed Marie, ‘the Lab Mother’, was as responsible for establishing and sustaining the Shark Lab as Doc himself was. In the field of elasmobranch research, Doc and Marie were always known as a single entity, a true team. Together they had two wonderful daughters, Meegan and Aya. Brilliant like their parents, these two are both successful professionals, Meegan as a plastic surgeon and Aya as a lawyer turned law professor. There’s no doubt that Doc passed a healthy dose of his determination on to his daughters, and between them they have given Doc and Marie three amazing grandchildren: Mia, Max and Misa, whom Doc loved dearly and will forever be proud of.

Doc had a presence that would command respect whenever he entered a room; no matter whom he met or how senior they were, they would give him the utmost attention and listen to what he had to say. Yet somehow he had time for everyone. At the lab, when new volunteers arrived, or at society meetings, he would delight in speaking to aspiring young scientists, listening to their stories and discussing their interests with an encyclopaedic level of detail. Doc’s larger-than-life personality drew the focus of many a television documentary in which he will be forever immortalised. Even more so, and more importantly, his legacy will live on in the Shark Lab, with his beloved family, and in the lives and achievements of all of us who had the distinct privilege of working with, or even just spending some time in the presence of, Dr Samuel H. Gruber, a true legend in our field.

Steven T. Kessel, PhD Chairman | Bimini Biological Field Station Foundation (BBFSF) Director of Marine Research | Daniel P. Haerther Center for Conservation and Research | John G. Shedd Aquarium

R. Dean Grubbs, PhD Member of the Board of Directors | Bimini Biological Field Station Foundation (BBFSF) Associate Director of Research | Florida State University Coastal and Marine Laboratory